The Elemental Mysteries: Complete Series (71 page)

“Gio,” she whispered as she placed her hands firmly on his shoulders and pushed him back. She heard him growl quietly as he tried to pull her back, but she grabbed his chin and forced him to look into her face. “Giovanni, what was that on the boat?”

He blinked, shaking his head to clear it. His eyes continued to fall toward her neck so she pinched his chin.

“I’m serious. I’m exhausted, and I just had a verbal fencing match for the last two and a half hours. So calm your fangs, and tell me what the heck is going on.”

“Sorry,” he muttered as he stepped back and cleared his throat. “My apologies, Beatrice. Let’s get in the car and I’ll fill you in on the interrogation and the…biting.”

Beatrice nodded, sliding down the side of the car, taking care not to scratch it. She paused before she got in when she noticed the side of his head.

“You singed some hair off again,” she said. “What happened?”

He frowned and felt the bare spot behind his ear. “In the car. Let’s get on the road and I’ll tell you.”

Giovanni drove back to the house since she was exhausted. If there hadn’t have been news to hear, she probably would have fallen asleep.

“One of Ernesto’s people is working for Lorenzo,” he said. “Baojia discovered it last week, but he wanted to tell me in person because he’s still not sure who it is.”

“One of Ernesto’s children is working for Lorenzo?”

He shook his head. “That’s highly unlikely, since your connection to him is well known. It would be almost unheard of for a child to defy their sire like that.”

She couldn’t help but remember Giovanni had plotted his own sire’s murder, but she didn’t bring that up.

“But only a small portion of the vampires you saw tonight are his children,” he continued. “Many are business associates, employees, or others who have connection to him and claim his protection.”

“So Bao—whatever his name is—doesn’t know who it is?”

“He’ll be able to find out fairly quickly with the information I gleaned from the Greek. He was most talkative after a short time with me,” Giovanni smiled grimly. “I wouldn’t worry about it,
tesoro
.
 

“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 smiled 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 boy 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 smile.

“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.