“Getting a leg over?”
“Sex, Ben! Sex helps. Jaysus, I’m Catholic—don’t make me say it again.”
Ben felt the urge to laugh for the first time in days. “I got it.”
“Are you fecking happy to be alive or not?”
He thought past his anger. “Yes. I am glad to be alive.”
“Then move on,” Brigid said. “Face your anger and accept that it’ll be a part of you for a while until you work through the shite you need to, and move on. Don’t let it keep holding you back from having the life you want.”
“How do I forgive her,” Ben asked, “when she refuses to apologize?”
“She’s not going to. Ever. From Tenzin’s perspective, she was doing exactly the right thing.”
He swallowed hard. “I can kind of see that.”
“Then you just forgive her. Not for her but for you.”
Ben couldn’t speak. He was remembering a moment years before, a quiet confession in the sacred space between waking and sleep.
I have been a hero and a villain in the same moment. If you live long enough, you’ll understand what that means.
“Just forgive her,” he murmured.
“Tenzin’s not perfect,” Brigid continued. “Or perfectly wise. Feck, my husband is a thousand years old, and he’s still clueless at times. He makes mistakes because he’s learning to love me. And there’s never been a me before, so it’s a new situation for him. It’s the same with you two. There’s never been another Ben and Tenzin. The relationships you’ve had, the relationships she’s had… They teach you, but only so much. Every person is a new world.”
“So I just forgive her.” Something about saying the words took a weight off his heart.
“Aye, you do. And the anger might come back, so you might have to repeat it to yourself every day for a year. Or a decade.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat.
“But you—of all the people in her life—know who Tenzin is. You know her better than anyone else does. This was not malice. She did the only thing she could.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “I have to let it go.”
“Like a fucking party balloon.” She whistled. “Whoosh. Float away.”
Ben could feel the dawn coming. “I better go; I’m going to fall asleep soon.”
“Call me after you’ve settled some things.”
He rubbed his eyes. “You tired of being my guidance counselor yet?”
Brigid laughed. “You’re like my little brother, Benny. I’m sure when you figure this all out, I’ll think of a way you can repay me.”
“I’m not going to give you any of my guns.”
“Fuck yer guns, lad. I want one of Tenzin’s swords.”
Vano opened the door to Tenzin’s trailer and tossed her inside with her feet and hands still bound, the metal net wrapped tightly around her body. She smelled the visitor in the trailer, but she didn’t say a word to the vampire currently gloating from the open doorway.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She asked from the floor. “I will be able to escape from this.”
“Not before you fall asleep at dawn.” Vano glanced at the horizon. “Which should be coming shortly.”
Tenzin had no desire to share her secrets with Vano. If he thought she slept, she wouldn’t spoil the notion. “Do you think Ben won’t come looking for me if I’m not around tomorrow night?”
“By tomorrow night, it won’t matter.” Vano watched Tenzin’s face. “You’re going to disappear. But don’t worry; I have no plans to kill your little pet. Doing that would attract the wrath of Penglai Island by mistreating a favored son. I have my businesses to think about.”
Tenzin, on the other hand, could probably go missing and possibly no one would realize she was gone for a century or two. If they got rid of her things, even Ben might assume she’d just taken off.
“You’re wrong,” she bluffed. “My absence will be noted.”
“If it comforts you to think so.” He patted the edge of the doorway. “Sleep well, Tenzin. Such an undignified end for such a famed immortal. If I was sentimental in the least, I might feel for you.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You consider me an outsider and only have empathy for those people you consider your own.” She shrugged as much as the metal net would allow. “I often feel the same.”
“So we understand each other.”
“Only if you understand that if anything happens to me, my mate will hunt you down and rip you limb from limb before he kills you.”
“Your mate?” Vano smiled. “I know young Vecchio isn’t truly your mate, just like I know that you’ve had a falling-out. Besides, the boy doesn’t have it in him. He’s soft. Pampered. Everything in this life has been given to him, even immortality.” Vano’s mouth twisted a little. “Power like that handed to someone who didn’t even want it.”
“Power like that should only be given to someone who doesn’t want it.”
“Spoken like a commander of the losing side.” Vano examined Tenzin from head to toe. “Enjoy trying to get out of the net. I imagine you’ll find it quite impossible.”
He slammed the door, and she heard a lock snapped on the outside.
Tenzin began to twist and turn. Vano was right to a point. The metal net was thin and flexible; every time she tried to grab it, it slipped away. When she pushed, it flexed.
How irritatingly clever. She’d have to find out where he’d acquired it.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t something she could break through quickly even with her immortal strength.
“Are you going to make yourself useful?” Tenzin asked. “Or are you enjoying the show?”
René stepped out from the shadowed corner where he’d been hiding. “I admit, I am enjoying this.” He slid his hands in his pockets. “Remind me; why I am staying in your caravan during the day? Oh, that’s right, because you asked me to.”
“Because you owe me,” she said. “Who bailed you out in Singapore last summer, René? That’s right, it was me.”
