“You looked like fucking Spider-Man for a minute there.”
She smiled. “It’s not easy, but you could teach yourself if you want. It’s called parkour. I started studying it while I was still human. When I became a vamp… way cooler.”
“Parkour?”
“Parkour.”
Tenzin landed in the alley again, a delicate spray of blood across her cheek. She walked over, nodded at Ruby, and picked up the head and the body of the other vampire. He could see her favorite sword, a curved Mongolian saber designed for combat on horseback, strapped to her back. Tenzin never went anywhere without that sword.
“Thank you,” Tenzin said to Ruby when she landed again. “I am in your debt for protecting Benjamin.”
“Hey,” he said. “Standing right here.”
“No problem,” Ruby said. “And he holds his own pretty well.”
Tenzin sighed. “I am hoping he gets over this desire to be human. He’s much more vulnerable as a mortal.”
Ruby laughed.
“That’s enough, Tiny.” Ben looked up at the side of the building Ruby had crawled up. “What are we going to do with these guys?”
“They were both from Naples, and Oscar would have told me if anyone from Alfonso’s court had permission to enter the city. They were fair game if any of the Venetians got them anyway.”
“I’ll tell Oscar they were threatening me,” Ruby said. “He’ll smooth over anything with the council. Venetians may be a quiet lot, but they don’t like trespassers.” Ruby nodded at the roof of the building. “You can dump their bodies out in the lagoon.”
“Oh, I know a few places,” Tenzin said. “I do so love that splash. You two, get to the boat. I’ll meet you in Murano.”
❂
TEN minutes of listening to Oscar berate Ruby was more than enough for Ben. He was ready to murder the cranky old vampire. Though Oscar didn’t raise a hand to Ruby, he beat her with his voice.
“Enough,” Tenzin said. “I don’t need to be here for this. Punish your woman on your own time, Oscar.”
Oscar turned and bared his fangs at Tenzin before he turned back to Ruby. “Go to your room,” he snarled. “I don’t want to see you until tomorrow night.”
Ruby’s normally vivacious expression was gone. Her face was a mask. She looked down and nodded quietly before she left the workroom.
Ben started. “Ruby—”
“Shut up,” Tenzin said, slapping her hand against his chest. “Shut. Up. Oscar, we’re leaving.”
“I hope you like the coins,” he said, throwing his hammer down and shutting off his forge. “Because they’re the last job I’m going to do for you, Tenzin.”
“Fine,” she said. “I apologize if I caused any trouble.”
“Don’t bring that human around Ruby again.”
“Just remember I have ways of knowing,” she said in a low voice. “Never again, Oscar.”
“Out of my house!” he shouted. “And don’t come back!”
Tenzin pushed Ben out the door and down the street toward the dock.
“He is going to beat her,” Ben hissed. “Hurt her. And you’re going to just let him?”
“Oscar is not going to beat Ruby,” Tenzin said. “He’s going to shout and rail, but that’s all he’s going to do.”
Ben scrambled into the boat and glared at her as she floated in. “Oh yeah? How do you know?”
“Because he almost killed a friend of mine once,” Tenzin said calmly. “A woman who had been his lover. He lost his temper when she left him.”
Ben sat down, shocked into silence.
Ruby… He felt sick to his stomach for leaving her there.
“So I cut Oscar’s balls off and stabbed a knife through his neck.” She held up two fingers an inch apart. “Very close to his spine. His balls took a long time to grow back. He won’t hit Ruby.”
Ben shuddered. They rode in silence all the way back to San Marco, then Claudio dropped them off and sped into the night with a casual nod.
“Tenzin,” Ben said.
“What?”
“Oscar… Is that really the last job he’ll do for you?” As much as Ben might not have liked Oscar at the moment, he was a good contact. A great artist, and a discreet one from what Tenzin had said. Losing his skills would be a shame.
Tenzin frowned as if she was confused. “The last…? Oh.” She waved her hand and sat on the chair in the entry hall. “I think he says that every time we work together. This is not unusual. He’ll be fine. He’ll be doting on Ruby by tomorrow night and best friends with me when I deliver a shipment of that gold he likes as a bonus.”
“What are they?” He finally asked the question that had been bugging him ever since they left Murano. “Why would she stay with him? He treats her like a child.”
“Well, how should he treat her?”
“Not like a child!”
“But she is a child. To him, she’s a child. Oscar is not her father or her sire, but he is her superior. And her lover. In his mind, that makes Ruby his. You may not understand it—”
“I sure as hell don’t understand it, and I don’t understand why she’d stay with him when he treats her like that.”
“Ben…” Tenzin closed her eyes and sighed. “Most vampire relationships are not like your aunt and uncle’s. You should have learned this by now. There are no saints in this world. No one acts completely out of the goodness of their heart. There is always self-interest involved. Oscar protects Ruby. Cares about her in his own way. Ruby feeds Oscar and learns valuable skills from him. They both get something from the other, or it would not be balanced.”