There were white pants and white shirts. Looking in the top drawer even netted her a wealth of white bras and panties, all in her size. There were bathing suits and sundresses, all in white, all without any other identifying feature on them. She hastily dressed herself and crawled into the corner of her room for the next two days, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Beatrice had been captive a week and fallen into a monotonous rhythm. She woke. She took a quick shower and dressed herself in the white clothes, dumping the towel and dirty linens in a basket by the ocean door where another silent servant would carry them away at some point in the morning. No one ever talked to her. Her guard would open the door and she would sit in one of the chaises that faced the ocean, waiting for something to happen.
Nothing ever did.
When darkness fell, she could hear scurrying movements farther along the cliff to her left, but she never made any attempt to investigate the sick laughter or sounds of revelry that drifted to her room. Darkness meant vampires, and Beatrice may not have liked her human guard, but at least she didn’t think tall, dark and silent was going to rip her throat out if he got hungry.
Her door wasn’t shut until well after dark, so she often sat staring at the moon as it reflected off the dark water below her.
One night, about a week and a half after she’d been taken, she heard footsteps approaching. She tensed, but refused to run back to the corner, knowing that anything that came after her would just consider that an easier and more private meal.
To her surprise, it was Lorenzo who peeked his head around the corner.
“Hello, my dear. How are you enjoying your stay?”
Eying him warily, she took a moment to answer. Her own voice sounded strange to her ears.
“Well, I have no privacy, no human contact, and nothing to read or listen to other than the ocean. But at least your prison decorating skills are top notch, Lorenzo.”
He walked over to her and stretched out on another chaise, dressed from head to toe in loose white linen that made his inhuman skin glow in the moonlight. “You like it? I’m so glad my home meets your approval.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean, it’s just so…white. And white. And with all those white accents.”
Lorenzo smiled, his fangs dropping down. “Is this why Giovanni kept you around? To make him laugh? You smell as lovely as your father, so I’m sure he must have had to control himself if he didn’t bite you. It does make me wonder.”
She clenched her jaw for a moment. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Because he traded you?” Lorenzo shrugged. “Giovanni never cared for much besides his books and himself, to be honest. Don’t take it personally.”
Her mind flashed to a hundred different moments of kindness between them, but she didn’t want to dwell on those memories when the reality had turned out to be so much different. “I just have better things to think about.”
“I was expecting him to show up. I was so sure it was you he was smoking about in the library that day…but he hasn’t by now, so he probably won’t. If he cared for you at all, he’d be far more territorial.”
She stared at the ocean, remembering Giovanni’s fiercely protective behavior around Carwyn and Gavin. It had annoyed her at the time; but the moment she’d really wanted him to protect her, it had fallen away to nothing, so she didn’t know what to think.
“Something tells me he still has something up his sleeve.” Lorenzo flicked at a bug on his pants. “After all, one doesn’t hire expensive security for dinner. So…yes, I’m expecting something.”
“Yeah?” she muttered. “I’m not.”
She suddenly remembered him laughing over a bite of lemon cake she’d forced him to try. He’d made the most hilarious face, and she had leaned over and kissed his cheek in delight, laughing at his disgust and tugging the ends of his hair.
“You need a haircut.”
“I do not. Do you know how long it takes my hair to grow?”
“It falls in your eyes all the time and annoys you. Just a trim. I’ll do it for you; I used to cut my grandfather’s hair for him sometimes.”
“You’d cut my hair for me?”
“Sure.”
She felt tears come to her eyes, and she bit her lip until it bled, forgetting for a moment about the vampire sitting next to her in the dark. She glanced at him, worried he would try to bite, but he only handed her a white linen handkerchief and chuckled at her expression.
“I’ve had requests for you to join us in the evenings, but I doubt you’ll do that. But there’s a full library for you to enjoy, as well as plenty of music. I even have a music player you may borrow, if you like.”
“What’s the catch?”
His delighted laughter pealed out. “No catch, my dear. Xenos can come with you. He’s your personal guard, you know, chosen by me. No one will touch you or harm you in any way. After all,” he winked, “I need to have you in good condition when your father arrives.”
Her heart dropped. “My father’s coming? When?”
“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “Crafty little boy to have eluded me for so long. I’d really find it quite endearing if I didn’t want to kill him so much.”
Beatrice shuddered at his matter-of-fact tone. “Why? Why do you want to kill him? You made him a vampire, now you want to kill him?” Her frustration boiled over. “I don’t understand any of this! I feel like I got caught in some giant game all of you are playing, and I don’t even know why.”
Lorenzo’s head cocked; he almost looked amused. “I suppose it would be confusing to a human—even a bright girl like you.”
“So why don’t you enlighten me, Lorenzo? Since I’m here and no one seems to be coming to my rescue.”
He stared at her with the inhuman stillness she had come to associate with them. Finally, his lips cracked into a smile.
“You met my little mouse at the library, didn’t you? Scalia has been my mouse for many years, long before you were born, and long before he met your father in Houston when they were in school. It was pure chance that they met again in Ferrara.”