“When this is over, you’re never bringing that up again.” He curled his lip and knelt next to her. “I don’t even know what this is made of.”
“It is some kind of metal fabric.” She touched a piece between her fingers. “It’s clever. Finely woven, which makes it harder to manipulate. I can’t get enough leverage to tear it.”
“Quite ingenious. How long do you think it would take you to get out without me?”
“More than an hour. Do you have scissors? Wire cutters?”
“Scissors, no. Wire cutters?” He pulled out a familiar-looking red knife. “I believe this has a small saw attached. That should do.”
“Well done.” She heard the knife tear through the fabric over her wrists. “Cut that and then get my feet.”
“I’m taking this fabric.”
“It’s yours.” She twisted her wrists and snapped the plastic ties that bound her hands. “I wouldn’t suggest it for bedsheets.”
Minutes later, Tenzin was free as a bird and sitting on the ground, staring at the door that Vano had locked. “His people are going to do something to the trailer during the day. Break it possibly. Try to drag me out.”
René’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”
“Why else would he tie me up in a trailer?”
“I can think of a few reasons to tie you up, but none of them involve murder.”
“Boring,” she snapped.
“Murder?”
“Your flirting,” she said. “It used to be amusing. It’s not anymore.”
He muttered something in French that she didn’t care about translating.
Tenzin spoke to herself. “He doesn’t know I don’t sleep. Why would he?”
René’s eyes went wide. “At all? You don’t sleep at all?”
“You didn’t know that?” Tenzin frowned. “I suppose not—why would you?”
He sounded nervous. “So the past few nights when you’d been asking me to slee
p here—”
“I’ve been awake all day, yes.” Something was tingling. Some unknown sense was setting off alarms. “Don’t worry; I don’t stare. Much.”
“How the fuck—”
“Shhhh.” She threw a pillow from the couch at him. “Shut up.”
What was it? Vano clearly had a plan to get rid of her, so what was it?
René sulked in the corner. “Your caravan is much nicer than mine.”
“I’m sure it is. Ben’s is nicer still.”
He rocked back and forth. “It doesn’t shake as much as mine does.”
“That’s because—” Oh.
Oooooh.
She heard it then, the whisper-quiet business of the camp. The sun would be up within half an hour, which meant the darigan were setting about their business, retracting the braces that kept the trailers even, readying for the camp to move.
Except her trailer. No one was readying her trailer to move.
Tenzin smiled. “He’s going to leave us.”
René jumped to his feet. “What?”
“Relax.” She waved him back. “This complicates things, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“Some of us can’t fly, Tenzin!” René was fuming. “Some of us have plans we’ve been working on for weeks that are more important your little feuds with Vano and Ben.”
“You’ll get your treasure,” Tenzin said. “Didn’t I promise?”
“Your deal was that I stayed in here during the day for some reason I now realize was not trying to make Vecchio jealous.” René began to pace. “The deal was not losing the biggest potential score of my immortal life because you pissed off the wrong vampire.” He started toward the door, but Tenzin was on him. She throttled him and sent him flying back into the bed.
“Sit,” she growled. “Didn’t I just say you’d get your treasure?”
“What is wrong with you?” René yelled even as his eyes began to blink longer with every minute. “You should be running outside and telling Radu what Vano did.” He blinked harder. “You should be… tell Vecchio.”
“Ben will be fine.” The last thing Vano would do was hurt Ben. Too many people knew Ben was working for Radu. Not many knew that she was here though. Therein lay the brilliance of Vano’s plan.
Utter silence told Tenzin that René had fallen into day rest. She walked over, bent over him, and slapped him hard across the cheek.
“What?” He sat up straight, his eyes wide. “Tenzin?”
“Just checking to make sure I can wake you when it’s time.”
“What?” He didn’t answer because he slumped to the side, falling into day rest again.
“Never mind.” She patted his shoulder before she dragged him onto the floor.
It was always good to have an earth vampire handy. That was why she’d lured René into her caravan. Not to make Ben jealous but to have another tool in her pocket.
Tenzin sat next to René and waited until the attack came.
33
Ben passed the day in a dreamless sleep. Nothing disturbed him. Nothing nibbled at his brain. He slept peacefully for the first time in months, and he woke with two certainties in his mind:
He still loved Tenzin. He didn’t know if they could be together, but he also didn’t know how not to love her. He’d said horrible things to her the night before, most of which he didn’t mean, but he wanted to be with her if she was still willing.
Vano had the emerald goblet, and he was planning a coup against his brother and sister. The signs were all there. Kezia might be wise to it, but Vano was the ringleader and Radu completely underestimated him.
Which meant that Ben’s only goal in the next week before the festival—other than trying to mend things with Tenzin—was to break into Vano’s trailer and find the emerald goblet to prove to Radu that his brother was the source of the trouble.
He lay in bed, listening to the night birds waking. An owl hooted in the distance, and the strong scent of lilac told him that wherever they’d moved, flowers were blooming nearby.
