This Same Earth

Chapter Twelve

Northern Wales

January 2010

A week later, Beatrice and Giovanni travelled by horseback through the rugged mountains of Snowdonia in northern Wales. They followed Carwyn, who was hospitable enough to travel above ground for the benefit of his guests. They were stopping in Carwyn’s house in Wales for a few nights before continuing on to London to meet with his daughter and her fiancé, a water vampire who ran London and had extensive contacts throughout Britain and the continent.

The leads into Ioan’s death had dead-ended in Dublin, but Beatrice had found two boats in the port that were owned by shadow corporations that looked promising. One was headed to London, and the other had been tracked to La Havre. Either could have been Lorenzo, but they would have to go to London before they could find out more.

“I’m sorry you’re visiting my home for the first time under these circumstances.”

Beatrice looked over and smiled at Carwyn. “Don’t apologize. I’m sorry I’ve been so moody lately.”

He pulled his mount back and kept pace with her as they made their way along the trail. Giovanni had ridden ahead, familiar with the terrain and, she suspected, wanting to give her and Carwyn some time alone to talk.

He shrugged. “It’s a crazy world you’ve found yourself in, darling girl. I can hardly blame you for not feeling entirely yourself.”

“I’m glad to be visiting anyway.”

“How’s the bike?”

“Good,” she smiled. “I’m happy you convinced me to buy the Triumph.”

Carwyn nodded. “Anyone looking after things? While you’re away?”

“Well, officially I’m still on my vacation time, though Dez and Matt know what’s really going on and are watching the house. I’m going to have to figure out something to do about work, though.”

“Ah, so Dez is finally in on the secret, is she?”

Beatrice nodded. “She is. And she and Matt are dating now.”

“About bloody time,” he muttered.

“Hey, watch the language, Father. Don’t you have parishioners around here?”

Carwyn chuckled and looked around the snowy valley. “That I do, though I hardly think any of them are out on a night like this.”

Though she was bundled in the warm woolen clothes she had bought in Ireland, Beatrice still shivered as they made their way through the cold, desolate hills leading toward Carwyn’s mountain home.

“So Matt and Dez are finally together,” he continued.

“Yep.”

“And you and Gio?”

She fell silent and looked sideways at him. “What about us?”

Carwyn shrugged and gave a wry smile. “Distract an old man with some juicy gossip. What’s going on with you two? I know you and Mano broke up.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, surprised by how much it still hurt, “we did.”

“And you and Gio are obviously more than friends. You always were. Anything else is pure denial. So why aren’t you two together now?” She may have been glaring at him, but the priest only offered a wink.

“He left me, Carwyn. For five years he stayed away, and he knew where I was the whole time. Am I supposed to just forget all that time because he comes back and tells me he loves me?”

Carwyn lifted an eyebrow. “He told you he loves you?”

She shrugged and looked at the mounded cairns that started to appear at regular intervals along the path.

“Do you love him?”

She wouldn’t have answered for anyone but him, but Carwyn was one of the people she trusted most in the world.

“Honestly? I don’t know. I think part of me never stopped, but the other part of me doesn’t quite trust him to stick around.”

They rode in silence for a while longer.

“I understand where you’re coming from, B-and heaven knows I told him he was wrong to stay away for so long-but at the same time, I do understand why he did it.”

Beatrice scowled at him. “You know, I’m pretty sick of everyone thinking they know what I want more than I do.”

Carwyn chuckled and brushed at the red hair that fell in his eyes. “I’m sure you are, but let me tell you, the time you were in L.A., without him, you did a lot of growing. It was lovely to watch, you know, to see you come into yourself. Do you think you would have grown the same ways if he had been there? Or if you had stayed in Houston with him?”

She clenched her jaw. “It’s not that I don’t agree with what you’re saying. I do, but-”

“Or what kind of life would you have had if you were traveling all over the world with him? The work he was doing, B-tracking your father, shoring up alliances-it was important. And then he found Ben-”

“I get it!” she blurted. “He had more important things to do than hang around and entertain my crush. Fine. I get it. Can we change the subject please?”

“Oh, so it was a crush, was it?”

She clenched her hands and spurred on her horse. “I am so damn tired of know-it-all vampires telling me how much more they know about life than I do! Maybe what I felt for Giovanni back then was a kind of hero worship. I don’t think so, but maybe. Then he leaves, and I try my hardest to move on with my life, but I always feel kind of like I’m faking it.

