Ben blinked. “What the fuck?”
“Do you know what happens to our bodies if we die?” Tenzin asked.
Ben frowned. “We turn back to our element within days.”
“True.” Beatrice spoke for the first time from the back of the library table. “But there is one odd quirk. If we lose a limb—any body part really—it will usually decompose normally. The amnis seems to… abandon that limb, and it becomes just another human relic.”
“So Mithra cut off vampires’ arms to make—”
“Oh no, he used his own arm,” Giovanni said. “Reportedly. He cut it off, waited for it to grow again, then cut it off again.”
Ben blinked. “I’m sorry, that is so messed up. Why would he—”
“No one really knows, but he was trying to accomplish a unique goal,” Giovanni said. “Mithra believed that he had discovered the secret for a single vampire to control every element and, for some reason, that was how it needed to be preserved.”
“Holy shit.” Ben sat gape-mouthed, and the thought churned Tenzin’s stomach.
She had cultivated power in her lifetime, learned to master her element and bend the air to her will. She knew others of similar skill with their own elements and respected them highly even if they were enemies.
But no one vampire needed that much power. No one good. No one bad.
No one.
“That’s why we’re here,” Tenzin said. “I have decided that we need to find the bone scroll and keep it from Arosh or steal it back if he has it already.”
4
Ben was stunned by the revelation, so he wasn’t expecting the quiet snort from Beatrice.
“You decided,” she muttered. “Yeah, you decide a lot, Tenzin.”
Ben turned to his aunt. “Hey. I told you—”
“You told us that Zhang came and laid this all out, but I’m not getting a lot of facts here.” Beatrice’s voice cut through the silence of the library. “I hear a lot of rumors and a lot of fairy tales, but no one knows if this actually exists, Zhang has only heard rumors, and now Tenzin wants to drag you to the other side of the planet—again!—on a wild-goose chase that could put you in a hell of a lot of danger, Ben.”
He was stunned by the bitterness in her voice. “Beatrice.”
Tenzin stood. “Why don’t we go outside and talk.”
“Talk.” Beatrice rose as well. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Why don’t we go talk, Tenzin?”
The two stormed out of the house, and Ben could almost see the electricity between them. He tried to follow, but Giovanni grabbed his arm.
“Wait.”
“They’re going to go kill each other.”
“No.” He frowned. “Not kill. Possibly maim, but they’ll recover.”
Ben’s eyes went wide. “And you’re okay with that?”
Giovanni patted Ben’s shoulder. “You still have a lot to learn about women.”
Tenzin followed Beatrice at a distance. The cool, polite mask was gone, and the anger she had been repressing had simmered over into a raging boil. Beatrice walked to their sparring studio at the back of the house, next to the indoor pool.
“I understand why you’re still angry with me,” Tenzin said. “If you want to—”
“Angry?” Beatrice reached for a dagger off the wall and pivoted, flinging it close enough to Tenzin’s head to gust her hair off her neck. “You do not understand what I’m feeling if you think it’s anger, Tenzin.”
The sensation of the knife whispering against her skin set Tenzin’s teeth on edge. “Feel free to thank me anytime.”
Beatrice grabbed one of the hook swords she favored and didn’t wait for Tenzin to grab a weapon before she swung it in a circle over her head. “You think I should thank you?”
“Absolutely.” Tenzin flipped heels over head, grabbing a pike from a bracket on the wall as she landed. “We both know you wanted him changed too.”
“Only if he wanted it!”
“Bullshit.” Tenzin parried another strike from Beatrice’s blade. “If he’d been dying in your arms, what would you have done?”
“I would have protected him,” Beatrice yelled. “He wouldn’t have been in a situation where—”
“You and Gio put him in that position when he was a child!” Tenzin knocked her blade off-balance and thrust the head of the pike toward Beatrice. “He had to kill a man when he was sixteen years old! Were you there? No. I was.”
“Fuck you!” Beatrice grabbed the second sword and hooked it on the first, creating a lethal, whirring orchestra of blades coming ever closer to Tenzin’s neck.
The wooden shaft of the pike cracked; Tenzin tossed it aside and reached for a blade of her own. The steel clashed between them, and sparks flew in the darkness. Beatrice was an expert swordswoman, and since Tenzin was keeping to the ground, they were evenly matched.
The clanging ring of steel filled the air, and every instinct in Tenzin’s body went on alert. She had to focus everything she had on not killing her opponent.
That would be bad.
“He cried in my arms,” Beatrice said. “He kept saying, ‘I might have lived. I might have been okay, B.’ Did you even once consider taking him to the goddamn hospital?”
Tenzin nearly tripped. “And let the human butchers gamble with his life?”
“Well, what were you doing?” Beatrice reached for the handle of her second sword and gripped it in her left hand.
“I saved his life.” Tenzin locked her sword in Beatrice’s handle and pulled up, dragging the woman closer. “I refused to gamble with his life. I had to be sure; I didn’t have any other choice.”
“So you took him to your father?” Beatrice was crying bloody red tears that tracked down her face. “After everything Zhang did to you, you gave Ben to him?”
Tenzin locked Beatrice’s swords in position and pushed. Her face was inches away, and Tenzin could smell the salt-and-copper tang of grief and anger.
“I took him to the most powerful vampire I knew,” she said quietly. “The only one I knew I had leverage over. I could not gamble with his life or his eternity. Even when I had to crawl across stone on my hands and knees to beg for him.” Tenzin pulled the swords closer. “You, of all living beings, know what that means to me.”
Beatrice’s face was blank. There was still anger, but there was also pain and confusion. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Tenzin asked. “He is mine.” She shoved Beatrice back, releasing the tension holding their swords hostage. “You are my dear friend and Stephen’s own blood, but if you try to drive a wedge between us, Beatrice De Novo, our friendship will end and your eternity will be forfeit to my rage.”
Tenzin threw her sword on the ground and left the room. There was nothing else to say. She had no other argument, no silver tongue. Beatrice would cool her anger or they would have war. Ben was standing on the edge of the practice arena, leaning against the wall.
She walked out the door, and he followed her in silence.