Read Online A Fall of Water by Elizabeth Hunter - Free Book Online Page B

nodded with a grin. “I think I’ve finally identified the four original donors.”
    He sat up and leaned over the spread notebooks. “How? You’ve been looking for months.”
    Beatrice opened her notebook and handed it to him. “I don’t have them exactly, but I’ve been making notes every time he mentions them in his journals, and I finally found a reference to the one I’d been missing, the earth donor.”
    “What did you find?” He began paging through her notes, deciphering the strange shorthand she had developed since she had turned. Most vampires developed some sort of unique language for their thoughts over time. Since their minds moved more rapidly than mortals, it was the best way to record thoughts and had the added benefit of concealing their meaning from the casual reader. To anyone else, Beatrice’s writing would have been gibberish; Giovanni alone could read it.
    “What is this?” He pointed toward an unknown symbol. “This is new.”
    “It stands for ‘ Aethiop .’”
    “‘Aethiop?’ You mean the earth donor was Ethiopian?”
    She nodded with a grin. “Yep, and she—”
    “She?”
    “Uh-huh, another surprise. The others were clearly male, but this one was definitely female because Geber notes that preliminary testing on her blood showed no discernible difference because of sex.”
    “Which would only be notable if her sex was different.” Giovanni smiled. “Nicely done, Tesoro.”
    “So, we have his names for the four, which all indicate their origin... except for his friend.”
    Giovanni paged through the notebook. “The Greek, the Numidian, the Aethiop, and ‘my dear friend.’”
    Beatrice sighed. “I don’t want to make assumptions, because medieval Kufa was so diverse.”
    He nodded. “It was in decline, in a political sense, during Geber’s lifetime, but it was an active center of learning and scholarship, so it could have been a friend from any number of backgrounds. Arab and Persian are the most likely, but many vampires were drawn to the Middle East during that period because there was so much going on.”
    “He does use the medieval Persian word for ‘friend’ so that could be significant.”
    Giovanni shook his head. “It could just as easily not be significant. All his personal journals were written in Persian. And if we are looking for your father’s contact in Rome, it could be less than helpful. Livia has always kept a very diverse court... well, diverse for a Roman.”
    She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
    “She takes pride in having tokens from all areas of the Roman Empire, thinks it adds to the ‘imperial’ quality. Shows how magnanimous she is. So, all of these, Greek, Numidian, Ethiopian, any of these would be common in the Roman court. Nothing particularly notable there. We’ll have to wait and see who’s been keeping her company the last few years. It changes all the time with a few notable exceptions. Rome is probably the most ‘international’ of the European immortal courts.”
    “But old. We’re looking for older vampires, for sure.”
    He shrugged. “The experiments were conducted around 800 A.D.? We’re looking for four vampires over a thousand years old. In Rome, it’s not uncommon. Though the majority of the population is fairly young, there are so many older vampires who come and go that one of a thousand years would not stand out.”
    She scowled. “Well, thanks for raining on my parade, Captain Sunshine.”
    He chuckled and put the notebook down. “However, this is exceptional work, as always. I don’t tell you enough how brilliant you are.”
    “No, you really don’t.”
    Beatrice was still pretending to pout, so he pushed the notebooks aside to grab her hand and pull her toward him. “You’re brilliant... beautiful.”
    “Yes, keep it coming,” she said, waving her other hand.
    “Smart, sexy.” He pulled her to straddle his lap and began running his fingers along her spine, enjoying the shiver of