A Hidden Fire

Chapter Twenty-four

Cochamó Valley, Chile

August 2004

She listened for hours, wrapped in his warm arms as he told her the tale of a small boy, plucked out of poverty by the friends of a beloved uncle. He had been an indulged child after his early years, fed a steady diet of art, philosophy, religion, and learning in a time of flowering human achievement.

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, after adopting his older brother’s illegitimate son, treated Jacopo more like a cherished younger brother than a bastard. His three friends; Angelo Poliziano, the scholar, Girolamo Benivieni, the poet, and Girolamo Savaranola, the monk; followed suit.

The four surrounded the boy with knowledge and love, each contributing a part to the young man he became, and each unaware of the hovering danger that lurked in the beautiful form of Signore Niccolo Andros, a water vampire of unspeakably ancient power.

“When did you first meet him? Your sire?” she asked as he carried her to his bedroom to escape the first stirrings of dawn. He settled her on top of his large bed, then walked back to her bedroom for blankets, since he slept with none.

“Andros?” he called. “My uncle first met him in Lorenzo’s court in 1484. It was the same visit to Florence when he first met me.”

Giovanni walked back in the bedroom, which was finished in plaster and wood on three walls. The far wall, at the head of the Giovanni’s bed, was hewn granite and the candlelight in the room caused the black flecks in the stone to dance.

“I first met Andros when my uncle visited his villa in Perugia. He had collected an extraordinary library and gave my uncle many rare books and manuscripts to study, though I later learned he had always intended to take them back. Andros’s books are the real treasure, tesoro. My uncle’s books are valuable to me, but Andros’s library was legendary.”

He arranged the blankets over her before crawling in the bed, and settling a warm arm around her waist. “It had no equal I have ever seen. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian. Even some Sumerian clay tablets. He’d amassed it over twenty-five hundred years, and inherited other manuscripts from his own sire, who I never met. It was an astonishing collection.”

Since he’d woken her from the nightmare that had plagued her for weeks, Giovanni couldn’t seem to stop touching her. As tumultuous as her feelings toward him were, she found his presence comforting, and his touch seemed to warm the persistent chill that had tormented her since the night she’d fallen into Lorenzo’s hands.

“And Lorenzo still has it?”

He shrugged. “He must. It was all housed together after my uncle died. So if he has my uncle’s books-”

“At least you got those back, right?”

She felt his arm tighten around her waist.

“I did.”

There was a long silence as the memory of that night nudged at her. Finally, she heard him whisper, “I haven’t even looked at them.”

Her breath caught. “None?”

“Caspar had them shipped here for safekeeping, but…”

She nodded and put her hand over his arm, weaving her fingers with his.

“We should look at them.”

“Not tonight.”

“No, tell me more about when you met your uncle.”

He paused before he continued. “It was all in 1484. It was a very eventful year.”

“What else happened?”

She felt him sigh and she curled into his chest. “He met Lorenzo de Medici that trip, and then me, and then Andros, of course. Andros had been lingering in the Medici court.”

“Why?”

“Why was my sire in Florence? He told me later he was ready to create a child-he never had before-and he wanted to pick from the brightest of the city.” Giovanni propped his head up on his hand and looked at her. “He was looking for a ‘Renaissance man,’ I suppose. Initially, he set his sights on my uncle, but then my uncle disappointed him.”

“How did he disappoint him? Not smart enough?”

“Oh no, my uncle was brilliant,” he said wistfully. “No, Giovanni fell in love.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat and remembered the slim book of sonnets he’d held in his hand the night she was taken. “With Giuliana?”

He nodded, and lay his head on the pillow next to hers, lifting a hand to play with a strand of her hair. “He met her in Arezzo, visiting an acquaintance. She was married…not her choice, of course, but it never was then. Her husband was cruel and dull. Even Lorenzo hated him, though he was a Medici cousin. But Giuliana and Giovanni…they were so beautiful.”

“She was beautiful?”

He paused, and she rolled onto her back so she could see his expression. His eyes were narrowed in concentration while he thought. “It’s difficult to say. My human memories are not always clear. I remember her as beautiful, but that could be a child’s perspective. I remember the way my uncle smiled at her. She was very kind to me; she liked to play games. I don’t think she could have any children of her own. She never did in all the time they wrote to each other.”

“What happened?”

“She was married, and my uncle was thrown in prison when their affair was discovered. Though Lorenzo de Medici found my uncle entertaining, so he intervened.”

“But they stayed in contact?”

He nodded and let his hand stroke along her arm. Everywhere he touched gave her goose bumps, but not from the chill. His energy, which he normally kept on a tight lease, seemed to hum along his skin as he reminisced. She could see him taking longer and longer blinks, and could only assume the sun was rising in the sky.

“They wrote beautiful letters to each other,” he said quietly. “He locked them away; I never discovered where he put them.”

“But why did that matter to Andros? They couldn’t marry anyway, why-”

“My uncle fell into a depression toward the end of his life. After his imprisonment in Paris, he lost his spirit. He stopped writing Giuliana. He no longer had the same joy he’d always carried before. He destroyed his poetry. He burned many of his more progressive philosophical works and corresponded more with Savaranola, who had become so radical by then it taxed even Poliziano and Benevieni’s friendship.”

“When were the bonfires?”