“My father wasn’t in Ferrara, he was in—”
“Yes, he was in Ferrara, researching some correspondence about Dante, of all people, and his exile in Ravenna, blah, blah, blah. Very boring. He was in the old library and had the unfortunate luck to stumble upon some books of mine. Books I had hidden there.” Lorenzo’s expression darkened. “Books that my little mouse was supposed to be guarding for me.”
“So you killed him? For finding some books?” She felt the tears slide down her cheeks. “He probably didn’t even know what he was looking at. Why did he have to die? Why—”
“It didn’t matter that he didn’t know, Beatrice. Scalia found him and your father began asking questions of his old school chum—questions I didn’t want any human asking. When Scalia told me about it, like the good little mouse he was, I decided to get rid of him. It seemed like the simplest thing.” Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “It’s my own fault I let myself be swayed to turn him. I thought he could be a replacement for Scalia, who had disappointed me, but sadly, your father was too bright.”
“And he ran away.”
“Yes, he did.” Lorenzo grimaced. “Though not before taking some books he knew I valued.”
“What books? Some of Giovanni’s?”
His eyes narrowed. “Some of mine. Our father—yes, we had the same father, I only call Giovanni ‘Papà’ because it annoys him—and it is technically accurate. Our father left them to him, when he should have left them to me. It didn’t matter what Giovanni thought. I was the one who had earned them.”
Lorenzo broke off, making a disgusted noise and flipping his long hair over his shoulder. “The fool was so trusting.”
“Who? Giovanni?” Beatrice was still confused. Was Lorenzo Giovanni’s brother? His son? She wanted to ask, but wanted to know about the books more.
“I told him the mad friar had burned them all.” A laugh bubb
led up from Lorenzo’s throat. “And he believed me! He thought they were all gone. All his books and letters, Guiliana’s precious sonnets…all of it. Up in smoke in the ‘bonfire of the vanities.’”
“In Florence,” she whispered. “The bonfires of Savaranola.”
“Of course, my dear.” Lorenzo winked. “There were many things that didn’t quite burn as Savaranola intended. It was a good time to be an opportunist. It all happened before Giovanni was turned. Even then, he couldn’t run about like me. Andros didn’t trust him. With good reason, as it turned out.”
“Andros?” she muttered, but Lorenzo wasn’t listening. She recognized the name from the letters. Niccolo Andros was the name of the strange associate of Lorenzo de Medici’s who had shown such an interest in Giovanni Pico. Andros was Giovanni’s sire? She wondered why Lorenzo called him his father, too.
“Father thought Giovanni was the clever one.” Lorenzo chuckled, still reveling in his own deceit. “I was smarter than both of them. I fooled them both.” His eyes narrowed as he looked over the water. “And soon, I will fool them all. All the silly, trusting fools with their delusions of grandeur. As soon as I find your father and torture him into telling me what he did with the books…”
Lorenzo smiled and turned to her. “But perhaps torture won’t even be necessary. In fact,” he chucked her under the chin as she cringed, “I’m absolutely counting on it.”
Tucking all the vampire’s cryptic revelations into the back of her mind, she swallowed and tried to remain calm. “How do you know he’ll even come for me? How do you know he’s even keeping track?”
“He might not be.” Lorenzo shrugged. “But word will reach him eventually. Maybe tomorrow? Maybe in a few years? I’m sure it depends on where he is.” Lorenzo smiled and scanned her with cold eyes. “I have no doubt he’ll join you eventually.”
A few years? She cringed at the thought.
“And then? What happens to me then?”
He looked at her, cold eyes raking over her throat and legs, lingering around her breasts until her skin flushed in embarrassment.
“Human women are too fragile for me. But maybe I’ll have one of my children change you for me so we can play,” he shrugged, carelessly nonchalant about the idea of her mortality.
“What if I don’t want to be a vampire? Would you just kill me?”
His delighted laughter rung over the crashing waves. “Oh, my dear Beatrice, you’re so amusing. Why do you think it matters what you want?”
He laughed again and stood, still snickering as he walked down the path.
When he was far enough away, she let the tears fall, soaking the linen handkerchief stained with her blood.
Despite Lorenzo’s assurances, she didn’t want to risk venturing out at night, so the next day she put a pair of pants and a shirt over a bathing suit and walked down the small cliff path to the area where she had seen the servants disappearing. She passed other rooms, all of them identical to hers, but none of them appeared to be occupied. There was a railing along parts of the path when it became too narrow, and even one place where a small bridge spanned a sharp drop into craggy rocks below.
She finally reached a series of rooms open to the ocean. They were living areas, and she saw a number of servants scuttling around, but nothing that resembled a library. She turned in confusion to her guard—who Lorenzo had referred to as Xenos—but he only shrugged.
Just then, an English accent rang from across the room.
“Oh, there you are!”
She turned and looked at a young man, also dressed head to toe in white, as he crossed the room. He was around her age, and wore a pair of wire-framed glasses on his tan face. His brown hair had gold highlights from the sun, and his smile was brilliantly white. He was handsome, in a catalogue model kind of way, and a friendly light shone from his eyes.