“Then, when I finally feel like maybe I can have a life without him, he comes back!” She forced back the tears that gathered in her eyes. “And it’s like everything I felt for him gets taken out of the closet, dusted off, and is stronger than ever. And he acts like it’s no big deal.”

“B-”

“Do you think that’s fun? Do you have any idea how guilty I feel that I could never love Mano the way he deserved because I was so hung up on Gio?” She bit her lip and brushed at the angry tears that filled her eyes.

“B-”

“And I’m supposed to make this huge decision about being with him when it has so many implications. Because I won’t be with him and grow old while he stays the same. I won’t do it. It would be cruel to both of us. So, on top of deciding how I feel about him, I have to make the decision about whether I want to end my human life and drink blood for eternity.”

“Beatrice-”

“You wanted to know? Well, that’s how I feel, Carwyn!” She sniffed. “And I’m probably a giant shit for dumping all that on you right now, but you did ask.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

She sniffed again. “If I become a vampire, will I stop crying every time I get pissed off? Because that would be a definite mark in the plus column.”

Carwyn chuckled. “I’ve no idea, but your tears would be kind of pink. Very…cute.”

“Great,” she swiped at her cheeks that were dusted with salty frost. “So I’d look stupid and I’d stain my clothes.”

He snickered; then he laughed, and soon Beatrice was laughing along with him. After the tension of the past two weeks, laughing with Carwyn felt like coming up for air.

He reached over and squeezed her hand as they climbed the hill. “You’ll figure it out between the two of you. I have to confess, other than the odd, unexpected emotional outburst-thanks for that-it’s rather entertaining to watch. Don’t give in too easily, I’m having fun needling him about it.”

“Good to know we amuse you.”

“Oh, yes. Better than wrestling,” he snickered. “Well, maybe not quite.”

“We could always make Gio wear one of those lucha libre masks while we bicker at each other.”

“Excellent idea! I knew I liked you for a reason.”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that? Though he did confess to wearing a Zorro hat in a past life.”

Carwyn shook his head. “Oh, he loved that thing. Looked absolutely ridiculous on him. Wore it for years in South America.”

She snorted and looked across at him. “I missed you, Carwyn.”

He winked at her. “Missed you, too. Despite all this, there’s a light in your eyes I haven’t seen for a long while.”

She sniffed again and swallowed the lump in her throat. “If I do decide…I mean, if things work out with us and…I’m not even sure how to ask something like that.”

He smiled gently. “Well, if you’re not asking what I think you’re not asking, then the answer would be…I’d consider it an honor to call you my daughter, Beatrice De Novo. I already consider you a part of my family.” She looked across at him and realized his eyes looked a little red, too.

Beatrice reached over and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry I never got to meet your son.”

“I’ll see him again, darling girl,” he said in a rough voice. “Of that, I have no doubt.”

The following night, she sat next to Giovanni on the bed, reading a manuscript she had found in Carwyn’s huge library. The priest had mentioned she was welcome to borrow anything she liked while they were in his home.

Though Carwyn’s house was built into the mountains like Isabel and Gustavo’s, she could still hear the wind blow bare branches against the thick stone walls that protected them, and she shivered at the crack of ice as it hit the rocks.

She looked down and saw Giovanni begin to stir from his daytime rest. They’d slept next to each other every night since Ioan had died. Beatrice slept more soundly next to him, and he seemed reassured to keep her close and secure in his chamber. He never pushed, though his obvious desire for more was becoming harder and harder to resist.

Giovanni stretched beside her, looking for all the world like a very large, sexy cat waking from a nap. His eyes were closed and she took a moment to admire his body. She insisted he wear pants to sleep, though she knew he considered bedclothes of any kind irritating.

He refused to wear a shirt, so she had a clear view of his perfect physique, at least from the waist up. Knowing he had been kidnapped and molded by a madman to look like the ideal of male perfection still didn’t lessen her appreciation for the end result.

She wondered if that was a moral failing of some sort.

“Mmm, tesoro…” he mumbled something in sleepy Italian as his eyes blinked open.

“Still don’t speak Italian, Gio.”

His hooded eyes raked over her breasts with sleepy languor as he whispered something else she couldn’t understand. She could feel her face heating up, and decided from the tone of his voice, it was probably a good thing she didn’t speak Italian.

Probably.

He began to reach for her, so she decided a drastic subject change was in order.

