Blood Cross - By Faith Hunter Page 0,112

- in the middle, and the slaves at the bottom as workers, sexual toys, and blood meals. Most of the slaves were treated barbarously."

Bruiser's voice hardened. "The slaves wanted freedom. The vampyres du couleur clans had little political power due to their race, and they wanted equality with the white vampires. The whites wanted status quo. Some, both white and mixed race, had the witch gene and practiced blood magic, dark rites. Some with the witch gene never quite regained sanity, even after they passed the devoveo state and were unchained. I've read accounts of the atrocities they practiced. Their cruelty was legendary.

"Escaped slaves called maroons fled to the mountains, where they organized, collected weapons, and carried out raids against their former captors in a series of rebellions over half a century." His hand made a little flapping motion to show a give or take on the length of the revolt. "The vampyres du couleur libre eventually joined with the revolt to kill or oust the white Mithrans, led by a variety of men, both human and vampires.

"A vampire, François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, turned some of the discontent maroons and helped plot one of the major uprisings. He and his allies led a revolt under the Spanish flag that toppled the French colony. It was violent and brutal, with carnage on both sides. Some of the white landowners escaped to the U.S.; many more died, along with over ten thousand slaves. Three of the surviving vampire clans, including some who practiced blood magic, came to Louisiana in 1791, upsetting the political scene here."

"The Rousseau insanity? They were nuts because a lot of them had the witch gene?"

Bruiser's mouth turned down, forming deep channels on either side of his mouth. He topped off his coffee, warming it as he thought through what he wanted to tell me. "The clan has always been known for a weakness in the first sire's blood. All of his first scions took more than a decade to find sanity after they were turned. It was worse in the second generation, with nearly half still chained after two decades. On Saint Domingue, that first sire experimented on his slaves in the search for a cure, instituting a breeding program to create offspring with the witch gene, using them in ceremonies that were intended to cure his chained scions. When he was killed, his children took up his studies - "

"Studies?" I didn't try to keep the irony out of my tone.

"It was barbaric." His words were a hatchet of sound, short and cutting. "The island was liberated in the revolt and the clan came here, bringing his records and taking up the experiments. They found a partial treatment, though I couldn't say what it was, and some scions who had been chained for decades became sane."

"The long-chained ones," I said, intrigued despite myself.

"Yes. But there was war among the New Orleans clans, followed by the purge, which decimated two of the Domingue clans and put an end to the experimentation. The first Rousseau master and his records were destroyed in a fire with most of his long-chained scions. His heir built a special lair on their family grounds and even today keeps their devoveo chained for up to fifty years before destroying them. One account suggests that about forty percent find sanity, though what memories may be lost is still questioned."

"All of them are destroyed after fifty years?"

Bruiser hesitated. He looked intensely self-contained, as if he picked and chose what he wanted to tell me out of a basket of history, gossip, and myth. I'd have felt better if he had rocked back on the chair's back legs, tapped his fingers on the table. Anything. But he was as motionless as Leo, except that he still breathed and his heart still beat. "There are rumors that some scions, specially loved ones, might be kept longer. But no evidence of it has ever been uncovered."

"So if one of the long-chained ones, say, one kept around alot longer than the usual fifty years, found sanity, he might have memories of the first sire's old methods. And he might have started the experiments again. That might be why Sabina didn't smell anyone she knew, except that it was an old Rousseau." At Bruiser's confused look, I explained about the burial sites and the crosses, about LeShawn and the kidnapped witch children. And the priestess's claim that a witch child had died at the burial site.

When I was done, Bruiser said, "Rumor

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