“Good, Nima had dinner prepared for you,” Tenzin said, nodding to one of the servants standing near the door. “Did I bruise you too much?”
“I’m fine,” Beatrice said with a wave.
Tenzin cocked an eyebrow at Giovanni, as if challenging his cool demeanor, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “She’s very good, you know. When she changes, she’ll be formidable. We should have Baojia give her weapons training while she is here. I have a full practice room with many options.”
“Oh?” Beatrice perked up. “What kind of weapons?”
He sat down and waited for Tenzin to stop teasing him. Though, really, it wasn’t a bad idea. Because he had such a ready weapon in his fire and rarely needed to behead an enemy, Giovanni wasn’t as well trained in swordsmanship as most vampires were. He was proficient in fencing and the older Greek and Roman forms of hand-to-hand combat, but he suspected that Beatrice would take to the Asian styles better, considering her background in martial arts. Baojia, despite Giovanni’s personal reservations, would be an excellent teacher.
“We’ll talk later; I’m sure she’ll consider it,” he said. “In the meantime, try not to bruise any internal organs on my woman, Tenzin.”
“Hey!” Beatrice scowled and smacked his arm. “Enough with the ‘my woman’ stuff already.”
“Really?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. She blushed and looked at the bowl of noodle soup the servant had just placed in front of her.
“Well,” Stephen said when the servant finally closed the door. “Speaking of awkward silences, let’s talk about what’s been keeping me running around the globe for the past thirteen years, shall we?”
Giovanni leaned forward. “First, do you know where Andros’s library is?”
Stephen shrugged. “When I escaped, it was in Lorenzo’s villa in Perugia, but who knows where it is now! I’m sure he moved it; it could be any number of places.”
Giovanni sat back, stunned into silence by the simple confirmation of the mystery he’d followed for so long. He felt Beatrice’s hand grasp his own, and he looked over at her. She had tears in her eyes as she stared at him, but he gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand.
He heard Stephen still speaking. “You knew about the library, right?”
Giovanni looked up, his voice a little hoarse when he finally spoke.
“No, Stephen. I have suspected for some time, but when Lorenzo and I parted many years ago, I thought my father’s and uncle’s collections had been lost or burned in Savaranola’s bonfires.”
Stephen’s mouth dropped in horror. “No wonder you were looking for me. Andros’s library was… magnificent! It would take a thousand years to detail it. The tablets. The scrolls.” Stephen turned to his daughter. “Beatrice, Andros had scrolls from Alexandria. Things from Baghdad that he’d rescued from the Mongols. Books humanity thought had been lost for—”
“Dad,” Beatrice interrupted. “Trust me when I say, we could talk about that library for years—and probably someday, we will. But right now, I think there’s one book we really need to know about.”
“Of course.” Stephen nodded, taking a deep breath and leaning back in his seat, though Giovanni could still see the energy snapping off him. “Of course. I just… I had no idea you had no confirmation of its existence, Giovanni. I’d be happy—”
“Another time, Stephen.” Tenzin rolled her eyes. “Tell them about the manuscript. Tell them about Geber’s work.”
“Geber?” Giovanni’s ears perked up. “I wondered. So it was alchemy, or early chemistry? A lost manuscript? An experiment?”
“An incomplete work, but his greatest achievement. Of that, I have no doubt.”
“Okay,” Beatrice broke in. “Geber. I know I’ve heard the name, but remind me.”
Giovanni turned to her. “Jabir ibn Hayyan. He was called Geber during my time, Tesoro, but he was an eighth century Persian alchemist.”
“One of the first to apply modern scientific methods to his work,” Stephen said. “He was hugely influential in the Middle East and later in Europe.”
Tenzin piped up. “His work mostly related to the artificial creation of life. Not achievable, that we know of, but his formulas held promise and were better tested than others of the time. He wrote in deliberately cryptic ways, so many of his original formulas are still a mystery.”
“But what is so special about this book? The book you stole, Dad? Why is it worth killing for?”
“‘Knowledge is power,’” Giovanni murmured, still haunted by the words of his father. He shook his head and squeezed Beatrice’s hand. “Humanity steals it. Trades it. Covets it. Many have killed for it. What is the knowledge that Lorenzo seeks from this, De Novo?”
Stephen sighed and spread his hands on the table.
“Life. The secret mankind has sought for centuries. Geber found the elixir of life. He discovered its source.”
Beatrice shook her head. “That’s not possible, that’s—”
“And it’s not just for humans.”
Chapter Four
Mount Penglai, China
August 2010
“The elixir of… life?”
Beatrice could hear the skepticism dripping in Giovanni’s voice.
Stephen only nodded. “Yes, the elixir of life.”