A Hidden Fire: Elemental Mysteries Book 1 (33 page)

Beatrice woke to the feel of a hard body beside her, and soft lips traveling over her neck.  She sighed and arched toward it, purring in sleepy pleasure when a large hand cupped her breast.  Though her eyes were closed, she could feel them roll back as a mouth traveled along her collarbone, a hot tongue licked up her neck, and she felt the gentle scrape of teeth behind her ear.

His mouth dipped lower, searching, and she could feel her heart begin to pound.  The lips grew more urgent and a low rumble issued from the body next to hers.  Beatrice’s eyes suddenly blinked open when she felt the scrape of pointed teeth again the pulse in her neck.

Giovanni must have still been sleeping, but his body was hard and pressed into hers.  His hand caressed her breast, and his other arm pulled her closer as they moved against each other.  She was overwhelmed by the pleasure of his touch.  Her skin hummed with the transfer of energy, and she could feel the brush of amnis wherever his bare hands or lips touched her flesh.

“Gio,” she whispered softly.  “Gio, I—” She broke off with a quiet moan of pleasure at the feel of his lips teasing behind her ear.

Giovanni’s hand left her breast and moved up to cup her cheek.  His thumb brushed against her lips before he wandered back down her body, touching places she had dreamed of for months.

“Tesoro,” he breathed out, along with a string of sleepy Italian she didn’t understand.  They rocked against each other, and her eyes rolled back when she felt his teeth nip at her neck.

Bite me
,
she thought, unable to say the words aloud.  Her heart pounded as his hands and mouth drove her into a frenzy of need, and she reached up to grasp his shoulder as he moved over her.

“Do it,” she whimpered, unable to contain her desire as his lips teased her skin.  “Please, Giovanni.”  She felt his mouth close over her neck, and his tongue teased her rapid pulse.

Beatrice thought, in the back of her mind, that it would hurt, at least a little.  But though she could feel the quick burst as her skin gave way to his fangs, a wave of pleasure overwhelmed her, and she shuddered in his arms as his mouth latched on to her throat and sucked.

She cried out in release, and she sensed Giovanni rouse to full consciousness.  He hesitated for only a second before instinct took hold, and he drew from her vein as his hands clasped her to his body.

Every pull of his mouth was answered as she arched into him, and she could hear soft growls of pleasure as he drank.  Her hands dug into the hard muscle of his back, as his soft lips worked her neck and his hands stroked her skin.  She was lightheaded, but had the feeling it had less to do with blood loss than the aftershocks of pleasure that coursed through her body.

It was probably only minutes until she felt his fangs retract and his tongue sweep over her skin, licking the last drops of blood as his body shivered, then fell still.  He hid his face in her neck and lay next to her, silent and unmoving as a statue as her heart rate evened out.

“Gio?”

“I am…sorry, Beatrice,” she heard him whisper.  “That was—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I wanted you to,” she said, pulling his ear until he looked at her.

His green eyes were worried.  “You did?”

She nodded and lifted a finger to the drop of blood at the corner of his mouth.  She wiped it away, and he caught her finger in his mouth, licking off the last trace of her as his eyes closed in pleasure.

“That wasn’t a good idea,” he murmured.

“When was the last time you fed before tonight?”

“In Greece.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.  “You haven’t had any blood since we’ve been here?  Not even after you fought?”

“Pigs.”  He curled his lip.  “There are mostly wild pigs in the valley.  And I don’t drink from the humans out of respect for Isabel and Gustavo.  They don’t allow it in their clan.”

“So even after the battle at Lorenzo’s—”

“No,” he whispered and lifted a hand to her cheek.  “I’m sorry I took advantage of you.  It won’t happen again.”

She snorted.  “I don’t remember fighting you off.  If I had wanted you to stop, I would have yelled at you.”

“You didn’t worry I would lose control?”

Beatrice took a moment to think.  She hadn’t worried about him losing control for a second.  She had actually been more afraid he would wake up before he bit her, and stop the wave of pleasure that had begun with the feel of his mouth and hands on her body.

“No.”  She blushed.  “I didn’t worry about that.”

He nodded, and leaned down to place a soft kiss on her mouth before he drew away and rose to leave the bedroom. He grabbed a change of clothes on his way out, and when he came back, he carried a glass of water and a plate of fruit.

“You should drink something, and have something to eat.”

“Will you need to feed again?”

He looked at the floor when he answered.  He had changed into a pair of loose pants and a t-shirt before he returned to the bedroom.  “It depends on how long we stay.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t need to drink as much here as I do in more modern places, and your blood is very rich, so it should satisfy me for a long time.  I also drank quite deeply.”

She paused and nodded a little. “I guess I taste okay, then.  Good to know.”

He coughed a little, and his eyes roamed over her body but did not meet her gaze.

“You taste…rather wonderful, actually.”

She bit her lip and tried to contain a smirk.  “I wonder if I should put that on my resume.”

