A Fall of Water (45 page)

“My name will be Giovanni,” he said.

Crotone

December 2012

No one visited the cold stone building that jutted into the sea. Old women who passed by made the sign of the cross, and small children peeked at it from behind their parents’ legs. Daring boys climbed the rocks that surrounded it to impress their friends, but no one ventured inside except a lone caretaker who visited the old fortress every few months. He slipped in silently then left after a few hours. The heavy locks that hung in the door were always in good repair.

Giovanni walked down the rocky path leading to his birthplace. The sound of the sea filled his ears, and the salt spray tickled his nose. It was a clear night, and the black outline of Andros’s fortress rose ominously from the waves that rose and fell under the full moon. He walked to the front door, noting the broken lock, and pushed it open. Then he tucked his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and walked in.

He could feel the faint energy trace as soon as he entered. Giovanni took a deep breath and closed his eyes, then he followed the energy down the stone stairs. Down. Down. Until the damp walls around him pressed in and the haunting memories filled his mind. Childish voices seemed to echo off the walls.

“Paulo, give me back that book!”

He followed the hallway toward the ancient classroom, and he heard the mischievous laugh echo off the walls along with his steady footsteps.

“Cook says that I look like an angel.”

“Then I congratulate you on your deception.”

“She gave me a cake, too.”

“Perhaps I need to speak more sweetly to Cook.”

Giovanni turned the corner and passed by the room where his son had slumbered. He pushed it open, but he was not there.

“Will I ever be as tall as you?”

“I do not know. How tall was your father?”

“I never knew my father. I only remember Andros.”

He entered the cold classroom to see his son’s blond head bent over. Lorenzo was sitting in the center of the room, reading a book as the waves crashed against the stone walls.

Giovanni leaned against a stone pillar and watched him.

“What are you reading?”

Lorenzo looked up. “Virgil.
The Aeneid
. Book Four.” He straightened his shoulders and lifted the book. “‘But the queen, wounded by serious love, cherished the wound in her veins, and she was consumed by the hidden fire.’”

Giovanni stared at him. Lorenzo’s face was gaunt. The shining blond hair he had always been so proud of was limp and hung around his face. His clothes were torn and stained with blood.

“She was so bitter with hate,” his son said. “Maybe even more than me. It was easy to convince her that you had plotted to murder Andros.”

“So you told her that I used amnis on you? That I used you to kill him.”

“You
did
use me.”

“You wanted him dead, too.”

“I did.” Lorenzo nodded. “I did. And she always hated you. I saw it even when you didn’t. The way she looked at you when your back was turned. I knew it would not be difficult to fool her.” A loud wave smacked the rocks outside.

Giovanni asked, “Did she know about the book? Did she ever really know the truth about the elixir?”

“I don’t really know. She said that she did. When I went to her—after I knew what it was—she said that Andros had told her about it, but she thought it had been destroyed. She could have been lying. She was a good liar.”

“But you knew?”

“Not at first. I only knew that Andros valued that book. It was one of the reasons I took the library. I heard him questioning Ziri once when we were in Rome. I was young, but I remembered the old vampire. After he was gone, I looked for the book that Andros was asking about. I didn’t understand it. Not then, anyway.”

“But you took it. You took it all.”

“None of it would have been mine. All those years with him, and he would have given it all to you, his precious son.”

Giovanni ignored the ache in his heart. “But you convinced Livia that she was included in his plan.”

Lorenzo shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I played to her vanity. Told her Andros wanted them to rule the world together. With a weapon like the elixir, they could have subdued their enemies. In a few years, after the effects had taken hold, every immortal leader would have been under their thumb. Even the ancients.”

Giovanni pulled a chair over and sat across from Lorenzo as the waves crashed up the walls. “It sounds like a plan Andros would have concocted. Nicely done.”

Lorenzo cocked an eyebrow. “She’s dead, of course. If you are here, then she is dead. She really was consumed by fire, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I suppose that is good.” Lorenzo sighed. “So all the secrets have come to light.”

