She settled into the seat across from him and Ben kept driving. By his calculation, they had a little over two hours of full night left. Then Tenzin could crawl in the cubbyhole for the rest of the trip, as far as he was concerned. He had half a mind to leave her in the middle of Xinjiang and fly home. Only the lure of the gold and garnet Scythian necklace carefully packed with the rest of her cache and surrounded by wilted vegetables made him stick with the truck.
Mercenary? Maybe. But then, he was traveling with a mercenary. Tenzin didn’t lie about that. Why would she when she enjoyed it?
Ben glanced at her, but her eyes were closed and she was doing the meditating thing she did when she was tuning the world out.
The question of Tenzin’s mental state was one Ben had thought long and hard over.
She was crazy. That had never been in question. Ben figured that anyone who’d lived as long as Tenzin and seen a fraction of what he imagined—and Ben had a vivid imagination and a good grasp of history—would be unbalanced. She had moments when he could swear she wasn’t even in the room with him. Moments when she’d turn to him and a second of insanity was caught in her eyes. Cold. In that second, Ben knew she didn’t know him. Didn’t know anything except whatever inner rage forced her to keep living as long as she had.
Then she blinked and she was herself again.
Crazy? Yes. And funny. Sarcastic. Caring. Pragmatic. The oddest combination of child and ancient he’d ever seen or ever would see.
Ben could accept it, because it was just… Tenzin. If he didn’t want to deal with it, he wouldn’t spend time with her.
He knew his anger would wane eventually, and she’d have him again. The next time she had some scheme or adventure, she’d lure him into it and he’d go, knowing it would all go to hell at some point and he’d deal.
Because it was Tenzin.
Next to him, she pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around them, settling her chin on her knees as she gazed at the moon. He could see the slight smile curve her lips from the corner of his eye.
“You like the rush,” she whispered.
“Tenzin—”
“Someday, you’ll stop lying to yourself about it. It doesn’t make you a bad person, you know, to like the rush. It makes you feel alive. Reminds you that you are the one who survived.”
Ben tried not to think about it. Because then he’d start questioning his own mental state.
“I want to live as peaceful a life as I can in this world,” he said. “Picking fights is generally a bad idea for a mortal living with vampires.”
“There’s a solution to that.”
“Not one that I’m interested in.”
“Benjamin,” she whispered. “Why do you value something that only holds you back?”
I don’t want to be like you.
No, that wasn’t it. Not exactly. But he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Might not ever be ready.
He took an exit and pulled over. They needed gas and he needed a promise.
He turned to her. “Tenzin.”
“Benjamin.” She smiled, obviously amused at the gravity in his face. But he was serious. Deadly serious.
“I want you to promise me something.”
“That depends on the promise.” Her eyes were calculating now.
“Promise me you’ll never turn me.”
Tenzin’s grey eyes narrowed.
“Ben—”
“Even if I’m dying,” he said, almost choking on the words. Ben lived a dangerous life and there were no guarantees. Dying young was a distinct possibility. “Even if I’m dying, Tenzin. Do not turn me. I want you to promise me.”
She stared at him just long enough to reassure him she’d thought about it. “I promise I won’t turn you.”
That was way too easy.
Tenzin hopped out of the truck before he could say another word.
“We should get tea,” she said. “Then get back on the road. It’s a long way to Shanghai.”
Night turned into day, then night again. Over and over as they drove across country. The papers Cheng had arranged for them worked. So much that after the fourth night Tenzin didn’t even stay in the truck bed. She’d only had to use amnis once, and that had been when the official had been more interested in the lithe young woman traveling in a cargo truck than in checking Ben’s papers.
That time it was Tenzin holding Ben back from violence.
They still drove mostly at night, though sometimes Ben bullied Tenzin into a daytime drive so he could see some of the country. Five thousand miles. Almost seventy hours of driving, and that wasn’t counting traffic. They crossed deserts and climbed mountains. Up and over, the highway often following the same route that caravans had traveled for hundreds or thousands of years. The vastness humbled him.
Jiuquan and Zhongwei, vast spaces and mountains of sand. Guyuan and Xi’an, the Han influence growing stronger. He made Tenzin stop in Xi’an for two days so he could take in a few of the sights, but he could have spent a week there. She buzzed past the ancient belltower at night, scaring the bats, and he jogged along the old city walls as the sun rose. Ben loved Xi’an, but he knew he’d have to come back. The weight of all the gold hidden in quickly rotting vegetables made touring the terra cotta warriors somewhat less alluring.
He’d stopped thinking in English and had switched to Mandarin somewhere in the past week. Tenzin spoke to him only in Mandarin, and his spoken language had reached the point where the officials who examined their papers didn’t question Ben, they just assumed he was from Xinjiang, as his forged documents claimed.