“How do you heal yourself?” she asked again.
“I need to let it take me, Father. Keep her away.”
“You’re going to set yourself on fire?” Beatrice was starting to sound panicked.
“Darling girl,” Carwyn soothed her. “Come stand with me. Did you get shot, Gio? You’re getting slow in your old age.”
He closed his eyes, trying to focus on something other than the pain in his chest. “Keep her away. Maybe you should both go up on deck.”
“No,” they said together.
“I won’t leave you,” she said.
Giovanni thought about the resolute look in her eyes as she watched him drain the human and nodded before he stepped to the far corner of the empty compartment. He stood motionless and lowered his head, taking deep breaths before he allowed the static electricity to start snapping along his skin. After a moment, he began pacing, keeping one eye near the door where Carwyn and Beatrice stood. They were at least ten meters away, but he was still cautious, which was, no doubt, part of Carwyn’s plan in keeping them close by.
He flexed his arms and curled his shoulders in, focusing his energy to run along his skin and push outward as he felt the flames begin to lick along his chest and arms. He could feel himself start to walk the thin edge between control and chaos. The last of his clothes burned away, and he stood naked as the blue fire covered his body.
As Giovanni’s energy grew and the flames rose, he could feel his chest ache and start to knit together. He glanced up to see Carwyn holding onto Beatrice with an iron grip. He turned and faced her, focusing on her dark eyes as he stood motionless and let the fire wash his injuries away.
He heard the hiss as his hair singed, and the acrid scent drifted to his nose. He kept himself focused on the sour smell of burning hair to counteract the heady sensation of power that threatened to overwhelm him. The blood rushed through his body and his heart raced, but the higher the flames grew, the stronger he became.
His power peaked, and Giovanni could feel his chest muscles stretch and smooth out. He flexed them, feeling only an edge of pain. He continued to stare at Beatrice as he let the fire fall back and finally dissipate into the cold salt air.
He gave a quiet grunt and fell to his knees as they rushed over. Beatrice put her arms around him, flinching from the heat that still radiated off his skin, but she only pulled him closer and rocked him as her hands tangled in his singed hair.
“That was…” She sniffed. “It was-”
“Cracking as always, Gio,” Carwyn said with a laugh. “By God, you’ll manage to kill me someday, but that’s absolutely brilliant.”
Giovanni sighed and slumped against Beatrice, burying his face in the cool skin at her throat and wrapping his arms around her waist.
“I hate getting shot.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Just the two left?”
“We were lucky to save those before Gemma got her hands on them.”
“And no trace of my son?”
“No, but he left his lackeys here. And he must have known we would take them.”
“Interesting and deliberate.”
Giovanni and Carwyn were walking up the stairs, Giovanni growing stronger with every step. He wanted to feed again, but didn’t want to weaken Beatrice more by asking. She was still limping, and her bruises were more vivid. It irritated him that he could do nothing more to heal her. She had been handling herself extraordinarily well, but he could tell she was starting to crash.
“
“I’m okay with skipping the torture part, thanks.”
He nodded, relieved she had not insisted on being present for what would be, no doubt, a brutal interrogation.
As they walked through the melted door and onto the open deck, he saw Jean’s men securing what was left of the crew, and Gemma held two battered, young vampires by the throat. Terry tossed him a pair of black pants he found somewhere, and Giovanni turned to Beatrice as he saw the three vampires walk away with the captives.
He leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll be back soon.”
She threw her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, “Don’t be too long. There are things to say.”
He nodded and gave her one more lingering kiss before he walked away.
The injured vampires were obviously disposable; Giovanni wondered why Lorenzo had even left them on the ship. They dragged them to the rear deck among the maze of containers the freighter carried.
“No one else?” he asked as he slipped on the borrowed pants.
Terry and Carwyn shook their heads.
“Jean’s men searched all the containers,” Gemma said, pounding on one that echoed in the dark. “Nothing. Not even a drained human or a bit of clothing.”
“
“Are you the master’s father?” One croaked and took a deep breath of the salt air. Giovanni suspected they were both water vampires, turned by Lorenzo to replace the personal army he and Tenzin had destroyed in Greece. Both looked to be in their early twenties. One had an American accent, and the other sounded Irish.
Giovanni knelt down and braced one arm on his knee. “I am Lorenzo’s sire.”
“We have a message for you,” the American said.
“Thought you might.” He let the blue flames flare on his torso as the young vampires watched. The American, a young blond man with brown eyes and an innocent face, looked at Giovanni as if he had never seen anything more terrifying. The other wore a placid expression, and his hard, blue eyes did not flinch. “Well?”
It was the Irishman who spoke up. “Lorenzo says he will burn your books, take your woman, turn your child, and one day, you will call him master…and you will love him.”
Giovanni cocked his head. “He sacrifices your lives to boast?”
The young American vampire could not seem to look away as the fire grew. Again, it was the other that spoke for them. “We are his humble servants.”
Giovanni stared into the young one’s frigid blue eyes. He whispered, “Did you kill Ioan ap Carwyn?” He could feel Gemma and Carwyn looking over his shoulders. “Did you kill my friend?”
The young vampire’s calm mask finally faltered, and he stuttered when he answered.
“W-we are his humble servants.”
Giovanni grabbed him by the neck and took the knife that Terry held out. “You are nothing. But you will tell me everything you know.”
He slashed the vampire across the neck and the side, placing his burning hands on the wounds as the young one began to scream.
Giovanni interrogated them for hours, Terry reviving both with seawater when they fainted.
The two vampires confessed to luring Ioan away from the clinic he had been running in the slums of Dublin. The young Irish vampire, named Sean, had been a patient of Ioan’s as a child and used the connection to put the doctor at ease. Then the other vampires, two of whom Gemma had killed in the cargo hold, kidnapped three children who had come to the clinic, threatening to kill them unless Ioan cooperated.
As Giovanni had suspected, his compassionate friend had not hesitated to sacrifice his freedom for the innocent
