Night's Reckoning

by Elizabeth Hunter

  “This is good,” Fabia said, sidling up to Ben with a beer in her hand. “You were right.”

  “I often am.”

  Cheng was the first vampire who showed up. He grabbed a beer, nodded appreciatively at Ben, and sat down at the mahjong table with some of his crew and two of the university team. A few minutes later, one of the crewmen stood and walked to the corner to turn the radio on. Immediately the sounds of Chinese pop music filled the room.

  Johari and Kadek were the next vampires to arrive. The room went quiet for a moment when Johari walked in. She was the only African on the boat, and she was stunningly beautiful. Ben suspected she often made people stop and forget what they were saying.

  Ben walked over immediately. “Can I get you a drink?”

  Kadek abandoned them to join a table playing cards.

  Johari looked around the room, then back at Ben. “Yes. I would like a beer.”

  “Of course.” He drew her away to one of the tables with fewer people and pulled out a chair facing the room for her. Nothing that would expose her back to the room. The corner table would allow both of them to survey the crowd of humans and vampires.

  Johari sat while Ben walked to the counter to get a beer from one of the tubs the galley crew had set out. It was a mixture of local beer with a few miscellaneous imports thrown in. Ben grabbed her a local brew.

  “Thank you.” She lifted it and waited for Ben to raise his own drink. “Cheers, Benjamin Vecchio.”

  “Cheers.” He took a drink. “How do you say cheers in Zanzibar?”

  Johari smiled suddenly. It was the first time Ben had seen it, and he couldn’t deny it took his breath away. Her smile was like the sun breaking over the horizon.

  She said, “I don’t drink beer in Zanzibar.”

  “Ah.”

  “But cheers in Swahili is afya. Properly, it would be maisha marefu, which is a wish for long life—”

  “Appropriate with your family.”

  Her smile softened. “No doubt. But with your friends you would say ‘afya.’ Which is like… good life. Good day.”

  He lifted his beer again. “Afya.”

  She clinked their bottles together. “Afya, Benjamin.”

  “Ben.”

  “Ben.” Johari took the time to look around. “I cannot remember the last time I was invited to a party.”

  “So Alitea isn’t the party capital of the Mediterranean, huh? That’s it. I’m canceling the cruise.”

  Johari lifted an eyebrow. “It is not a vacation destination. My sire is very focused on bringing order to the eastern Mediterranean. She has little patience for festivities at the moment.”

  “I hear she makes a great cup of coffee though.”

  Johari swallowed a mouthful of beer. “Truly?”

  “I’ve heard rumors. She is Ethiopian. Have you had Ethiopian coffee? It’s amazing.”

  “That is true.”

  Ben saw Tenzin slip into the room. She approached Cheng but didn’t stop at his table. She slid over to Kadek’s table and spoke to him for a moment. Made polite faces at the humans there. She grabbed a beer and leaned her back against the wall, searching the room. When she locked eyes with Benjamin, the hand holding her beer fell to her side. Her eyes went to Johari, then back to Ben.

  Ben looked back at Johari. “So, was your first sire from Zanzibar?”

  Johari’s face froze.

  “I’m sorry,” he added quickly. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s none of my business.”

  “He was.” Johari set her drink down carefully. “I am not offended. The question was unexpected. Once I traveled to Alitea, no one asked me about my past life. I was Saba’s daughter. That was all.”

  “That’s… I don’t know what that is.” He saw Tenzin leave the room from the corner of his eye. Which was fine. He wasn’t going to chase her.

  “It was not unexpected.” Johari’s eyes followed Tenzin. Looked back at Ben. “In a way, I was grateful for the opportunity to begin again. My sire is no longer living, and my brother did not agree with my seeking Saba’s cure. So I have no family left at my home.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  “Do you?” Johari glanced at the door. “What is your relationship with Tenzin?”

  Ben’s eyebrows went up. “That’s direct.”

  “You asked me a direct question. I was responding in kind.”

  Ben took a long drink of beer. Then he took another. “My relationship with Tenzin is… complicated.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Genuinely. I do understand.” Johari picked at her beer bottle. “I became a vampire because my lover was a vampire. That is the reason I chose this life.”

  “You did?” Ben blinked. “Where is he? Did he—?”

  “He’s still in East Africa.” She kept her face neutral, but her fingers destroyed the label on her beer bottle. “We were together for many years, but we never mated. I didn’t understand many things about this life then. Eventually we went our separate ways.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She frowned. “It is the way of things, Ben Vecchio. A human lifetime is one commitment. An eternity is another.”

  Something in his chest hurt. Physically hurt. “Yeah.”

  Johari nodded. “I believe the purpose of this party is for us to meet the humans, correct?”

  “Yes. Just don’t refer to them as ‘the humans’ if you can help it. Makes it a bit less conspicuous.”

  “Then I will leave you and meet some of them.” She stood. “I believe most of them have stopped staring now. I enjoyed our conversation, Ben Vecchio.”

  “Thanks. Me too.”

  Johari nodded and took her leave, approaching Cheng’s table where he, a sailor, and two students were playing mahjong. Cheng stood and added another chair to the table so she could sit down.

