“So what was up with the biting thing? Just feeling possessive?” she asked him with a curled lip. “You could have at least warned me.”
“The bite on the veranda was a public display. I’m sorry I couldn’t warn you, but for me to feed from Ernesto’s granddaughter in front of him, and on his own ship, made a very strong statement, and since we don’t know who it is yet—”
“I get it, I get it. You did the caveman dance, and we’ve covered our bases. Everyone knows who I ‘belong’ to.” She rolled her eyes.
“Exactly,” he said with a smile. “And, I’ll confess, my blood was running after the interrogation. If I was human, you could say it was an adrenaline rush.”
“Okay then,” she cleared her throat. “Next time go punch something instead of biting me.”
“I just had,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh.’”
“So…” she hesitated. “Is the guy who attacked Mano dead?”
He paused before she heard his satisfied voice. “Ashes in the Pacific.”
They exchanged a look Beatrice didn’t want to think about too closely before he changed the subject. “So…how was your conversation with Ernesto?”
Her head fell back against the seat and her eyes drooped. “That was exhausting.”
Giovanni smiled. “You did extremely well for your first small taste of vampire politics, Beatrice.”
“That was a small taste?”
He chuckled and reached for her hand, stroking the back of her palm with his thumb. “A small and rather friendly dip in the shark pool.”
“Okay, well, it was interesting, but I could go on a vamp politics diet for a while, if you know what I mean.”
“Fair enough. There’s no reason I can think of for us to go back in the near future.”
Beatrice must have dozed in the car, because when she woke Giovanni was lifting her from the passenger’s seat and carrying her into the kitchen.
“What time is it?” she asked with a yawn.
“Around four in the morning.”
“Good thing I don’t have to work tomorrow.”
He walked through the kitchen, still carrying her in his arms. Beatrice curled into his chest and thought of the first ride she’d made into Cochamó when he’d held her for hours in front of him on the rocking horse.
“Gio?”
“Yes?” He turned down a long hall she knew contained the guest bedrooms.
“If I stayed with you tonight…could we just sleep?”
His steps faltered, and she heard his heart give a quiet thump.
“If that’s what you want.”
“I miss you,” she whispered as her eyes closed again. She burrowed toward the comforting smell of his skin. “I miss how warm your arms always are.”
He paused in the hallway before he turned and walked up the stairs.
Beatrice didn’t remember much except for his hands as they removed her shoes, the low buzz of his skin brushing against hers, and the comfort of being enveloped in his scent as he pulled the sheets around her. She heard him moving around the room before his long arms enfolded her and he nestled behind her in the bed. He whispered in her ear as she faded to dreams.
“I love you, Beatrice.”
Chapter Nine
En route to Houston
December 2009
“If you’re really from Texas—”
“Is that something people lie about? Being from Texas?”
“—then why don’t you have an accent?”
Beatrice turned to Giovanni. “Is he serious?”
He shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said, looking at Ben’s curious face. “We’ve never been, he only met Caspar and your grandmother when they came to New York to stay with him.”
They were sitting in the belly of Lorenzo’s old plane, which now was stripped of its more ostentatious details. It sported a decent library, two twin beds, and the same couches, though Giovanni had made sure they’d been recovered. When he had inherited Lorenzo’s converted cargo plane with the reinforced compartment that allowed him to fly, he had no idea it would be put to so much use.
Though he had spent much of the past year in New York and Los Angeles settling legal matters with Ben and preparing to reenter Beatrice’s life, he had spent the four years previous flying across Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, rebuilding old alliances and searching unsuccessfully for her father.
“I didn’t know my grandmother and Caspar went to New York!”
He nodded. “They came in August when I…” When he had flown down to Cochamó, unable to resist seeing her. The farther he had pushed her to the back of his mind in their years apart, the more he had been able to successfully concentrate on preparing himself for the conflict he knew was coming.
But as the prospect of seeing her neared, he became almost desperate. Though Isabel had verbally lashed him, he hadn’t been able to resist lurking around the house to try to catch a glimpse of her or a hint of her scent.
As soon as he mentioned August, her eyes hardened, Giovanni knew she realized what he was talking about. Luckily, Ben was still chattering, so she wasn’t allowed to shut herself off like she so often did.
“Will there be cowboy hats? Do I get one? No, that would probably look stupid. But maybe…Gio, have you ever worn a cowboy hat?”
“I never wore a cowboy hat when I lived in Texas,” he said.
Ben and Beatrice looked between each other, their eyes glinting. “That wasn’t a ‘no,’” she said with a sly smile.
He shrugged, thinking back to the time he had spent in Argentina with Gustavo and Isabel in the late 1800s. “It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a cowboy hat.”
They both started laughing and Ben finally choked out. “You—a cowboy—Gio wore a cowboy hat!”
“I’m trying to imagine it, Ben, but I just can’t,” Beatrice snorted.
“It wasn’t a western hat—it was a gaucho-style hat. Everyone wore them.”
Her eyes lit up. “But they wore them to keep the sun out of their eyes, and unless I’m missing something, sun burns you to a crispy critter, so you wouldn’t need one because you wouldn’t be out during the day. Admit it, you liked the cowboy hat.”
