She wanted to pull away. To strike him. But she was utterly frozen and had no choice but to answer as the cold fingers of Lorenzo's amnis stroked her mind.
“Yes.”
“Does his bite make you come?” he purred into her ear.
Beatrice tried to resist. She pictured walls going up in her mind, blocking the creep of his influence, but the twisted fingers flowed over and around the walls, forcing her to answer.
“Y-yes,” she whispered.
“How delicious you smell. Sweet, but not overpowering. Very much like I remember your father tasting. Maybe I should have kept him like my father keeps you. Quite convenient having a regular meal.”
The angry tears still fell down her face as she realized how powerless she was.
“Of course,” he whispered her hidden fear as his fingers slid up her arm. “I could just keep you. Maybe my father is on to something with his human women. Who cares if you bruise a little when I’m done with you? If you’re interesting enough to keep him occupied, perhaps you are worth my time.”
“N-no!” Just the thought churned her gut. “I don’t want-” And yet it didn’t seem to matter what she wanted. She could feel the suggestion take root in her mind, and her arm lifted until her fingers were nestled in the soft golden curls on his head. She stroked them, and he hissed in pleasure.
“Such lovely, delicate hands, Beatrice. Why are your knuckles so bruised, precious girl? Surely you haven’t been practicing your ridiculous martial arts like you did in California. Surely you know…” His lips brushed against her cheek, and he whispered into her ear, “You cannot fight me.”
He snickered a little and pierced her earlobe with one fang, quickly lapping at the blood with his cold tongue before he rose and straightened his clothes. She immediately felt the chill leave her, and Beatrice resisted the urge to shake.
“Delicious. You are a treat, my dear. I’ve already fed this evening, but hopefully we’ll have time tomorrow night.”
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, shrugging the tension from her body and drying her eyes with the back of her sleeve. He thought she was going to wait around to let him feed on her? In his dreams.
“Don’t be silly. It’s very possible that Giovanni will have found you by tomorrow night, and I don’t want to give him any new information.”
She glared at the monster in front of her.
“Why did you kill Ioan?”
He giggled and looked around the room. Beatrice finally noticed that there were four other vampires present beside Lorenzo and no other humans beside herself. All of Lorenzo’s men were dressed in black, and none of them seemed remarkable in the least.
Lorenzo finally stopped his ridiculous giggling. “One, I did not kill the kindly doctor, these lovely gentlemen did. Two, the reason I killed Ioan is between Ioan and myself. So you’ll have to ask one of us, and since I’m not telling, and he’s little bits of dust at this point, I suppose you’ll just have to live with disappointment.”
In that moment, Beatrice De Novo decided that she would become a vampire. If for no other reason than to kill the evil creature in front of her, who shattered lives on a whim. A cool calm settled over her, and a smile flickered across her face.
“I am going to kill you, Lorenzo.”
He only laughed. “You’re precious. Now, will my father kill me?” He shrugged. “Perhaps. He’s definitely powerful enough. The problem for him is, he lacks a certain…we’ll call it ‘devious intent,’ that allows me to be far more ruthless. Oh, he’s quite violent when provoked, as my lovely house on the island can attest, but he doesn’t really enjoy it like I do. Now you…” He lifted a curious eyebrow. “You might be a force to be reckoned with, Beatrice De Novo.”
The smile fell from his face, and he cocked his head to the side. “I can see the calculation in your eyes, and it’s very intriguing. What could you accomplish with power? It’s almost worth changing you to find out.”
The thought of his blood running through her veins sickened her, and she curled her lip. He quickly plastered on a sick smile.
“Oh! You’re so darling. I missed you.”
“I can’t say I feel the same, Paulo.”
She didn’t even see the slap coming. His quick backhand would have knocked her unconscious if she hadn’t become accustomed to Gemma’s even more ruthless blows during their training. Lorenzo was eyeing her with a new light in his eyes.
“So, my darling Papá confided my human name to you, did he?” He cocked his head. “What else did he confide?”
Beatrice kept her expression neutral, suddenly aware that she’d made a horrible mistake. No one had known how much she knew about Giovanni, and she realized that his secrets were completely open to any vampire that wanted them if they could get their hands on her.
The same thought seemed to occur to Lorenzo, but he didn’t put his hands on her. Instead, he smirked and blew her a kiss before he swept out of the room with his entourage. Beatrice released a breath when she was alone again and settled into the bed to rest and wait for dawn.
Chapter Seventeen
English Channel
March 2010
The sun was pouring through the porthole when she woke, and small droplets of condensation cast tiny rainbows around the small room. Beatrice remembered Giovanni’s favorite waterfall in Cochamó and how it looked during the day with the sun reflecting off the spraying mist. It would be late summer right now, and she decided that if she could pick one place to be, it would be at their house in the valley with him.
They would wake in the early evening and make love in front of the fireplace in their bedroom, the flecks of mica sparkling in the hewn granite wall. She would sleep next to him all day and spend the night riding through the meadows in the moonlight. Maybe there would be wildflowers. She would have to remember to see as much of the valley as she could in the sunlight and take pictures for after she had turned. Since it was summer, maybe they would implement a no clothing rule in the house. She knew Giovanni wouldn’t mind.
Beatrice rubbed her eyes and stretched. She was going to get out of the room today. She wasn’t sure how, but it was daytime. Granted, it was morning, which meant that some of the vampires could still be awake if they stayed out of sunlight, but by afternoon, she knew they would be sleeping. That meant anyone up and walking around would be human. And she was pretty sure if she could land the odd blow on Gemma, she could kick some human ass.
Hours later, when the sun was hanging lower in the sky, she beat on the thick metal door.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Anyone?”
She paused to hear if there was any movement.
“Anyone out there? I’ve been in here all day, you gonna feed me?” She pounded some more. “Hey, I’m starving!”
She wasn’t starving, she was sickeningly nervous, but she needed someone to open the door.
“Open up! I need some food.”
She finally heard steps approaching, and Beatrice stepped back, grasping the sheet she had twisted into a thick rope.
“Hello?” an accented voice called. “You are hungry?”
“Yeah, I’m starving, all right? Will you feed me already?” She braced herself on the corner of the bed. When the door opened, whoever came through would see her immediately, there was no avoiding it, so she stepped up on the small bed, knowing that she would get one chance for surprise.
“Okay. I get food,” the voice called. She felt a brief pang at the thought of harming the voice, which sounded fairly friendly, but there was no way in hell she was going to show mercy to her captors when Lorenzo was waiting at sundown.
The footsteps walked away, and she put down her sheet to take off the jacket she had been wearing. It was cold on the ship, and she knew it was cold outside, but the jacket was too bulky for her to move freely, and she knew that the less an attacker had to grab, the better.