He shifted closer to her, worried she would wake and relive her captivity with the madman he had sired. She had refused to speak to him for the most part, communicating mainly through Carwyn and Tenzin. To say it had not bothered him would have been inaccurate, though he knew it was to be expected after his perceived betrayal.
He lifted a hand, stroking her brown hair in a gesture he knew she wouldn’t allow if she was awake. He hadn’t had a chance to hunt before they left Greece, but he leaned closer anyway, drawing in her welcome scent despite the growing burn in his throat.
He dreaded her fury when she woke and discovered she was not back in Houston. She had screamed at him, refusing to board the plane when she discovered it wasn’t going back to the United States.
“I want to go home. I don’t want to talk to my grandmother on the phone, I want to see her. I want to go home.”
“Beatrice, we need to get you somewhere safe until we can make sure—”
“You’re still holding me captive, you bastard! You can go to hell, for all I care, but I want to go home. Take me home!”
Her words burned, and he’d almost given in and taken her back to Texas, but Tenzin had walked over, calmly placed a hand on Beatrice’s arm and knocked her out, catching her as she slumped into unconsciousness.
Carwyn loaded her on the custom built airplane bound for one of his children’s most remote territories in the south of Chile, where it would be winter and the days would be short. Giovanni had kept a safe house there for over one hundred and fifty years, and no one but the priest and his daughter’s family knew exactly where it was.
He felt her begin to stir and stopped stroking her hair, backing away from her but staying within arm’s reach in case she panicked. Tenzin had no clothes that would fit her, so Beatrice was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and one of Giovanni’s black shirts.
She woke with a start, reviving from Tenzin’s amnis and sitting up with a choking gasp. She searched the compartment with panicked eyes until they settled on him. He froze, not wanting to startle her, allowing her to take in her surroundings along with his presence. After a few seconds, her eyes narrowed and she flung herself at him, slapping his face and pushing his shoulders.
“I hate you! I hate you!”
He let her release her anger for a few minutes, finally grabbing her hands to halt her punches so she didn’t hurt herself. Though Giovanni had not wept in five hundred years, he felt as if he might when he saw her useless rage and the tears that coursed down her cheeks.
“I know,” he whispered.
“I want to go home,” she cried. “Why won’t you just take me home?”
She tried to hit him again but couldn’t move as he held her, so she twisted away and threw herself on the opposite couch, glaring at him. He took a deep breath.
“It’s not safe.”
“You don’t know that, asshole. And I can’t believe you used your mind voodoo on me on top of everything else.”
“That was Tenzin.”
“Then I’m pissed off at her, too.”
She fell silent, staring at a chair in the back of the compartment where he had noticed Lorenzo’s smell was particularly strong.
“What did he do to you?”
“What do you care?”
He rushed over to kneel in front of her at vampire speed, ducking down and forcing her to meet his eyes.
“What do I care? I have spent the last six weeks doing nothing but trying to get you back, Beatrice. I spent weeks narrowing down where Lorenzo was keeping you. Then I spent weeks in Rome and Athens negotiating to make sure you weren’t going to be caught in a war when I got you away from him. I called on centuries of alliances and personal debts so his allies would not try to take you back or retaliate against Carwyn, Tenzin, and all their families and allies for helping me.”
He sat back on his heels, his eyes locked with hers as he began to see cracks in her angry shell.
“Be angry with me, Beatrice. Rail at me and slap me,” he said more softly. “Feel betrayed if you want to, but don’t ask me if I care. And don’t ask me to take you someplace where I cannot assure your safety while you recover.”
She looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. They sat in silence for the rest of the flight over the Atlantic, and Giovanni began to feel drowsy as the pull of day dragged him toward sleep.
Tenzin had influenced the pilot, assuring them he would set the plane down in the private airfield outside of Santiago and safeguard it until the sun had set. From there, Carwyn’s daughter, Isabel, had arranged a small customized plane to Puerto Montt, and after that, ground transport into the interior of Chilean Patagonia.
By dawn the next day, they would be in Giovanni’s safe house in the Cochamó Valley.
Beatrice had slipped into fitful sleep by the time he stretched out on the ground next to her, finally succumbing to exhaustion.
When he woke, the plane was on the ground and she was staring at him.
“I’ve never seen you sleep before.”
He frowned. “I don’t think anyone has seen me sleep…maybe since Caspar was very young.” He blinked to clear his eyes. “He would crawl all over me as a child, trying to wake me up to play. It’s very hard to wake me, though it is possible.”
“You don’t breathe at all.”