Imitation and Alchemy: An Elemental Legacy Novella by Elizabeth Hunter

have been a hit with the girls this summer, but he was tempted to find a barber and a razor that afternoon.
    Instead, he went back to the hotel, drank two cold beers, and retreated to the shelter of his air-conditioned room for the remainder of the afternoon. When he emerged, the sun was down, the temperature had cooled, and a vampire wearing high-heeled boots was smoking a slim cigarette in the garden of his hotel.
    Filomena smiled and blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You’re awake.”
    Ben walked toward her. “So are you.”
    She shrugged one lightly muscled shoulder and nodded toward the piazza. “Join me for a drink, will you?”
    Ben cocked his elbow out and Filomena rose, her boots putting her just a hair taller than Ben as they walked.
    “So, Benjamin Vecchio”—Filomena leaned into his side—“what is the adopted nephew of a famed assassin doing in my city with his uncle’s old partner?”
    He really hated when Tenzin was right.
    ❂
    FILOMENA smiled at him in the candlelight, careful to conceal her fangs even when she laughed. “Was yoga instructor her idea or yours?”
    “What do you think?”
    “I hardly know. I only know Tenzin by reputation.” She gave him another careless shrug. Such a human habit for an immortal. Did she do it out of true habit, or was it an affectation to put her prey at ease? Ben was drawn to her regardless.
    They were sitting at a small table outside a quiet restaurant near the waterfront. The moon was high, reflecting off the Bay of Naples as shadowed ships bobbed in the distance. The waterfront was busy, but the restaurant she’d chosen was isolated down a small alley, which meant they didn’t worry about being overheard.
    Ben said, “I think everyone knows Tenzin’s reputation.”
    “Yes.” She sipped the red wine. A drop lingered on her lips before she licked it away. “Everyone does. And yet you were raised with her?”
    Ben shook his head. “Not exactly. I only met Tenzin when I was sixteen.”
    “A child.”
    “Of a sort.”
    Ben couldn’t remember ever feeling like a child. His earliest memory was of his parents in a fistfight, screaming at each other before his father threw his mother into a mirror. It was the sound of shattering glass and the taste of blood in his mouth that had stuck with him. His mother said a shard had sliced his lip. He still bore the tiny scar. And the rest of his “childhood” he simply tried to banish to the murky shadows of history.
    “But what a childhood it must have been,” she said. “To be raised among legends.”
    “What about your human life, huh?” He leaned forward, keen to take the attention off himself. “Do you remember… the Renaissance?”
    Filomena laughed. “No.”
    It was a game. Vampires were notoriously secretive about their origins. To reveal their age meant revealing their power. But guessing and riddles were fair game.
    “Italian unification?”
    “Oh yes,” Filomena said, her eyes flashing. “I remember that quite clearly.”
    “Napoleon.”
    “You’re getting closer,” she said, leaning a slim arm on the table, propping her chin in her palm. “You know I’m not going to tell you.”
    “But you are from Naples.”
    She smiled and he saw a hint of fang. “Define Naples .”
    Ben gave her a good-natured growl and threw up his hands. “I give up.”
    Filomena laughed. “You should know better, Benjamin Vecchio.”
    “Ben,” he said. “Call me Ben.”
    Dark brown eyes appraised him. “And did your friends warn you away from me, Ben?”
    “Of course.” He leaned across the table until he heard her draw in his scent. He stared at her lips. “You may be a stunningly beautiful woman, but you’re also a lethal immortal enforcer, second to one of the most dangerous vampire lords in Italy.” He let the corner of his mouth turn up as he raised his eyes to hers. “And I am a mere yoga instructor. I’d be a fool to—”
    The breath between them vanished when Filomena took his lips.
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