“The ‘bonfire of the vanities?’” he murmured, and she was reminded of the book she had been reading so many months ago when they had first met. His amusement at hearing the title finally made sense and she smirked.

“Yeah, those bonfires.”

“It was after I had been taken, but before I was turned. My uncle left me everything; though he wasn’t exorbitantly wealthy, his library was substantial and Andros wanted it, so he took it. When Lorenzo told me years later that everything had burned in the fires, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine. Many of his books would have been considered heretical, and so many things were lost.”

“What did your uncle write about?”

Giovanni smiled wistfully and placed a small kiss on her forehead. “He thought that all human religion and philosophy could be reconciled. That the quest for knowledge was the highest good; and that somewhere, between all the wars and debate, there was some universal truth he could discover which would bring humanity together.”

Beatrice paused and watched his green eyes swirl with memories. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He was…an idealist.”

She reached up to place a small kiss on his cheek, which had grown a dusting of stubble since she had kissed him so many weeks ago at the Night Hawk.

“The world needs idealists.”

His hand trailed up from her arm and cupped her cheek. His eyes searched her own before he leaned down to place a gentle kiss on her mouth. It was soft and searching, and she felt his arm pull her closer. She also felt his eyelashes fluttering on her cheek, and knew he was struggling to remain awake.

“Sleep, Gio.”

“Will you be here when I wake?” he mumbled, almost incoherent from the pull of day. “There’s more…”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll be here.”

Though his arm lay heavy across her waist, and his head slumped to the side, Beatrice felt safe for the first time in weeks, so she closed her eyes and joined him in a dreamless slumber.

When she woke, he was still sleeping, so she pulled away from the tangle of his arms and went to the front of the house. She boiled some water and made black tea to drink on the front porch. When she went outside, there was fresh milk sitting on the porch, and a block of ice for the icebox.

She was surprised by how peaceful she found the simplicity of life in the valley. The house had no electricity, but she didn’t miss it as much as she imagined. The fire in the main hearth was constantly burning, and it heated a small water heater by some mechanism she still didn’t understand, but appreciated anyway.

Other than the dreams that had plagued her every night, Beatrice had never felt more peaceful, and she understood why Giovanni had wanted her to come to this quiet place. Her soul, as well as her mind, had been refreshed.

She could hear the rustle of someone approaching through the trees, and sat up straighter in instinctive alarm. She relaxed when she saw the oldest son of the Reverte family, who kept the lodge at the base of the valley. Arturo had escorted her over some of the gentler riding trails as she explored the valley. He was riding his favorite horse and leading another one for her.

“Ciao, Beatriz!” he called with a smile.

“Buenos días, Arturo.”

“¿Quieres cabalgar?”

“No, grácias,” she said, declining his offer to ride.

“¿No? Estás segura?” he asked with a wink.

She thought about getting some fresh air but was unsure of what time Giovanni would wake, so she nodded that, yes, she was sure, and waved him off with a smile. She realized she wanted to be there to hear the rest of Giovanni’s story and didn’t want to lose time when he woke.

To say she had been stunned to learn he was the orphan the count had adopted, instead of Giovanni Pico himself, was an understatement; though when she thought about her research into the life of the fifteenth century philosopher, the ages had never seemed exactly right. She still had many questions, but she was beginning to understand how valuable the correspondence of his uncle and friends would be to the boy who had loved them.

She ate a small meal and perused the bookcases in the living room. When Giovanni had mentioned his books the first night they’d come to the house, Beatrice had frozen, thrown back to the night he had callously traded her for the books he had sought for so long.

At least that’s what she had thought at the time.

Her mind understood what he had been saying since he had rescued her, but a small part of her heart found it difficult to let down her guard around the magnetic man she knew she still loved, though she had trouble admitting it-even to herself.

Beatrice found a harmless paperback and crawled back in bed with the sleeping vampire, who had not moved from the position she left him in.

“Sheesh,” she grunted as she shoved his arms over to clear a spot. “You’re heavier than you look, Gio.”

He just lay there, silent and unbreathing.

“It’s probably really evil that I want to draw something on your face right now, isn’t it?”

She examined his unmoving form. “I could draw a big, curly mustache, right on your upper lip, and you wouldn’t be able to stop me, would you?” She lay down and traced her finger over his upper lip.

“Yep, that would piss you off for sure,” she muttered. “You’re so damn proud, Giovanni.”

Ironically, his face looked childlike in repose, and she found herself wishing the soft curls still covered his forehead so she could brush them away.

“Or should I call you Jacopo?” she murmured.

She liked the feeling of his childhood name in her mouth, so she continued in a soft voice.

“Does anyone else know your name, Jacopo? Does Lorenzo even know?” she said. “I wonder…”

She began to feel tears prick the corner of her eyes, and she lay her head on his chest to stare at him. She heard one soft thud as his heart gave a beat before falling silent again.

“I thought I was in love with him, Jacopo. I think I still am.” She blinked away tears. “But I don’t trust him anymore, even though I want to.”

Suddenly, his expression creased into a slight frown, and he no longer looked like a boy, but the hard man who had killed to get her back.

“Oh,” she whispered, “there you are, Giovanni.”

She sighed and decided she didn’t really want to read, so she curled into his side and fell into another dreamless sleep.

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.”