Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Beatriz: Part One

Navarre, Spain, 1741

The sound of soft singing drifted through the trees, and Isabeau Aguillon paused, listening. The voice was sweet and quiet, and a little off-key, and Isabeau smiled, her heart lifting. She knew that voice.

She broke into a run, her vampire vision easily navigating her past fallen branches, and logs buried beneath lichen, ditches and holes in the ground, until she reached the small wooden shack in the clearing halfway up the forest slope.

The curtains were open, and candlelight flickered in the windows, calling Isabeau home.

Putting on an extra burst of speed, she flung open the front door.

Beatriz was in the front room, stacking wood in the grate for a fire, and she looked up as Isabeau came in, her face breaking into a smile.

Isabeau crossed the room in two strides and swept Beatriz into her arms, kissing her as if they'd been parted for two years rather than two days.

"I didn't know you were coming," she said.

"I wanted to surprise you," Beatriz said, smiling again. Her cheeks dimpled in a way that made Isabeau's heart lurch.

Beatriz Allende was the opposite of Celeste Beauchene in every way. Celeste had been graceful, elegant, with her marble skin and mahogany hair and petite figure. Beatriz was petite too, but what she lacked in height, she made up for in curves. Her skin was tanned from years working on her family's farm, and her hands were often rough rather than satiny like Celeste's had been. She usually wore her dark hair tied back with a grubby scrap of cloth, and beneath her curves, her body was stout and sturdy from so much manual labour. Perhaps objectively, she wasn't as beautiful as Celeste, and yet at the same time she was so much more beautiful.

Even after two years together, Isabeau felt a pull towards this Spanish woman that she'd never felt before.

"Walk with me?" Beatriz said, linking her fingers with Isabeau.

"Always."

It had been nine years since Isabeau had left France and the trio of women who had, for a time, been her family. She'd travelled Italy for several years before heading to Spain and she hadn't intended to settle here, but then she'd met Beatriz.

While exploring the Navarre region of Spain, Isabeau had found that small wooden shack in the depths of the Irati Forest. It seemed to have been abandoned, and so she'd claimed it for her own, giving her somewhere to return to while exploring.

But from the moment she'd first seen Beatriz, walking in the forest as the sun set, she'd been transfixed. Everything had changed. She forgot about exploring and travelling. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was finding out who this woman was.

The next time Beatriz came to the forest, Isabeau introduced herself. She'd been surprised to find out that she was nervous. Back when she'd been human, she was always the one who'd initiated stolen kisses with other girls, and she'd grown even more confident during her relationship with Celeste. But it was different with Beatriz. Isabeau had never felt this way about anyone, and sometimes she swore she could feel her heart racing. It wasn't, of course – it couldn't – but sometimes she pressed a hand to her chest, just to be sure.

Beatriz lived a couple of miles away, in a small village outside the forest with her family, but she often came here to be alone. Not many other people wandered the forest, which was also why Isabeau had decided to stay in that shack.