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in: Characters, Vampires, Main Supporting Characters, Shift Hitch-hikers

Tomas

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Tomas

Tomas

The Day of the Dead (Cassandra Palmer

"The Day of the Dead" short story featuring Thomas

Tomas — First appears in Touch the Dark.


Introduction[]

Tomas features in the Cassandra Palmer series of novels and also in a free short story, "The Day of the Dead," available on the Author's website.

Like Francoise, Tomas doesn't have a last name. He was born in Peru during the conquest, the bastard son of a priestess of Inti and a Spanish conquistador. His father didn't stay around long enough to impart his surname—or much of anything else—but Tomas could have taken his master's name once a life-challenged Spanish nobleman took a liking to him. But after being forcibly changed into a vampire and treated as a slave for four hundred years, he wasn't feeling too chummy. Now, all he wants is his hated master dead--permanently. He'll figure out the rest later. ~ Take A Chance: Gallery

About[]

Tomas is Cassandra Palmer's platonic roommate.[1]

Books Appears In[]

Species[]

Powers & Abilities[]

  • First Level Master Vampire[2]
  • He can rip out the heart of a vampire from a distance.[3]
  • Can mask his Vampire nature and seem human, even go out in daylight sometimes.[4]
  • Power of suggestion
  • Ability to fog memories
  • Can bespell multiple people at one time to fog their memory, few can.[5]
  • Can put people to sleep with an order, even vampires.[6]
  • One of those rare vamps able to mimic the human condition so perfectly that we lived as roommates for six months without me guessing what he was. [7]
  • Apollo said he approved of Tomas as his avatar—his mother was one of his mother was another of his priestesses. [8]

Occupation[]

  • Vampire slave
  • Waited table at the Club for Mike when Cassie recommended him.[9]
  • Cassie's covert body-guard for the Senate[10]

Residence & Place of Origin[]

Character / Personality / Motivations[]

  • His main goal was to be free of his master's control in order to kill Alejandro and free his people. [13]

Physical Description[]

  • High cheekbones and straight black hair of his Incan mother had mixed with the golden skin and European features of his Spanish father.
  • Slender muscles, skin like honey over cream and sable hair that brushes his waist when he doesn't keep it pulled back. His face was all high cheekbones and strong angles, but the delicacy of some of the features make up for it.[14]

Love Interests[]

Connections: Family / Friends[]

Original Allies[]

New Allies[]

Enemies[]

Other Details[]

  • Drinks Mescal
  • Mike said he was the smartest hire he'd ever made—never sick, never complained and looked like a dream.[18]
  • Tomas has been feeding from Cassie for months, and he has become… territorial, not wanting Mircea to feed from her. He claims it was for the band that's created so he could know where she was at all time to keep her safe.[19]
  • Tomas' attempts at seduction were on the Consul's orders. [20][21]
  • Rafe told Tomas that Cassie would go after Jimmy the Rat, and you told Tony who set up that ambush in Dante's Casino parking lot. Tomas had allied himself with Rasputin.[22]
  • he constantly hears Louis-Cesare's call to, driving him mad. In Faerie, he blessedly doesn't hear it anymore. [23]
  • He heal far more quickly in Faerie. [24]
  • He hears Louis-Cesare's constant call. It drew him to the Senate [25]

Tomas and Cassie[]

✥ When Cassie first was Tomas hanging out at the local shelter run by Lisa Porter, he had the dead eyes of a typical street kid. Cassie got him his job for Mike at the Club. Cassie discovers after an attack by Tony's vamps that he is really a Master Vampire. She is furious and heartbroken by the betrayal.[26]

✥ Cassie had shared glimpses into her time on the streets with Tomas, things she never talked about with anyone, to encourage him to open up. Cassie had worried that he had some of the same relationship phobias she did. Cassie had let myself get fond of him.[27]

✥ Tomas was sent to do more than just guard Cassie, he was also told to ensure that the Circle's claim could be successfully disputed by bedding her and ending her status as a virgin so that the Pythia's power would pass to her successfully—there by freeing her from any claim by the Circle over her. [28]

Biography[]

Tomas is more than five hundred years old. His mother was a high-ranking Incan noblewoman before the European invasion. She was forced by one of Pizarro's men, and Tomas was the result. He grew up in a time when a smallpox epidemic had killed many Incan nobles, leaving a vacuum of power. He organized some of the scattered tribes into a force to resist the Spanish advance, and thereby came to Alejandro's notice.

One of Alejandro's servants made Tomas, but Alejandro killed him shortly thereafter and took Tomas for himself. He was carving out an empire within the Spanish lands in the New World and he needed a warrior to help him. We succeeded, and he eventually organized a new Senate, but his tactics never changed. He acts to this day as if every question is a challenge, every plea for leniency a threat.

