He roused himself and, ignoring his snoring seatmate, shoved his way into the aisle to grab his bag from the overhead bin. Personal space, he had quickly learned when he landed in Asia, was not a universal value. He stretched his cramped legs and barely winced when the formidable grandmother in front of him knocked him on the jaw with her suitcase.
She said something to him in what he guessed was Uyghur. She said it again, scowling at his clueless look.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” he said in Mandarin, the language he’d been practicing for three years.
Three years and he was still struggling. For the perfectionist he’d become under the training of his adopted uncle, Giovanni Vecchio, it was unacceptable. Ben was hoping this trip would finally cement the language in his mind. Flip whatever switch was holding him back from true fluency.
The old woman gave him an odd look. She cocked her head and looked him up and down. Frowned again, then turned her back. Ben cautiously glanced around the plane, only to realize something astonishing.
He blended in. That’s why the old woman had given him a strange look. She had expected him to understand her.
Taking a deep breath, the tension in his shoulders relaxed, and Ben felt more at ease than he had in days.
“Xièxiè,” he murmured to the pretty flight attendant as he shuffled off the plane, hiking his backpack on his shoulder. He strode through the heated tube of the jetway, wondering how hot it would be outside.
It was late summer, and Beijing had been an oven he was happy to leave. He wanted to go back to the city when he had more time—the energy had been intoxicating—but maybe he’d pick spring. Or fall. Maybe even the dead of winter. Anything but the end of June. But Ürümqi was higher elevation and inland. According to what he could find online, Ben was expecting weather a lot like Los Angeles. Warm during the day, but cooler at night. Nothing near the sauna-like conditions of the Chinese coast.
He checked the forecast on his phone as he walked. Mobile phones were as common in China as they were in Southern California, and everyone he’d seen, from the flirting schoolgirl to the Buddhist monk in saffron robes, had one. The vampires, of course, would not.
But so far, he hadn’t seen too many of them.
Being a human raised by vampires had its perks. He had sole access to the computer and assorted electronic gadgets in the household. He had little to no supervision during the daytime. And he’d been raised in the kind of luxury since the age of twelve that most of the world could only dream of.
Of course, he’d been under threat of death from his aunt and uncle’s enemies for just as long.
By the time he was fourteen, Ben Vecchio knew how to wrestle an opponent twice his size to the ground. By the time he was fifteen, he could shoot an array of firearms, fence with reasonable skill, and use a knife to kill someone in complete and utter silence.
He’d killed a man at sixteen, but it hadn’t been silent.
In the five years since it happened, Ben managed to avoid violence whenever possible. And other than an unfortunate run-in with some Russian-Mexican earth vampires, he’d managed pretty well. He liked the rush, but at heart, part of him was still his mother’s son. Being noticed made him squirm. He enjoyed surprising people. Flirting around the corners of their awareness until he won. It didn’t much matter what he won. Money. Girls. A stupid bet. Ben liked winning, but he didn’t like attention.
Which made traveling in Asia something of a shock.
As he walked to collect his bag, he noticed it again. No one looked. No one stared.
“Maybe my favorite place in China so far,” he muttered.
It was an uncomfortable thing for him, to be so visible. And in China, he was visible in more than one world. Being the adopted son of two prominent immortals required a visa of a completely different sort than the official government variety. His Aunt Beatrice was the one who’d contacted the Elders at Penglai Island with the information he’d be traveling in their territory “for educational purposes.” Since his aunt had been given the title of scribe on Penglai Island, her word was good enough.
Giovanni had still warned him.
“That region is unstable in the immortal world. It always has been. Be careful. Even the Elders keep vampires in Xinjiang on a very long leash. Don’t draw any attention to yourself and don’t piss anyone off.”
He’d only spotted two vampires since he’d arrived. Once at the airport in Beijing and once outside his hotel. Then he’d caught a plane for Ürümqi and hadn’t seen one since.
Of course, the sun hadn’t gone down yet.
He wasn’t quite sure what anyone knew about Tenzin. Tenzin was, as always, vague in her movements. But Ben knew her sire was one of the Elders, so he figured she’d be okay.
For once, it wasn’t the vampires making him feel out of place for being human.
His looks—fair skin with an olive undertone, dark curly hair, the thick-lashed brown eyes his mother had given him—marked him from everywhere and nowhere when he was traveling in much of the world. He could be Italian, French, or Middle Eastern. South American or Greek. It was a convenient appearance he’d come to appreciate as he grew older.
He’d been stuck just around six feet for two years, so he figured he’d finished the growth spurt that hit him in high school. Not bad, considering his bastard of a father was a midget. His mother had claimed her brothers were tall, regal men who charmed the beauties of Beirut.
His mother had claimed a lot of things.