“Not all.”

Lorenzo looked at him in surprise. “Not all?” Then he nodded. “Ah, the books. Of course, Andros’s library.”

“Where is it?”

His son shook his head and a bitter smile touched the corners of his lips. “Does your woman live, Father?”

“Yes.”

“How happy you must be. You have everything now. You always did.”

Giovanni’s heart twisted in pain. “I did not kill her, Paulo. I did not kill your woman.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he hissed.

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it—”

“I drank from her, yes. But it was Andros who snapped her neck. He heard she carried your child.”

He saw Lorenzo blink once before he spoke. His mouth opened, then closed again and he looked off into the distance, staring into the past.

“I had an irritating moment of clarity when we were in China,” Lorenzo said. “Do you know what it was?”

“No.”

“That infuriating Elder Lan asked me how many children I had sired.”

“I remember.”

Lorenzo looked up with a glare. “Do you know what my first thought was?
One
.”

Giovanni’s hands clenched in old anger. “Serafina’s child.”

“I sired one child. Her child.”

“Andros never would have allowed her to—”

“She asked me—the night before she died—she asked me to run away with her. To leave this place. I told her I had to think about it. I had to weigh my options.”

Giovanni took a deep breath of the salty air. He could hear the waves growing louder. “Would you have?”

Lorenzo shrugged again. “I like to think that I might have. In my sentimental moments, I think I would have run away. Started a new life. A normal one with her as a wife, raising our child.”

“That’s—”

“But I doubt it.” A sneer lifted his lip. “I have no illusions about who I am, Giovanni. Mortal or immortal. I am who I am. But you and Andros took the one thing that was
mine
. And I wanted revenge.”

“So you killed him, and I sired you. How long would you have waited to kill me?”

“I don’t know.”

“After I was dead, would that have been enough?”

The bitter smile spread. “No.”

“If Livia’s plan had worked? If you had ruled the world with her?”

“Not enough.”

“If you had forced Beatrice to take the elixir so she was your puppet. If you could have taken my lover as yours was taken from you… Enough?”

Lorenzo yelled, “It was never enough!
Nothing
could be enough!”

Giovanni shook his head. “Then you have been consumed by the fire just as Livia was.”

Lorenzo said, “I won’t tell you where the books are, Giovanni Vecchio. You figured out where I would be, you’ll be able to find them, too. Why—why did you keep this horrid place?”

“Why did you come back?”

“Because I want to die.”

Giovanni looked into Lorenzo’s vacant blue eyes, and his son spoke again. “Aren’t you going to kill me now?”

“No,” he whispered. “I am too much at fault for what you became.”

Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “So dramatic. I am a creature of my own making,
Papà
. Don’t overestimate your influence. Tell the truth, why aren’t you going to kill me?”

He took a deep breath and lifted his eyes over Lorenzo’s shoulder.

“Because she is.”

Giovanni had felt Beatrice enter the castle. She’d waited longer than he’d asked her to. Her elemental energy had filled the fortress, drawing the angry waves as he and his son had spoken. He knew Lorenzo had felt it, too. The amnis of an immortal as strong as his wife was unmistakable.

Lorenzo smirked, then tossed the book he’d held and darted down to grab his sword, which was tucked under the chair. He spun toward Beatrice and their blades clashed together.

His son was good with a blade, Giovanni thought as he watched them from the corner, trying not to intervene. But his wife was better.

Beatrice spun and twisted; the
shuang gou
she carried moved as if they were part of her own body. Sparks lit the dark room as they battled. Lorenzo ducked and darted around her, but Beatrice moved at a languid tempo as she parried with him. The room was utterly silent except for the sound of colliding metal. The two exchanged no useless chatter as they dueled.

She slid one blade down and swung it toward his legs, leaving a deep gash in his thigh. Lorenzo hissed and parried. He swung his blade up toward her face, but she only ducked away.

She was playing with him.

