A Hidden Fire
Page 108

“Oh.”
“I don’t need to drink as much here as I do in more modern places, and your blood is very rich, so it should satisfy me for a long time.  I also drank quite deeply.”
She paused and nodded a little. “I guess I taste okay, then.  Good to know.”
He coughed a little, and his eyes roamed over her body but did not meet her gaze.
“You taste…rather wonderful, actually.”
She bit her lip and tried to contain a smirk.  “I wonder if I should put that on my resume.”
He smirked for a second before bursting into laughter.  He finally met her eyes and fell into bed next to her, covering his face with a pillow.
“Are you embarrassed?” she asked incredulously.
“Yes,” came the muffled response from under the pillow.  “I acted like a newly sired vampire, totally out of control.”
“You didn’t hear me complaining,” she said with a blush.  “And before I fell asleep this afternoon, I was thinking about finding a marker and drawing a big curly mustache on your face.”
He lifted the pillow and frowned at her as she picked at the plate of dried apples and apricots.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t, but I thought about it.  Don’t you feel a little less immature now?”
He cocked an eyebrow at her.  “Quite.”
Beatrice sat up in bed and began to nibble the fruit and sip the water as he watched her.  “What were you really like?  When you were new?”
He rolled over and lay on his stomach, crossing his arms under his chin.  “Do you really want to know this?  It’s not pleasant.”
“Have you ever told anyone?”
He shook his head, still watching her as she ate.
“Then tell me.  Even the ugly parts.”
He paused for a moment before he continued to tell his story.  “My uncle was murdered in 1494, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  Andros had been watching us.  He had decided that while my uncle would not suit his purposes, I would.  He influenced one of the servants to put arsenic in my uncle’s food, so he wasted away.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
She tried to imagine him at seventeen, and her hand reached out to stroke the shorn hair that covered his scalp.  She smiled when he moved into her touch.  His eyes closed, and she could almost imagine him purring like a cat.
“He came to the door only hours after my uncle had died and took me.  I was confused when I woke.  He had taken me far away, and I was very disoriented.”
“Where were you?”
“It was an old Greek settlement in the south of Italy.  Crotone,” he said the name with disgust.  “He had made a kind of school there.”
“He was Greek?”
Giovanni nodded, and she continued to stroke his hair.  “He was around twenty-five hundred years old when he made me.  A contemporary of Homer’s, or so he claimed, I never knew whether he was lying or not.  He was…crazy.  Obsessed.”
“With what?”
“Areté.  Aristos.  Virtus, to call it by its Roman name.”
“Explain to the non-genius in the room, please.”
He chuckled, rolling over and grabbing her hand which he placed over his heart and covered with his own.  “Essentially, the perfect man.  He wanted a child that personified the utmost in human potential.”
“That must have been quite the ego stroke.”
He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling, absently tracing the outline of her palm on his chest.  “No, I wasn’t perfect in the least.  I was the raw material.”
“You mean—”
“He had to create me, before he sired me.”
She frowned.  “I don’t understand.”
His head tilted back as he looked at her with sad eyes.
“Andros held me captive for ten years while he molded me into what he thought was the perfect man.  He schooled me, trained me, drilled me to be the most perfect example of humanity he could create.  It was…not pleasant.”
Suddenly, Giovanni rolled up and knelt in front of her, pulling off his shirt and watching in silence as she stared at him.
“Do you think I’m handsome, Beatrice?”
She blushed, but looked into his eyes when she answered, “Yes, of course.”
“Am I strong?” He crawled toward her on all fours, getting inches from her face.  She took a deep breath, inhaling the faint smell of smoke that always seemed to linger on his skin.
“Yes.”
He leaned into her neck, taking a deep breath before he whispered in her ear, “You smell like honeysuckle, did you know that?”
Her heart was pounding and her body reacted to him instinctively.  She leaned toward him and felt his lips brush her temple before he sat back.
“Do I look like a statue?  That’s what he wanted.  He wanted a perfect…specimen to turn, one who excelled physically, mentally, who had strong character.”
“So, he made you into the ideal man, and then he killed you?” she choked out, still reeling from his scent and the energy that poured off him.
He gave her a sad smile.  “No, then he turned me into a demigod.”
“What?” she asked, suddenly wondering if she needed to call Carwyn for an immortal psych consult.