This Same Earth

“But you control it, Gio. It doesn’t control you.”

He shrugged. “And oddly, we have my sire to thank for that. Without the years of discipline Andros beat into me, I would probably have destroyed myself long ago.”

She paused for a moment, frowning. “I don’t like feeling grateful to him.”

Giovanni gave her a sad smile. “He made me who I am.”

“You made yourself who you are. I’ve read your journals.”

“I wasn’t a good man for a long time. It was Carwyn and then Ioan who helped to humanize me.”

“And Tenzin. Kind of.”

“Kind of, yes. But nothing like Ioan. He was the finest of us,” he said quietly, slouching in the rumpled bed.

Beatrice wanted to erase the grief she saw fill his eyes, but she knew she couldn’t, so she pulled him over to rest his head in her lap and began running her fingers through his hair like she knew he loved.

“How did you meet him?”

He lay with his head on her thigh, and she listened as he timed his breath to match hers. Finally, he spoke in a soft voice, “My father created me to be his idea of the perfect man: a scholar, an artist, a strategist, a soldier…after he was gone, when I had to make my way in the world, there was little need for strategists, artists or scholars. But there was always a need for soldiers. Especially with the talents and training I had.

“I was a known fire vampire. I knew I needed to make a reputation quickly, and I needed to make it frightening, so I used what Andros had given me, and I became the most efficient assassin and mercenary I could be.”

“Who did you kill?”

“Whoever I was hired to,” he said quietly.

She took a deep breath and tried to reconcile the gentle man she knew with what he was describing. Beatrice had read his journals, but it was so much more brutal to hear the truth from his own lips.

He continued when she did not speak.  “After a while, I had built a decent reputation, though I was still targeted regularly. Then I met Tenzin and she wasn’t what I was expecting. At all.”

“Why not?

“Well, I was hired to kill her—”

“What? Tenzin?” Beatrice laughed.

“Ridiculous, I know. She is one of the oldest and most powerful vampires I have ever heard of. But I did not know her reputation when I was hired. I was young—only fifty years old or so. I took the contract, but she is the one who hunted me.”

“Why am I not surprised? Where did she find you?”

“It was in the mountains of southern Siberia, perched in the branches of an evergreen. She jumped on my back like she does, and I was too shocked by her appearance to do anything but try to run away.”

“But she caught you?”

“Oh yes. She laughed and told me that she’d seen me long ago. That we were fated to be great friends, and that we would work together.” He cocked an eyebrow. “We would be more powerful than any other vampires walking the earth.”

“Talk about appealing to your ego.”

He chuckled. “I’m not going to lie, I didn’t believe her about fate, but she was persuasive, and I could see how powerful she was. She’s always known how to get me to do what she wants me to. And then, well, she just knew things. It was Tenzin who took the contract in London that led us to Carwyn. She always seemed to know the exact moment to get out of one situation or into another. Tenzin always... Well, she always...”

He drifted off and she noticed an odd, almost childlike, look on his face.

“Gio?  What were you saying about—”

“Why did I go to the library where you worked?”

“What? You went to transcribe that manuscript, remember?”

“Yes.” His eyes lit up. “The manuscript for Tenzin. The one she just had to have copied.”

“Gio?” she whispered, but he could only stare at her in wonder as his head lay on her lap. He reached up to smooth away the frown that had gathered on her forehead and slowly pulled her face down to feather a kiss across her mouth.

“You are my balance in this life. In every life,” he murmured against her lips.

“Gio?”

“Tu sei il mio amore,” he said with a brilliant smile.

“I finally learn Latin and you switch to Italian on me, Jacopo? No fair.”  She frowned against his insistent lips.

“I don’t want you to get bored.”

“Because that’s so likely, isn’t it?”

He just grinned at her. “Were you bored without me?”

Beatrice didn’t want to answer but knew she should considering how open he was being.

“Never mind,” he said. “It’s not my business. It’s your—”

“Yes.”

Giovanni cocked his head, as if surprised she had responded.

“I was bored without you,” she continued. “I had a good life, but it wasn’t anything…” It was monochrome instead of color.

“I hated being away from you, Beatrice. Even when I convinced myself it was necessary.”

She blinked away the tears that tried to surface and pulled away from him. He still lay in her lap, looking up at her with an unguarded expression.

“What are we doing, Gio? I had so many questions for so many years. Why is everything suddenly not a secret?”

“Don’t you know?” he murmured.

She looked into his eyes, which had once been veiled and enigmatic. Now, they were open, and Beatrice was beginning to realize that everything she thought she knew about the previous five years might have been wrong.