But she nodded anyway, even though Beatrice had a hard time feeling very reassured as the smoke grew thicker, blotting out the stars in the night sky. She had little concept of the passage of time, and she sat up straight when she heard a whistling tune.

It was the children’s song about a cricket that Giovanni would often sing to her, but as the sound of the whistle grew louder, she shrank back, dreading its approach. It was not Giovanni.

Lorenzo’s blond hair shone silver in the moonlight as he bounced down the stairs carrying a wrapped package clutched to this chest. Three guards followed him as he descended. He still sported the grey scholar’s robes he had worn in the Hall of the Eight Immortals as he stepped toward the bamboo raft.

Beatrice turned to her father in panic.

“The book,” Stephen breathed out as he watched his sire with wide eyes.

Lorenzo’s steps halted immediately, and he turned and eyed the bushes where they were hiding. Beatrice heard a taunting laugh come from his throat.

“A book in the hand,” he called as he stepped toward them, “and it sounds like two De Novos in the bush.”

Her father rolled to the right and into the clearing, drawing his sword in one swift movement. Beatrice drew her own and darted around the trees behind Lorenzo’s guards as Stephen rose to face his sire.

“Well,” Lorenzo chirped, “this night just keeps getting better!”

Chapter Twenty

Wuyi Mountains

Fujian Province

China

November 2010

Giovanni threw fire into another whirlwind that Tenzin tossed his direction, the scent of blood and ash thick in his nostrils. The bodies of Lu’s monks lay scattered in the courtyard as he and Tenzin eliminated the last of Lorenzo’s water vampires who guarded the outer gates of the monastery.

“One more!” Tenzin swung her arm around, tossing the vampire toward him.

The dark-haired guard fell in crumbled heap, only to rise and run toward Giovanni. These were not the ineffectual spawn that Lorenzo had been creating; these vampires were far more formidable and bore European features that were further confirmation that Lorenzo had allies that remained a mystery. Allies with deep resources to hire or inspire the loyalty of such fierce opponents.

It was taking longer than he’d planned for Tenzin and him to work through them.

Giovanni sidestepped the guard, who tried to spray him with water to extinguish the fire that coursed over his body, but Tenzin drew the wind from the attacking vampire, sucking the water toward herself and allowing Giovanni to light his opponent on fire. He screamed and ran toward the stairs to escape, but Tenzin caught him up in a gust, pinning him to a stone wall as he turned black and flaked away.

“This is taking too long!”

“That’s the last one.”

“I smell blood in the monastery.” He tried to suppress the flames on his body. “Let me just…” He took deep breaths, forcing the fire back so he could enter the stone rooms without harming Tenzin or any remaining monks.

They had seen the crumpled bodies of Lu’s monks from a distance as they approached. The journey through the mountains had gone swiftly, but not swiftly enough to beat Lorenzo’s men. At least twenty human bodies littered the courtyard and five vampires had patrolled the gates.

“Are you ready to go inside?” Tenzin asked with cold eyes.

He nodded, taking a deep, calming breath. “Yes.”

They stole silently through the doors, searching, but quickly bypassing the meeting hall where the monks had met to pray. He forced himself to ignore the lifeless bodies that lay in the shadows. Giovanni followed Tenzin, who quickly wound her way back into the mountain, following tangled corridors and dark passageways that always seemed to end with more bloodied corpses. The sheltered monks of Lu Dongbin’s order had been decimated.

Finally, at the end of one corridor, Tenzin’s eyes darted to the right. She took a deep breath before she ducked under a thick tapestry that hung on one wall. There was a small stone door, no bigger than a gravestone, that she pulled back before she ducked inside.

Giovanni followed. He heard a scuffling in the chamber and quickly lit a flame that shot to the top of the small room. A young monk, no more than sixteen or seventeen, stood, spreading his arms to guard the clutch of small boys behind him. The young monks wore saffron robes and tears in their eyes.

“We are not here to hurt you,” Tenzin said softly. “Where have they gone?”

The young monk examined them before he seemed to decide they were trustworthy. “I do not know. Master Fu-han woke me and told me to gather the young ones here to hide them while he went to the library. I only did what he told me.”

“And you have not seen the strangers?”

“I saw no one. But many have come through the halls before you. What has happened in the monastery?”

“There has been an attack. You cannot stay here—” Tenzin’s eyes darted toward the door in panic before she relaxed. “It is Baojia.” She turned to Giovanni. “I will find a safe place for these boys, and then we search for Lorenzo.”

Giovanni nodded and stepped into the corridor where he found Baojia waiting for them. “Where is Beatrice?”

“At the riverbank with Stephen. It was deserted. All of Zhongli’s guards were there, dead.”

The boys filed into the passageway and began following Tenzin down the corridor.

“I wondered what had happened to them. There were others in the courtyard,” Giovanni murmured. “We killed them.”