Thump.

“I’m here for you.”

Thump.

“I will always come for you.”

Thump.

“Don’t you know how I adore you?”

Thump.

“You are my balance in this life.”

Thump.

“In every life.”

There came a force of wind in her ears.

“Forever.”

Thump.

Forever. Forever. Forever.

The wind grew louder, filling the room as she felt the first falter of her heart.

She dimly heard her father say something as Tenzin’s mouth pulled away. Her body was passed from one set of arms to another, more familiar, pair. The wind still roared through the room.

Forever.

Forever.

Forever.

The shriek grew. There was a banging and clamoring as the whirlwind took over, and she heard a door burst open. The roaring filled her ears as she felt the drip of blood at her lips.

Her eyelids fluttered closed.

Her heart fell silent.

His inhuman roar was the last thing she heard before the black void took her.

Chapter Thirteen

Mount Penglai, China

October 2010

Giovanni was engulfed in flames. His roar shook the room.

“Beatrice!”

Tenzin held his shoulders against the wall as the fire unfurled around him.

“No!” he raged as the smell of her blood filled the air.

He couldn’t hear her heart.

He couldn’t see her eyes.

Giovanni was trapped in Tenzin’s iron grasp as his lover’s blood flooded his friend’s body and turned her cheeks red. The blue fire burned his clothes and spread up the wall behind him as he continued to struggle.

“Let me go!”

He couldn’t hear her heart.

“No.”

The snarl ripped from his throat. “Release me, or I will kill you.”

“Her father is feeding her.”

Giovanni’s roar was inhuman. Stephen looked up in horror as he pressed his wrist to Beatrice’s mouth. Her lips weren’t moving.

He couldn’t see her eyes.

“You need to calm yourself.”

“I will kill you both!”

He heard another vampire enter the room, but his eyes never left Beatrice’s crumpled form. She lay lifeless on the cushions as her father forced his blood in her mouth.

He couldn’t hear her heart.

“Well, this was stupid.”

“Shut up, and help me hold him.”

He felt the pinch of a metal pike pierce his shoulder and the wall behind him, holding him as Tenzin’s wind forced the flames up the side of the practice room. The air was filled with smoke and fire.

“A little help with the flames, please.”

He saw Beatrice’s throat move once before Baojia blanketed him with a sheet of water drawn from the stream that cut through the room. He relaxed slightly when he saw her lips begin to move and latch onto Stephen’s wrist. Her father cradled her in his arms as Beatrice began to drink.

Giovanni slumped against the wall, Tenzin holding his shoulders while Baojia tugged the spear out of his flesh. He could not tear his eyes from her.

“Tenzin, let me go.”

“No.”

“I won’t kill Stephen.”

“I don’t really trust you right now.”

The flames flared again on his torso.

“Let me go!”

Baojia doused him again, but he still struggled against Tenzin’s hold.

“Calm down, my boy.”

“Let me go to her.”

“Her father is feeding her. Let him take care of her.”

“Tenzin!” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Please, bird-girl. Let me go.” When he opened his eyes, he stared into her grey ones, trying to ignore the flush of her cheeks, rich with Beatrice’s blood.

“Are you calm?”

He finally heard her heart give a faint thump, and a new trace of amnis began to drift across the room as Stephen’s blood entered her system. A familiar honeysuckle smell reached his nose.

“Please,” he begged. “Let me go, Tenzin. Let me go to my wife.”

She drew back in surprise. “What?”

“My wife,” he pleaded. “Let me go to Beatrice. I need to go to her.”

Her hands released him. “I did not see that.”

Giovanni rushed over, taking her limp hand and pressing it to his cheek as she continued to drink from her father’s wrist.

It was cold. The human warmth gone from her forever.

He pushed down the instinctive rage and grief to focus on Beatrice.

The new whisper of her energy comforted him, and he put his hands to her temples, searching for the familiar signature of her mind. Her scent was the same; fainter, as he knew it would be. Giovanni brushed her cheek with soft fingers as her father took his wrist away, biting it open again before he put it back to her mouth. Beatrice’s lips were stained with blood and rivulets dripped down her neck, mingling with Tenzin’s angry bite marks. He resisted the urge to heal her, knowing that any of his blood mingling with her own before she was fully turned could be tragic.

Stephen looked at him cautiously. “Did you say ‘my wife?’”

“Yes.” He brushed the hair away from her face. She was deathly pale.

“When?”

“We were married in Santiago months ago.”

Silence blanketed the room. The only sounds came from the new vampire suckling at her father’s wrist. Giovanni watched her with a single-minded focus, memorizing the rhythm of her lips and throat as she drank.