“What is it about bass players?” Ben mused.
“Rhythm. Lack of ego. Good fingers.” Tenzin nearly tripped on Ben’s feet when he missed a step. “What?”
“Nothing.” Color had risen on his neck.
“None of them appear to be dangerous.” Tenzin moved closer. “Though that vampire looking at the bassist looks very hungry.”
“She’s not the only one.” He spun Tenzin around in two quick spirals as the band finished their song. “You still got the moves, Tiny.”
“As do you.” She gave one last glance at the balcony. The vampires had lost interest in the new faces and refocused on the humans with them. “Can we eat now?”
“Yes.” He led her back to the table as the crowd clapped and the bandleader cheerfully introduced the next band, a Latin jazz quartet from Ponce. They both froze when they heard the first familiar trumpet solo of “Summertime.”
“It’s Louis,” Ben murmured.
“It’s not Louis.”
“It’s a version of Louis.”
“Louis did not play Latin jazz. This is definitely—”
“We always dance to Louis.” He tugged Tenzin’s hand and spun her back to his chest. “It’s the rules.”
Tenzin looked up. “Too many.” Vampires. There were too many vampires, and Tenzin refused—
“Follow me.” Ben nodded and led them away from the dance floor, the tables, and the bustle of patrons, into a narrow alleyway off the courtyard where the trumpet cried quietly. A human couple was passionately kissing against one wall. A woman was smoking on a narrow stoop.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. She put her palm over his chest, feeling the steady beat, absorbing it into her cells as if by osmosis. She felt the pounding rhythm of his blood as if it were coming from her own heart.
Tenzin felt Ben’s fingers on the small of her back, the pressure tuning her senses. To him. To the air around them. The electricity of the humans and the elements. The water in the humid air. The heat of human blood. The wafting breeze in the palm trees above and the stones beneath their feet.
Time stopped as the song played. They were a single creature in that moment, light and dark, fleeting and eternal.
“They can’t see us here,” he whispered in her ear.
Tenzin closed her eyes and turned her face into his neck.
Pepper. Saffron. Salt.
Her fangs ached in her jaw, so she kept her mouth shut. Kept her lips pressed together as they moved, suspended in the awareness of his fragility and her need.
How long will you torture yourself? He is a weakness.
The scent of tobacco smoke brought her awareness back. The song was ending. Ben’s heart rate had steadied. The kissing couple walked past them with red cheeks and downward glances while the woman in the corner put out her cigarette and tied on an apron.
The song died down, and Ben held her for a lingering minute before he dropped his arms. “We should head back or they’ll give our table away.” His voice was rough.
Tenzin took a deep breath and focused on the scent of human food coming from the courtyard. “Okay.”
“I’m hungry.” He cleared his throat and straightened his collar. “Are you hungry? What am I saying—you’re never hungry.” He grabbed her hand and walked them back to the table where their server stood, scanning the courtyard.
“There you are!” the server said. “I was wondering if you’d left. I didn’t see you on the dance floor.”
“Sorry about that.” Ben glanced down at Tenzin. “We got distracted.”
The server laughed and relit the candle on the table that had blown out in the evening breeze. “On nights like this, that happens. Do you know what you want to eat?”
Yes.
“No.” Tenzin glanced at Ben, then at the server. “I’ll just have whatever he’s having.”
Ben held out a bite of fish. “You’re in a mood.”
She leaned forward and reluctantly took the bite. “I am not.”
She was. She’d barely touched her food, and she kept glancing at the balcony above them where the vampires had been. All but the one scoping out the bass player had left.
“They’re gone, Tiny.”
But she was unsettled. It was an interesting turn. Ben was used to being the unsettled one. But ever since the dance in the alley, she’d been in a mood. Cross. Irritable. Distracted.
He sipped a rum cocktail with mint and lime. “There something you’re not telling me?”
“They were watching us.”
“Of course they were.”
“She isn’t.”
Ben glanced over his shoulder. The vampire in the corner of the courtyard watching the musicians looked to be around forty, but that meant nothing. She could be young. She could be old.
“You get any sense of her power?”
“Nothing.”
“Which means she’s either very powerful or not powerful at all.”
“Correct.”
Ben watched her. She was beautiful, as most immortals were, with long dark hair in thick spiral curls and a round face. Her lips were generous and very red, and her skin was light brown. She’d been darker as a human, but lack of sun and an immortal diet had leached her natural color.
Tenzin had told him once that the paler a vampire was, the more they relied on blood for sustenance instead of taking human food.
Or they were Irish. That was always a possibility too.
“She’s ignoring you completely, so that makes me think more powerful and able to shield herself from others,” Ben said.
“Yes. That’s my guess too.”
“Spanish?”
Tenzin shrugged. “There’s no way of knowing. She could be a tourist.”
“No, she’s too beautiful.”
Tenzin frowned. “What does that mean?”
“She’s a regular here, or she’d be attracting more attention because she’s really beautiful.” He glanced at the male bartenders. The waiters. “She’s magnetic, but they’re used to her.”