  Ben stood and tossed his empty beer bottle in the trash. He walked by Fabia, bent down, and said, “Don’t forget to serve the cake.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  He pointed at the overhead speakers. “Getting some quiet. I’ll probably be back, but for now I’ll leave you in charge.”

  Fabia glanced at the door, then back at him. “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t make that face. I’m going out for air.”

  She cocked her head. “I guess that’s one way of putting it, considering she’s—”

  “Shut up.” He stood and walked away. “Like I said, don’t forget the cake.”

  Ben walked down the passageway and up the stairs, looking for fresh air and quiet. The fact that he found Tenzin perched on the railing when he arrived on the top deck was purely a coincidence.

  “Hey.” Ben waved a hand.

  “Hello.” She glanced at the lit windows. “It is a nice party. Gavin would be proud.”

  “I try.”

  She nodded and looked back over the wreck. “Are they working tonight?”

  “I’m sure they will once the humans go to sleep.”

  “And you?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”

  “Did you go down to see it today?”

  “I did.”

  “And what did you think?”

  He tapped his foot and looked over the water where the crew had set buoys to mark the rough perimeter of the shipwreck. “Uh… it’s a big waterlogged ship with lots of dirt and coral on it and theoretically some shiny stuff underneath all the dirt and sand.”

  She smiled. “There’s shiny stuff. Trust me.”

  “Part of me just wants to dig in and damn the historical significance, and the other part of me wants to stay away completely. Usually when we go after stuff, it’s just you and me on our own. We have a client. We have a goal. And we just go for it and make our own rules. This feels so…”

  “Regulated.”

  “Exactly. And neither of us is a fan of rules.”

  “My father is a fan of rules,” Tenzin said. “You should trust Cheng.
He’s done many salvages like this. The Laylat al Hisab will be with the cargo.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” Since she’d brought it up… “Speaking of the cargo—”

  “We should dance.” She hopped off the railing and walked to him.

  Ben blinked. “I… What?”

  She looked up with wide eyes. “Don’t you hear it?”

  He turned his head toward the open windows of the mess hall and heard the strains of “What a Wonderful World” drifting through the air.

  He couldn’t stop the smile. “There’s a Chinese cover of this song?”

  She stepped into his arms. “Ben, there is a Chinese cover of every song.”

  “Not every song.” He put his arms around her. It felt easy. Friendly. Like it had been before everything changed.

  “If there’s not a Chinese cover of a song yet, give it another year,” Tenzin said. “YouTube never sleeps.”

  “Maybe that’s why it’s your natural ecosystem.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You’re right!”

  Ben laughed and spun her around. The words were different, but the melody was the same. “Do you remember the first time we danced to this song?”

  “In Venice?” She danced back into his arms and laid her head on his chest. “I remember. I remember everything.”

  His heart ached. “Do you?”

  “With you? Of course I do.”

  Did that make it worse? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t think. And for one night and one dance under a beautiful full moon, Ben didn’t want to.

  20

  After the enjoyable night with the humans, the three diving vampires decided to take the rest of the night off. The party had produced an ebullient mood that spilled over the entire ship. Once again, Ben was proven right.

  Cake. It was magic.

  Cheng and Tenzin recruited some of the night crew and followed Fabia’s directions, setting up the saltwater tanks that would be necessary to preserve artifacts until desalination could commence at the university. Kadek and Ben wrote out their own diagrams and survey maps of the wreck so Johari would know what she would need to do and where to focus once they started removing artifacts.

  Ben went to bed a few hours before sunrise, eager to get some sleep so he could make another dive the next day, but he had a hard time relaxing. His mind was bouncing between the wreck and the crew. Between Johari’s story of heartache and Tenzin reminding him about Louis. He kept replaying their dance in the moonlight. Over and over again.

  There was something he’d forgotten. Something he’d meant to bring up, and then it slipped away…

  “Speaking of the cargo—”

  “We should dance.”

  Oh. Damn.

  Ben sat up and his ebullient mood fled. “Nicely done, Tiny.”

  Of course she hadn’t been feeling sentimental. Of course she wasn’t reminiscing about Italy or their past. Tenzin didn’t reminisce. She had sensed a subject she didn’t want to talk about, and she’d dodged it by playing on his feelings.

  Typical.

  The realization turned his memories of the previous night bitter, but once again he’d have to get over it. It was Tenzin; he should have expected nothing less.

  He’d bring up the problem with the cargo first thing in the morning. God knew she had nothing else to do during the day. Tenzin couldn’t dive and she couldn’t be out in the sun. It was pure luck they were carrying a bunch of academics who were completely focused on their work and ignored the mysterious woman in the forward hold who bounced a basketball for hours on end.

  When he finally managed to sleep, Ben dreamed about dancing with Tenzin while sailors sank beneath the surface of the ocean. They danced across the sky while humans thrashed in the water beneath them and lightning struck the mast of a creaking wooden ship. They spun wildly in the tempest like a solitary twisting waterspout, consumed with each other and oblivious to the world around them.

  One by one, the sailors’ cries grew fainter and the sound of the wind grew. In his dream, their lips met, warmed by pulsing blood and hunger.