“It wasn’t a cowboy hat.”
“I bet it was a black one,” Ben said.
Beatrice nodded. “Definitely black.”
He rolled his eyes and opened a book, attempting to ignore them, but in reality, his heart lightened to see them laughing together. Though he never said it, Ben had been dreading the idea of Beatrice disrupting the tentative family ties the two of them had formed.
“And you know, the sun thing isn’t totally true. He once chased me out of the house about twenty feet during the day when I was trying to run away in New York. He didn’t burst into flames, he just got really sunburned and a little smoky around the ears.”
She cocked an eyebrow at Giovanni. “Smoky ears, huh? I’ll have to remember that.”
“And then he fell asleep really hard after he had two bags of blood, and he kept saying your name over and—”
Like lightning, Giovanni reached across the small compartment and grabbed Ben’s hand. The boy slumped over, instantly asleep, and Giovanni sat back in his chair as Beatrice gaped at him.
“Did you just use mind voodoo to shut him up?”
“Yes.”
“That’s…”
She just kept gaping, seemingly unable to comprehend Ben’s slumbering form. He was now snoring, just a little.
“I gave him a very nice dream about flying,” he said with a shrug.
“That cannot be ethical, Gio.”
“Well, call me an unorthodox parent then, but do you really think we would both be here a year later, still un-maimed, if I couldn’t do that on occasion? He’s a twelve-year-old boy. Trust me, it’s for the best. He’ll wake up when we’re in Houston.”
She shook her head, then stood, crouched down over the sleeping b
oy and pulled him over her shoulder as she trundled him to one of the small beds.
He watched her in amusement; she was far stronger than he’d realized. When he pulled her in to kiss him on the boat the week before, he’d noticed the firmness of the muscles on her body. It felt foreign on her but not at all unpleasant.
“The judo has paid off. You’re far stronger than you look,” he said when she came back and sat on the couch across from him.
Beatrice nodded. “I told you, that new sensei has really been great. Between judo, jujitsu, and the tai chi I feel pretty well-rounded. I need to find a shooting class, though.”
He smiled. “Gustavo mentioned that you were quite proficient with a rifle. He enjoyed shooting with you last summer. And the judo and jujitsu are good self-defense choices for you with your size.”
“That was the idea. I didn’t like feeling helpless.”
His heart clenched at the thought of his own failure to protect her five years before. “I understand.”
“I very much doubt that,” she muttered.
“Do you?” he asked with a flash of irritation. “Do you forget that I was held against my will for over ten years as a human? That, even as a vampire, I was subject to a far more powerful sire. One who could easily overcome me, no matter how strong I was?”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at him in the low light of the plane. “I forgot. Sorry.”
He looked back down at his book. “I have…a well of regret over what I have put you through that I doubt you’ll ever understand, Beatrice.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I am grateful you are now better able to protect yourself. It has given you confidence you lacked.”
“Professor voice,” she muttered under her breath.
He smirked at her and looked until she met his gaze. Then he allowed his eyes to travel suggestively down her body and back up until he met her eyes, which were heated with desire.
“You are no longer a girl,” he murmured. “And I was never your professor.”
“You just had the arrogance of one. Still do.”
With lightning speed, he came to kneel between her knees. He could hear her sharp inhalation and the sudden rush of her pulse. Looking up, he met her dark eyes.
“You think I’m arrogant?”
“I know you are,” she said breathlessly.
“Then what would you have me do, tesoro?”
She blinked and he saw her gaze drop to his mouth. “Wh—what?”
“Should I forget five hundred years of experience killing my enemies and protecting those who belong to me so that your modern sensibilities are not harmed?”
She was still looking at his mouth, and he forced himself not to smirk.
“Would you have me confer with you before every move as if I was a mere boy looking for approval?”
“No, I mean—”
“You called all the shots in your relationship with that human, didn’t you?”
He knew he had made a mistake bringing up Mano as soon as she twisted her mouth into a sneer.
“Yeah, I did. And he knew just how to make me happy.”
He darted back to his side of the plane and draped his arm over the back of the couch. “Did he? Did he really?”
She paled and looked away from him, staring at the dark window over his shoulder and the stars that winked out.
“Fine,” he conceded. “I shall do my utmost to consult with you on future matters of strategy and defense when it pertains to you.”
“Good.”
“But I reserve the right to overrule you based on my experience and superior knowledge of the immortal world.”
“Bossy.”
“Mortal.”
They glared at each other in silent struggle for a few minutes before she walked to the other bed in the cabin and lay down, turning her back to him as she fell asleep. Giovanni watched for hours, memorizing the sound of her soft breath, steady heartbeat, and the small unintelligible murmurs that comforted him. He glanced at Ben and felt his dormant heart beat once as he remembered the interrogation of Lorenzo’s man in Los Angeles.
“He knows about your boy, di Spada, and your human woman. He still has many friends,” the shriveled vampire had gloated as his limbs slowly charred under Giovanni’s grip. “You’ll never find all of them before he kills your people.”
