This Same Earth: Elemental Mysteries Book 2 (30 page)

His touch was not the soft caress of Giovanni or even the sick, teasing touch she remembered from the last time he’d held her. It was the cold burn of ice that gripped her throat; the sensation quickly spread over her skin and nausea turned her stomach.

The ache spread from his fingers, around her neck, and up to the base of her skull as she stared into his frigid, blue eyes. She couldn’t speak, but her teeth began to chatter and the goose bumps spread down her body. It was as if his touch had frozen her and, as the creeping cold slipped into her mind, Beatrice knew she was powerless to stop the invasion.

“Where is your father?”

Her teeth chattered when she answered. “I—I don’t know.”

“Has Giovanni been in contact with him?”

Her mind screamed at her to tell him nothing, but she couldn’t stop the words as they tumbled out of her mouth.

“Postcards.”

“Explain.”

“Dad left clues for Gio, and he sent me…postcards.”

“Who sent you postcards, Beatrice?”

“G—G—io sent me postcards,” she rattled. “From the places he f—found clues.”

Beatrice could feel the tears trickling down her cheeks, and she was surprised that they didn’t freeze against her cold skin. But as she saw the spotted condensation on the porthole, she realized that no one in the room was cold except her. In fact, if someone touched her skin, she imagined it would still be its normal temperature. But Lorenzo told her nerve endings she was freezing, and her body reacted accordingly.

“What kind of clues?”

“He—he wouldn’t tell me.” Beatrice wondered if the knowledge of her vulnerability was what had caused Giovanni to hold back the information, and she was suddenly grateful for his stubborn, determined, forward-thinking ass.

“He sent you the postcards?”

“Yes.”

“From where? I want every location he sent a postcard from. List them all.”

And with trembling lips and tears in her eyes, Beatrice gave Lorenzo the location of every place Giovanni had found a clue left by Stephen De Novo in the previous five years.

Warsaw.

Johannesburg.

Lima.

San Francisco.

Tripoli. Santiago. Shanghai. Stockholm. Budapest. Novosibirsk.

She told him everything she knew.

And as she told him, Lorenzo came to sit next to her on the small bed, putting an arm around her as he played with her hair. He twisted it in his right hand while his left hand played with her fingers.

“Your skin is so lovely, Beatrice. Have I ever told you that?”

“N—no.”

“It is. It’s no wonder he likes you. I can see his bite marks on your neck now.” He bent down to run his lips against her skin, inhaling deeply. “Do you like it? When he bites you?”

She wanted to pull away. To strike him. But she was utterly frozen and had no choice but to answer as the cold fingers of Lorenzo's amnis stroked her mind.

“Yes.”

“Does his bite make you come?” he purred into her ear.

Beatrice tried to resist. She pictured walls going up in her mind, blocking the creep of his influence, but the twisted fingers flowed over and around the walls, forcing her to answer.

“Y—yes,” she whispered.

“How delicious you smell. Sweet, but not overpowering. Very much like I remember your father tasting. Maybe I should have kept him like my father keeps you. Quite convenient having a regular meal.”

The angry tears still fell down her face as she realized how powerless she was.

“Of course,” he whispered her hidden fear as his fingers slid up her arm. “I could just keep
you
. Maybe my father is on to something with his human women. Who cares if you bruise a little when I’m done with you? If you’re interesting enough to keep him occupied, perhaps you are worth my time.”

“N—no!” Just the thought churned her gut. “I don’t want—” And yet it didn’t seem to matter what she wanted. She could feel the suggestion take root in her mind, and her arm lifted until her fingers were nestled in the soft golden curls on his head. She stroked them, and he hissed in pleasure.

“Such lovely, delicate hands, Beatrice. Why are your knuckles so bruised, precious girl? Surely you haven’t been practicing your ridiculous martial arts like you did in California. Surely you know...” His lips brushed against her cheek, and he whispered into her ear,
“You cannot fight me.”

He snickered a little and pierced her earlobe with one fang, quickly lapping at the blood with his cold tongue before he rose and straightened his clothes. She immediately felt the chill leave her, and Beatrice resisted the urge to shake.

“Delicious. You are a treat, my dear. I’ve already fed this evening, but hopefully we’ll have time tomorrow night.”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked, shrugging the tension from her body and drying her eyes with the back of her sleeve. He thought she was going to wait around to let him feed on her? In his dreams.

“Don’t be silly. It’s very possible that Giovanni will have found you by tomorrow night, and I don’t want to give him any new information.”

She glared at the monster in front of her.

“Why did you kill Ioan?”

He giggled and looked around the room. Beatrice finally noticed that there were four other vampires present beside Lorenzo and no other humans beside herself. All of Lorenzo’s men were dressed in black, and none of them seemed remarkable in the least.

Lorenzo finally stopped his ridiculous giggling. “One, I did not kill the kindly doctor, these lovely gentlemen did. Two, the reason I killed Ioan is between Ioan and myself. So you’ll have to ask one of us, and since I’m not telling, and he’s little bits of dust at this point, I suppose you’ll just have to live with disappointment.”

In that moment, Beatrice De Novo decided that she would become a vampire. If for no other reason than to kill the evil creature in front of her, who shattered lives on a whim. A cool calm settled over her, and a smile flickered across her face.

“I am going to kill you, Lorenzo.”

He only laughed. “You’re precious. Now, will my father kill me?” He shrugged. “Perhaps. He’s definitely powerful enough. The problem for him is, he lacks a certain…we’ll call it ‘devious intent,’ that allows me to be far more ruthless. Oh, he’s quite violent when provoked, as my lovely house on the island can attest, but he doesn’t really
enjoy
it like I do. Now you…” He lifted a curious eyebrow. “You might be a force to be reckoned with, Beatrice De Novo.”

