The Elemental Mysteries: Complete Series (164 page)

“I don’t know.” Suddenly the idea of destroying all the computers seemed less than ideal and he wished he had Dez or Benjamin available to hack into the mysterious technology and find out more about it. He felt sick and desperate. “This is a disaster.”

Carwyn bent to help him and they began carting the small stack of brown boxes to the back of the Range Rover. “It’s not a disaster. We just need to find the truck.”

“And the boxes of Elixir. And make sure none of them went missing. Because that never happens at border crossings, does it?”

“Livia isn’t going to produce something she can’t detect, Gio. There has to be some way to detect it. Just calm down.”

He exploded. “She doesn’t know what the hell this does! None of us do! There is some sort of—of poison headed toward my wife and family, and I have no idea what it does or what danger it really poses, Carwyn. Do not tell me to calm down!”

The vampire’s blue eyes flared. “Don’t pretend you have any more at stake than the rest of us, Gio. We need to get in contact with Rome and let them handle it so we can keep going.”

“We need to go after the—”

“Jean and Gavin are still in Rome and those two smugglers know more about tracking down shipments of dodgy goods than we ever will. You’re right; we don’t know what this does. The most important thing for us to do is find the answers.”

Giovanni took a deep breath and nodded. Carwyn was right. “We need to find Arosh and Kato.”

“If we find them, then we know what to worry about. If we find them, we find the truth.”

They burned the boxes on an empty stretch of road outside the city a few hours before dawn. They stood upwind of the fire, blocking their mouths and watching as the smoke rose from the pit that Carwyn dug. When the flames were finally out, the earth vampire sunk the remnants and covered the ashes with dirt and rocks.

“There. It’s gone.”

“That bit is, anyway.” Giovanni sighed and turned his face west.

The lights of the city glittered in the distance and he could still see smoke rising from the fire at the factory. Hopefully the small fire he’d set would conceal the destruction of the computers and the theft of the boxes and the computer that Dez told them she would try to access. There weren’t many computers. Only seven. And they fed into an unassuming tower in Todorov’s office. The metal box was swathed in blankets in the back of their vehicle. They would ship it to Rome as soon as they reached Istanbul.

Hopefully, the computer would give Beatrice and Tenzin a better idea of how the formula had been manufactured and what its effects were. They had tracked down the registration of the truck that had taken the small shipment to Rome and sent it to Matt. Giovanni only prayed that his friends could find the truck before it reached Livia.

“Come on, Sparky. We’ve got to get down the road a bit before dawn.”

“What if they can’t find the truck, Carwyn?”

“You can’t think that way. You just can’t. Besides, Jean and Gavin will track it down. When has Gavin ever failed to steal something he really wants?”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Carwyn slapped him on the shoulder. “Come, my friend. Let them do what they do best, and we’ll get on with finding the legendary missing vampires in their mythological fortress in the Caucasus Mountains using only vague directions and landmarks that haven’t held the same names for four hundred years. If we’re very lucky, Arosh will burn us before Kato pulls the water from our bodies and leaves us shriveled husks of the vampires we once were.”

Giovanni nodded. “But we have a letter.”

Carwyn turned and walked to the car. “We do. And it better be a damn good one.”

Giovanni followed him. “Speaking of letters…”

“I’m not going to tell you who I was writing, so stop asking.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Residenza di Spada

August 2012

“Yes,” Ziri said, “that is the formula that I remember."

Lucien and Dez were sitting at the desk, going over the printouts from the hard drive that Giovanni and Carwyn had sent from Istanbul. Dez had spent the previous week going over the contents with a fine-tooth comb. Since Beatrice still had trouble accessing electronics, the printer had gotten a workout.

Dez had quickly pinpointed the shipping information of the single truck that had taken the first shipment from Bulgaria to Rome. There were only five boxes on the manifest. Apparently, someone hadn’t wanted to wait. Jean and Gavin had immediately called contacts in the area, and the truck had been delayed in Serbia. They left the following night, hoping to intercept it before their favors were preempted by whomever Livia had in her pocket.

Ziri was still speaking. “It is amazing to me that they manufactured it so quickly. It took us months to put it together, even after Jabir perfected the formula.”

Beatrice perked up from her chair by the fire. “Ziri?”

“Yes?”

“How
did
Jabir perfect it? Did he test it on humans before Fahdil and Kato tried it? What did he do?”

Ziri walked over and sat across from her. Beatrice could feel Lucien and Dez’s eyes on them.

“He did test it on humans first. There was no shortage of ailing people in that part of the world, but he only tested it on the sickest of them. The first attempts did little. The human’s metabolism destroyed any benefits our blood might have offered. But slowly, there were small improvements. An extra hour before the blood was rejected. Then a day. It took over a year, but he finally found the exact formula to keep the human body from rejecting the blood. From there, the results were quite startling. One elderly woman in particular showed an amazing recovery.”

“Yeah, I remember reading about her in the journals.”

Ziri smiled. “He was always so careful with his language in those. Careful to conceal what we were and what we were doing. I’m very impressed you and your father figured them out.”

“I doubt we would have had we not known about vampires already.”

“True.” Ziri sat back in his chair and stroked his chin in a thoughtful manner. “I do wonder how Livia and Lorenzo were able to interpret them so quickly."

“Gio thinks that there were notes that the monks made that Lorenzo stole when he ransacked the monastery. He said that Fu-Han had made progress.”

“That was Zhang’s old apprentice?”

“Yes. Giovanni said he had figured it out. Lorenzo must have taken his notes.”

“Interesting.”

“But Gio also said that Fu-han told him right before he died that there was something Lorenzo would not understand about the elixir.”

Ziri cocked his head. “What? What wouldn’t he understand?”

