This Same Earth: Elemental Mysteries Book 2 (37 page)

“Yes,” she panted. “More.”

Giovanni felt her hands run through his damp hair and down his neck as she drew his head toward the pounding pulse in her throat. His tongue traced over her skin as they moved together, and he wrapped one arm around her back to steady her as he tugged her neck to the side, exposing the lush vein.

“Gio,” she whispered. “
Now
.”

He emitted a low growl before he sunk his fangs into her, drawing on the rich blood she offered as he felt her tense and shudder around him. She cried into the night as she came, and he grasped the ends of her dark hair as she arched back.

She didn’t stop moving and he hissed when he felt the edge approaching. Her fingers bit into the thick muscle of his shoulders, and he pulled away from her neck to taste her mouth. He moaned into their kiss, then bent to lick the small wounds at her throat before he buried his face in her hair and groaned in release. He didn’t pull away, but stayed linked with her, enjoying the shivers that coursed over their skin as they rocked together under the stars.

“
Tesoro
.” He listened with satisfaction to her racing heart. “Remind me to suggest swimming more often.”

“It is your favorite waterfall.”

“Even more so now,” he said with a grin.

They were soaked, and he framed her face with his hands as the water collected on their skin, running down in rivulets as they smiled and laughed together and the moon reflected in the ripples of dark water beside them.

Later, they stretched naked on the wool blanket she had tucked into their saddlebag, and he wrapped his body around her, chasing away the night chill. His hands explored each curve, leisurely studying her unique topography. In five hundred years, he’d had lovers he’d cared for, but none like her. Never before had one woman captured his heart, his body, and his mind as Beatrice had.

“What are you thinking right now?” she asked as his fingers traced over the soft rise of her belly.

“I am thinking, for the first time in five hundred years, I wish I could give you children. I regret that I cannot. It is not possible.”

She lay back, silent as she looked up at the stars. Finally, he heard her soft voice.

“Have I ever told you about my mom?”

“Not really.”

“She didn’t want me. She and my dad were never married, though I think he did ask at some point. But she didn’t want to be pregnant or married. She kind of…had me for my dad. Then she took off.”

“She was a foolish woman.”

Beatrice shrugged, and he clamped down on his instinctive anger.

“She didn’t want to be a mom. She could have gotten rid of me. She could have abandoned me to some stranger, but she didn’t. She gave me to my dad and my grandparents. And they loved me. So I can’t be too angry with her. I was probably better off.”

“My mother died of a fever. I think I was around five years old. I’m not sure. I know I was very young.”

“And then your uncle found you.”

“And then my uncle’s friends found me—purely by chance—and apparently I was a replica of my father, so they knew I was his bastard.”

“But your uncle was kind.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Very kind.”

“So, Jacopo…” She rolled him over on his back and laid a slender arm across his chest as she met his gaze. “We know better than anyone that family is what you make it.”

“You would make a wonderful mother,” he whispered.

“Maybe I will be one day...somehow,” she said with a soft smile. “I think I have time.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and brought his mouth to hers for a soft kiss. “Yes, you will have time.”

A week later they were lying in their bed in the early evening as a fire burned in the grate and reflected off the mica in the hewn granite wall. Beatrice was watching the lights dance and laughing at a story Ben had related when she’d called him that afternoon.

“So he was reading the recipe and somehow read one quarter
teaspoon
as one quarter
cup
,” she said as she held back the laughter.

“And?”

The incredulity covered her face as she looked up at him.

“Really?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you ever baked?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Only the bad guys.”

She snorted and rolled over to fold her arms on his chest.

“Well, there was a little bit of cleaning to do when the brownies ran all over the oven.”

“As long as he was the one doing the cleaning.”

“I have no doubt of that. My grandma has been forcing reluctant men to clean for years. My grandpa. My dad…”

She choked, and he caught her chin between his fingers, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Do you want to know?”

“What are you talking about?” she muttered.

“You have very carefully not asked me any more about your father. You know I was looking for him. I know you received the postcards, but you seem reluctant to ask any other questions.”

She pursed her lips and wiped at a tear that had come to one eye. “I’m not sure what I thought. I guess part of me always hoped
he
would find
me
. That he would come to L.A.”

“He was in San Francisco once, but that was the closest he ever came that I know of.”

She thought for a few more minutes as he played with the ends of her hair.

“Okay, tell me what you found.”

“Whatever tricks Tywyll taught your father, he learned them well. Combine that with a brain like yours, enhanced by better vampire processing and memory…he’s stayed one step ahead of me for years.”

“But you found—”

“What is the saying? Breadcrumbs,
tesoro
. I found breadcrumbs.”

He pulled her closer as he continued. “As I told you before, in each location I found some clue. I would get a call, or a note, or some indication that he had been inquiring after one of my books or my services, something like that.”