Tomas challenged Alejandro as soon as he grew strong enough—he would have succeeded in ending his reign of terror, if not for outside interference.  Latin American Senate on is a challenge, every plea for leniency a threat. Tomas challenged for leadership of the Latin American. Its Consul asked me to stand as his champion and I agreed. Tomas lost.

Backstories[]

How Tomas became a vampire:[]

They rounded Tomas up with the rest of his village and took them to be hunted by Alejandro and his court? The only reason Tomas is not dead is that one of [Alejandro]]'s courtiers thought Tomas was attractive enough to save for himself. Tomas had to watch people who had come through plague and conquest, who had fought at my side for years against overwhelming odds, be slaughtered by a madman for his sick amusement.[29]

Roommates with Cassie[]

Tomas in the kitchen of our Atlanta apartment, frowning in puzzlement at the stove. It hadn't cooked the brownies he'd intended as breakfast for me, possibly because he hadn't known to turn the thing on. He'd been wearing one of my aprons, the one that said does not cook well with others, over the smiley face pajama bottoms Cassie had bought to keep him from sleeping in the altogether.
"That was the first time I'd let myself begin to hope that he might become a permanent fixture in my life. He'd already been my best friend for six of the happiest months I'd ever known. Against all odds, I'd actually started to create a more or less normal existence. I'd liked my sunny apartment, my wonderfully predictable job at a travel agency and my gorgeous roommate. Tomas had been a dream come true-handsome, considerate, strong, yet vulnerable enough to make me want to take care of him."

Human Life[]

"When the Spaniards came to our village, I fought with the rest, to save the corn that would feed us through the winter. I lost many friends then, Cassie. The man who had been like a father to me was taken, and because he would not betray where we had hidden the harvest, they fed him to their dogs, piece by piece. Then they carried off the women and burned the village to the ground. I grieved for him by honoring what he fought for, by keeping our small group together and free.” Alejandro had eventually finished what the conquistadors had begun, by killing Tomas' village in some sort of game.

Mother's Story[]

"After the conquest, no one was noble, no one commoner. You were either European or nothing. My mother had been a priestess of Inti, the sun god, and had taken a vow of chastity for life, but a conquistador took her as booty after the fall of Cuzco. She had expected to be treated with honor, according to the rules of war, but he knew nothing of our customs and would not have cared if he did. He was merely a farmer's son from Extremadura out to make a fortune, and didn't care much how he did it. She hated him. No one thought she could scale a wall ten feet high when seven months pregnant, and they failed to watch her closely. She got away, but she had no money, and her defilement made her an outcast from her former calling. Not that it mattered. The temple had been plundered and the land was ravaged by disease and war. She fled the capital, where the Spaniards were fighting among themselves, but found things no better in the countryside." Tomas smiled bitterly. “They forgot, you cannot eat gold. Most of the farmers who had not died had run away. Famine was everywhere. Grain became more valuable than the riches the conquistadors had wanted so badly. She hid in her family's chullpa-a crypt where food and offerings were left for mummified ancestors-and one of the palace servants found her. He had long loved her, but the priestesses were considered the wives of Inti. Sleeping with one of them was a terrible crime. The punishment was to be stripped and chained to a wall, and left to starve to death. he had worshipped from afar. But he began looking for her as soon as he heard she had escaped. He persuaded her to go away with him to his family's village. It was almost fifty miles from the capital, and so small that they hoped the Spanish would overlook it. They lived there together until I was eight, when she died of smallpox along with half the village." — Tomas [30]

Related Characters, Groups, Places, etc[]

Events Throughout the Series[]

This section may have spoilers. If you want to avoid spoilers, think of the book title as a "Spoiler Warning" for books you have not read yet.

1. Touch the Dark[]

Cassie runs to his job at the Club to warn him. But before she could say anything, five huge Vampires charge into the room. By the end of the attack, it's revealed that Tomas is really a Master Vampire—higher than third level—and that he's been decieving her all this time. He claims he was ordered to protect her. They're both still in danger, but she refuses his help or to go with him. He puts her to sleep.[31] She awakes in a waiting room the Vampire Senate in Las Vegas. He attends the Senate meeting on Cassie's fate.[32]

During the stand-off with the Were-Rats, Cassie's spirit gets pushed into Tomas when Billy Joe gets pushed out of Jimmy the Rat not her. Inside Tomas, she tells Louis-Cesare to shut up and yells at him. Louis-Cesare thinks it's Tomas talking to him like that and so grabs him by the throat. Cassie has another vision prompted by Louis-Cesare's touch. Tomas tags along on the vision. The two of them return to the 17th Century torture dungeon and rescue Francoise.[33] Tomas is part of the battle in the parking lot defending Cassie against Jonathan and the Dark Mages and Tony's vamps. He pulled the heart out of a vamp from a distance and caught it like baseball.[34]

