Elizabeth Hunter - This Same Earth

Beatrice must have dozed in the car, because when she woke Giovanni was lifting her from the passenger’s seat and carrying her into the kitchen.

“What time is it?” she asked with a yawn.

“Around four in the morning.”

“Good thing I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

He walked through the kitchen, still carrying her in his arms. Beatrice curled into his chest and thought of the first ride she’d made into Cochamó when he’d held her for hours in front of him on the rocking horse.

“Gio?”

“Yes?” He turned down a long hall she knew contained the guest bedrooms.

“If I stayed with you tonight…could we just sleep?”

His steps faltered, and she heard his heart give a quiet thump.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I miss you,” she whispered as her eyes closed again. She burrowed toward the comforting smell of his skin. “I miss how warm your arms always are.”

He paused in the hallway before he turned and walked up the stairs.

Beatrice didn’t remember much except for his hands as they removed her shoes, the low buzz of his skin brushing against hers, and the comfort of being enveloped in his scent as he pulled the sheets around her. She heard him moving around the room before his long arms enfolded her and he nestled behind her in the bed. He whispered in her ear as she faded to dreams.

“I love you, Beatrice.”

En route to Houston

December 2009

“If you’re really from Texas-”

“Is that something people lie about? Being from Texas?”

“-then why don’t you have an accent?”

Beatrice turned to Giovanni. “Is he serious?”

He shrugged. “I suppose so,” he said, looking at Ben’s curious face. “We’ve never been, he only met Caspar and your grandmother when they came to New York to stay with him.”

They were sitting in the belly of Lorenzo’s old plane, which now was stripped of its more ostentatious details. It sported a decent library, two twin beds, and the same couches, though Giovanni had made sure they’d been recovered. When he had inherited Lorenzo’s converted cargo plane with the reinforced compartment that allowed him to fly, he had no idea it would be put to so much use.

Though he had spent much of the past year in New York and Los Angeles settling legal matters with Ben and preparing to reenter Beatrice’s life, he had spent the four years previous flying across Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, rebuilding old alliances and searching unsuccessfully for her father.

“I didn’t know my grandmother and Caspar went to New York!”

He nodded. “They came in August when I…” When he had flown down to Cochamó, unable to resist seeing her. The farther he had pushed her to the back of his mind in their years apart, the more he had been able to successfully concentrate on preparing himself for the conflict he knew was coming.

But as the prospect of seeing her neared, he became almost desperate. Though Isabel had verbally lashed him, he hadn’t been able to resist lurking around the house to try to catch a glimpse of her or a hint of her scent.

As soon as he mentioned August, her eyes hardened, Giovanni knew she realized what he was talking about. Luckily, Ben was still chattering, so she wasn’t allowed to shut herself off like she so often did.

“Will there be cowboy hats? Do I get one? No, that would probably look stupid. But maybe…Gio, have you ever worn a cowboy hat?”

“I never wore a cowboy hat when I lived in Texas,” he said.

Ben and Beatrice looked between each other, their eyes glinting. “That wasn’t a ‘no,’” she said with a sly smile.

He shrugged, thinking back to the time he had spent in Argentina with Gustavo and Isabel in the late 1800s. “It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a cowboy hat.”

They both started laughing and Ben finally choked out. “You-a cowboy-Gio wore a cowboy hat!”

“I’m trying to imagine it, Ben, but I just can’t,” Beatrice snorted.

“It wasn’t a western hat-it was a gaucho-style hat. Everyone wore them.”

Her eyes lit up. “But they wore them to keep the sun out of their eyes, and unless I’m missing something, sun burns you to a crispy critter, so you wouldn’t need one because you wouldn’t be out during the day. Admit it, you liked the cowboy hat.”

“It wasn’t a cowboy hat.”

“I bet it was a black one,” Ben said.

Beatrice nodded. “Definitely black.”

He rolled his eyes and opened a book, attempting to ignore them, but in reality, his heart lightened to see them laughing together. Though he never said it, Ben had been dreading the idea of Beatrice disrupting the tentative family ties the two of them had formed.

“And you know, the sun thing isn’t totally true. He once chased me out of the house about twenty feet during the day when I was trying to run away in New York. He didn’t burst into flames, he just got really sunburned and a little smoky around the ears.”

She cocked an eyebrow at Giovanni. “Smoky ears, huh? I’ll have to remember that.”

“And then he fell asleep really hard after he had two bags of blood, and he kept saying your name over and-”

Like lightning, Giovanni reached across the small compartment and grabbed Ben’s hand. The boy slumped over, instantly asleep, and Giovanni sat back in his chair as Beatrice gaped at him.

“Did you just use mind voodoo to shut him up?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…”

She just kept gaping, seemingly unable to comprehend Ben’s slumbering form. He was now snoring, just a little.

“I gave him a very nice dream about flying,” he said with a shrug.

“That cannot be ethical, Gio.”

“Well, call me an unorthodox parent then, but do you really think we would both be here a year later, still un-maimed, if I couldn’t do that on occasion? He’s a twelve-year-old boy. Trust me, it’s for the best. He’ll wake up when we’re in Houston.”

She shook her head, then stood, crouched down over the sleeping boy and pulled him over her shoulder as she trundled him to one of the small beds.

He watched her in amusement; she was far stronger than he’d realized. When he pulled her in to kiss him on the boat the week before, he’d noticed the firmness of the muscles on her body. It felt foreign on her but not at all unpleasant.

“The judo has paid off. You’re far stronger than you look,” he said when she came back and sat on the couch across from him.

Beatrice nodded. “I told you, that new sensei has really been great. Between judo, jujitsu, and the tai chi I feel pretty well-rounded. I need to find a shooting class, though.”

He smiled. “Gustavo mentioned that you were quite proficient with a rifle. He enjoyed shooting with you last summer. And the judo and jujitsu are good self-defense choices for you with your size.”

“That was the idea. I didn’t like feeling helpless.”

His heart clenched at the thought of his own failure to protect her five years before. “I understand.”

“I very much doubt that,” she muttered.

“Do you?” he asked with a flash of irritation. “Do you forget that I was held against my will for over ten years as a human? That, even as a vampire, I was subject to a far more powerful sire. One who could easily overcome me, no matter how strong I was?”

Her mouth fell open as she stared at him in the low light of the plane. “I forgot. Sorry.”

He looked back down at his book. “I have…a well of regret over what I have put you through that I doubt you’ll ever understand, Beatrice.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I am grateful you are now better able to protect yourself. It has given you confidence you lacked.”