He shrugged. “Fire feeds me; fire destroys me. It’s a very fine line.”
“So, if you allow yourself to…what do you call it?”
Giovanni chuckled. “Flame up? Manifest fire? Get sparky, as Carwyn likes to say?”
Beatrice quirked her mouth in a wry smile. “Yeah, that.”
He stretched an arm against the headboard. “I’m not going to lie, tesoro, when I allow the fire to take over my body, it feels…heady. It’s intoxicating, and it could be very addictive. It does feed something in me and it does help me heal, but at the same time, it’s very, very dangerous.”
“But you control it, Gio. It doesn’t control you.”
He shrugged. “And oddly, we have my sire to thank for that. Without the years of discipline Andros beat into me, I would probably have destroyed myself long ago.”
She paused for a moment, frowning. “I don’t like feeling grateful to him.”
Giovanni gave her a sad smile. “He made me who I am.”
“You made yourself who you are. I’ve read your journals.”
“I wasn’t a good man for a long time. It was Carwyn and then Ioan who helped to humanize me.”
“And Tenzin. Kind of.”
“Kind of, yes. But nothing like Ioan. He was the finest of us,” he said quietly, slouching in the rumpled bed.
Beatrice wanted to erase the grief she saw fill his eyes, but she knew she couldn’t, so she pulled him over to rest his head in her lap and began running her fingers through his hair like she knew he loved.
“How did you meet him?”
He lay with his head on her thigh, and she listened as he timed his breath to match hers. Finally, he spoke in a soft voice, “My father created me to be his idea of the perfect man: a scholar, an artist, a strategist, a soldier…after he was gone, when I had to make my way in the world, there was little need for strategists, artists or scholars. But there was always a need for soldiers. Especially with the talents and training I had.
“I was a known fire vampire. I knew I needed to make a reputation quickly, and I needed to make it frightening, so I used what Andros had given me, and I became the most efficient assassin and mercenary I could be.”
“Who did you kill?”
“Whoever I was hired to,” he said quietly.
She took a deep breath and tried to reconcile the gentle man she knew with what he was describing. Beatrice had read his journals, but it was so much more brutal to hear the truth from his own lips.
He continued when she did not speak. “After a while, I had built a decent reputation, though I was still targeted regularly. Then I met Tenzin and she wasn’t what I was expecting. At all.”
“Why not?
“Well, I was hired to kill her—”
“What? Tenzin?” Beatrice laughed.
“Ridiculous, I know. She is one of the oldest and most powerful vampires I have ever heard of. But I did not know her reputation when I was hired. I was young—only fifty years old or so. I took the contract, but she is the one who hunted me.”
“Why am I not surprised? Where did she find you?”
“It was in the mountains of southern Siberia, perched in the branches of an evergreen. She jumped on my back like she does, and I was too shocked by her appearance to do anything but try to run away.”
“But she caught you?”
“Oh yes. She laughed and told me that she’d seen me long ago. That we were fated to be great friends, and that we would work together.” He cocked an eyebrow. “We would be more powerful than any other vampires walking the earth.”
“Talk about appealing to your ego.”
He chuckled. “I’m not going to lie, I didn’t believe her about fate, but she was persuasive, and I could see how powerful she was. She’s always known how to get me to do what she wants me to. And then, well, she just knew things. It was Tenzin who took the contract in London that led us to Carwyn. She always seemed to know the exact moment to get out of one situation or into another. Tenzin always... Well, she always...”
He drifted off and she noticed an odd, almost childlike, look on his face.
“Gio? What were you saying about—”
“Why did I go to the library where you worked?”
“What? You went to transcribe that manuscript, remember?”
“Yes.” His eyes lit up. “The manuscript for Tenzin. The one she just had to have copied.”
“Gio?” she whispered, but he could only stare at her in wonder as his head lay on her lap. He reached up to smooth away the frown that had gathered on her forehead and slowly pulled her face down to feather a kiss across her mouth.
“You are my balance in this life. In every life,” he murmured against her lips.
“Gio?”
“Tu sei il mio amore,” he said with a brilliant smile.
“I finally learn Latin and you switch to Italian on me, Jacopo? No fair.” She frowned against his insistent lips.
“I don’t want you to get bored.”
“Because that’s so likely, isn’t it?”
He just grinned at her. “Were you bored without me?”
Beatrice didn’t want to answer but knew she should considering how open he was being.
“Never mind,” he said. “It’s not my business. It’s your—”
“Yes.”
Giovanni cocked his head, as if surprised she had responded.
“I was bored without you,” she continued. “I had a good life, but it wasn’t anything…” It was monochrome instead of color.
“I hated being away from you, Beatrice. Even when I convinced myself it was necessary.”
She blinked away the tears that tried to surface and pulled away from him. He still lay in her lap, looking up at her with an unguarded expression.
“What are we doing, Gio? I had so many questions for so many years. Why is everything suddenly not a secret?”
“Don’t you know?” he murmured.
She looked into his eyes, which had once been veiled and enigmatic. Now, they were open, and Beatrice was beginning to realize that everything she thought she knew about the previous five years might have been wrong.
