Tenzin stared at the computer. “Are you excited because your ancestors were African?”
Chloe cocked her head to the side. “Really? Did you put that one together yourself?”
“But as a Black American, you are far more likely to be related to people in West Africa, and we are going to East Africa.”
“Whatever, Tenzin. I won’t be the only Black person in the room for once. Hush and let me have my joy.”
Ben coughed to cover a laugh. “Chloe, I can’t lie, most vampires not in Saba’s clan steer clear of the continent to avoid pissing her off; that’s the only explanation I have for taking this long to visit. But did I hear Gavin is going to be in that neck of the woods anyway?”
Chloe nodded, her curly dark brown hair bouncing around her ears. “Yes. He’s going to be in Nigeria though. He’s opening a club in Lagos with a new partner. He’s cautiously optimistic and said something similar about not pissing off Saba, so I know what you guys are saying, but I’m still excited.”
“Then let’s get to the details.” Giovanni was eager to start class. “Chloe, Ben gave you a summary?”
“Creepy scroll made from vampire bones that’s supposed to make the owner capable of controlling all four elements,” Chloe said. “Did I get that right?”
“Yep.” Ben pointed to Giovanni. “And you just mentioned something about a blood myth.”
“Yes.” He put the picture of the old man with the beard up again. “There are some stories related to the myth that say Ash Mithra created this scroll so that only his own children could use it. That’s why you’ll hear sayings about the blood of Mithra in some circles. It’s kind of vampire shorthand for saying someone was sired into a lucky situation.”
Beatrice frowned. “I’ve never heard that before.”
“Neither have I,” Ben said.
“I have,” Tenzin said. “But it’s a really old saying.”
Chloe asked, “So what does the blood of Mithra mean though? Does that mean vampires this guy sired, or like his human bloodline?”
Giovanni smiled. “Very good question, Chloe. We don’t know. We don’t even know if this is true, but if it were talking about his human bloodline, that would probably be quite vast. Much like Beatrice’s great-grandfather, Ash Mithra was renowned for the massive clan of human family he kept to serve him. They were rumored to be originally from the Land of Punt, which was an ancient trading partner of Egypt on the Horn of Africa. Stories say they were wildly wealthy gold traders who moved north, becoming prominent in Arabia, then Assyria and Persia.”
“And they were related to this vampire? So he moved with them?” Beatrice asked.
Giovanni nodded. “It’s not unheard of. Many vampires bring their blood family into the immortal world because they don’t trust anyone else, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear about arrangements like that in the ancient world. The myths around Ash Mithra vary some but are surprisingly consistent for such an old character.”
“So if the bone scroll can only be used by someone with the blood of Mithra, that could still mean a lot of people,” Chloe said. “I mean, in theory, his human descendants could have had lots of children. There could be thousands and thousands in the modern world, right?”
Giovanni nodded. “That is correct.” He flipped to another slide. “For instance, this Sasanian noble was the governor of Sidon in Lebanon under the Romans and claimed to be part of Mithra’s line. He had twelve wives and concubines and sixty-three children.”
“Holy shit,” Ben said. “Okay, so half the Middle East and Central Asia could be related to this guy in some way or another?”
“That might be a slight exaggeration, but yes.”
“None of this matters,” Tenzin said. “Because we’re going to find the scroll and safeguard it from anyone who might want to use it for bad reasons.”
“If this scroll was so powerful,” Chloe asked. “Why would this Ash Mithra guy ever let it out of his possession? Did someone kill him?”
“No one knows for sure,” Giovanni said. “Though obviously that’s an excellent question. But one of the myths is that Mithra sired an immortal son named Rutha, and unlike Mithra’s other children, he was more thirsty for power than wisdom. In that legend, Mithra disowns his son and hides the scroll so that Rutha could never use it.”
Chloe nodded. “Okay, so there’s this superpowerful and dangerous object floating around the world now, but it can only be used by Mithra’s descendants.”
“According to legends,” Tenzin said. “No one knows that for sure.”
“But it’s not out of the realm of possibility,” Giovanni said. “After all, only Mithra’s descendants would have his amnis, which could be a component of how the scroll works.”
“How would it have gotten to Ethiopia?” Beatrice addressed Tenzin directly for the first time that night. “Why are you so sure it’s there?”
“According to sources I trust, the scroll was in the possession of a Manichaean missionary who was on his way to visit the court of the Aksumite emperor in the sixth century. And now rumors are saying that Arosh found the bone scroll in Aksum. I don’t think that’s a coincidence; I think the relic is in Ethiopia.”
“In Aksum?”
“Possibly. Or possibly in some other undiscovered Aksumite treasury.”
“So you’re potentially looking at a lot of sites,” Beatrice said. “Have you figured out a way to narrow them down yet?”
Tenzin narrowed her eyes. “Not yet.”
“Hey.” Chloe piped up from the computer. “I was just thinking that everyone seems to be afraid of Saba, right? And she rules Ethiopia and like, North Africa and most of the continent, right? She’s the big, big boss?”
“Yes,” Beatrice said. “She’s the oldest vampire anyone knows of, and Ethiopia is where she is originally from. So she kind of considers the entire continent of Africa her territory.”
“And so we’re going in there,” Chloe said. “And hopefully finding and taking a superpowerful object from her territory.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “That’s the basic idea.”
“And no one thinks she might have a problem with that?”
Ben and Tenzin exchanged a look. “Oh, she won’t like it,” Tenzin said. “But we have an idea.”
“More like a distraction,” Ben said. “We have an idea how to distract her.”
“Shiny objects,” Tenzin said. “We’re going to trade the bone scroll for something she wants more.”
Beatrice looked skeptical. “There’s something she wants more?”
Ben nodded. “Yes. And we think we know where it is.”
6
Ben sat on the balcony of a vacant house that was perched across the road from the private club where Trevor Blythe-Bickman was dining. He was lounging on an easy chair that hadn’t seen company since its owner had left the city for his villa in Thailand the month before.
One after another, shiny new electric sports cars and hybrid SUVs arrived at the club and were swiftly whisked away by the ever-present valets. The club was not a typical bar or a restaurant but an extremely expensive social club that catered to the city’s young, hip, and ridiculously wealthy.