“Gio?” she murmured and reached for him as she slept. Setting his book to the side, he slid down and took her into his arms, wondering again how he would ever let her go.
Two days later, they sat next to each other as the plane flew north to land at the small private airfield where Beatrice had left Houston over two months before.
“And my grandma and Caspar are at your house?” she asked, clasping his hand in her own.
“Yes, and Carwyn and Tenzin, as well.”
“And none of his people are going to come after me?”
“We killed most of them. My negotiations in Rome and Athens should have secured your safety from the rest of his allies.”
She nodded quickly, but tightened her grip.
“He’s not dead though, is he?”
He felt his fangs fall. “No, I suspect he will be recovering for some time, but he still has resources.”
“And he’ll come after me again. To get to my father.”
He tilted her chin up so she would meet his gaze. “I’ll kill him before he gets to you.”
She may have nodded, but Giovanni could see the infuriating doubt lingering in her eyes. She leaned her head on his shoulder, and held onto him for the rest of the flight.
His stomach dropped when the plane landed, but it wasn’t from any turbulence. She stood as the plane came to a halt, but he grabbed her hand before she could exit.
Pushing her up against the door, he leaned down and kissed her. He felt the current of desperation run through him, but he held fast, clutching her back and gripping the nape of her neck. He forced himself to back away, suppressing his instinct to bite and claim her when he saw her red swollen lips and the desire that lit her eyes.
“Gio—”
“We should go,” he breathed out. “Now, tesoro, before I tell the plane to take us back.”
“I want—”
“Your grandmother, Beatrice,” he growled. “She’s waiting for us outside.”
She bit her lip and her eyes narrowed in anger when she picked up the small leather case he had bought for her in Puerto Montt. She pushed past him and opened the thick door that shielded the plane’s sealed compartment.
He closed his eyes, burying his frustration and breathing slowly until he regained his self-control. By the time he left the plane, Beatrice was wrapped in Isadora’s fierce embrace as Caspar watched them with tears in the corners of his eyes.
“Gio,” Caspar said as he strode toward him and embraced his old friend. “It’s such a relief to see you both.”
“Is everyone at the house?” he asked as he patted Caspar’s back.
“Tenzin and Carwyn are both out hunting. They’ll be back before dawn, but you need to rest. Have you fed—”
“I’m fine. We’ll go back to the house. Tomorrow is soon enough to meet with them.”
“Isadora has been staying at the house with me.”
He nodded. “Of course, my friend. Of course.”
They drove to the house and Beatrice sat next to him in the back of the car, keeping her hands carefully folded in her lap. When they arrived, Caspar and Isadora retired to his apartment, and Beatrice and Giovanni went upstairs. Beatrice went to her old room as he slowly climbed the stairs to his. He peeled off his rumpled shirt, petting Doyle as the cat curled around his legs in welcome.
“Hello, Doyle,” he murmured as he bent down to pet the cat. He sat on the edge of the bed in his outer room and inhaled the familiar scents of Houston.
Caspar had left a window open to air out his room and he could smell the faint scent of honeysuckle drift in on the breeze.
Giovanni closed his eyes when he heard her footsteps on the stairs. He sat hunched over, his elbows leaning on his knees as she entered his room and came to stand in front of him. He sighed when he felt her small hands stroke his hair, run down his neck, and trace his shoulders as he lay his cheek against her and put his arms around her waist.
“Beatrice—”
“One night, Gio. One more night?” she asked softly as she placed her hand on his cheek, holding him against her. He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded. Finally looking up to meet her dark gaze, he pulled her into his lap and framed her face with his hands, searching her eyes before he kissed her. Their lips sparked when they met, and he could feel the heat rising on his skin, but he couldn’t pull his mouth away, or stop his hands from pressing her closer as she moved against him.
Standing up, he carried her into the small room where he spent his days, and laid her on the narrow bed.
“One more night,” he whispered before he shut the door.
The following evening, Giovanni, Beatrice, Carwyn and Tenzin gathered in the library. The priest and the small woman greeted her warmly, though Beatrice was annoyed Tenzin didn’t even pretend to be sorry about using her amnis to knock her out in Athens.
“You needed to go. You’re better now.”
“And you knew this? Or you were just being domineering?”
The tiny woman shrugged. “I knew and I was being domineering. I’m much older than you, and far smarter.”
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “Are you always this arrogant?”
“No,” Carwyn muttered. “Usually she’s much worse.”
“At least I don’t have the arrogance to believe there is only one god, priest.”
“But you do have the arrogance to believe that fate dictates—”
“Hush,” Giovanni broke in. “I doubt Beatrice wants to listen to your old argument.”
He had been sitting in one of the armchairs, sipping a glass of whiskey as he watched the three of them gather around the large library table in the center of the room.
She noticed that both Carwyn and Tenzin looked disappointed to be distracted from their debate. Beatrice pushed back her own smile and hopped on the edge of the table to sit cross-legged as Giovanni watched her from his chair.