Ben sat up and stretched, washed his face in the kitchen, and drank from the preserved blood in the fridge. He didn’t love cold blood, but he didn’t hate it either. Sometimes it was oddly, and grossly, refreshing. He’d stopped trying to explain why. He leaned against the small counter in the kitchen and listened to the birds.
Something was off.
Something was… wrong. It was too quiet.
Ben pulled on a pair of pants and walked to the door, swinging it open to reveal nothing but the sloping hills beyond his trailer and nothing else.
No fires. No musicians. No camp.
The Dawn Caravan was gone, and there was only the faint scent of something burning and a hint of kerosene in the air.
Shit.
SHIT!
What happened? Had Radu tipped his hand to Vano? Had he found the thief himself? He’d had an agreement with Radu. He wasn’t supposed to back out without a single word.
Ben walked down the steps and turned in a circle.
When he saw the wreckage, his stomach dropped.
Beyond the oak trees, there was a single caravan smoldering, the body split open to reveal ashes everywhere. There was a mark on the side, a distinctive blue logo he remembered from the first night in her trailer.
It couldn’t be. His mind couldn’t process what he was seeing. It wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be. He raced toward the burned-out carcass, his mind rebelling at the images before him.
They wouldn’t have burned her trailer.
This was an accident.
She hadn’t been inside.
No, no, no, no.
Ben stood in the middle of ashes and yelled, “Tenzin?”
He looked to the swiftly darkening sky. Nothing.
Where was she? Because she couldn’t be in the trailer and she couldn’t be gone because he would feel it, right? He’d taken her blood. She was in him. If she was gone—
“Tenzin!”
Ben flew up and raced over the camp, scouring the air for any hint of her.
She wouldn’t have left him. She wouldn’t have just flown off. He flew back to the wreckage of the trailer and kicked through the ashes where the door would have been. His foot hit something hard and he bent down, lifting up a heavy metal lock burned black by the fire.
No.
He curled his fingers around the warm device. It was linked through the metal door mechanism. It must have been smoldering for hours, just like the ashes around him.
A padlock, basic tumbler. Easy to pick from outside.
Impossible to break from inside. Even for Tenzin.
Ben’s mind shuffled through a hundred possibilities as he walked around the perimeter of the burned-out trailer, the padlock clutched in his hand. He could feel it searing his skin.
She could have broken through the walls.
During the day?
She could have flown away.
In sunlight?
“Tenzin?” He could hear the edge of panic in his voice. “Where are you?”
She couldn’t be gone. It wasn’t possible. A world without Tenzin didn’t make sense. This was Tenzin. She had to have gotten away. She had to have a plan. She always had a plan.
The night sky was clear, star-filled, and silent.
“Tiny!” he screamed. “Where the fuck are you?” He turned in circles. He took to the air again, racing from one end of the camp to another, but other than the occasional scrap of paper, there was nothing. It was as if the Poshani had never existed in this place.
He flew back to his trailer and looked underneath. Had she hidden there?
Nothing.
“Tenzin!”
She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t be dead. He needed her.
Ben walked back to the wreck and began to dig through the ashes. He tore through the remains of cabinets and the odd swatch of fabric that had remained unburned, certain that at any moment he’d pull back a piece of rubble and see her impish grin.
Got you, she’d say.
“Tenzin.” He began to speak. “Show me where you are.”
More broken and charred cabinets.
Metal pipes.
Broken glass.
Twisted plastic, curled and cracked.
“What was the plan?” He stood and tossed the remains of the refrigerator across the clearing. “Where did you hide? You always have a plan.”
If she had hidden, why hadn’t she come back yet? He felt something wet on his face. He blinked hard and looked around.
The burned carcass of the trailer was torn apart, scattered across the clearing. The trailer chassis slumped to the side, broken and jutting from the ashes like metal bones.
Vampires don’t leave bones.
“Fuck!” Ben gripped his hair and screamed, “This isn’t funny anymore. Just tell me where you are!”
He didn’t think about Radu and his caravan. He didn’t think about the job. He didn’t think about the humans who must have burned her trailer.
All he wanted was Tenzin. All he wanted was for her to be alive.
If she was so pissed at him she never spoke to him again, he’d be fine, he just needed her to be alive.
Be alive!
Ben fell to his knees, staring at the empty field of ashes.
Nothing.
No sound.
No life.
The air curled around him and cooled the tears on his face.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Was this how she’d felt? Was there an empty gaping hole in the center of her chest where his life had been?
She can’t be gone.
She can’t be gone.
She was Tenzin. The idea of her not existing didn’t even make sense. She always had a plan. She couldn’t be gone.
Silence.
The wind lifted him and turned him around. He felt the currents reaching beneath his clothes and pressing against his skin like gentle hands comforting him.
But Ben didn’t want the wind; he wanted her.
His amnis was wild, whipping the air around him, churning the ashes on the grass. Confused and broken, the wind lifted him and turned him, raising him from the earth to the sky. It whispered to his amnis.
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