“How you do kill an immortal?”

Giovanni was obviously taken aback but looked surprised, not offended. He stretched again and sat up, crossing his arms on his chest as he leaned against the headboard of the sturdy bed in his room at Carwyn’s house.

“Good evening to you, too. And how to kill an immortal?” he mused. “Well, that’s obviously the wrong word, isn’t it? Immortal.”

Her heart faltered for a moment as she thought of Ioan. “You know what I mean.”

“We like to call ourselves immortals.” He reached over and played with a lock of her hair that had come out of her ponytail. “Makes the more civilized of us feel a bit better about feeding from human beings. Which we aren’t anymore, but we once were. Makes us slightly less barbaric in our own eyes.”

She leaned against his shoulder and let her cheek rest against his bare arm.

“You’re not barbaric, Jacopo,” she said. “You’re one of the kindest men I know.”

His skin automatically heated against her cheek. “Why do you call me by my human name?” he asked softly.

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

“No, I…it is comforting to hear it again.”

His hand came to rest on her left arm, and his fingertips traced gentle circles along the inside of her wrist.

“Am I the only one who calls you Jacopo?”

“You’re the only one who knows my name.”

Beatrice closed her eyes and gave in to the comfort of his warm hands. The low hum that always accompanied the touch of his skin on hers soothed her. As she sat in bed, enjoying the feel of him, she realized if she was robbed her sight, her hearing-of every sense she had-but could only feel his touch, she would recognize him by that alone.

She sighed and smiled, closing her eyes as she relaxed into him.

“‘Tu sei tutta bella, amica mia, e non v’è difetto alcuno in te,’” he murmured.

“Hmm?” She roused herself from drifting. “What does that mean?”

He tucked her head under his chin. “It means you’re beautiful.”

She smiled and turned her face to press her cheek to his chest.

“Do you dream? I’ve always wondered that.”

She heard him let out a soft chuckle. “I do sometimes. Not often though.”

“What do you dream about?”

He hummed a little, still sounding sleepy as he played with the ends of her hair. “The past. The future. You.”

She had no idea how to respond to that. I dream about you a lot, too. Have for years. You’re usually naked.

“So.” She cleared her throat a little. “I’ve been reading Ioan’s book about vampire biology. I remember you said he was a doctor. It’s fascinating.” Speaking of naked, did you pose for some of those diagrams? I’m pretty sure I recognize your abs.

He reached his left arm around to the table where she had set the manuscript.

“Ah, I remember helping him with this one. Deirdre did some of the sketches. Excellent resource.”

“I’m sure you get tired of answering all my questions, so I thought I’d just take advantage of the library since we have a few days here.”

He smiled. “I don’t get tired of answering because you ask good questions. So feel free to take advantage of me any time you like.”

She swatted his arm playfully. “Haha.”

He only chuckled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “What a good little librarian you are, tesoro.”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

“I’m not. Just teasing you a bit. So, what have you learned, Miss De Novo?”

“That you aren’t immortal, but you are very hard to kill.”

Giovanni nodded. “Yes we are. Fire and losing our head are the only ways I’ve ever heard of.”

“Really? Definitely no wooden stakes, huh?”

He shook his head. “No, though that would take a long time to heal if anyone tried.”

“Unless you’re surrounded by your element, right? Like when you burned Lorenzo and he dove in the water, he knew he would heal faster that way.”

“Yes, though burns still take years to heal completely, unless you’re a fire vampire. But if Carwyn was injured, he could heal very quickly if he went to ground.”

“So Tenzin-”

“Is practically impervious to serious injury unless she’s buried or drowned.”

“Wow.”

“‘Wow’ is a common reaction, yes.”

“And you?”

He shrugged. “Fire feeds me; fire destroys me. It’s a very fine line.”

“So, if you allow yourself to…what do you call it?”

Giovanni chuckled. “Flame up? Manifest fire? Get sparky, as Carwyn likes to say?”

Beatrice quirked her mouth in a wry smile. “Yeah, that.”

He stretched an arm against the headboard. “I’m not going to lie, tesoro, when I allow the fire to take over my body, it feels…heady. It’s intoxicating, and it could be very addictive. It does feed something in me and it does help me heal, but at the same time, it’s very, very dangerous.”

“But you control it, Gio. It doesn’t control you.”

He shrugged. “And oddly, we have my sire to thank for that. Without the years of discipline Andros beat into me, I would probably have destroyed myself long ago.”