He is present in the suite at M.A.G.I.C. during the discussion, remaining mostly quite. Cassie learns hat he had been feeding off her all the time they were roommates without her knowledge and feels doubly betrayed by him.[35] During the fight with John Pritkin, Tomas received the most damage from Pritkin's weapons trying to contain him and block him from killing Cassie.[36] After Pritkin leaves, he lets slip that Louis-Cesare was cursed with vampirism. This was after he and Cassie had changed Louis' history.[37]

While escaping Rasputin's attacks through the hidden halls of M.A.G.I.C., Mircea suddenly puts it together that Tomas is working for the other side. He viewed the situation as an opportunity to be free of Louis-Cesare and once again challenge Alejandro for the South American Senate and to free his people from Alejandro's cruelty. He wants Cassie to join him promising her safety. Cassie tells him the only thing Rasputin wants is for her to die, he has his own Sybil. Pritkin holds him off using a garrote while Cassie and Mircea escape to the Senate's Inner Sanctum where they use the Tears of Apollo to go back to 1661 to free Louis and Radu .[38]

2. Claimed by Shadow[]

Tomas was captured early yesterday morning by the North American Vampire Senate. They're planning on executing him—the most painful way possible. Cassie tells John Pritkin that they have to rescue him.[39] Cassie escapes from the Senate chamber with him in Mac's magical flying Tattoo Shop—straight into Faerie, with the help of John and Mac. Kit Marlowe hitched a ride, though Pritkin tried to fight him off.[40] When Cassie looked his injuries over, she saw that Jack had split him open from nipples to navel, like an autopsy specimen.  She bound up his wounds with strips of sheet so they would heal better. Cassie was determined to keep Kit Marlowe from killing Tomas. Kit swears he means him no hare, but she does't believe him. Tomas goes into a vampire healing trance. he seemed safe from the sun in Faerie.[41]

The Dark Fey shoved less than gently into a large sack in the enchanted forest.[42] Tomas and Cassie complete the ritual of the Pythia rites, making her Pythia. Tomas had been told that it would break the geis, but it didn't work because of recent events involving the Time Line. Cassie negotiated sanctuary for Tomas as part of a deal with the Dark Fey King in exchange for her finding the Codex Merlini. He did not go through the portal with the others.[43]

3. Embrace the Night[]

3.1. "The Day of the Dead"[]

Tomas goes to a village in Peru to kill Alejandro, his former master on the Day of the Dead—the night that Alejandro forces people to be hunted by his vampires though mazes and other obstacles, including a thick raw jungle. He teams up with Sarah Lee and her team of mercenaries searching for her brother, Jason Lee who was kidnapped by Alejandro to be one of the hunted. They make their way into Alejandro's lair and eventually into his audience chamber where hundreds of victims were coraled. And, where Alejandro was trying to make three Necromancers, Jason included, turn the humans into zombies to create an army fully under his control. Tomas attempts to challenge Alejandro, not only to kill him as he dreamed of doing for centuries, but also as a distraction allowing Sarah and team to rescue Jason and the others. After a valiant effort, Tomas falls to an axe in is spine—just as Alejandro is about to finish him, Tomas looks up to see one of the Ancient Inca Kings take Alejandro from behind and drain him.

After getting the others out and leaving, Sarah offers Tomas a job. The alternative is taking over Alejandro's position as the head of the Latin American Senate, and, in time, becoming just like Alejandro. He takes the job.[44]

Quotes[]