“Catch us up,” she said. “What did we miss?”
“Well, other than a sale at the Tommy Bahama store—don’t worry, Gio, I helped myself to your safe when I ran out of cash—most of the big excitement is old news.”
“Did you find Scalia?” Beatrice asked. She had briefed Carwyn on the professor’s role in her abduction while they were on the boat to the Greek mainland, and he had promised he would look into the professor’s background.
“The dear doctor met a rather unfortunate end.” He raised his hands. “Don’t look at me, he was found attacked and killed outside the library the day after you were taken. I didn’t get a chance to question him. It looks like Lorenzo lost patience with the man, or he had just outlived his usefulness.”
“He said he knew my father,” Beatrice said.
“He did,” Tenzin added. “We looked into it while you two were in South America. Robert Scalia had gone to school with your father years ago and must have met him again when he was working in Ferrara.
“As far as we can tell, Scalia had gone to the university as a guest lecturer and stayed, but no one seems able to remember what he did. He was doing some kind of research in the library, but all the humans we found appeared to have had their memories tampered with.”
“So no one could give you any good information?” Giovanni asked.
Carwyn shrugged. “I wouldn’t say that. From what he told B, and from what we could piece together, it seems obvious that Lorenzo was using the university library to hide your collection in plain sight, so to speak. Though nothing appears to be there now.”
“No,” Giovanni muttered. “I’m sure he moved it.”
Beatrice asked, “Was it on the island? There was a huge library.”
“No,” Tenzin shook her head. “I flew back the night after you two left. There was nothing of any real value there. All the humans were gone or dead. The place was destroyed; he won’t be going back there.”
“Good,” she said, shivering at the memory of the compound where she had been held. She glanced up to see Giovanni watching her, but she lo
oked away. Instead, she looked over to Carwyn, who kept glancing between the two of them with a curious expression.
“So, what about Lorenzo? What should we do now? We know he’s still alive, right? Are my grandma and I going to be safe?”
They all seemed to start talking at once.
Carwyn shook his head. “I really don’t like the idea of you going to Los Angeles when he’s still out there. We don’t know—”
“It wouldn’t be that hard to systematically assassinate his allies,” Tenzin mused. “I’m sure between Gio and me, we could kill them all within a few years and then—”
“And I don’t really feel like getting embroiled in more vendettas, Tenzin, no matter how easy it would be to kill them all,” Giovanni said from across the room.
Carwyn snorted. “Besides the moral implications of killing immortals who may have no greater crime than being sired by someone who has allied themselves with Lorenzo a hundred years ago, Tenzin. I know you have your own notions about fate and—”
“It’s not fate I’m talking about, I’m talking about protecting our own interests and—”
Beatrice rolled her eyes as she listened to the three old friends argue. Each had their own ideas about what she should do. Carwyn proposed going to some safe ground until the danger was eliminated, even offering his own isolated home in Wales. Giovanni believed that the political steps he had already taken would protect her until he could hunt down and kill Lorenzo himself; and Tenzin seemed to be suggesting eliminating anyone who’d ever had any sort of alliance with Giovanni’s son—just to be on the safe side.
She watched the three arguing for a few moments and tried to remember what Giovanni had told her months ago about the loose organization of the immortal world.
“The strongest, smartest, and wealthiest have the most power. And power is the only law.”
Vampires didn’t have laws or governments. From what she could tell, their world ran on physical strength, wealth, and a tangled web of long term alliances. Beatrice began to think about how all this applied to Lorenzo.
Giovanni seemed to think he had neutralized Lorenzo’s alliances. Tenzin and Giovanni had taken his strength by turning him into a crispy critter who would take years to recover. She couldn’t attack his brains; that was impossible.
But, she could attack his money.
Suddenly smirking, Beatrice walked silently over to her desk and turned to the one place she knew she had the upper hand on any vampire in the world. She may have been helpless to defend herself in the face of supernatural strength, and she sure didn’t have much money…
At least not yet.
She closed her eyes, delving into her memories of captivity, and running through the list of accounts she memorized in the hours she sat in Lorenzo’s library. The pitiful assistant had been sloppy, never noticing her careful study of the numerous account codes, passwords, and security questions she’d observed as she sat in the corner, pretending to read.
“Gio?” she called quietly as she turned on the equipment.
He glanced at her as he argued with Carwyn about the merits of meeting with the leader of a clan of water vampires that controlled London.
“Yes?”
“All these computers have security, don’t they? Lots of firewalls?”
“Of course, tesoro,” he said before he was distracted by Tenzin and something she was saying about a council of eight immortals that sounded like they controlled most of China.
“Good,” she muttered as she dove online to access Lorenzo’s accounts scattered over the globe.
The debate swirled around her for hours as she hunted, systematically eliminating Lorenzo’s ability to access the money she had observed his lackey moving around. Beatrice searched, isolating each account that poor, addled Tom had set up for his master. She shifted and diverted, putting some of it in her own name and transferring other parts into overseas accounts she would have access to. For some banks, it was as simple as changing a password and electronically transferring funds into other, newly created accounts at the same institution. It was all completely illegal.