“Is that so? Tell me more, Pirro. How did you escape the massacre on Lorenzo’s island? Were you hiding in a corner? Did you run away from the fight?”
The small dark vampire grinned before another burst of flame from Giovanni’s hands caused him to arch his back in agony.
“How—how does it—” He hissed, overcome with agony.
“The fire?” Giovanni leaned closer to the assassin, almost embracing the vampire as his lips murmured in his ear. “I’ve sent my fire through your dry veins, you fool. It’s a slow burn. One that will eat you from the inside out.” He gripped Pirro’s arms more tightly, and he could see Baojia’s approving nod from over the assassin’s shoulder. “I’ll stop it if you tell me who the traitor is on this boat.”
“I don’t know,” he choked. “It burns. He didn’t tell me how—”
“—badly I could hurt you? No, he likes to leave that part out because it makes him look weak, Pirro.” Giovanni stepped away, keeping a hand on the vampire’s shoulder and forcing the fire a little further into his veins. The gashes Giovanni had opened on the vampire’s arms, face and abdomen continued to leak the sludge that was the last of his dehydrated blood. Still, he pushed his amnis onto the assassin and forced the silent fire deep into the dry body in front of him.
“Tell me,” he said again. “Who is working for Lorenzo? Who gave you the information about the human diver?”
“Does it bother you that your woman keeps a lover, di Spada? Does it—” The vampire let loose a bloodcurdling scream as the fire reached his heart, which only tried to pump feverishly as the vampire curled in pain. Giovanni could hear the slow churning as it tried to move the bloody sludge through Pirro’s body, which only pushed the burning further.
“Tell me,” he murmured in the man’s ear, “and I will kill you quickly.”
“I don’t know,” Pirro finally croaked out of his dusty throat. Giovanni thought he could see a faint puff of smoke as the vampire spoke.
“I don’t believe you.” He hit him with another wave of fire, and the smoke poured out of the assassin’s scream.
“I don’t know!” he shrieked. “He was in Tripoli three months ago. We all knew he was meeting with the master, but none of us saw him.”
Giovanni released the vampire’s shoulder and allowed him to slump to the ground, where he curled into a small, smoking ball of pain.
“Tripoli?” he mused to Baojia.
The stoic vampire nodded. “I’ll be able to find out who was traveling then. It’s enough.”
“Are you sure? I’m happy to take the time for further questioning.”
Pirro whimpered on the floor, delirious from pain.
“We’ve been busy for quite some time. Do you know how much my father wants your human?” Baojia shook his head. “He knows you’re going to take her soon. How hard do you think he’s trying to persuade her to join us right now.”
Giovanni’s eyes darted up, as if he could see through the steel layers of the ship to the top deck where he had left Beatrice. He looked back to Ernesto’s enforcer. “Why do you want her? Why is he so set on having her in his family?”
Baojia shrugged. “I have watched her these years—” The vampire was cut off by Giovanni’s snarl. “—and I understand her appeal. She has a certain type of perception that is rare. Her eyes see through the layers of things, don’t they? That is a very valuable trait.”
Giovanni’s lips curled. “She is mine.”
The enforcer’s eyes locked with his. “Is she? Really? I think Beatrice De Novo belongs to no one but herself, di Spada, no matter who may taste her blood.”
A feral sound crawled up from hi
s throat and he reached down to pick up Lorenzo’s assassin, pummeling him until he was a lump of smoking flesh.
“Do you have any more use for him?” he asked Baojia.
The vampire frowned and shook his head, so Giovanni threw the lump to the floor, where it was quickly engulfed in blue flames that turned the body to ash. Baojia opened the doors leading to the small balcony and turned on a fan that slowly sucked the remains of Lorenzo’s assassin into the wet night air.
Houston, Texas
Christmas Eve 2009
“Da nobis quæsumus Dómine Deus noster: ut qui Navitátem Dómini nostri Jesu Christi mystériis nos frequentáre gaudémus; dignis conversatiónibus ad ejus mereámur perveníre consórtium. Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per ómnia sæcula sæculórum. Amen.”
The familiar Latin of the priest poured over him like a balm as he sat next to Ben and Beatrice late on Christmas Eve. Isadora had insisted that the five of them celebrate midnight mass together, and Giovanni surprised himself by asking if there was one being celebrated anywhere in the old language.
He sat with his arm around Ben, who had slumped to the side in exhaustion, and his gaze rested on Beatrice’s profile as she watched the priest deliver the last of the liturgy. Giovanni flashed back to the many human days he’d spent with his uncle listening to the same words spoken by ancient men who had taken the same vows as the young Irish priest standing in front of him.
It was good to remember that even some things in the human world did not change.
He may not have practiced regularly, but he had been Catholic in his human life, and in the deepest part of himself, Giovanni still considered it a part of his identity. There was little doubt in his mind that in two hundred years, he could sit in another church, thousands of miles away from this one, and listen to the same words spoken in a slightly different accent.
He heard the last of the ancient mass ring through in the stone church, and he gently shook Ben awake.
“Is it over?” he whispered.
“Yes, time to go home.”