“I think…I’m starting to know,” she finally said.
He shook his head; she could see the disappointment.
“Tell me more,” she begged. “When did you meet Carwyn?”
A smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“I was a little over two hundred years old. Tenzin and I were still working together, but I had grown weary of it, no matter how efficient we were.”
“You were tired of killing vampires.”
“I was tired of killing anything. I mentioned a contract that Tenzin found. We’d taken a job from the old guard, the vampires that used to control London. There was a band of rogues that was terrorizing the human population in Cornwall, and we were hired to get rid of them and clean up the mess they’d left. By the time we got there, Carwyn and Ioan had already taken care of most of the problem. Carwyn had killed the young vampires and Ioan was altering all the memories of their human victims and healing those he could. It had been going on for quite some time, so there was still a lot we were able to do.
“Tenzin and I offered to share the bounty with them for the vampires they had killed, but they both refused. It intrigued us both, and we went to spend some time with them in Wales. Eventually, I decided to stay with them and leave mercenary work. I was exhausted.”
“Was Tenzin mad?”
“Not really. She had begun to attract more attention than she normally liked, so she was ready to lie low for a few hundred years to let the rumors die down.”
Beatrice snorted. “Just a little while, huh?”
He smiled. “I told you, she’s very old. I stayed with Carwyn’s family for a time and slowly remembered what it was like not to spend every night looking for who would attack me next. I remembered how much I loved books, and music, and quiet. Eventually, I became convinced that I could choose to liv
e another way. Carwyn and Ioan helped me see that.”
“I’m sorry I’ll never meet him,” she whispered and rested her hand against his cheek.
“I’m sorry too.”
“What happens when vampires die? The book was kind of vague.”
He took her hand and knit their fingers together before he rested them on his chest. “If we’re not burned, we return to our elements. What was left of Ioan’s body lingered for a few days and then crumbled into earth. Water vampires almost melt away, but again, it’s not instantaneous. And wind…well, they just disintegrate. Eventually, there is no trace of them.”
“And fire?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never beheaded a fire vampire. I don’t know. Usually, we burn.”
She paused. “Why did you leave me your journals in Cochamó?”
“I wanted you to know everything. Like when I told you to tell Dez about your life. There can be no future with that many secrets, tesoro.”
“But why didn’t you tell me all that before?” she asked gently. “You always held back with me.”
He sat up and moved to her side, looking into her eyes when he answered.
“When we first met, I didn’t know if I could trust you. And when you left for Los Angeles, I wasn’t sure you wanted to be part of my world. Which I understood. So I tried to shield you, Beatrice. There was no reason for you to be burdened with all of this if you were only going to touch the edges of it.”
“Gio.” She shook her head. “I think it’s pretty obvious at this point…”
She didn’t finish, and he leaned forward. “What? What’s obvious?”
She stopped short of admitting she loved him. She still wondered, when the current mystery was solved, whether he would disappear from her life again. This time, she knew the hole she felt from his absence when she was younger would be dwarfed by the immense vacuum another departure would leave.
He reached over to nudge her chin toward him so she was forced to meet his eyes. “I take nothing for granted, but I will not have you make any decision blindly. I’ll not have you resent me for hiding things from you.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Then why—”
“Are you going to leave me again?”
He drew back as if she had struck him. “What?”
“If we find Lorenzo—”
“When we find him.”
Beatrice looked away. “Fine, when we find him. After he’s been killed. After you find my father, will you leave again? What if you decide you don’t want to feel grief like Deirdre’s? What if I choose not to become a vampire? What if—”
“You’ll have to be far better at evasion than even your father to lose me at this point, Beatrice De Novo.”
She looked at him, and his eyes begged for her to believe him. She wanted to, she realized. More than anything, but five years still hung between them. “Are you sure? About me? About this?”
He cocked his head.
“What?” she looked down nervously, wondering at his expression.
“Deirdre asked me the same question,” he said softly. “When she brought Ioan’s body back. She asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time.”
A memory of the fearsome woman carrying the body of her husband flashed to Beatrice’s mind. “What did you answer her?”
“I never got the chance.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Will you answer me?”
Giovanni grasped the back of her neck and pulled her into a hard kiss; she felt the force of it down to her toes. Finally, his mouth traveled to her ear and there was no mistaking his answer.
“I am sure of the fire that runs through me. I am sure of the earth I stand on. And I am sure of you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Northern Wales
January 2010
“When are you coming home?”
“I’m not sure yet, Benjamin. I want to come home, but it’s more important that I make everyone safe first.”
“From Lorenzo?”
“Yes.”
He heard the boy sigh over the telephone and knew that he was probably rolling his eyes as well.
“Tell me what you and Caspar and Isadora have been doing,” Giovanni said to distract him.
“Lots of stuff. They’re pretty cool for old people.”
He chuckled. “They are. Has Caspar taught you how to shoot yet? He thought it would be good for you to learn. He’s a very good shot, so make sure you pay attention when he teaches you.”
