Vampires wouldn’t die unless you severed the spine, as Ben had been threatening to do, but snapping it would still render them useless until their bodies could regenerate the nerves, which could take hours.
The black shadow swooped down again, snatching the limp vampire from the sidewalk and disappearing into the darkness like a nocturnal bird of prey.
“That little shit!” Now they would never know who sent them.
Infuriating. She was absolutely infuriating.
Ben walked over and kicked the body of the remaining vampire into the canal. The head had already sunk. He dipped his knife in the water and dried it on his black T-shirt before he turned and walked back toward the house. He was going to have to go through the middle of town with a shirt covered in vampire blood. Glancing down, he realized it hadn’t reached his grey linen pants.
At least there was that.
He reached the garden gate and knew Tenzin was already in the compound. Steeling his expression, he unlocked the door and marched into the courtyard, already wondering just how much a ride share back into the city would cost.
“Every time,” he growled at her. “Every single fucking time I’m trying to question someone—”
“They were going to kill you.” Tenzin stood in the moonlight, her arms crossed and her face set in an obstinate mask.
“Did you not see the giant knife I had in the bastard’s throat?” Ben stripped off the bloody T-shirt and tossed it on a garden bench. It was starting to dry and stick to his skin, which was just… gross.
Ben strode toward Tenzin. “I had a ten-inch hunting knife pressed to his damn spine, and you decide to—”
“You weren’t going to be able to kill both of them.” Tenzin looked up at him, her face still unmoving, though Ben could feel the fury vibrating off her. “Not both of them, Benjamin.”
“But I might have gotten away, and I might not have had to kill either of them,” he hissed. “And now we don’t know who sent them. Did you ask for references before you killed the second one?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then don’t be so damn shortsighted!”
Her eye twitched. “You’re calling me shortsighted?”
“Yes, you act on impulse. Every single time. If someone is after me here—”
Without warning, she rose up, hooked her arm around his neck, and locked her mouth on his.
Ben didn’t think twice. He didn’t care if he was furious with her. His body didn’t care at all. He wrapped both arms around her torso and pressed her close, locking them together in the darkness.
Her mouth was ferocious. He cut his lips on her fangs and she sucked his tongue in her mouth, drinking him in. Her amnis rose, dancing over his bare skin like icy rain. He held one arm around her waist and gripped the back of her head in his hand, trying to control the violence of her kiss.
It was impossible.
Tenzin released Ben as abruptly as she’d taken him, but not before she’d sunk her teeth into his bottom lip, piercing the skin and making him taste his own blood. She shoved herself away from him with inhuman strength. Ben was forced to let her go.
Her lips were bloody, her face was glowing, and her eyes were wild. “If someone comes after you, then I will kill them.”
She couldn’t blame it on bloodlust this time. She was fully herself, though she wasn’t fully in control.
“Tenzin—”
“Don’t.” Her eyes shifted to wary and guarded in the space of a second.
Ben heard someone waking in the house. Lights switched on.
He stepped toward her, looking her square in the eye. “Tell them to go back to bed. Send them away.”
She shook her head.
“This isn’t friendship,” he whispered. “Maybe you don’t know what it is. Maybe I don’t either. But I don’t want to pretend anymore. You want to know what I want? That’s it. I want us to stop pretending.”
She faded into the darkness just as Jinpa turned on the low lights in the courtyard.
“Benjamin?” The sweet old woman recognized him and was unfazed by his sudden appearance, shirtless and standing with a bloody lip in the middle of the night. “What happened to your shirt?” She fussed over him. “Come in the kitchen. I’ll make you tea.”
He let her guide him into the kitchen, but not before he saw Tenzin on the far side of the courtyard, disappearing into the night sky.
“Sorry.” He turned to Jinpa. “I needed a book from the library and ran into unexpected company.”
“It’s fine.” She pushed him into a chair. “Sit. I’ll get you some gauze for your lip. You have an extra shirt or two in your room.” Jinpa looked over her shoulder toward the courtyard. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you alone?”
I am now. Ben cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m staying in the city right now.”
Jinpa knew the score. She raised a single eyebrow, shook her head a little, and turned back to the stove. “When you’re ready to go, Mei can drive you back into town. She has a car now.”
“Oh yeah?” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to catch up with Tenzin’s caretaker. “How’s she doing in school?”
“So well. She makes us all very proud. All the boys want to marry her, but she says no. No boyfriend for her. School only right now.”
“That’s good. Good plan. Relationships are nothing but trouble.”
Jinpa took Ben’s chin in her hand and angled his face toward the light. “And how are you, Benjamin?”
He took a deep breath. “Oh, about the same.”
14
Tenzin reached the balcony of Cheng’s building a few minutes before midnight. She saw Cheng sitting in the corner, smoking a pipe he enjoyed from time to time.
She marched over to him. “Did you send men after Benjamin?”
He raised an eyebrow. “No.”
She placed a careful hand at his throat. “Are you sure?”
Cheng was unfazed. “You have blood on your lower lip, Cricket. Is there something I should know about?”