Beatrice shook her head. “He didn’t say. He just said something about the fifth element. Not even Gio knew what the hell he was talking about. There are only four elements.”

Dez piped up. “No, there’s not. There’s five.”

Beatrice’s head swung around. Dez was still sitting at the desk, and her eyes were glued to the monitor. Lucien was sitting to her left, studying the screen intently. He turned in his chair to address her.

“Dez is right,” Lucien said. “The four elements are more philosophical than scientific. There are consistencies and variations across history. While four elements were named in ancient Western tradition, Aristotle added a fifth,
aether
.”

“Aether?”

“The essence. The…
aether
. It’s hard to explain. Aristotle described it as that which the heavens were made of. The eternal elements. All earthly elements are, in reality, unstable. They can be changed in many ways. Aether, the essence of the eternal, could not.” Lucien smiled. “Call it what you will. The soul. The spark of God. Eternity. Aether is that which does not change.”

“That’s not science.”

Lucien chuckled. “My child, God has existed long before science. He created it, after all.”

“The fifth element was more prevalent in the East, Beatrice.” Ziri broke in. “The ancient Babylonians had five elements, the sky being one, which you could relate to the Greek concept of aether.”

Lucien continued, “Hindu philosophy and Bön have five elements as well. Bön has always held a fascination for Eastern vampires. Its study is what Tenzin’s father is so well known for—well, that and bloodshed. Bön names five elements: fire, earth, wind, water, and space. The philosophy says that everything is related to these five elements. The four earthly elements influence everything about an individual, with the fifth, the space or aether, tying all things together.”

“So, there
are
five elements.” Beatrice nodded. “Okay, but how does that relate to the elixir of life? What could Fu-han have found?”

Ziri shrugged. “Who knows? The four earthly elements are all that truly pertain to our biology. There are no
aether
vampires. None possess a fifth power.”

“What element is the most common?” Dez asked, looking up from the computer. “Just curious. Are there roughly the same number of all the different vampires around?”

Beatrice shook her head. “Not fire. Fire vampires are pretty rare, right Ziri?”

“Yes, I would say that there are roughly the same number of wind and water immortals. Earth vampires are more numerous.”

Lucien said, “We do like our big families.”

Dez patted Lucien’s hand. “That must be why you guys are so easy to hang out with.” She laid a hand on her swelling abdomen. “Family oriented.”

Lucien watched Dez with a warm gaze. The human and the vampire had bonded over Dez’s pregnancy, which was progressing with no complications. Matt had arranged an Italian midwife and hospital for his wife, but Dez also had the benefit of an immortal doctor on call. Lucien had been a healer for thousands of years and had grown very fond of Dez.

“How are you feeling, my dear?” He held a hand out. “May I?”

“Of course!”

Lucien placed a hand on Dez’s stomach. Beatrice felt her fangs descend involuntarily and tried not to growl.

“Relax, Beatrice.” Lucien glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know why that keeps happening. You’re her doctor, for goodness sake. I’m so sorry.”

Ziri spoke. “It’s instinct. It’s natural for you because you consider Dez under your aegis. It’s nothing to be concerned about. It just means that you will protect her and the baby.”

“Aw.” Dez winked at her. “I knew you were gonna be the best auntie.”

Lucien smiled. “Have you felt the quickening?”

“Huh?”

“The baby. Have you felt the baby move?”

“Oh, yeah! Just a little. It kinda feels like bubbles.”

“You’ll feel more and more. He’s very active.”

Dez sat up straight. “It’s a boy?”

“I’m not sure,” Lucien said with a smile. “Extra strong senses, remember? No vampire ultrasound. And I can’t smell the little one. He or she is very well protected in there.” Lucien gave one last pat to Dez’s little rounded belly. “Aren’t you,
bebe
? Stay nice and snug until it’s your time.”

Dez melted. “Lucien, you are a big vampire sweetheart.”

“Please don’t let that get out. Well, you can tell my mother. She would laugh.” He winked. “And this vampire sweetheart is exhausted, I better—”

Deirdre blew through the door in her typical, abrupt way. “I need to leave,” she stated.

Beatrice sat up straight. “Everything all right?”

The redheaded vampire nodded. “Everything is fine. But there is nothing more I can do here. I need to return to my family.”

“Oh.” Dez stood and walked toward her. “I’m going to miss you!”

Lucien said, “You need to leave tonight?”

She nodded as she embraced Dez. “Matt has been looking for a ship that could carry me back. There is one leaving out of Genoa in the morning, but I’ll need to leave tonight. Soon.”

Beatrice glanced around the room. Ziri was unmoved. Dez was disappointed, but Lucien looked… lost.

“Deirdre," he said.

Deirdre’s eyes swung toward him and she held out a hand. “Lucien.”

And Beatrice suddenly recognized the anguish in his voice. The two friends had known each other for hundreds of years. Lucien and Deirdre’s husband had been the closest of friends and colleagues. And Lucien didn’t think he would see her again.

Deirdre walked over and embraced him. “You must not think this way, my friend. You must not.”

“I do not know if I will see you again in this life.”

Blood tears touched Deirdre’s stoic face as Lucien enfolded her in his long arms. “Do not make me say good-bye to another loved one, Lucien. Whatever this is—”

“It is not goodbye. Not really, Deirdre. You and I both know this.”

Beatrice just tried to hold herself together. At times, it was easy to see the mystery of Geber’s manuscript as academic. It was a research project. A problem to be solved.

But it wasn’t.

She watched the friends say good-bye, and her mind flashed back to her father’s anguished face as he faced off against Lorenzo on the banks of the Nine-bend River. The scattered bodies of the monks in the Wuyi Mountains. The memory of the woman before her, wailing on the ground as she mourned the loss of her mate.