He smirked for a second before bursting into laughter.  He finally met her eyes and fell into bed next to her, covering his face with a pillow.

“Are you embarrassed?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes,” came the muffled response from under the pillow.  “I acted like a newly sired vampire, totally out of control.”

“You didn’t hear me complaining,” she said with a blush.  “And before I fell asleep this afternoon, I was thinking about finding a marker and drawing a big curly mustache on your face.”

He lifted the pillow and frowned at her as she picked at the plate of dried apples and apricots.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t, but I thought about it.  Don’t you feel a little less immature now?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Quite.”

Beatrice sat up in bed and began to nibble the fruit and sip the water as he watched her.  “What were you really like?  When you were new?”

He rolled over and lay on his stomach, crossing his arms under his chin.  “Do you really want to know this?  It’s not pleasant.”

“Have you ever told anyone?”

He shook his head, still watching her as she ate.

“Then tell me.  Even the ugly parts.”

He paused for a moment before he continued to tell his story.  “My uncle was murdered in 1494, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  Andros had been watching us.  He had decided that while my uncle would not suit his purposes, I would.  He influenced one of the servants to put arsenic in my uncle’s food, so he wasted away.”

“How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

She tried to imagine him at seventeen, and her hand reached out to stroke the shorn hair that covered his scalp.  She smiled when he moved into her touch.  His eyes closed, and she could almost imagine him purring like a cat.

“He came to the door only hours after my uncle had died and took me.  I was confused when I woke.  He had taken me far away, and I was very disoriented.”

“Where were you?”

“It was an old Greek settlement in the south of Italy.  Crotone,” he said the name with disgust.  “He had made a kind of school there.”

“He was Greek?”

Giovanni nodded, and she continued to stroke his hair.  “He was around twenty-five hundred years old when he made me.  A contemporary of Homer’s, or so he claimed, I never knew whether he was lying or not.  He was…crazy.  Obsessed.”

“With what?”

“
Areté.  Aristos.  Virtus
, to call it by its Roman name.”

“Explain to the non-genius in the room, please.”

He chuckled, rolling over and grabbing her hand which he placed over his heart and covered with his own.  “Essentially, the perfect man.  He wanted a child that personified the utmost in human potential.”

“That must have been quite the ego stroke.”

He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, absently tracing the outline of her palm on his chest.  “No, I wasn’t perfect in the least.  I was the raw material.”

“You mean—”

“He had to create me, before he sired me.”

She frowned.  “I don’t understand.”

His head tilted back as he looked at her with sad eyes.

“Andros held me captive for ten years while he molded me into what he thought was the perfect man.  He schooled me, trained me, drilled me to be the most perfect example of humanity he could create.  It was…not pleasant.”

Suddenly, Giovanni rolled up and knelt in front of her, pulling off his shirt and watching in silence as she stared at him.

“Do you think I’m handsome, Beatrice?”

She blushed, but looked into his eyes when she answered, “Yes, of course.”

“Am I strong?” He crawled toward her on all fours, getting inches from her face.  She took a deep breath, inhaling the faint smell of smoke that always seemed to linger on his skin.

“Yes.”

He leaned into her neck, taking a deep breath before he whispered in her ear, “You smell like honeysuckle, did you know that?”

Her heart was pounding and her body reacted to him instinctively.  She leaned toward him and felt his lips brush her temple before he sat back.

“Do I look like a statue?  That’s what he wanted.  He wanted a perfect…specimen to turn, one who excelled physically, mentally, who had strong character.”

“So, he made you into the ideal man, and then he killed you?” she choked out, still reeling from his scent and the energy that poured off him.

He gave her a sad smile.  “No, then he turned me into a demigod.”

“What?” she asked, suddenly wondering if she needed to call Carwyn for an immortal psych consult.

He snorted, “Well, that’s what he thought, anyway.  He thought vampires were the demigods of Greek mythology.”

“Ah, so what you’re saying is…he was completely nuts?”

“Absolutely
raving
, tesoro.”

She shook her head and watched as he reached over to grab a bit of the dried apricot on her plate.

“And you lived with him for ten years?”

He nodded.  “Ten years as a human, and then longer after I was turned.  But Lorenzo…”  He trailed off when he saw her shiver.

Placing the plate on the small table by the bed, he crawled over to her again, gathering her close and tucking her into his side when he stretched out under the blanket.  “I don’t know how long he had Lorenzo.  And his name as a human was Paulo.”  Giovanni sighed.  “He was a sad thing, always anxious for Andros’s attention.  Never quite good enough for my father.”

“Why was he there?”

Giovanni shrugged.  “As a servant mostly, though Father liked to insinuate he would turn Paulo, too, when it was time.  Just to keep Paulo happy.”

“But he didn’t.”

“My father…”  Giovanni paused with a frown.  “He was a complicated vampire.  Cruel, horrible, and completely single-minded.  But perceptive, as well.  He was a genius in his own way, and he saw something in Paulo,” he said.  “Something I should have paid attention to before my pity overwhelmed my reason.”