“Good observation.” Tenzin picked at the delicately poached fish on her plate. “So she’s a regular here. She likes bass players. And she’s probably quite old.”
“But those other vampires were ignoring her too,” Ben said. “VIC?”
Tenzin shook her head. “There’s no vampire in charge of San Juan.”
“Not even unofficially?”
“Officially and unofficially, Los Tres has the power here and all over the island.”
“Says who?” Ben asked.
“Says me and every contact I’ve checked with, including your uncle.”
Ben felt a twitch in his cheek. “You’ve been talking to Gio about Puerto Rico?”
“Of course I have. He wrote me as soon as the hurricane hit.”
After I’d told him about my family. Ben cleared his throat. “What did he want?”
“He wanted to know if you’d told me anything about your grandmother.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I said it was none of his business.” She took a bite of fish. “This is good.”
“Thank you.” Ben was unexpectedly relieved.
“You didn’t cook the fish; why are you saying thank you?”
“Thank you for telling him to mind his own business.” Why did he care so much that Tenzin had shut Giovanni down?
“You’re welcome.” She met his eyes. “Why did you lie about her?”
“Because…” I trusted a manipulative creature of the night over kindness. “It’s complicated.”
“Fine.” She turned her face back to the band. “Finish your dinner, Benjamin. We’ve been here too long.”
“At the restaurant or in San Juan?”
“Both.” Tenzin sat back and looked into the starry sky. “It’s time to start looking.”
8
Ben was driving the all-wheel-drive Jeep to the west side of the island when he called Chloe. “How’s life in the city?”
Ben glanced at the sign he was approaching. “Thirty-two kilometers east of Arecibo.”
“I don’t really know where that is.”
Ben smiled. “Out of the city. We’re heading to the mountains to meet the VIC here—or VICs. I’m honestly not sure how many we’re dealing with at this point—then we go searching.”
“For gooooold,” Chloe said in a spooky voice.
“Yes, for pirate treasure.” The wind whipped his hair and the breeze was cool and damp.
He’d headed out of the city early to avoid as much traffic as possible. He knew he’d run into some; traffic out of San Juan was unavoidable. There was only one main highway on the north side of the island, and it was the most direct route to his destination. With every town he passed, commuters, truckers, and tourists slowly clogged the motorway.
“But before pirate treasure,” he added, “we have to make nice with the locals.”
“Who aren’t going to object to you stealing their pirate treasure?”
Ben smiled. “Let me deal with that part. How’s things in the city?”
“Uh… busy. Good.” Chloe was flustered. “I mean, it’s good, but I’m busy. The bar is packed lately, and rehearsals for the new show have been kind of tough.”
Ben frowned. “Tough how? Is your knee bothering you?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s… Really, everything is good, Ben. I’m just a bit scattered right now.”
“Because?”
“None of your business,” she said. “Personal stuff.”
Which meant something was going on with Gavin. Ben bit his tongue. “You’re right. None of my business. Things are fine at the loft?”
“Construction is actually ahead of schedule, if you can believe that. By the time you guys get back— When are you getting back, by the way?”
“I rented the house in San Juan for a month. I don’t want to be gone any longer than that.”
“Okay. The main stuff might be done by the time you get back.”
“Cool.”
“And the finish work will go quickly. You and Tenzin don’t exactly live for the elaborate and fussy details.”
Meaning their house looked more like an office than a home. Ben had heard the criticism before, from both Chloe and his aunt. He ignored it. “Well, good. I’m tired of having random people around the place. It’s not safe.”
“I know. I’m spending a lot of time at Gavin’s while you’re gone.”
“Good.” Was that good? Ben shook his head. None of your business.
“None of the workers have even given me a bad feeling. It’s just… weird without you both. So”—she cleared her throat and her voice suddenly went higher—“wrap stuff up and get back home. Can’t wait to see the pirate treasure. Okay, gotta go, bye.”
She hung up.
Ben frowned at the phone. “Fucking Gavin…”
It never worked out well to have a friend dating a vampire. It just didn’t. It had happened too often for him to count in Los Angeles among his school friends, many of whom had been born into families of day people. Young people accustomed to vampires grew up, started to look more attractive to the very handsome old people they worked for, then they got romantically hooked on the alternating danger and security of a relationship with an immortal. Then… they disappeared.
Not permanently. No one was disappearing into scary basements or anything. At least not in LA. But vampires tended to be major time sucks.
Ben should know. He was partners with the time-suckiest one of them all.
He was driving to the beach house he’d rented in Quebradillas. The town wasn’t far from Lares—where Los Tres were located—and it was in the general neighborhood where most of the Puerto Rican cave systems were. Until they could narrow down a starting point for the Enríquez map, it was better to be in a quiet town that had a few tourists, but not too many.
And while Ben was driving and settling in, Tenzin would be meditating or reading or… something. She’d fly out to the villa that night and join him. In theory. Ben had spent more than one night pacing a room and waiting for Tenzin to show up when and where she’d promised.
And, of course, who was stuck moving the luggage and the books and the computers? Ben, naturally. He left the expressway and merged onto the old highway, which had far more traffic.
