Elizabeth Hunter - A Hidden Fire

“I told him the mad friar had burned them all.” A laugh bubbled 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.