“The kitchen.”
“Excellent.” Gavin left him on the lawn and strode toward the house without a backward glance.
Ben watched Gavin leave. He spotted Sadia running through the backyard, Dema trailing behind her. He could hear Giovanni and Beatrice speaking quietly in the library and Zain making small talk with Chloe.
It was familiar. It was home.
It was suffocating.
Ben took off into the air, grateful for the soft cocoon of coastal fog that blanketed the San Gabriel Valley that night. He moved soundlessly through the clouds, moving by instinct and scent toward the heavy wisteria arbors at the Huntington Gardens.
Descending into the rose garden, he spotted the gates of the Japanese garden and walked toward them.
In the middle of the night, the park was serene. The only sounds were an owl hooting in the distance, a mockingbird call, and the quick flap of bats hunting through the gardens from their roosts in the palm trees.
Ben walked through the gate of the Japanese garden and sat under the wisteria arbor to survey the silent sanctuary. He’d spent summers here as a child. When he closed his eyes, he could see the sago palms and maple trees bathed in golden sunlight, the pools with darting koi, their tails cutting through the reflected sky.
You will never see that again.
You will never see your shadow during the day or feel the sun on your skin.
You will never watch a sunrise or a sunset.
It was a process, this litany. Like deliberately cutting off a limb that was already dead. Every now and then he forgot. Then he remembered and that limb twitched again, a phantom pain spiking through his heart.
“I remember what I said that night. But I’m not that man anymore. I’m not a man at all. I don’t know what I am.”
“You are still you.”
Was he? Some nights he felt like himself, and some nights he was so filled with overwhelming anger he felt like he was choking on it. A year after he’d fled to Mongolia with Zhang, he flew out over the mountains and screamed as long and as loud as he could.
He felt better for a night. When he woke up the next night, the swelling rage nearly overtook him again.
“All things have roots and branches. Every being has their end and their beginning.”
Zhang’s words came back to Ben as he sat in the silence of the garden.
Roots and branches.
“We don’t have an end. We’re immortal.”
“All things have ends, and one immortal may have many lives. That does not mean there are no endings and no beginnings, but when one branch is cut off, another grows. You will have to find peace with your end before you can grow into your beginning.”
Roots and branches. Beginnings and endings.
His human life had ended. A branch cut off.
Ben stood and walked through the garden, over the bridges, and up to the teahouse, climbing to the Zen garden and the bonsai garden beyond.
“Where one branch is cut, a bud will grow.”
“So this life is a bud?”
“In a sense. If you want new growth, the old must be cut away.”
Ben didn’t feel new. He felt shackled by his roots, but he was unwilling to pull away. He’d worked hard to find people and places that were his own. Cutting them off wasn’t an option.
“All branches grow from the same root.” Zhang was pruning his grape vines in Penglai. “Cut off this branch, and the new bud comes. But it all comes from the same root. The root never changes. Will this branch have different grapes than the old one? Of course not. The root stays true.”
Ben walked along the path above the creek, through the dark canopy of camellia bushes, toward the Chinese garden in the distance.
“You are still you.”
She didn’t know. How could she? She was so old, the idea of her mortal life so remote it was a myth. The man Ben had been was dead, and the vampire he was now…
He didn’t know who he was.
Ben passed through the camellias and walked under the cloudy sky again, the night sounds muffled by the clouds and the trees and the gurgle of running water.
He ducked under the round gate leading to the Chinese garden and took his shoes off, flexing his toes on the intricately patterned pebble mosaics that made up the garden.
A flash from the corner of his eye.
Ben froze as his eyes followed the moving shadow. He held his breath and listened.
Something was overhead. Something other than bats. Something…
A hint of amnis trickled through the air, the taste of cardamom and honey.
“Tenzin.” Rage punched through him and he rose into the sky, arrowing toward the shadow, but it was gone.
The scrape of tile near the teahouse.
“Tenzin!” Ben snarled as he raced in that direction, only to see the shadow fly from the curving roof and toward the pavilion that overlooked the lake. The shadow darted under the bridge, the water rippling out from the speed of her flight.
“Dammit.” She was too fast. “I know it’s you!”
Why haunt him? Why follow him?
The shadow flew over the gates of the garden and through the night. Ben followed, the wind tearing through his hair as he raced behind. He wasn’t fast enough; his control was too shaky. He felt the wind fighting him.
He thought he heard the echo of laughter as he passed through the alley of giant camellias leading toward a trickling stone fountain.
Ben hovered over the garden, listening to the water and the wind sweeping through the palm trees. The bats were back, flapping through the night as they feasted on insects.
“I know you’re there.” He didn’t need to speak loudly. “And I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m not interested. Leave me alone.”
Ben landed softly on the wet grass, realizing too late that he’d left his shoes back in the Chinese garden.
Shit.
Tenzin watched from her perch in the king palm tree near the desert garden as he took flight. He was getting faster and faster. His control was growing. She was glad he’d finally left Asia. Keeping tabs on him had been exhausting. He was far more adept at disappearing than she’d imagined.
It both frustrated and delighted her. Ben had never been boring in his human life, and he was proving to be a skilled opponent in his immortal one.
Very enjoyable.
Opponent for now, partner eventually.
She glanced at the bat eating a piece of fruit next to her. “He insists he wants to be left alone, but if that was truly the case, why did he chase me?”
The bat didn’t answer her.
“Agreed.” She drew up her knees and rested her chin on them. “He doesn’t know what he wants.” She glanced at the bat. “No, you’re right. He does know, he just doesn’t want to admit it.”
He wanted her. For what, he was probably unsure. But he wanted her, and that was a place to start. Maybe at first he would only want her help. Maybe he thought he wanted revenge.
He’d see the truth eventually. She would be patient.
She had all the time she needed now.
7
Gavin was drinking a glass of whiskey in the front yard when Ben landed back at the house.