  Then everything went silent. She floated away from him, releasing his hand.

  He fell.

  Ben didn’t wait long after he woke to confront Tenzin about the missing storage jars. He hadn’t slept well, and he’d woken up annoyed that she’d used Louis to distract him from a conversation about the cargo.

  He marched to the forward hold and opened the door without knocking. “Hey, Tenzin?”

  She was lying in a corner of the room where she’d built a pallet for resting and meditating. Her eyes were closed and she appeared frozen. If he didn’t know her, he would have thought she was dead.

  “Tenzin.”

  Movement behind her eyelids.

  “You’re not sleeping, Tiny. And you knew it was me or you would have met me at the door with your fangs down.”

  Her fangs were always down. While other vampires could retract them to remain inconspicuous, Tenzin’s never completely retracted. Her canines curved back in her mouth like raptor talons. He knew how sharp they were because he’d cut his lips and tongue when he kissed her.

  “Tenzin.”

  Her eyes opened and she rose in one movement to fly at him. Gripping his shirt by the collar, she bared her teeth. “I. Was. Meditating.”

  Ben’s pulse should have spiked, but it no longer did. He’d once been proud of that fact; now it disturbed him. Had he lost the ability to be shocked? Lost the ability to fear? He had become too accustomed to her quicksilver moods.

  “I’d apologize for interrupting, but you very expertly distracted me from bringing this up last night, and I’m kind of annoyed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The cargo, Tenzin.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, sure. You have no idea what I’m talking about.” He took a deep breath and continued to ignore that she had her nails dug into his neck. “Cheng and Kadek have already stolen some of the treasure.”

  The corner of her lip curled up. “That is why you interrupted me? I knew that already. Cheng showed me the other night.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say at first. “And… you just forgot to tell me?”

  “Why do you need to know? It’s a stunning collection of glasswork, by the way. If you ask nicely, Cheng might show it to you.”

  His jaw clenched. “So you’re okay with this?”

  “Ben, who exactly do you think is paying millions to fund this expedition? Cheng is. If he’s going to take a small number of ninth-century Arab glass pieces to recoup his expenses, that is none of your business or mine.”

  “I believe your sire said he would be getting a generous finder’s fee. I don’t remember Zhang saying he could help himself to the cargo.”

  Tenzin rolled her eyes. “Details.”

  His patience snapped. “I was hired because your sire said he needed someone he could trust to oversee this job, and now Cheng is looting from the same ship he’s supposed to be excavating.”

  “You were hired because I wanted you here, Benjamin. That’s the only reason you were hired.”

  Her words hit him like acid burning skin.

  “And Cheng isn’t looting,” Tenzin continued. “He’s taking a commission from a ship he was hired to find and salvage. Do you know why he’s doing any of this? It’s a favor to me, Benjamin.” Her grip on his collar tightened. “Because I sure as hell am not diving under that ocean to salvage a shipwreck.”

  “The archaeology team—”

  “Is a silk dress on a soldier,” Tenzin said. “The archaeology team can document what they want—they’re the reason we have this ship and this equipment—but they’re not needed. Cheng is allowing them access because, despite what you might think, he actually cares about historic preservation and honoring the lost. He is not the bad guy, Benjamin.”

  The idea of it abraded his skin, but Ben had to admit she was partly right.

  Cheng didn’t need them. Chen
g didn’t need any of them.

  He needn’t have told Zhang about the wreck. He and Kadek could have looted every artifact from the Qamar Jadid without telling a soul. He could have put the Laylat al Hisab on the market and sold it to the highest bidder. The hilt alone would be worth millions.

  “Why am I here?” Ben asked quietly. “If you didn’t need me to coordinate between the two teams—if the archaeology team is just a silk dress on a soldier, as you put it—why was it necessary for me to be here? Why did you even want me on this job?”

  “To make sure the humans understand their role.”

  “Their role.” He let out a long breath. “I see.”

  “Do not bring this up to Cheng.” Tenzin tightened her grip. “Or Fabia. Or the people from the university. Don’t forget for a minute whom you’re working for.”

  The back of his tongue tasted bitter. “I’m working for Cheng now?”

  “No, you’re working for me,” she said. “And my father.”

  Ben felt small. Insignificant. Not her partner. He had never been her partner. They would never be equal. Maybe in his mind they had been, but never in hers.

  Why am I here?

  What am I doing?

  What am I doing?

  Ben stared into her beautiful, fierce eyes. Her grip didn’t loosen on his collar, and her fingernails bit into his neck. Two things hit him in an instant, and all the anger, all the bitterness and animosity building in his heart, was washed away in a wave of sadness.

  He loved her.

  And she would never love him.

  She wasn’t capable of it. He wished it made him love her less, but it didn’t.

  Ben brought his hand up and tucked her hair behind her ear before he ran the back of his fingers down the curve of her cheek. She blinked, but her grip didn’t loosen.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Even when you’re like this, I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t speak.

  Ben leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She froze, but Ben kept stroking her cheek when their lips parted. “I can’t do this anymore, Tenzin. I won’t do this anymore.”