“But when you got there—”

“He would be gone. I would always find a hotel room, recently occupied, with some trace—a note, a receipt, something that would tell me it had been his.”

“And that’s where you sent the postcards from?”

“Yes.”

“So he didn’t try to hide that he’d been there.”

Giovanni shook his head. “Quite the opposite. It was almost as if he was waving a flag, then ducking out of sight.”

He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.

“So what if the locations were the clue? There has to be a—a method. A pattern, some—”

“I thought the same,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought the locations must be some kind of code or pattern, but there was nothing. I even played with the latitude and longitude for each city, looking for some kind of method to the seemingly random appearances.”

“So why did you send the postcards?”

“In the back of my mind, I thought that perhaps the cities would mean something to you. I thought that perhaps you would see something I wasn’t.”

He could feel her sigh as he stroked her back to try to ease the tension building in her muscles.

“No,” she finally whispered. “Those weren’t even places he talked about going. I mean, some of them were, but they were all fairly major cities, so there wasn’t anything that stood out.”

“Yes, after that first sighting in Iraklion, all the cities were major urban—”

“Where?”

“Iraklion or Heraklion. Crete. It was the first place I got any news of him. The director of the Archaeological Museum—”

“You didn’t send me a postcard from Iraklion.”

He blinked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to start sending them to you until I’d left Crete, and by then—”

She bolted up, staring into the fire, and he heard her heart begin to race.

“Crete?”

He sat up next and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry I didn’t send one from Iraklion, but it’s hardly a major city. He didn’t even stay very long—”

“But it’s
Crete
!”

He frowned. “Beatrice, I don’t understand—”

“Knossos. Minos.” She turned to Giovanni with burning eyes. She clasped his face between her hands. “It’s Minos, Gio. The minotaur!”

“Beatrice, what are you trying to tell me?”

She began shaking her head and a desperate look came to her eye.

“Not breadcrumbs. Not breadcrumbs…it’s a
labyrinth
.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Cochamó Valley

March 2010

Beatrice’s heart raced.

“Daddy! Daddy, the string game, Daddy!”

She tore out of the bedroom, searching for the unassuming reference book she’d spotted on the bottom shelf in one of the living room bookcases years ago.

“Beatrice, slow down. You’re going to trip if you don’t—”

“I’m going to find the treasure!”

“You think you’re clever enough to solve the puzzle, Mariposa?”

She searched for the blue binding as Giovanni rushed out of the bedroom to join her. “Beatrice—”

“The string game. I called it the string game when I was little,” she muttered. The book wasn’t where she remembered. Her eyes raked over the shelves in the living room, searching for the familiar book as the memories poured over her.

“What?” Giovanni’s voice called from the edge of the room. “The string game?”

“Stephen, are you two playing that silly game again? I’m going to trip and break my neck one of these days!”

“Relax, Mom. But don’t go in the living room, okay?”

“Grandma, I’m in the maze right now!”

She finally spotted it on the bottom shelf in the bookcase closest to the front door; she rushed over. “It used to drive my grandmother nuts. She was always tripping over the strings that we put up.”

“
Tesoro
, what are you—”

“Theseus and the Minotaur. My dad read me the story…I don’t know how many times. It was my favorite.” Her hands pulled the book out and raced over to the large kitchen table, slamming it down.

“Beatrice, if you need an atlas, I have much better editions—”

“No, no, this is the one we had.” She waved her hand as she opened it. “We had this one in our house. It would be this one.”

“Look for the clues, Mariposa. I left you clues all over the house; find them and follow the string to the treasure.”

“Like Theseus. Follow the string out of the labyrinth!”

“When I was a child, my father would read me the Greek myths. I loved them. He read them to me over and over again, but my favorite was the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.”

“The minotaur in the labyrinth?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Theseus goes to Crete, right? His father sends him to King Minos of Crete.”

“In Knossus, the ancient excavation site right outside of Iraklion.”

“Exactly. Theseus kills the Minotaur in the middle of the labyrinth, but then he has to find his way out of the maze again. Luckily, he was smart. He tied a string near the entrance and held onto it so he could find his way out again.”

She opened the atlas and flipped to the large map of Greece, pointing toward the island of Crete. “There’s no way my father picked that location at random. It was our game; he was telling me to play the string game.”

“What’s the first clue?”

“
‘What goes up when the rain comes down?’
”

“Solve the riddle, Beatrice.”

Giovanni was standing in a corner of the living room, his arms crossed as he stared at her like she was a crazy person. “Can you please explain from the beginning? What is the ‘string game?’”

She looked up at his beautiful, confused face and smiled. “I love mazes, always have, partly because of that story. Solving mazes, building mazes. I told my dad one time that I wanted to build a labyrinth at our house, but how do you make a maze in a little, tiny house, right?”

“…
‘comes up when the rain’
…an umbrella!”