Her tempo slowly built, and he could see Lorenzo struggle to keep up. Even without the benefit of her element, she controlled the fight, forcing him around the room, pushing him into the corner.

“Because I want to die.”

Even if it was true, when faced with a mortal adversary, Lorenzo was battling as if he wanted to live. Giovanni wondered whether he had changed his mind.

It didn’t matter. Beatrice would have her revenge.

She looped one of the hooks of the
shuang gou
around his long hair and pulled, jerking him toward her and opening a gash on his neck as a chunk of his hair fell to the floor. The blood sprayed across the room, and Giovanni could detect the moment Lorenzo knew he was going to die.

A strange calm fell over his son’s angry face, even as his sword reached up to block Beatrice. Sparks scattered across the floor as she lifted her blade again. She brought it down against his, and the sword flew from Lorenzo’s hand.

He fell to his knees, weaponless, as Beatrice circled him. The tears streamed down her face as her blades ran around his neck, slowly deepening the bloody cut. She came to a halt in front of Lorenzo, and he lifted his brilliant blue eyes to hers. She crossed her swords at his neck, the hooks of the blade curling around the softest, most vulnerable part of his neck.

Giovanni could hear his son whisper as he looked into the face of his killer.

“Let it be enough,” Lorenzo said.

Beatrice pulled back her arms, and the curved blades caught his neck, slicing off Lorenzo’s head in one smooth stroke. Giovanni felt the sharp ache pierce his heart as the son of his blood fell to the ground, crumbled into a lifeless heap. He was frozen for a moment until he heard her sobs.

His mate dropped her swords and stared at the body of her enemy. At her father’s murderer. The vampire who had thrown her world into chaos. Then, Beatrice pulled her foot back and began to kick.

She sobbed as she struck him, screaming into the silent room and stomping on Lorenzo’s body over and over again, mashing it to a bloody pulp. Giovanni ran from the corner of the room and pulled her away, so she turned on him, striking his chest as she continued to scream.

“Let it be enough!” he whispered, pulling her close so that her fists could not strike. She sobbed into his neck until—finally—she wrapped her arms around her mate and let out a deep breath, exhausted by her rage.

He closed his eyes and whispered again, “Let it be enough, Beatrice.”

Her rasping breath echoed off the walls of the cold chamber. The waves still bashed against the rocks outside. But her racing heart slowed as her anger turned to grief, and she let him hold and comfort her as she wept.

Giovanni kept whispering as he stared at the broken body of the child he had sired five hundred years before. Lorenzo’s eyes stared from the corner, and a bitter smile was frozen on his face.

“Let it be enough, Tesoro. It has to be enough.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Outside Florence

December 2012

Beatrice arched her back as she moved over him, and her eyes caught the skylight they’d uncovered at dusk. A thousand brilliant stars shone over her head as his warm hands stroked over her shoulders, cupped her breasts, then trailed down her body until he grasped her hips in his hands. He groaned in pleasure and rose up, kissing along her collar as her hands tangled in his hair. The amnis sparked between them wherever their skin touched, and their pleasure built as they slowly made love.

His hands trailed down her spine, teasing the small of her back as his mouth met hers and his tongue traced her lips. Then he flipped her over so she was under his body. Beatrice smiled as she wrapped her hands around his wrists, and they moved in ancient rhythm.

Rise and fall. Push and pull. When she felt the wave lift her, she looked into her husband’s eyes. Her mouth opened, and a soft breath escaped her lips. Giovanni leaned down and captured the small exhalation of pleasure before he pulled back, rocking into her faster as his eyes darkened in desire.

The wave crested and she pulled him closer. He reached down to lift her up and press their bodies together in one, final thrust before his back arched and he cried out in release. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers in a long, luxurious kiss.

She rolled them on their side, and his fingers reached up, tracing the line of her nose. Her chin. The curve of her eyebrow. She smiled and looked at him from the corner of her eye.

“You’re staring at me,” she whispered.