The stranger held out his hand. “I’m Tom. I’m one of Lorenzo’s day people. I knew he had the daughter of a friend staying with him, but we hadn’t seen you. Enjoying your stay?”
She choked out a stiff laugh. “The daughter of a friend? Is that what he told you?”
He cocked his head in amusement. “Of course! Lorenzo’s a good man, he wouldn’t harm anyone.”
She frowned at the startlingly false statement. “Um, no actually, he’s a vicious vampire, who killed and turned my father and tortured him to get information. And then he flew to Houston, attacked my grandmother, killed some people who were protecting me, and then kidnapped me to get my father back.”
Through her entire statement, Tom’s smile never wavered. When she was finished, he only chuckled again. “Oh, don’t worry. Lorenzo’s a good man, he wouldn’t harm anyone.”
She looked at him, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Did you not hear the part about him murdering and kidnapping and holding me hostage?”
Tom just shook his head again, still smiling. “Don’t worry. Lorenzo’s a good man, he wouldn’t harm anyone.”
She nodded, finally understanding that the man’s cerebral cortex must have been altered by Lorenzo or one of his minions. “That’s nice. What did you say your name was?”
“Tom. Tom Sanders. And what’s your name?”
“It’s B. Nice to meet you, Renfield.”
The young man frowned, “Uh…no, my name is—”
“I heard you, Tom.” Beatrice sighed. “Is there a library here?”
“Sure, just come with me; I’ll be happy to show you the library.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“So, what do you like to read? There are computers here, too, if you want them.”
“Computers?” her ears perked at the thought of contact with the outside world.
“Well, they’re not online unless you have a special code. I do, but I can’t give it to guests.” The stiff set of his shoulders warned Beatrice they were treading on uncomfortable ground.
“No problem.” She shrugged. “I’d rather read, anyway. What do you do for Lorenzo, Tom?”
He smiled, relaxing at her easy question. “I do some financial stuff. No biggie. Just things he can’t do because of his disability.”
Oh really?
“You mean the fact that he fries a computer just by touching it?”
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Something like that.”
Beatrice nodded, and decided to watch the young man more carefully. She was curious. As inept as Giovanni and Carwyn seemed to think Lorenzo was about technology, why did he have a financial guy who had online access in his super-secret bad guy lair?
They walked through a doorway to a dark paneled library.
Finally surrounded by something other than white, Beatrice took a deep breath, relaxing in the smell of leather bindings and old paper.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Tom said, “I have some work to do.”
“Sure, do you mind if I read in here?”
“No problem,” he said. “Don’t let me bother you. And feel free to take books to your room, if you like.”
She glanced around at the furniture which looked more like a typical English manor house then the cold, modern lines that characterized the rest of the mansion. The warm tones reminded her of Giovanni’s library, but she frowned and turned toward the bookcases.
“No, I like it in here. It’s warm.” She smiled at him and went to explore the library, keeping an eye on the young man and the computer screen he studied.
She spent the next two weeks there. Or at least, that’s what she guessed, since she had little sense of time in the strange, surreal world of Lorenzo’s household. She would wake in the morning, dress in her white clothes, then go to the wood-paneled library to sit with Tom. She spent every moment she could in the library, and a grim satisfaction settled on her when she finally figured out what Tom was doing.
He was transferring money for Lorenzo. Cleaning it in clumsy ways and then moving it to offshore accounts that were far too obvious to be effective. She almost laughed at the young man’s inept
manipulations, but then, she hadn’t had her cerebral cortex mangled on a nightly basis like Tom had.
When she had finally began creeping closer to the raucous parties Lorenzo hosted in the mansion on the sea’s edge, Tom was the only human she recognized.
It happened every night, with Lorenzo lording over his men like some sort of modern day warlord. The music was loud, the lights were low, and the blood flowed freely. She had seen young Tom passed around from vampire to vampire on more than one night, though he always seemed to end up crumpled in a pile next to Lorenzo by the end of the evening.
The first time she snuck down to observe the parties, she looked at Xenos, who was following her, wondering if he would object to her furtive observation. He simply shrugged and continued to watch her. Apparently, as long as she wasn’t trying to escape, she really did have free rein.
Lorenzo had a seemingly endless supply of humans who were brought out for his vampires to feed on. She guessed there were around twenty immortals on any given night, though she often saw different faces, so she suspected there were closer to thirty or forty around. Most nights, they would drain the humans to the point of unconsciousness and then toss them on a pile in the corner. Sometimes the oblivious people woke up and joined the party again, writhing on the vampires’ laps and moaning as they were bitten. Other times, the pale men and women simply slunk out the door.
They were all young, beautiful things, tan and bleached from the sun, and she wondered where Lorenzo seemed to find such an endless feast for his men. On more than one occasion, tears slipped down her face when one of the humans was drained to death.
One night, a blond girl was killed, and the vampire who drained her laughed and pretended to dance with the limp body before tossing it over the side of the cliffs to be bashed against the rocks below.
Other than Tom, she never saw any of the house staff at the parties, so she imagined there was some kind of prohibition about feeding from the human servants. She hoped she fell into that category if any of the vicious looking vampires she saw at the parties ever found her.
A Hidden Fire Page 27