Ben felt his stomach lurch.
Then it was done and only one was left. Tenzin walked over, her blood-drenched tunic flapping as she approached him.
“Are you injured?”
“No. Just… trying not to puke.”
Tenzin grabbed the last vampire by the hair, batting off the square hat the man wore and bringing up the dagger she held. “Ben, this is a good lesson on why you do not let your blades become dull. Obviously, it creates greater mess when you have to use them and can be to your detriment in a fight.”
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.
“Got it, Tenzin.”
Ben pulled off his bloody shirt and wiped his face, but he wasn’t sure if it cleaned anything or just spread the blood around.
He didn’t throw up.
Tenzin flew up, dragging the vampire to the balcony on the second floor of the house. Ben sure as hell hoped no one was looking over the wall, especially since there’d been so much noise. She sat on the edge of the balcony, kicking her legs back and forth and dangling the bloody stranger in front of her.
“Who is your master?” she asked in her most reasonable tone. She was using Mandarin and he wasn’t sure why. Tenzin spoke Uyghur. Was it for his benefit?
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Yes. But I will kill you at a later time if you tell me who your master is.”
“Eh…”
Obviously, this wasn’t what the vampire wanted to hear.
Tenzin explained. “I am very old. So it’s quite possible I’ll forget about you for decades. Though I will kill you eventually.”
“My sire is Aqpasha.”
“Well,” she said with a snort, “he thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he?”
“What?”
“Never mind. I am Tenzin. Have you heard my name, even if you obviously haven’t seen my mark?”
The vampire nodded.
“Then you know you should never try to take what is mine. Benjamin, there is a brick in one of the men’s pockets, grab it please.”
“Since you said please…,” Ben muttered, rolling his shoulders and trying to ignore the bruises on his back he could feel forming.
“Now, vampire, what is your name—never mind, it is not important and you’ll probably lie to me so I can’t find you again.” She pulled him closer and snarled. “It won’t work. I have your smell. So tell me, did Aqpasha send you or were you exploring?”
He muttered something in Uyghur and Ben tuned out the conversation. After a few more pointed questions, she dropped him. The bloody vampire fell in the courtyard below, eyeing Ben with bitter eyes as he pulled out the knife still lodged in his ribs. Ben raised one eyebrow at the vampire as he threw the knife at Ben’s feet.
“Pick the knife up, clean it, and hand it to my human,” Tenzin called. She was examining the bodies of the other vampires, kicking them to the walls as their blood filled the cracks between the cobblestones, slowly creeping toward the cistern. She picked up Ben’s other knife that had dropped near the crates and tossed it to him.
Ben caught it with a wince, slicing his finger open on the edge of the blade. “Careful, Tenzin.”
The remaining vampire lunged toward the scent of Ben’s blood, but before he could reach him, Tenzin tossed one of the severed heads at the vampire’s ankles, tripping him so he tumbled at Ben’s feet. Then she flew over, leaned down, and whispered in the man’s ear before she cut his throat.
“I suppose it’s later.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“When are you going to start speaking to me again?” Tenzin asked, sitting uneasily across from Ben in the truck. It wasn’t his anger making her uneasy. It was his driving. She was completely at ease with his anger.
Whatever.
“This is going to be a very long trip,” she continued, “if you refuse to speak to me.”
Ben said nothing. He was pissed. More than pissed. Actually angry. Because they’d killed three vampires who belonged to someone he assumed was important, they’d sped out of Kashgar as soon as the truck was loaded. They didn’t go back to his hostel. They didn’t see the Apak Hoja Mausoleum like he’d wanted to. They didn’t get to visit the market or the central mosque. And all of his things, including his books, were left at the hostel. All he had on him was the bag with his computer, wallet, and passport. And his weapons.
Fucking Tenzin.
It wasn’t the first time she’d pulled him into some shit she dreamed up or sought out. And while she’d saved his life, he was fairly convinced a little strong-arming and verbal intimidation of the VIC would have avoided the entire mess. But why find the vampire in charge and negotiate when you could just kill a bunch of people you didn’t care about? And if your traveling companion had a little brain matter splattered across his face and had to knife someone in the gut, what was the big deal?
She settled into the seat across from him and Ben kept driving. By his calculation, they had a little over two hours of full night left. Then Tenzin could crawl in the cubbyhole for the rest of the trip, as far as he was concerned. He had half a mind to leave her in the middle of Xinjiang and fly home. Only the lure of the gold and garnet Scythian necklace carefully packed with the rest of her cache and surrounded by wilted vegetables made him stick with the truck.
Mercenary? Maybe. But then, he was traveling with a mercenary. Tenzin didn’t lie about that. Why would she when she enjoyed it?
Ben glanced at her, but her eyes were closed and she was doing the meditating thing she did when she was tuning the world out.
The question of Tenzin’s mental state was one Ben had thought long and hard over.
She was crazy. That had never been in question. Ben figured that anyone who’d lived as long as Tenzin and seen a fraction of what he imagined—and Ben had a vivid imagination and a good grasp of history—would be unbalanced. She had moments when he could swear she wasn’t even in the room with him. Moments when she’d turn to him and a second of insanity was caught in her eyes. Cold. In that second, Ben knew she didn’t know him. Didn’t know anything except whatever inner rage forced her to keep living as long as she had.