“Ben was followed and attacked by my home.”
His eyebrow went up. “Do you really think I’d be that stupid?”
“You can be unpredictable.”
Cheng carefully removed Tenzin’s hand from his throat and set his pipe on the table. “Unpredictable? Yes. But you are anything but unpredictable when it comes to that man, so I would be an idiot to try to harm him, even if I find him annoying.”
They stared at each other for long, silent minutes.
Tenzin didn’t see any deception in his eyes. Also, Cheng was right. Coming after Ben would be stupid, and he wasn’t.
She backed away from him and jumped up to sit on the edge of the balcony. “Then who?”
“That’s an excellent question. Harming your pet human—”
“He’s not my ‘pet human.’” She glared at him. “Do you really see him that way? Are you so blind? Do you not see his potential?”
“Potential is not reality.” Cheng picked up his pipe and drew a long puff. “And I know he’s not a pet, but I do enjoy the look on your face when I call him that.”
She stared at the reflection of the skyline in the glass. “He says we aren’t friends anymore.”
“He said he wasn’t your friend?” Cheng narrowed his eyes. “I’ll be honest, that sounds very stupid. And unlike Ben.”
Tenzin swung her legs back and forth. “It wasn’t exactly that. He said, ‘This isn’t friendship.’”
“Oh.” Cheng shrugged. “That’s quite different.”
“How?”
“You know…” Cheng smiled a little. “You’ve been getting better about reading human reactions—any reactions, for that matter—which is one of the reasons I’ve put up with your odd relationship with him. I think he’s been good for you. But do you really not understand what he’s talking about, Tenzin?” Cheng leaned forward. “Do you really? Or are you afraid?”
She stared at Cheng, who was coming far
too close to being overly perceptive. “This isn’t about Stephen.”
“You don’t think so? How about Nima? Is it about Nima?”
Tenzin couldn’t say anything. A flood of anger washed over her. Anger at Nima. At her humanity. At her loss.
“Nima is none of your business,” she said quietly.
His face softened. “You and I would never be what you and Nima were, Cricket. My heart isn’t built that way. But yours was once.”
“You don’t know how my heart is built. You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Does anyone know you?”
Nima had. And she was gone. She was dead because she was human, and she’d taken Tenzin’s memories with her into the darkness.
And now Tenzin was feeling inexplicable urges to bite Benjamin. She wanted to hurt him and wanted to lie next to him and absorb his heat. He distracted her and made her want things she’d forgotten. It irritated her, like the feel of an insect buzzing around her face. She felt more at ease when she was in his presence, and it made her angry.
You say you want to know me.
I don’t think you do.
Her eternally silent heart had beat wildly for a few seconds when she’d seen the two vampires stalking him tonight. The sensation was physically painful.
You don’t want to know the things I have seen.
Ben might have thought he had the situation under control, but she’d seen their body language. They weren’t going to leave him alive. He would have been dead and gone because he was so infuriatingly mortal.
Tenzin hopped down from the balcony ledge. “Ben will be coming back in his own car. Make sure the valets are expecting him. And be thinking about who might want to hurt Ben. It’s not my father, but it could be one of your enemies trying to hurt me through you.”
Cheng shook his head slightly. “Or we could guess it’s very likely that just as the man has allies of his own, he also has enemies. Did you think of that?”
“Of course I thought of that.” But she’d dismissed it. Ben’s enemies weren’t likely to follow him all the way to Shanghai, and they weren’t likely to know the location of her home. This was far more likely to have something to do with Tenzin, her sire, or Cheng.
“I’ll let the valets know about Ben.” Cheng looked up as she walked by. “Did you at least find that book you were talking about?”
She stopped in her tracks. Shit.
Tenzin walked out of the room and toward the balcony on the far end of the floor. She opened the door, closed it, and floated up to the small room that Cheng had customized for her. It was the only place other than her own home she was willing to stay while she was in Shanghai.
It was only accessible from the air and there was no door connecting it to the rest of the building, only a small hatch nearly invisible to anyone who didn’t know what to look for.
Tenzin imagined it had once been a storage area or something similar, but Cheng had finished the walls with calming blue silk wall hangings and carpeted the small room with silk rugs before he blocked up the old doorway.
The single window in the room overlooked the Shanghai skyline. She could see the glowing lights of the Pearl Tower among the dozens of brilliantly lit skyscrapers that dominated the modern Shanghai sky.
There was no bed, but there were low, comfortable cushions, numerous bookcases, and bottles of blood-wine in an ornate wine rack in the corner.
She sat on a cushion facing the window and closed her eyes. If she paid close enough attention, she could hear the rush of traffic outside. Smell the brackish water of the river. She opened the window and called the wind to her, bringing the scents of the city and the night fog into her space.
The air in Shanghai stank of humans, car exhaust, and cooking fires. Too many humans. She would be grateful for the emptiness of the ocean.
Tenzin glanced at her black tablet in its thick, vampire-proof case. There was a holder mounted to one wall where she kept the machine, which was equipped with her favorite computer person. She’d met other computer people, but she liked Cara the best. She had a pleasant Irish accent and took orders perfectly.
