Elizabeth Hunter - A Hidden Fire

“Put the documents away. The combination to the stacks is the last four numbers of my social security number.” She didn’t ask if he knew it, and he would have laughed at her correct presumption if only she had not looked so shaken.

He quickly put everything back in its place, keeping an ear open to listen for anyone entering the reading room while he was out of sight. He noted the meticulous organization of the document shelves and the empty spaces where the boxes needed to be placed and the faint honeysuckle scent of her that lingered in the small room. For a brief moment, he considered simply taking the letters that were his, but he brushed the temptation aside and focused on the present danger. By the time he slipped out of the stacks, Beatrice had shut down the computers, grabbed her bag, and turned off the lights.

They walked down the hall together and silently made their way downstairs. She let him guide her toward his Mustang, and he unlocked the door for her, pausing before he opened it.

“Beatrice-”

“I know it’s not really your fault,” she murmured. “If anyone’s, it’s my dad’s, though I’m sure he didn’t plan on being attacked by a vampire when he went to Italy. You were just the closest one here, so it was easy to blame you.”

He was surprised by her apology, but felt an unfamiliar tension ease when he heard it.

“Are you really sorry you met me?” he asked in a low voice.

She paused and glanced up at him in the dim lights of the parking lot before she reached out to grab the door handle, opening it for herself.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

He took surface streets to her grandmother’s house, trying to give her time to collect herself before she saw Isadora.

“So he’s really your son?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Why on earth did you turn him? Was he always so awful?”

Giovanni frowned. “He wasn’t-no, he wasn’t always like this. As a child, he was almost timid. He hadn’t had an easy life. I thought I was doing the right thing when I did it. There was a time that I had a kind of affection for him. I had hoped with guidance, he would… Well, he had his own ideas about immortal life at a very young age. We only stayed together for around five years before we parted ways.”

“Has he done this before? Has he tried to, I don’t know, provoke you?”

“No. I know his reputation, of course, but we’ve spent hundreds of years avoiding each other. I’m starting to realize what a mistake that was.”

“And he has your books? Your own son stole your books and letters from you?”

Giovanni nodded. “Before I turned him, he told me they had been lost. He told me that my properties were intact, but that my library had been ransacked and destroyed. It was during the time of Savaranola in Florence. It wasn’t hard to believe. There was so much lost. I had to trust him. There was a time that I couldn’t be around people like I can now.”

“Why? The blood thing or the fire thing?”

He hesitated before he answered. “Either. Both. There were…many reasons. Can we talk about something other than my past, please?”

He saw her cross her arms from the corner of his eyes and angry tears came to her eyes. “Well, it seems like your past is affecting a lot of my future, Gio. So maybe I feel like it’s kind of my business at this point.”

Biting back a curse, he gripped the steering wheel a little harder too hard and heard the plastic crack. Damn .

“I’ll tell you what you need to know, just not right now. I’ll take care of this, Beatrice, but you’re staying with me for a while.”

She snorted. “I am not. I have finals and classes and all sorts of shit to do. You’re not locking me up in your house.”

He frowned, irritated that she had predicted him so accurately. She was probably correct, and he didn’t want to interfere with her completing her classes unless it was absolutely necessary. He had no doubt Lorenzo would linger in the city for some time, watching them and securing support before he made any sort of move.

In his mind, he recalled the small boy sitting in front of a basket, dangling a mouse by its tail. The rodent was intended to be a meal for the snake that was kept in the classroom, but the boy always asked to be the one to feed it. Not wanting to handle the task himself, Giovanni always let him, but soon became disturbed by how the angelic looking child taunted both the snake and the mouse before he finally offered the serpent its meal.

“Gio?”

“Hmm?” He broke out of his reverie to glance at Beatrice. “We’ll figure something out. It would be best if you stayed at my house after dark. There’s plenty of room. I’ll increase your security during the daytime, as well.”

“What about my grandmother?”

“There’s a house that Caspar loves, up in the hill country around Kerrville. It’s isolated and Caspar knows the area extremely well. He can take her there. I don’t think it’s in Lorenzo’s interest to follow them. They aren’t what he’s after.”

“He’s after me?” she asked in a small voice. “I guess I knew that, but it hadn’t really sunk in until today.”

She seemed to shrink into the seat next to him as they made their way through the winding streets of Houston. He scented the air, pleased that the adrenaline had ceased pumping through her bloodstream and satisfied she wouldn’t alarm Isadora.

“I really hate my dad right now,” she whispered.

He wasn’t shocked by her admission, but it saddened him. He felt the urge to hold her again, but he shoved it to the side.

“I understand why you feel that way, but you have to know I do not blame him for running from Lorenzo.”

“You can’t? Even though it’s now messing with your life, too?”

Giovanni shrugged. “I’m the one who created the monster, Beatrice. And trust me, Lorenzo is a monster. Life as his child would be horrendous.”

“Why? I don’t get it. Carwyn told me he can’t make his kids do anything they don’t want to, so why would it be so horrible?”

He frowned at her. “It’s not a mental compulsion, it’s sheer physical strength most of the time. Strength for us is determined by age, mostly-though the age of your sire has some significance, as well. I’m old, but my sire was ancient. Combine that strength with my physical strength at the time of my change and my natural element-that makes me very strong.

“Lorenzo was never as strong as me when he was human, but my blood was very strong because of my sire and that was passed onto him. He has also trained himself particularly well in his elemental strength, though he’ll never be quite as strong as I am.

“ Your father-though very strong now by human standards-would be no match for either of us. He would never beat Lorenzo in a fight, and I’m sure my son probably tortured him in all sorts of inventive ways when your father didn’t do exactly what he wanted.”

He saw her eyes widen in horror, but he didn’t want to soften the truth for her. “You have no idea how much power he would have over him, especially in those first few years when he was learning to control his bloodlust. Your father is almost five hundred years younger than his sire. And he could conceivably be under his control for eternity. You must not blame your father for running.”

She seemed to shrink in her seat. “How about your sire?” she almost whispered. “Does he-I mean, was he good like Carwyn?”

Giovanni frowned. “My father…was a complicated vampire. And he’s dead, so it doesn’t have any effect on me now.”

“Oh.”

“Is there a proper anger, my son?”

“Aristotle said ‘anyone can become angry, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree, and at the right time. For the right purpose and in the right way-is not within every man’s power. ’”