Was this his life? Waiting on Tenzin to flit to his side when she felt like it and acting like her personal bellhop the rest of the time? Was the rest of his life going to be a series of similar experiences?
Tenzin gets a wild idea.
Ben chases after her.
He gets drawn in… somehow.
Tenzin flies off.
Ben cleans up the mess after her.
He almost ran into the compact car in front of him as traffic ground to a halt.
“What is my life?” he asked the instrument panel.
What the hell was he doing? He’d always given the mildly judgmental side-eye to his friends who had fallen down the vampire-relationship hole. But he was doing the exact same thing.
And he wasn’t even getting crazy-good vampire sex in the bargain.
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose. “I need to rethink my life.”
It was probably the twenty-fifth time that year he’d said it.
“What?” A guy in a pickup truck next to him rolled down his window. “It depends on where you’re going. You can take road 119 to 485 once we get past town, but I don’t think that’s going to be any faster.”
Ben frowned. “What?”
“Didn’t you say you needed to rethink this drive?”
“My life!” Ben yelled. “I need to rethink my life.”
The man shrugged and waved a hand to let the car in front of Ben change lanes. “You and me both, man.” Then he rolled up his window.
“Well… thanks.” Ben tilted his seat back, turned the music to a playlist of Daddy Yankee, and settled in to crawl along the packed highway with the rest of the island.
Tenzin had to wait for hours after sunset to call Giovanni. The younger vampire was four hours behind her in Los Angeles. She set her tablet on the table in the middle of the courtyard. “Cara, call Giovanni Vecchio.”
“I would be happy to,” the cleverly disguised computer voice replied. The phone rang three times before someone answered.
“Good evening. Vecchio household.”
“Hello, Caspar.”
“Tenzin!” She could hear the smile in her old friend’s voice. “Did you mean to call Giovanni’s land line?”
“Does he have another one now?” If he’d switched over to an electronic assistant like Cara, Tenzin would eat her own tongue.
“Well no. But Beatrice does. They’re in the library.”
“Which one?”
Giovanni and Beatrice were book detectives, researchers, and respected academics in the immortal world. They had libraries in both Los Angeles, California, and Rome, Italy. Beatrice was even recognized as a scribe in Tenzin’s sire’s territory on Penglai Island.
“They’re here in Los Angeles. Shall I get Giovanni for you, or would you rather call Beatrice’s mobile number?”
Tenzin debated. She had no idea how much Beatrice knew about Ben’s family in Puerto Rico. “I’d like to talk to Giovanni alone.”
“Very well.”
“Caspar, how is Isadora?”
“Doing very well,” he said. “Her hip fracture has completely healed. She’s up and walking around. And she hates her physical therapist. But other than that, she’s fine.”
“I can’t imagine Isadora hating anyone.”
“This young lady recommended Isadora wear orthopedic shoes and cut back on wine.”
“Clearly she is a monster who knows nothing,” Tenzin said. “Let Isadora know I will dispatch this person if she requires it.”
“I’ll be sure to let her know.”
“Good.”
�
��And now I shall page Giovanni. I don’t imagine he’ll be more than a few minutes. Where are you and Benjamin lately?”
“Caribbean,” Tenzin said.
“Pirate treasure?”
“Why else do you go to the Caribbean?”
Caspar laughed under his breath. “Some people go to relax.”
“I find gold very relaxing,” Tenzin said. “It gives me Zen-like tranquility. Like ocean-wave noises on the computer.”
“I see.”
The phone line went quiet for a few moments. Then a shuffling and a creaking seat while someone sat down.
“Hello, Tenzin.”
“Hello.”
“You’re in San Juan.”
“Do you have spies everywhere?”
“Yes.”
Tenzin could imagine his face. Slightly superior expression. Aloof. Some might say cold if they didn’t know him.
Those who thought Giovanni Vecchio was cold were idiots. Tenzin had seen the fire in him three hundred years before. She’d selfishly captured some of it for herself when she allowed him to befriend her.
That small fire had grown into a lasting friendship that spread to Giovanni’s mate Beatrice, the humans he’d gathered around him, and particularly to Ben.
“How is he?” Giovanni asked.
“What do your spies say?”
“They say he is preternaturally perceptive to the point that he’ll hurt himself.”
“Not with me around.” Tenzin sat in the hammock and kicked a foot out, rocking the woven cot. “He got a lead a couple of days ago. He’d just been to meet an old man you told him about. Anyone I know?”
“I don’t think so. Book-world people,” Giovanni said. “Someone owed me a favor.”
“Are you positive this gold exists?”
“Me?” he asked. “No. My former client is positive though. He isn’t sure who drew the map, but he’s convinced it’s genuine. He’d be going after the treasure himself if it were possible.”
“And why isn’t it possible for him?”
“Let’s just say he’s a little too well-known in the area. He would not find a warm welcome on the island.”
“So why hire you to find a map he can’t use?”
“Why indeed?”
“Oh.” Tenzin smiled. “So he knows we’re going after it?”
Blood Apprentice: An Elemental Legacy Novel Page 7