She paused for a moment, frowning. “I don’t like feeling grateful to him.”

Giovanni gave her a sad smile. “He made me who I am.”

“You made yourself who you are. I’ve read your journals.”

“I wasn’t a good man for a long time. It was Carwyn and then Ioan who helped to humanize me.”

“And Tenzin. Kind of.”

“Kind of, yes. But nothing like Ioan. He was the finest of us,” he said quietly, slouching in the rumpled bed.

Beatrice wanted to erase the grief she saw fill his eyes, but she knew she couldn’t, so she pulled him over to rest his head in her lap and began running her fingers through his hair like she knew he loved.

“How did you meet him?”

He lay with his head on her thigh, and she listened as he timed his breath to match hers. Finally, he spoke in a soft voice, “My father created me to be his idea of the perfect man: a scholar, an artist, a strategist, a soldier…after he was gone, when I had to make my way in the world, there was little need for strategists, artists or scholars. But there was always a need for soldiers. Especially with the talents and training I had.

“I was a known fire vampire. I knew I needed to make a reputation quickly, and I needed to make it frightening, so I used what Andros had given me, and I became the most efficient assassin and mercenary I could be.”

“Who did you kill?”

“Whoever I was hired to,” he said quietly.

She took a deep breath and tried to reconcile the gentle man she knew with what he was describing. Beatrice had read his journals, but it was so much more brutal to hear the truth from his own lips.

He continued when she did not speak. “After a while, I had built a decent reputation, though I was still targeted regularly. Then I met Tenzin and she wasn’t what I was expecting. At all.”

“Why not?

“Well, I was hired to kill her-”

“What? Tenzin?” Beatrice laughed.

“Ridiculous, I know. She is one of the oldest and most powerful vampires I have ever heard of. But I did not know her reputation when I was hired. I was young-only fifty years old or so. I took the contract, but she is the one who hunted me.”

“Why am I not surprised? Where did she find you?”

“It was in the mountains of southern Siberia, perched in the branches of an evergreen. She jumped on my back like she does, and I was too shocked by her appearance to do anything but try to run away.”

“But she caught you?”

“Oh yes. She laughed and told me that she’d seen me long ago. That we were fated to be great friends, and that we would work together.” He cocked an eyebrow. “We would be more powerful than any other vampires walking the earth.”

“Talk about appealing to your ego.”

He chuckled. “I’m not going to lie, I didn’t believe her about fate, but she was persuasive, and I could see how powerful she was. She’s always known how to get me to do what she wants me to. And then, well, she just knew things. It was Tenzin who took the contract in London that led us to Carwyn. She always seemed to know the exact moment to get out of one situation or into another. Tenzin always… Well, she always…”

He drifted off and she noticed an odd, almost childlike, look on his face.

“Gio? What were you saying about-”

“Why did I go to the library where you worked?”

“What? You went to transcribe that manuscript, remember?”

“Yes.” His eyes lit up. “The manuscript for Tenzin. The one she just had to have copied.”

“Gio?” she whispered, but he could only stare at her in wonder as his head lay on her lap. He reached up to smooth away the frown that had gathered on her forehead and slowly pulled her face down to feather a kiss across her mouth.

“You are my balance in this life. In every life,” he murmured against her lips.

“Gio?”

“Tu sei il mio amore,” he said with a brilliant smile.

“I finally learn Latin and you switch to Italian on me, Jacopo? No fair.” She frowned against his insistent lips.

“I don’t want you to get bored.”

“Because that’s so likely, isn’t it?”

He just grinned at her. “Were you bored without me?”

Beatrice didn’t want to answer but knew she should considering how open he was being.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s not my business. It’s your-”

“Yes.”

Giovanni cocked his head, as if surprised she had responded.

“I was bored without you,” she continued. “I had a good life, but it wasn’t anything…” It was monochrome instead of color.

“I hated being away from you, Beatrice. Even when I convinced myself it was necessary.”

She blinked away the tears that tried to surface and pulled away from him. He still lay in her lap, looking up at her with an unguarded expression.

“What are we doing, Gio? I had so many questions for so many years. Why is everything suddenly not a secret?”

“Don’t you know?” he murmured.

She looked into his eyes, which had once been veiled and enigmatic. Now, they were open, and Beatrice was beginning to realize that everything she thought she knew about the previous five years might have been wrong.