The smile fell from his face, and he cocked his head to the side. “I can see the calculation in your eyes, and it’s very intriguing. What could you accomplish with power? It’s almost worth changing you to find out.”

The thought of his blood running through her veins sickened her, and she curled her lip. He quickly plastered on a sick smile.

“Oh! You’re so darling. I missed you.”

“I can’t say I feel the same, Paulo.”

She didn’t even see the slap coming. His quick backhand would have knocked her unconscious if she hadn’t become accustomed to Gemma’s even more ruthless blows during their training. Lorenzo was eyeing her with a new light in his eyes.

“So, my darling Papá confided my human name to you, did he?” He cocked his head. “What else did he confide?”

Beatrice kept her expression neutral, suddenly aware that she’d made a horrible mistake. No one had known how much she knew about Giovanni, and she realized that his secrets were completely open to any vampire that wanted them if they could get their hands on her.

The same thought seemed to occur to Lorenzo, but he didn’t put his hands on her. Instead, he smirked and blew her a kiss before he swept out of the room with his entourage. Beatrice released a breath when she was alone again and settled into the bed to rest and wait for dawn.

Chapter Seventeen

English Channel

March 2010

The sun was pouring through the porthole when she woke, and small droplets of condensation cast tiny rainbows around the small room. Beatrice remembered Giovanni’s favorite waterfall in Cochamó and how it looked during the day with the sun reflecting off the spraying mist. It would be late summer right now, and she decided that if she could pick one place to be, it would be at their house in the valley with him.

They would wake in the early evening and make love in front of the fireplace in their bedroom, the flecks of mica sparkling in the hewn granite wall. She would sleep next to him all day and spend the night riding through the meadows in the moonlight. Maybe there would be wildflowers. She would have to remember to see as much of the valley as she could in the sunlight and take pictures for after she had turned. Since it was summer, maybe they would implement a no clothing rule in the house. She knew Giovanni wouldn’t mind.

Beatrice rubbed her eyes and stretched. She was going to get out of the room today. She wasn’t sure how, but it was daytime. Granted, it was morning, which meant that some of the vampires could still be awake if they stayed out of sunlight, but by afternoon, she knew they would be sleeping. That meant anyone up and walking around would be human. And she was pretty sure if she could land the odd blow on Gemma, she could kick some human ass.

Hours later, when the sun was hanging lower in the sky, she beat on the thick metal door.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Anyone?”

She paused to hear if there was any movement.

“Anyone out there? I’ve been in here all day, you gonna feed me?” She pounded some more. “Hey, I’m starving!”

She wasn’t starving, she was sickeningly nervous, but she needed someone to open the door.

“Open up! I need some food.”

She finally heard steps approaching, and Beatrice stepped back, grasping the sheet she had twisted into a thick rope.

“Hello?” an accented voice called. “You are hungry?”

“Yeah, I’m starving, all right? Will you feed me already?” She braced herself on the corner of the bed. When the door opened, whoever came through would see her immediately, there was no avoiding it, so she stepped up on the small bed, knowing that she would get one chance for surprise.

“Okay. I get food,” the voice called. She felt a brief pang at the thought of harming the voice, which sounded fairly friendly, but there was no way in hell she was going to show mercy to her captors when Lorenzo was waiting at sundown.

The footsteps walked away, and she put down her sheet to take off the jacket she had been wearing. It was cold on the ship, and she knew it was cold outside, but the jacket was too bulky for her to move freely, and she knew that the less an attacker had to grab, the better.

Beatrice took deep breaths, preparing her mind for the rush at the door. She focused on her hand-to-hand training with Gemma and all the advice the woman had given her over the past month.

“Go for the dirty punch. Always. And hit them when they’re down.”

“Throw your attacker off balance. It’s the only way your small size can be used to your advantage.”

“Be quick! Quicker. Make yourself so fast they can’t grab you. If they do, you’re dead.”

She took a deep breath.

The footsteps approached.

She heard a key in the lock.

The door cracked open.

She saw a tray.

Spotting her opportunity, Beatrice braced her arms on the narrow walls and kicked up, knocking the tray into her captor’s face as she swung the twisted bed sheet around his neck and, holding it securely, jumped off the bed.

The force of her momentum knocked the large man off balance and he stumbled into the wall. She aimed her boot at his groin and kicked him as hard as she could. Then she kicked him again.

He was on the ground, grunting in pain, so she stomped.

Beatrice was surprised how little noise he made. She must have knocked the wind out of him. After the first low grunt, the crewman curled into himself while she continued battering his kidney area with her boot the way Gemma had taught her. She shoved the door mostly closed and paused to survey the writhing man at her feet.

There was a gun in his belt.
Score
.

She reached down to his doughy waist and grabbed it. It was a Heckler and Koch nine millimeter, exactly like the one she had practiced with the previous week.

“God bless you, Terry,” she muttered as she popped the magazine out and checked the ammunition. The crewman hadn’t fired his weapon since he’d loaded it, so she slammed it back, racked a bullet into the chamber, and took the safety off.

She aimed it at the belly of the large man who was looking at her with wide eyes.

“Funny thing, guns. Six foot tall man with a nine millimeter, five foot tall woman with a nine millimeter…pretty much the same, aren’t they?”

He didn’t speak, but he was panting and she saw his mouth start to open. She kicked him in the kidneys again.