“At first I thought it was going to be really cool, but then he made me clean all the rifles after we finished.” Giovanni grinned. “And that wasn’t cool at all. But we shot some cans for target practice, and he said I was pretty good.”
“Excellent. And how is the rest of your schooling?”
Ben huffed on the other end of the line. “Dude, Caspar isn’t very good at Latin anymore, Gio.”
“Well,” he said and laughed, “you can be his teacher then. And how is Beatrice’s grandmother? Are you getting along?”
“Other than the cleaning stuff, yeah.”
“Cleaning stuff?”
“She wants me to clean my room here, like, all the time.”
He frowned. “Well, I’m fairly lax on that, so pay attention to her. Your room at home is something of a disaster area.”
“She’s a good cook, though. I’m gonna get fat hanging out with them, Gio. They both cook really good.”
“They both cook very well, and see if Isadora will give you lessons while you’re staying with them, will you?”
“If it means I’ll have to help her clean up the kitchen, I think she’ll be okay with it.”
He smiled and sat back in the chair, feeling more relaxed than he had in days. Giovanni sat in the library at Carwyn’s house, enjoying the fire and listening to the wind whipping outside. Beatrice had already fallen asleep, so he had taken advantage of the time difference to call Ben in Texas.
He was surprised by how much he missed the boy and his quick humor, though he was pleased Ben was getting along so well with Caspar and Isadora.
“Caspar said your friend died.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he have kids?”
Thinking of all the children Ioan and Deirdre had sired or fostered over the years, he nodded. “He did. He had a large family.”
“I’m really sorry. Tell Carwyn I’m really sorry.”
“Thank you, I will.”
He could almost hear the wheels turning in Ben’s small head, so he wasn’t surprised by the next question.
“Are you going to get hurt? I thought you couldn’t die.”
“Benjamin, I will do everything in my power to prevent anything happening to Beatrice and myself.”
“Can’t you guys just come home and hide here with us?” he asked in a small voice.
He closed his eyes and thought how he wanted to answer.
“You know, Ben, in my own way, I hid for years. I minded my own business and tried to keep out of sight so I could live my life in peace. But sometimes, minding your own business isn’t the right thing to do. Sometimes, you need to confront the evil in the world. I tried to ignore that for too long and people got hurt.”
“Like B? When Lorenzo took her?”
“Yes.”
“And your friend? Is that because of Lorenzo, too?”
The guilt and grief threatened to overwhelm him, but he cleared his throat and answered, “Yes, that was also because of Lorenzo.”
“But you’re going to get him, right?”
“Yes, I’m going to make sure he can’t hurt anyone else.”
“And find B’s dad, too, right?”
He nodded, even though he was alone. “I’m going to find her father. Eventually.”
“Good, ‘cause he sounds like a good guy and she misses him.”
He smiled, happy to hear the more relaxed tone of the boy’s voice on the o
ther line. He could hear Caspar and Isadora talking in the background, and Giovanni wished he and Beatrice could be relaxing with them in the Texas hill country instead of stuck at an old stone house in the cold Welsh mountains.
“So, is B your girlfriend yet?”
He cocked an eyebrow at the phone. “I’m working on it.”
“Still?”
“I think I’m still on probation. She’s making sure I’m really going to stick around.”
Ben was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. “I guess that makes sense. You did go away for a long time.”
Giovanni sipped at the scotch he’d poured before he sat down. “I did. I thought I was doing the right thing for her.”
“Did you say you’re sorry?”
He sighed. “I’m not sure what to say. I still think it was necessary to leave her, so I’m not sorry I did that.”
“But you hurt her feelings!”
“I know,” he said sadly.
“So you should say you’re sorry for hurting her feelings then.”
Giovanni frowned. He hadn’t thought of doing that. Sometimes children really did see things more clearly.
“—and then ask her to marry you so she knows you’re not going to leave again.”
He inhaled his scotch. “Wh—what?”
“Well, you want to marry her and everything, right? I mean, you love her and all that stuff, and you don’t want her to go anywhere, and you want her to know you aren’t going anywhere again, so…you should just ask her, and then she’ll know you aren’t going to leave.”
His mind whirled. Strangely, the thought of marrying Beatrice hadn’t occurred to him, though he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Suddenly, Ben seemed like a genius. After all, she couldn’t ignore the inherent commitment in the request, could she?
“Ben, I’ll consider that, my friend.”
“Good. I think she’s cool. She’d be an awesome fake aunt.”
He snorted. “I should let you get back to your math work. Tell Caspar and Isadora I said hello.”
“Okay,” Ben sighed. “Tell B and Carwyn I said hi, too.”
“I will see you as soon as I am able, fake nephew.”
“I miss you and my basketball court, fake uncle.”
He grinned and said goodbye. His ears perked up when he heard Beatrice stirring in their bed. Carwyn had muttered about them sharing a room while they were under his roof, and his housekeeper, Sister Maggie, had glared, but he and Beatrice ignored them. He suspected that Beatrice was afraid her nightmares might return, and he didn’t like risking her peace of mind to appease the priest or the nun.