“I think…I’m starting to know,” she finally said.

He shook his head; she could see the disappointment.

“Tell me more,” she begged. “When did you meet Carwyn?”

A smile touched the corner of his mouth.

“I was a little over two hundred years old. Tenzin and I were still working together, but I had grown weary of it, no matter how efficient we were.”

“You were tired of killing vampires.”

“I was tired of killing anything. I mentioned a contract that Tenzin found. We’d taken a job from the old guard, the vampires that used to control London. There was a band of rogues that was terrorizing the human population in Cornwall, and we were hired to get rid of them and clean up the mess they’d left. By the time we got there, Carwyn and Ioan had already taken care of most of the problem. Carwyn had killed the young vampires and Ioan was altering all the memories of their human victims and healing those he could. It had been going on for quite some time, so there was still a lot we were able to do.

“Tenzin and I offered to share the bounty with them for the vampires they had killed, but they both refused. It intrigued us both, and we went to spend some time with them in Wales. Eventually, I decided to stay with them and leave mercenary work. I was exhausted.”

“Was Tenzin mad?”

“Not really. She had begun to attract more attention than she normally liked, so she was ready to lie low for a few hundred years to let the rumors die down.”

Beatrice snorted. “Just a little while, huh?”

He smiled. “I told you, she’s very old. I stayed with Carwyn’s family for a time and slowly remembered what it was like not to spend every night looking for who would attack me next. I remembered how much I loved books, and music, and quiet. Eventually, I became convinced that I could choose to live another way. Carwyn and Ioan helped me see that.”

“I’m sorry I’ll never meet him,” she whispered and rested her hand against his cheek.

“I’m sorry too.”

“What happens when vampires die? The book was kind of vague.”

He took her hand and knit their fingers together before he rested them on his chest. “If we’re not burned, we return to our elements. What was left of Ioan’s body lingered for a few days and then crumbled into earth. Water vampires almost melt away, but again, it’s not instantaneous. And wind…well, they just disintegrate. Eventually, there is no trace of them.”

“And fire?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never beheaded a fire vampire. I don’t know. Usually, we burn.”

She paused. “Why did you leave me your journals in Cochamó?”

“I wanted you to know everything. Like when I told you to tell Dez about your life. There can be no future with that many secrets, tesoro.”

“But why didn’t you tell me all that before?” she asked gently. “You always held back with me.”

He sat up and moved to her side, looking into her eyes when he answered.

“When we first met, I didn’t know if I could trust you. And when you left for Los Angeles, I wasn’t sure you wanted to be part of my world. Which I understood. So I tried to shield you, Beatrice. There was no reason for you to be burdened with all of this if you were only going to touch the edges of it.”

“Gio.” She shook her head. “I think it’s pretty obvious at this point…”

She didn’t finish, and he leaned forward. “What? What’s obvious?”

She stopped short of admitting she loved him. She still wondered, when the current mystery was solved, whether he would disappear from her life again. This time, she knew the hole she felt from his absence when she was younger would be dwarfed by the immense vacuum another departure would leave.

He reached over to nudge her chin toward him so she was forced to meet his eyes. “I take nothing for granted, but I will not have you make any decision blindly. I’ll not have you resent me for hiding things from you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Then why-”

“Are you going to leave me again?”

He drew back as if she had struck him. “What?”

“If we find Lorenzo-”

“When we find him.”

Beatrice looked away. “Fine, when we find him. After he’s been killed. After you find my father, will you leave again? What if you decide you don’t want to feel grief like Deirdre’s? What if I choose not to become a vampire? What if-”

“You’ll have to be far better at evasion than even your father to lose me at this point, Beatrice De Novo.”

She looked at him, and his eyes begged for her to believe him. She wanted to, she realized. More than anything, but five years still hung between them. “Are you sure? About me? About this?”

He cocked his head.

“What?” she looked down nervously, wondering at his expression.

“Deirdre asked me the same question,” he said softly. “When she brought Ioan’s body back. She asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time.”

A memory of the fearsome woman carrying the body of her husband flashed to Beatrice’s mind. “What did you answer her?”

“I never got the chance.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Will you answer me?”

Giovanni grasped the back of her neck and pulled her into a hard kiss; she felt the force of it down to her toes. Finally, his mouth traveled to her ear and there was no mistaking his answer.

“I am sure of the fire that runs through me. I am sure of the earth I stand on. And I am sure of you.”