“What?”

“Cruelty.  My father said that Paulo did not have the character necessary to be a good vampire, so he would not turn him.”

“When did Lor—Paulo figure that out?” she asked as Giovanni’s hand stroked along her hair.  She curled into his side and he held her tightly.

He took a slow breath before he answered. “He found out five years after I was turned, the night I persuaded Paulo to kill my father.”

Beatrice gasped, but Giovanni was staring at the ceiling, lost in his memories, and wearing a hollow look.

“You mean—”

“I knew I would never get away.  He would always be stronger than me, and after he knew I could wield fire, Andros would never have released me.  What he had planned, I wanted no part in.  I couldn’t get away on my own, but I knew I could get away with help.  Andros was vulnerable during the day. He was vulnerable to humans if they knew where he rested.  If it was someone he thought he had control of.  And Paulo was so greedy…for gold, for power.”

“What are you saying?”

“So I promised to turn him if he did it.”

“Gio, what did you—”

“And I traded my father’s life for my son’s immortality.”

Chapter Twenty-five

Cochamó Valley, Chile

August 2004

“
I
think it’s time for us to go home.”

Giovanni looked at her, nodding silently as their horses rode across the meadow near one of the rushing waterfalls that dotted the valley.  They had been riding for two hours after waking in his bed that evening.

“I told you we would stay as long as you liked.”

“It’s been a month.”

He smiled.  “I’m impressed you put up with me for this long.”

“Well,” she said with a wink, “you’re a bit of a bed hog, but at least your feet aren’t cold.”

He chuckled.  “Good to know, considering I haven’t slept next to anyone in well over a hundred years.”  In reality, it had been far longer since he’d trusted anyone to sleep next to him when he was defenseless—not counting Caspar as a child—but he didn’t feel the need to elaborate.

“Really?”

He shrugged, and continued riding back toward the house.

Though it had tested his control, Giovanni refused to feed from her again, slipping out of the valley to find the nearest larger town to hunt the previous week.  Her blood had sustained him for as long as he dared, but he did not want to risk losing control again.

While Beatrice showed no hesitance in furthering their physical relationship, he knew that once he had truly taken her to his bed, his territorial nature, combined with his deepening attachment to her, would make it practically impossible for him to allow her to leave.

“It’s not that I’m unhappy here, it’s just—”

“You have a life to get back to, Beatrice.”

He could hear the hesitation in her voice when she finally answered.

“What will you do?  Will you go back to Houston?”

He nodded.  “I will.  For now.”

“Does that mean you’ll have to move?”

“I don’t know.”

He stopped his horse near the small bridge over the stream near his house and waited for her to catch up with him.

“Do you know—”

“I know as much as you do.  Carwyn and Tenzin are in Houston, waiting for us to return.  I need to talk to them before I make any decisions.”

They stared at each other and Giovanni could see the beginning of goodbye fill her eyes.  He had not told her he loved her, though he knew he did.  He still had doubts that her feelings were more than the product of a youthful infatuation and the stress of their tumultuous time together.

He grabbed her reins and reached across to pull her onto his lap.  Giovanni settled his arms around her hips, which had filled out since they had been in Cochamó and rested his chin on her shoulder, drinking in the contact for as long as he could.

He led her mare beside them as they crossed the stream, and warmed her with his arms when a light mist began to fall.

“I love it here,” she whispered.

“So do I,” he said, thinking more of the girl in front of him than the valley they crossed.

They had spent their nights in peace, sleeping next to each other for most of the day and exploring the valley at night.  He had shown her his favorite parts of Cochamó, and they spent hours in the company of Gustavo, Isabel, and their large family, who welcomed Beatrice like an old friend.

“Can I come back sometime?”

He brushed a kiss across her neck.  “You can come back any time.”

They fell into silence for the rest of the ride.  When they returned to the house, he picked up a note someone had slipped under the door.

Father called the lodge.

-Isabel

He closed his eyes, resigned to the intrusion of the outside world.

She lay next to him later that night, curled peacefully into his side as he read a book before dawn.  She’d not had another disturbing dream since the night he had woken her and taken her to his bed; she had slept there every night since.

He thought about a quote from Aristotle he’d never paid much attention to until more recent months. “‘Love,’” he whispered in Italian, “‘is a single soul inhabiting two bodies.’”

He stared at her, wondering if it was so simple, watching in fascination as her eyelids flickered with dreams, and a small smile played at the corner of her mouth.

She still said her father’s name often, and he wished he had more answers for her.  Stephen De Novo remained impressively elusive, despite Giovanni’s most persistent inquiries.  He had to admire the young vampire’s skills in remaining hidden.  He had evaded Lorenzo for years, and even now, remained stubbornly out of Giovanni’s reach.  He knew he would not stop looking for him, if only to let the vampire know that his daughter knew about him and wanted to find him.

“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 looked away.  Instead, she looked over to Carwyn, who kept glancing between the two of them with a curious expression.