Page 58 of Night's Reckoning
“That was three hundred years ago, and that man was a violent bully and a cheat. He needed to die.”
“But you didn’t explain that to Gio, did you? You just killed the guy and then let Gio stay mad at you for ages. He never took revenge for that. He never even challenged you.”
“That doesn’t mean I scare him.”
Ben leaned against the small sink. “No. But Giovanni would never let his guard down around you. As much as you both care about each other, there will always be a wall.”
“And you don’t have walls?”
“Of course I do.” Ben took a deep breath. “You just keep flying over them.”
She floated over and hovered in front of his face. She didn’t speak, she just stared at him. Ben took another drink of water, not once looking away.
“You’re not scared of me,” she muttered.
“Nope. If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it years ago.” He reached up and tapped her nose. “Miserable little troll.”
“My father isn’t scared of me.”
Ben cocked his head. “No?”
“Why would he be scared of me?” She narrowed her eyes. “He’s my sire. He’s more powerful than me.”
“Fear isn’t always about power.” Ben sat down on the edge of the bench, took off the T-shirt he’d been sleeping in, and rifled through his duffel bag to find a new one. “Why did you come in here, Tenzin?”
“Because I’m bored.” She flopped down on his bunk, lifting her feet in the air and touching her toes. “Why aren’t you insisting on uncomfortable conversations? We’ve been talking for ten minutes, and you haven’t brought up Puerto Rico once. Or what happened at my house.”
Well, he couldn’t say she wasn’t direct.
Ben pulled on a fresh T-shirt. “I haven’t brought any of that up because I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“Don’t you know?” He looked up and stared at her until her eyes met his. “Hasn’t your supernatural vision shown you exactly what I’m thinking right now, Tiny? Haven’t you seen it all? Known it all? Doesn’t history just repeat itself over and over?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Not always.”
He slid over to her, on his knees beside her while she lay in his bed. “You can’t see what I’m going to do, or what I want, because as many years as you’ve been alive, there’s only ever been oneme. There will only ever be one me.”
Tenzin kept her eyes on him; her body was frozen.
The cabin was silent, but it wasn’t. The boat creaked and rocked. Waves licked against its metal skin, and in the distance he could hear crew members shouting at each other while Korean pop music played in the galley.
“You want to know what I’m thinking about?” Ben reached over and tucked a piece of Tenzin’s hair behind her ear. “I’m thinking about whether the conversation weneedto have is one I evenwantto have.”
“I see.”
“I doubt it.” Ben stood and held out his hand. “Come on. I think it’s time to go up to the deck. Kadek will want to brief us on what they found today. Hopefully that will help with the boredom.”
* * *
“From reportswe’ve received from our people”—Kadek was pacing in the conference room—“we know the search area is still undisturbed. Since we determined that the site could be the wreck of theQamar Jadid, we’ve had immortals in the area watching it.”
Johari, Fabia, Tenzin, and Cheng were sitting around the huge table, looking at the giant map Kadek had put up on the wall.
“Cheng told Zhang that the wreck waslikelytheQamar Jadid,” Ben said. “So don’t we already know where it is?”
“Not exactly.” The stocky vampire continued pacing. “The wreck was found by a fisherman. He identified it as a dhow. Said it was relatively intact. There were a number of other clues that led us to believe it might be Arosh’s ship, but we don’t know the exact site. The fisherman didn’t have a GPS. He tried to find it again, he said, but he couldn’t. He could only give us a general area. That is what we’ve been watching.”
