A Hidden Fire

Dr. Christiansen looked up with a smile. “Another letter arrived!”

“Of course it did,” she muttered.

She set her bag down behind the reference desk and walked over to look. She glanced at the parchment, but quickly grabbed the notes that accompanied them.

“I’ll go make a couple of copies for the next flood of professors,” Beatrice said as she took the notes-which she knew would include a translation-back to the copy and imaging room.

Hours later she sat in the empty reading room, perusing the translation of the fourth Pico letter. Word of the new document hadn’t spread yet, so the reading room was deserted as she looked over her notes. It was another letter from the scholar, Angelo Poliziano. He talked more about the mystical books in Signore Andros’s library, some trip to Paris Pico was taking, and asked after the little boy, but it was the third section which caught her attention.

I will not linger in this letter, but hope to hear a response from you soon regarding the matter of G. Do not think that your unsigned correspondence has gone unnoticed. Your sonnets have been read in the very rooms of Lorenzo’s home. While they are beautiful work-some of your best-I beg of you to be more discreet in your admiration. You are fortunate so many ladies share the fair skin and dark hair of your muse, as their generality may yet prevent you from becoming embroiled in another scandal.

She shook her head, scribbling nonsense in the margins of her notebook.

Was this truly Giovanni? she asked herself as she finished the letter. Friend of Lorenzo de Medici? Philosopher at age twenty-three and contemporary of some of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance? A poet who longed for another man’s wife?

The man who seemed so cold and yet kissed her with such passion?

She closed her eyes and forced herself to think with her brain instead of her hormones.

When Beatrice had gone through her darkest teenage years, she had turned to almost anyone who seemed to offer a little warmth. Now, she shuddered to think how foolish she had been and how self-destructive. She had forced herself to take a break from the opposite sex since she decided that dark and destructive weren’t nearly as attractive as she had thought they were at seventeen.

But she didn’t like being alone, and she had the same desires that most twenty-two-year-old women had. A part of her thrilled at the idea of her interest in Giovanni being returned, but the other part of her had the cold realization that a relationship with a five hundred-year-old vampire, who probably wanted to drink her blood more than he wanted to cuddle, was the textbook definition of unhealthy.

On second thought, she was pretty sure most textbooks didn’t cover that one.

She heard the door to the reading room open, tucked the notes in her bag, and braced herself before she looked up.

And Carwyn stood in front of her.

“Surprise!”

She glanced at the smiling vampire before her eyes darted to the doors he had just walked through.

“Oh, Count Stuffy della Prissypants is not with me. He had to venture to the fair city of New York to negotiate purchase on a certain prize his awesome assistant found.” Carwyn clucked his tongue at her and winked. “And you didn’t even tell me. I would have taken you to a horror movie, a really bad one.”

She mustered up a smile. “It's good to see you. I wasn’t expecting-”

“No, I expect you weren’t from the sad, little look on your face. But cheer up!” He pulled a chair over and sat next to the desk. “I’m all yours for the night. And I won’t even pretend to transcribe an old book so I can stare at you longingly from the corner of my eye.” He kicked his feet up on the desk. “Thank God none of the boring professors are here.”

“Carwyn,” she said with a smile. “Have I told you lately that you’re kind of awesome?”

He winked. “No, but I’m always game to hear it. Forget the Italian, darling Beatrice. Run away with me. We’ll go to Hawaii.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’ll make us a cave by the sea where the sun won’t touch me and we’ll spend every night swimming naked and drinking fruity drinks while we make the fishes blush.”

She giggled and shook her head at his mischievous grin. “You…are something else.”

His grin suddenly turned sweet as he looked at her.

“As are you, darling girl. As are you.”

He opened his mouth again, as if to say something, and she felt a faint stirring in the air, but finally, his grin returned and the tension seemed to scatter.

“Could you really make a cave?”

“What?” He looked surprised by her question. “Oh, yes. Of course. Volcanic rock is very soft.”

She shook her head. “That’s so crazy. I wish Gio would tell me about that stuff.”

“Well, what do you want to know? No one here but vampires and crazy people.”

She snorted. “Well,” she thought, “what can all the different vampires do? There’s four kinds, right? Like the four elements? You can make caves, Gio can make fire-”

“Well, strictly speaking-”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved a hand, “static electricity, manipulation of the elements, got that part. So, it’s probably the same with all of them then.” She frowned. “How do you know what element you’ll be? Do you get to pick? Is it something that happens right away when you get…”

“Sired? Or turned. Those are the proper terms in our world.” Carwyn sighed and leaned back in his chair. “With my children-”

“Your children?”

“Yes, I call them sons and daughters. It depends on the sire, but immortal families can be very much like human families. We just tend to look a bit closer in age,” he said with a laugh.

“How do you-I mean how do you become…” She paused, unsure of how to phrase her question.

“Most of the common myths are true about that,” Carwyn said. “When I sire a child, almost all of their blood is drained, either by me or someone else. The important thing is that the majority of the blood is replaced with my own. That is what creates the connection.”

“And what is the connection? Do you…control them or something?”

“Sadly, no,” he laughed. “I can’t compel them to do my bidding.” Carwyn paused for a moment and a wistful look came to his eyes.

“It’s very much the way I remember feeling about my human children, to be honest. Only much more…intense, as everything is. It’s not an easy decision, choosing to make a child, and it has such long-term consequences. If nothing violent happens to myself or my children, we will be a family for eternity. It’s a very strong commitment to make to another being and, as a consequence, I do have quite a lot of influence over my children. We’re very close.”

“What about your sire? Is he-”

“She, actually. And my sire is no longer living.”

She could sense from the look in his eyes that it wasn’t something the normally open vampire wanted to talk about, so she changed the subject.

“Did you ever, I mean, do vampires ever turn people that they love? Like, if your wife had been living-”

“I wouldn’t have turned her myself,” he said quickly. “Well, not if I knew the consequences of it. It’s not a romantic connection, Beatrice. The feelings really are more paternal, so it’s not an ideal situation if a vampire falls in love with a human and they're turned.”

“Why not?”

“If the human does choose to become immortal, they would have to be turned by a vampire other than their lover, and then that other vampire would have a very strong connection and influence over the one turned. Your feelings toward your sire run very deep, positive or negative. It could become quite complicated.”

She looked down at the desk. “Right. I guess that makes sense,” she said quietly. She opened her e-mail and busied herself checking the news online. Carwyn was silent, but she could still feel him watching her.

“You know,” he said suddenly. “All my children are earth vampires. It runs in families that way.”