Then she blinked and she was herself again.
Crazy? Yes. And funny. Sarcastic. Caring. Pragmatic. The oddest combination of child and ancient he’d ever seen or ever would see.
Ben could accept it, because it was just… Tenzin. If he didn’t want to deal with it, he wouldn’t spend time with her.
He knew his anger would wane eventually, and she’d have him again. The next time she had some scheme or adventure, she’d lure him into it and he’d go, knowing it would all go to hell at some point and he’d deal.
Because it was Tenzin.
Next to him, she pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around them, settling her chin on her knees as she gazed at the moon. He could see the slight smile curve her lips from the corner of his eye.
“You like the rush,” she whispered.
“Tenzin—”
“Someday, you’ll stop lying to yourself about it. It doesn’t make you a bad person, you know, to like the rush. It makes you feel alive. Reminds you that you are the one who survived.”
Ben tried not to think about it. Because then he’d start questioning his own mental state.
“I want to live as peaceful a life as I can in this world,” he said. “Picking fights is generally a bad idea for a mortal living with vampires.”
“There’s a solution to that.”
“Not one that I’m interested in.”
“Benjamin,” she whispered. “Why do you value something that only holds you back?”
I don’t want to be like you.
No, that wasn’t it. Not exactly. But he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Might not ever be ready.
He took an exit and pulled over. They needed gas and he needed a promise.
He turned to her. “Tenzin.”
“Benjamin.” She smiled, obviously amused at the gravity in his face. But he was serious. Dea
dly serious.
“I want you to promise me something.”
“That depends on the promise.” Her eyes were calculating now.
“Promise me you’ll never turn me.”
Tenzin’s grey eyes narrowed.
“Ben—”
“Even if I’m dying,” he said, almost choking on the words. Ben lived a dangerous life and there were no guarantees. Dying young was a distinct possibility. “Even if I’m dying, Tenzin. Do not turn me. I want you to promise me.”
She stared at him just long enough to reassure him she’d thought about it. “I promise I won’t turn you.”
That was way too easy.
Tenzin hopped out of the truck before he could say another word.
“We should get tea,” she said. “Then get back on the road. It’s a long way to Shanghai.”
Night turned into day, then night again. Over and over as they drove across country. The papers Cheng had arranged for them worked. So much that after the fourth night Tenzin didn’t even stay in the truck bed. She’d only had to use amnis once, and that had been when the official had been more interested in the lithe young woman traveling in a cargo truck than in checking Ben’s papers.
That time it was Tenzin holding Ben back from violence.
They still drove mostly at night, though sometimes Ben bullied Tenzin into a daytime drive so he could see some of the country. Five thousand miles. Almost seventy hours of driving, and that wasn’t counting traffic. They crossed deserts and climbed mountains. Up and over, the highway often following the same route that caravans had traveled for hundreds or thousands of years. The vastness humbled him.
Jiuquan and Zhongwei, vast spaces and mountains of sand. Guyuan and Xi’an, the Han influence growing stronger. He made Tenzin stop in Xi’an for two days so he could take in a few of the sights, but he could have spent a week there. She buzzed past the ancient belltower at night, scaring the bats, and he jogged along the old city walls as the sun rose. Ben loved Xi’an, but he knew he’d have to come back. The weight of all the gold hidden in quickly rotting vegetables made touring the terra cotta warriors somewhat less alluring.
He’d stopped thinking in English and had switched to Mandarin somewhere in the past week. Tenzin spoke to him only in Mandarin, and his spoken language had reached the point where the officials who examined their papers didn’t question Ben, they just assumed he was from Xinjiang, as his forged documents claimed.
“Do they really think I’m Chinese?” he’d asked Tenzin one night, just after they’d passed another weigh station where they’d been inspected.
“They think you’re Uyghur. Most of the population here has never been to Xinjiang,” she’d explained. “It’s the perfect cover for you. They know your accent is different, but they assume it’s because you’re from so far west. You look Caucasian, but so do many of the people in Xinjiang.”
“That’s convenient.”
She squirmed in the truck. “None of this is convenient. I could be in Shanghai in half the time if I was flying.”
“Oh well,” he said, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Then I’d be bored.”
Tenzin gave him a dirty look, but at least she’d stopped complaining about his driving every second of every night.
“What was that beeping sound?”
“My voicemail.”
“Did someone call you?”
He shrugged. “Another message from Cheng’s guy. He wanted to know if the papers worked.”
“If they didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t tell Kesan.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Not without a knife to his throat.”
“You might want to work on your communication techniques, Tiny.”
Mountains and villages flew by, harsh terrain gradually giving over to soft green. As they drove, the air grew softer, too. Cold dry nights bled into warmer ones.
Nanyang and Xinyang, where the air became so humid it wrapped around his throat every time he left the sanctuary of the truck.