Ben would sometimes get irritated with Cara, which was completely illogical. Cara did exactly what she was asked, as long as you asked correctly.
“Cara, wake up.”
A pleasant computer voice responded. “Good evening, Tenzin. How can I help you tonight?”
“Show me Benjamin’s location.”
“Which device would you like to track?”
“His American phone.” Ben often changed phones, but he usually carried his American one with him because that was the number Giovanni and Beatrice used.
Did he know she was able to track his whereabouts via their household network? Possibly. Probably not, or he would have turned off the tracking like she’d done with her tablet.
“Benjamin’s device is traveling at forty kilometers per hour, eastbound on the G50 motorway near the G15 connection. Would you like to see a map of his progress?”
“Yes.” Tenzin waited for the small blue dot to appear on the screen, and then she tracked it silently as it steadily made its way eastward toward the Pudong.
Millions of humans died in common road accidents. Thousands every day. Just because he’d never had a road accident didn’t mean he wouldn’t have one. If anything, it made it more likely to happen.
As she watched the blue dot make its way toward her, she thought about Cheng’s irritating question.
Does anyone know you?
Sadly, her sire knew her.
Giovanni knew her. To a point.
Beatrice knew some of her stories.
And Benjamin…
You say you want to know me.
I don’t think you do.
You don’t want to know the things I have seen.
Benjamin saw what he wanted to see.
Mei’s car pulled into the garage under Cheng’s building, and Ben held out cash to Mei. “You have to take it.”
The girl’s fair skin flushed. “I told you it’s too much.”
“You woke up in the middle of the night to drive me over an hour into the city, and now you have to drive back. Take the cash. Buy gas for the rest of the school year. Go do something fun with your friends. Buy a hundred coffees.”
“Ben—”
“Just…” He kissed the top of her head. “Take the cash please?”
She tucked it into her purse. “I’ll give it to my grandmother.”
“You better not.” He got out of the car and opened the back door to grab the books he’d found in the library. One was the Italian glass book Tenzin had been talking about. The other was a museum publication on a Tang dynasty shipwreck. Both might be useful.
Ben bent down smiled at Mei. “Drive safely please. And text me when you get home. I put my number in your phone.”
“Okay.” She gave a little wave. “See you later, Benjamin.”
The blue compact turned around in the parking garage, and one of the valets held the traffic for Mei as she turned back onto the city streets and headed home.
Jonathan greeted him at the elevator. “I don’t suppose you found the book she was looking for?”
“I’m the nephew of Giovanni fucking Vecchio.” He held up the blue-jacketed hardback. “Of course I found the book.”
“Excellent.” Jonathan pushed the button for Ben’s floor. “I see you cut your lip.”
“Shut up, Jonathan.”
The vampire looked amused. “Just another…” He gestured to Ben’s face. “…addition to the collection, I suppose. The rest of the bruises were healing. You were almost back to your normal visage. How common that would be.”
Ben looked at the pale, acerbic vampire. “Do you practice being an asshole in the mirror? Or does it just come naturally?”
“Quite naturally, I assure you.”
Ben got off on his floor, leaving Jonathan in the elevator. Tenzin would get the message that he had the book. If she w
anted it, she could come to him. Until then, he was going to take a shower, ice his lip, and get something to eat since he’d never gotten his noodles.
Was he going to think about the fact that she’d kissed him and then taken off again? No, he wasn’t. Ben was beginning to understand something. Something that had been clarified in the dark courtyard after she’d run away for the second time. Or was it the third?
Tenzin was just as confused as he was.
They’d had one relationship, and now it was turning into something else. What it was, neither of them knew. But he’d be damned if he was the only one willing to bend.
Both of them would have to bend, or they would break.
Ben stripped off his clothes and got in the shower, washing away the blood flaking off his torso and avoiding his lip until he could get ice on it. Most of his wounds from the last job in Italy had healed, and he only had a few greenish-purple bruises left. He could probably use a shave, but he didn’t feel like it. The darkening beard on his chin would hide some of the bruising from Tenzin’s kiss, so he’d leave it for now.
He got out of the shower and glanced at the clock. Only two in the morning. She’d be awake.
She’s always awake.
Ben wondered if Tenzin had taken any time to meditate since she’d left New York. Normally she needed quiet solitude at least a few days a week in order to keep steady. That could have been part of the edge he’d been feeling from her.
He wrapped a towel around his waist and walked out to the small kitchenette in his room to grab ice from the freezer. He filled a plastic bag and pressed it to his swollen lip just as he heard the knock on the connecting door between his and Fabia’s room.
He unlocked his side and opened it. “Hey.”
She glanced up and down. “Where were you?”
“I went to Tenzin’s house with her to look for a book about Italian glass.”
Fabia glanced at the ice on his lip. “So how was that?”
He lifted the ice from his mouth. “She bit me.”
Fabia opened her mouth. Closed it. Then she shook her head and walked to the table. “I’m going to stop trying to understand your relationship.”
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