Page 5 of Night's Reckoning
“You know, this is why we never got together. You’re a worrier.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really?That’swhy we never got together? Are you committed to that story?”
“It’s not too late.” He blew kisses at the camera. “I know you find me irresistible.” His right eye was completely swollen shut; his lips were cracked and bleeding. He had a dark bruise blossoming on his left cheekbone.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Irresistible. That’s definitely the first thing that comes to mind. I’m worried about brain damage. Clean up, get some sleep, and call me in three hours or so help me, I won’t call Angela, I’ll call someoneelseI know you’re avoiding. Chloe has her number.”
He glared at the screen. “Over the line, Fabi.”
She looked chagrined. “Ben—”
He snapped the laptop closed and shoved it away. Then he set the alarm on his phone for three and a half hours and carefully walked to the narrow shower in the apartment bathroom. He kept the lights off, left the hall door open, and turned the water to lukewarm. After stripping off his clothes, he walked in and immediately forgot his irritation with Fabia in a wave of pain.
Everythinghurt. The cuts across his skin. His muscles. His fists. He soaped up and washed the blood, oil, and grit from his body. The worst was cleaning his feet. Not only were they cut and sore, he had to bend in half to wash them. He nearly lost his balance so many times he ended up sitting on the floor of the shower, gingerly picking gravel from beneath the skin and being happy he was currently living alone so no one else could see his humiliation.
After he’d gotten his feet clean, he stood and leaned his head against the tile, letting the hard spray of water pound against his back, soothing a little of the ache.
I don’t poach.
His fingers touched the fang marks on his neck. They were too faint for human eyes, but vampires would see them. See the vicious, uncontrolled bite of a vampire in bloodlust. See the carefully healed scars she’d sealed with her own blood.
I do understand what she sees in you, Benjamin Vecchio.
She wasn’t gone. She was never gone. Except that she was. She was a gaping hole in his life, and nothing he did seemed to fill it. Not fighting. Not work. Not travel. Not drinking.
Worse than that, there were letters. Three of them were sitting in the kitchen in Rome, carefully addressed to him and bearing the seal of the Eight Immortals on Penglai Island in China.
He couldn’t bring himself to open them. He’d been hiding in Rome for the past four months, dreading a return to an empty apartment in New York. Chloe was gone. Tenzin was gone. Chloe was at Gavin’s, and he wasn’t sure where Tenzin was. All he knew was that she was probably keeping tabs on him.
Infuriating vampire.
It had been six months since he’d seen Tenzin. Six months since she’d run away from whatever twisted relationship they’d been falling into.
Ben didn’t know what the letters from Penglai were about. He didn’t want to know. He knew he should open them, but he didn’t want to deal with whatever inevitability he’d be faced with once he did. And every night that passed, it grew a little bit easier to leave them hidden away.
* * *
He was changingtrains in Florence the next time he managed more than a cursory check-in with Fabia.
“Did you tell Filomena I’m on my way?” A mother and child passed him. The little girl’s eyes went wide while the mother carefully looked away. “I want to get this job done with and get back home.”
Ben knew he still looked frightening, but he’d used a little of the theater makeup Chloe had taught him how to apply in New York. He could at least pass without people gawking and staring.
“Her Majesty said she’d meet you at ‘your spot’—her words not mine—at eleven o’clock tonight. Do you know what she’s talking about, and does that give you enough time?”
“Just a sec.” Ben flashed his ticket at the conductor and boarded the first-class compartment for the final leg to Naples. He quickly found a seat near the back corner by the window. He stowed his bag in the overhead compartment and took a seat before he answered. “That’s plenty of time.” He tipped his head back and leaned against the seat. “I’ll get there a little after seven. And I know where she’ll be.”
“How long are you staying in Naples?”
“That depends on how friendly Filomena is.”
“Ben, be serious.”
He smiled. Then he winced. His lip was still really painful. “I’ll leave in the morning. I miss my bed.”
“Do you have accommodations in Naples arranged?”
“I have a place.” While Chloe acted as his general assistant and human external hard drive in New York, Fabia had taken over his life in Rome. She was between jobs at the moment and wasn’t teaching at the university this semester, so she had the time and Ben needed the help.