But the green. The emerald mountains and hills of Henan province almost brought him to tears, they were so beautiful. There was nothing in his experience that equaled the sheer size and grandeur of the Chinese landscape. Vast was too small a word to capture it. And the people, the cities. Ben didn’t think he’d ever been to a country more dynamic. It was ancient and new at the same time.
Somewhere past Nanyang, Tenzin said, “We’re in Cheng’s territory now.”
“Oh?”
“Which means if we have a problem, we can’t rely on my connection to Penglai to solve it.”
Tenzin’s sire was one of the Eight Immortal Elders who ruled Penglai Island near Beijing.
“Tell me about Cheng.”
She frowned. “Our relationship—”
“Not that,” he quickly interrupted her. “Just him. Is he really a threat to Penglai? I thought the Elders ruled all of China.”
She shrugged. “Officially? Yes. But Cheng has been consolidating power for the last hundred years or so. He was a pirate and he now holds vast shipping interests. He’s a close associate of Beatrice’s grandfather, actually. But he has… what is the word?” She switched to English. “He’s diversified now. The Elders consider him nothing more than a nuisance, so they leave him alone as long as he gives them the appearance of respect.”
“Does he?”
“What?”
“Respect them?”
“He respects their power. But he has no interest in their traditions. I think he considers them the old China. And he is the new.”
“That makes sense.”
She grinned, and her fangs pressed against her lips. “Things are much more interesting in Shanghai than they are in Beijing.”
“So does Cheng like you because of you, or because liking you pisses your sire off?”
“For me, of course.” She propped her feet up on the dashboard. “I’m wonderful.”
“And so humble.”
“I never understood the purpose of humility. It seems too close to false modesty for me.”
“And you have neither.”
She gave him a guileless look. “I have very little of any kind of modesty. You know that.”
Time to change the subject.
Ben stretched his arms up. “I’m so ready to be out of this truck.”
“Only one more night,” she said. “Then Shanghai.”
She sounded excited, so why did he get the sense she wasn’t looking forward to it?
Tenzin hated Shanghai. She hadn’t minded it so much several hundred years ago when it was just a port town, but it had grown so crowded. Skyscrapers towered over the city. The skyline was constantly changing. There was no quiet. No rest. It was build the new and damn the past. Part of its energy appealed to her. She couldn’t deny that. But there were simply too many humans anymore. A lush menu if she needed to eat often, but as old as she was, Tenzin needed little blood to survive. The blood of her own kind was far more nourishing to her anyway.
It didn’t escape her notice—or the notice of the Elders—that many of the younger immortals in China flocked to Shanghai, eager to enjoy the more lax supervision of Cheng’s patronage. He was going to have to be careful eventually. She didn’t want to be the one to remind him. Then again, if Tenzin remembered correctly, pragmatism was Jonathan’s job.
Tenzin was loath to bring Ben among Cheng’s people when he’d already attracted Kesan’s attention. The wily earth vampire would have told Cheng about the human she’d brought with her. Told him Ben was more than a lackey.
Inconvenient.
But not insurmountable.
Cheng still owed her a number of favors. And their continued friendship was one of the things holding the Elders back from interfering with his business. Her father considered Cheng one of his daughter’s odd friends, which was fine with Tenzin. She had many odd friends. So Cheng could only push her so far. But if he started threatening Ben…
Tenzin realized that if i
t came down to alienating Cheng or Benjamin, she’d alienate Cheng first.
“Hmm.”
Ben heard her and asked, “What?”
“Nothing.”
He muttered something under his breath, but she couldn’t be bothered to listen.
Ben was an amusing human, but why would she alienate Cheng for Ben’s benefit?
Well, Cheng was immortal. If he became angry with her, she had plenty of time to make amends.
Ben was not immortal. And he belonged to Giovanni, who was hers.
Giovanni, who had also extracted a silly promise from her years ago about not turning Ben if he didn’t wish it.
She’d promised them both. Silly boys. Didn’t they know she lied when it suited her? That was the thing about having mostly immortal friends. You had lots of time to assuage their anger should it ever crop up. Ben, for instance, could barely remain angry with her for a week.
A week was nothing. Giovanni hadn’t spoken to her for five years once. It had been mildly annoying, but she forgave him.
The next night, Ben took Tenzin’s directions when they finally left the main highway and drove to an industrial area south of Shanghai. He could see the lights of the city in the distance, but Tenzin said the ship would leave from the commercial port and not the city that sat on the mouth of the Yangtze River. He was itching to see the city, but he was also eager to hand over control of the cache to someone who’d get it on a ship heading to the States.
“Turn right here,” she said, looking at the directions Kesan had given her in Ürümqi. “And then left at the light.”
“Are we meeting Cheng here?”
“No. We’re dropping off his truck. His manager will see that it gets on the cargo ship once we do. I’ll inspect it before the container is sealed. Do you still have the inventory?”
“Yep. And pictures.” They’d done a proper inventory just outside of Jiuquan. He’d intended to do it sooner, but Tenzin didn’t want to take any extra time when she didn’t know who they might have pissed off in Xinjiang. Jiuquan was well within her sire’s territory.
“Pictures?” She smiled. “How convenient. It will be much harder for him to lie to me then.”