And she didn’t care one bit.
As her fingers raced over the keys, she thought more about the clues Lorenzo had lain at her feet, no doubt thinking that she would never be out from under his thumb.
Her father had taken something from him.
“…not before taking some books he knew I valued.”
And Lorenzo needed them for something.
“Soon, I will fool them all. All the silly, trusting fools with their delusions of grandeur.”
Lorenzo had plans…big plans.
“I have dreams, too. But they’re not small in the least. They’re positively…world changing.”
Beatrice had the feeling that those kind of plans wouldn’t be derailed forever, but without the financial resources she was stealing from him, it would take Lorenzo a lot longer to get them back on track. She knew it wouldn’t stop him, but she was buying herself time; and she hoped, giving her father the chance to find her. As for Giovanni…
“Beatrice?” Carwyn called over to her. “What are you doing over there? You’re looking like the cat that just ate the canary.”
She smirked and hit ‘return,’ typing the final, electronic nail in Lorenzo’s coffin, and netting herself a hefty payday, though she had a feeling much of it would remain out of reach until she’d found a way to explain it to the IRS.
“Carwyn, the creepy blond canary is dead. Mangled by all of you, and finished by me.”
Giovanni rose and walked toward her. “What did you do? If you’ve put yourself in more danger—”
“He’s done, Gio, at least for a while.” She sat back and kicked her feet up, resting her combat boots on the edge of the desk.
“What did you do?”
She stared into his worried eyes. “He’s wiped out. Any easy money he had is mine now. He won’t be able to access any electronic funds unless he had a whole lot his pitiful little accountant didn’t know about, and I’m doubting that. They’re mine. Safely tucked away where he can’t get them.”
Carwyn’s face split into a giant grin. “Nicely done, darling girl. Very nicely done.”
Tenzin walked over and peeked around Carwyn. “I like her.”
Beatrice glanced at Tenzin and smiled, but quickly looked back to Giovanni, who had not taken his eyes off her. His face had shut down, and his expression was impossible for her to read.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Carwyn tug on Tenzin’s arm, and they both left the library. Giovanni walked to the table, leaning against it as he stared into the fire that crackled in the grate.
“I have to agree with Carwyn,” he said, “that was very well done. Very smart. You’ll have to talk to Caspar. He can help you clean the money…if you need any help, that is.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a rueful smile.
Beatrice walked over to him, standing before him and lifting a hand to stroke his cheek. His smile fell, and he closed his eyes, leaning into her palm. She felt the ever-present crackling heat that ran along his skin as she held her hand to his face. Finally, he looked at her, and the stoic soldier met her gaze.
She took a deep breath. “I’m going to L.A.”
“Yes,” he murmured, “I know.” He closed his eyes, and rubbed his face into the palm of her hand.
“Gio—”
“You have a wonderful life in front of you, Beatrice De Novo.”
She felt the tears come to her eyes. Ask me to stay, she thought. Ask to come with me! Tell me you love me as much as I love you. She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Are you staying in Houston?”
He shrugged and took her hand from his face, threading their fingers together and holding them to his chest. “For now. Caspar seems to be very attached to this house,” he smirked, “and this city.”
“And you?”
He dropped her hand, and pulled her toward him. His fingers traced her cheek, his arms encircled her, and
his warm lips met her own. They kissed slowly in the flickering light that filled the room. She could feel his energy hum along her skin, and she pressed closer, drawn to the hidden fire that burned between them.
After a few lingering minutes, his lips slowed and he trailed kisses across her cheek. She closed her eyes, and held him close as he whispered in her ear.
“Ubi amo, ibi patria.”
Epilogue
Los Angeles, California
February 2005
The man walked under the shadow of the arch and into the flickering lights of the courtyard. He examined the bungalow-style apartments that surrounded him, and smiled at the calico cat perched near a bubbling fountain. It was an old complex, and brilliant red bougainvillea climbed the stucco walls. He could smell the scent of the ocean as the evening fog rolled up the Southern California hills.
The cheerful lamps near each door lit up the numbers of the apartments, and he scanned them until he found the one he was looking for. As he approached, he examined the windows, smiling when he noted the heavy bolts which secured her home.
“Excuse me? Can I help you?”
He smiled and turned to face the old woman who held the cat in her arms. Listening carefully to the surrounding apartments, he noted the lack of activity, and the faint sounds of sleep that issued from most. He held out his hand with a smile and the woman took it, opening her mind to him.
“Where is Beatrice tonight?”
“She went out with some friends from school,” she said with a soft smile. “I heard them leaving earlier. Such a nice group of girls.”
He smiled and led the woman over to the bench near the fountain, still holding her hand. “Do you know her well?”
“She comes over for coffee in the morning sometimes; I think she misses her grandmother. And she takes care of Miss Tabby for me when I go see my daughter. I’m glad she moved next door.”
He smiled at the old woman. “Does she have many friends?”