In vamp circles, feeding has strict rules. Even the same norm can't be fed from regularly, as it creates a feeling of possession in the vamp involved and can lead to all sorts of problems because of jealousy. But taking blood without permission from someone connected with our world is considered even more of a violation. That's not only because of the often sexual by-product of the feeding process, but also because anyone recognized as part of the supernatural community has special rights. Tomas had just broken a whole group of laws, not to mention betraying me yet again. So everything about him had been one vampire trick or another, from the way he looked to the way I'd felt. I might have eventually been able to forgive him the deception, but not this. I couldn't believe he'd done it, but looking at him, I knew he had. — Cassandra Palmer, [45]
"Let me make this simple," I said furiously. "You lied to me and you betrayed me. I don't want to see you, talk to you or even breathe the same air as you. Ever again. Got it?" — Cassie, Touch the Dark [46]
"What do you know of abuse?" he demanded in a savage undertone. "Do you know how I became a vampire, Cassie? Would you like me better if I told you that they rounded me up with the rest of my village and took us to be hunted by Alejandro and his court? That the only reason I'm not dead is that one of his courtiers thought I was attractive enough to save for himself? That I had to watch people who had come through plague and conquest, who had fought at my side for years against overwhelming odds, be slaughtered by a madman for his sick amusement? Is that what you want to hear? If it isn't gruesome enough to win your forgiveness, believe me, I have many other stories. We could swap them, only I think you would run out before I do. You were on the streets for a handful of years; I was with Alejandro for three and a half centuries!" — Tomas, Touch the Dark [47]
"I can't hear him," he said obscurely, an expression of pure bliss passing over his face. — Tomas, in Faerie [48]
"Every moment, I heard him, an endless voice, deep in my head driving me half mad! I could never relax, not for a moment. I knew as soon as I did, my will would break and I would go crawling back like a beaten dog. I told myself that soon the war would distract him and he would let me go. But tonight I awoke in the Senate's holding cells, and a guard informed me that I had walked into the compound and surrendered myself. Yet I remember nothing of it, Cassie! Nothing!" He shook more violently, a visible shudder passing over his limbs. "He pulled me to him like a puppet. He will do it again.” — Tomas about Louis-Cesare[49]
"All my life, I only knew people who wanted something from me. When I was young, it was protection and a chance for revenge. After Alejandro turned me, it was skill in battle and a knowledge of the land that he didn't possess. For Louis-C'esar, I was a living trophy, a testament to his power." He caressed my hair, lightly, reverently. "Only you ever cared about me as a person, without wanting anything in return. Te amo, Cassie. Te querr'e para siempre.” ... I don't speak Spanish, but I got the idea. — Cassie and Tomas [50]
"For the first time in a century, I am free of him," he said, and his voice held awe, as if he couldn't quite believe it. "I have no master." He looked at me, and there was a fierce joy in his face. "For four and a half centuries, I was someone's slave! My master's voice controlled me completely, until I thought I would never break free!" He stared around the dank little cell in wonder. "But here, none of our rules seem to apply.” — Tomas about Louis-Cesare and Alejandro[51]

From "The Day of the Dead":

✥ Once, he’d yearned for freedom with everything in him, hungered for it as he never had food, lusted for it as he never had any woman. But it didn’t seem to matter how long he waited or how much power he gained, the story was always the same. He’d had three masters in his life, but had never been master himself. The idea of being free was like an old photograph now, faded and dog-eared, and Tomas didn’t think he could even see his face in it any more. All he wanted now was to end this.[52]
✥ Tomas found himself struggling to breath against a thick smothering pressure, voices rising like a tide in his head. He’d killed before he came to Alejandro, fighting against the men who had come across the sea to steal his homeland. But those deaths had never bothered him: he’d never lost one night of sleep over them, because those men had deserved everything he did to them. The ones he’d taken in these halls were different.
Taken. It was a good word, he thought bleakly, seeing with perfect clarity the bodies, pale and brown, young and old, faces spattered with blood, bodies cracked and split open. They had bled out onto the thirsty earth because the ones who hunted them had been so sated that they could afford to spill blood like water. And none of it had been due to the hand of God, through some natural, comprehensible tragedy. No, they had died because someone with god-like conceit had stretched out his hand and said, I will have these, and by that act ended lives full of hope and promise.
More often then not, Tomas had been that hand, the instrument through which his master’s gory commands were carried out. He hadn’t had a choice, bound by the blood bond they shared to do as he was bid, but that had somehow never done much to soothe his conscience. He had known it would be hard to return, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite this overpowering. Four hundred years of memory seemed to permeate the very air, the taste of it thick and heavy, like ashes in his mouth.[53]

Book References[]

  1. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 1
  2. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"
  3. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 8
  4. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 2
  5. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 8
  6. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"
  7. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 1
  8. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 12
  9. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 1
  10. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 3
  11. ↑ Touch the Dark
  12. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 12
  13. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 12
  14. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 1
  15. ↑ Touch the Dark
  16. ↑ Claimed by Shadow
  17. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"
  18. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 1
  19. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 9
  20. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 12
  21. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 2
  22. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 13
  23. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  24. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  25. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  26. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 2
  27. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 3
  28. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 12
  29. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. , p.
  30. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  31. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 1-2
  32. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 3
  33. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 7
  34. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 8
  35. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 9
  36. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 10
  37. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 11
  38. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 13
  39. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 8
  40. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 9
  41. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 10
  42. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  43. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 12
  44. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"
  45. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 9
  46. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 3
  47. ↑ Touch the Dark, ch. 3
  48. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 10
  49. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  50. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 12
  51. ↑ Claimed by Shadow, ch. 11
  52. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"
  53. ↑ "The Day of the Dead"

Note[]

  • Source for Images and Into: Author's site. The Artist is not credited or I would name the artist.

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