Bite Me if You Can (13 page)

“Yes, I saw,” Leigh muttered, then cleared her throat and forced away the image of him naked in the water. “I thought I’d surprise you with a cup of coffee.”

“Hmm.”

She bit her lip at the skeptical sound to that grunt, and wasn’t terribly surprised when it was followed by the sarcastic comment, “And no doubt to take the opportunity to ask some questions.”

There was a soft splash as he shifted in the tub, then he said with exasperation, “You’re going to hound me until I answer, aren’t you?”

“No, of course not,” Leigh said quickly, then belied the words by adding, “But if you could just answer a few questions... ?”

His snort of disgust wasn’t encouraging, and Leigh sensed her chance to get answers slipping away.

“I’m not trying to be a pest,” she said apologetically. “It’s just that this is my life. And I have no idea what’s happened to me, or how it will affect my future, or... anything,” she finished weakly.

The silence following her words seemed to spin out for a very long time, then she heard a soft curse.

“Oh, very well,” he said with resignation. “Ask your questions.”

Leigh felt relief course through her, started to turn in her excitement, caught herself, then asked, “Would you like your coffee? How do you take it? I’ll fix it and—”

“I don’t drink coffee,” he interrupted.

“Right.” She frowned. He didn’t drink coffee. Should she offer to make him tea? Or—

“Ask your questions before I change my mind.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you,” she murmured, then blurted the first question on her mental list. “If we aren’t vampires because of some curse, how are we vampires?”

“Nanos,” he answered promptly, and Leigh couldn’t help herself, she glanced over her shoulder in surprise.

“Nanos?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yes. I’m afraid it’s due to plain old science, not some romantic curse that would leave you soulless.”

Leigh grimaced, aware that she actually was disappointed to learn it was science, not a curse. Really, how stupid was that?

“I’m going to give you the short explanation,” Lucian announced, distracting her. “If you want more in-depth answers, you’ll have to talk to my nephew Bastien. He’s the answer man. In future, if you have any questions or problems, he’s the one to go to. Understood?”

“Bastien,” Leigh murmured, nodding.

Seemingly satisfied, Lucian shifted again in the water. Leigh turned quickly away when she realized that her eyes were drifting away from his face, to more interesting bits.

“The short version is I come from a people who were very advanced scientifically. In search of a way to repair wounds and attack diseases such as cancer without invasive surgery, our scientists combined nanotechnology and bioengineering to create bionanos. These were shot into the bloodstream of the ailing or injured person, where they were programmed to make repairs and regenerate cells from the inside.

“It was quite a breakthrough when they succeeded,” he acknowledged. “Or seemed to be at first. Several people were treated with it, my mother among them. She was pregnant with myself and my twin brother Jean Claude at the time, which is how we came to be infected.”

“Infected?” Leigh queried softly, and glanced back to see him shrug.

“As I say, it seemed to be a miracle cure at first, but it wasn’t long before they realized the nanos did more than intended. They were supposed to repair the wound, or attack and kill the disease and then shut down and disintegrate, for the body to flush out. What the scientists hadn’t considered was that the nanos were programmed to search out and find any ailment or injury in the body. While they may have been introduced to a person to attack a cancer, once that was done, they didn’t shut down, but turned to other repairs needed in the body.”

“And this was a bad thing?” Leigh asked with confusion.

“As it turned out, yes. The human body is in constant need of repair. It’s attacked daily by sunlight, age, environmental factors... ” He shrugged again. “The nanos turn their attention to those things, constantly regenerating themselves and making repairs and helping to generate new cells in their host.”

“So the host never gets ill, never ages,” she realized.

When he nodded, Leigh considered what he’d said. In effect, his people had found the fountain of youth. She blinked as a question occurred to her. “But why the fangs and the need for blood?”

“The nanos were developed to live in and travel through the body via the blood. They also use the host’s blood to make the repairs and regenerate cells as well as themselves. Unfortunately, human bodies don’t create enough blood to support all their activities,” he explained quietly. “The nanos use up the blood at an excelerated rate and then attack the organs in search of more blood. This problem was dealt with through transfusions before Atlantis fell, but—”

“Atlantis?” Leigh interrupted with disbelief. Some part of her mind had been assuming Lucian and others like him were from another planet or something. It was just what she’d automatically assumed when he said he came from a people who’d been highly advanced. But now he’d referred to human bodies not creating enough blood and... Atlantis?

“Yes, I am from Atlantis,” Lucian acknowledged.

Leigh couldn’t help it, she whirled to gape at him. “But Atlantis was... that was... ” She shook her head with bewilderment, not even sure how long ago in history Atlantis was rumored to have existed.

“Eons ago,” he acknowledged, sounding weary.

God, she thought, staring at him with a fascinated horror. He’d said his mother was one of the ones the nanos had been used on... and she’d been pregnant with him and his twin brother at the time, which meant he and his brother were original Atlanteans. “But that would make you... ”

“Older than you,” he acknowledged dryly.

“Older than me?” Leigh echoed with disbelief. “Lucian, you’re older than America. England, even. You’re—” She cut herself off abruptly when she saw the closed look that came over his face and realized how rude she was being.

“Sorry,” she muttered. An uncomfortable silence filled the room, and then she cleared her throat and forced herself to recall what he’d been explaining before she interrupted him.

“So, before Atlantis fell, this problem was dealt with by transfusions,” she prompted.

Lucian frowned, his gaze dropping away as he apparently tried to find the thread of his explanations again. The moment he wasn’t looking her way, Leigh found her eyes drifting down over his wide chest and flat stomach. Damn, the man sure looked good for his age. And now she supposed she understood why he was as crusty and grumpy as her grandfather. He certainly came by it naturally. The man was ancient.

“Yes, the transfusions.” He cleared his throat. “They used transfusions in Atlantis, but when it fell—”

“How did it fall?” she interrupted, curious.

His face darkened briefly with memories that were obviously painful, but then cleared, leaving his expression flat. “A double whammy of a volcanic eruption and an earthquake. Atlantis was on the tip of the continent, separated from the rest of it by a high mountain range. We were an insular society, never looking outward to see what was beyond our mountains. An earthquake changed that. It split the mountain, cracked it open, bleeding the volcano onto the city, then a second earthquake—or the aftershock—swallowed it up. It just sank into the water.”

He shook his head. “The few of us who survived were all immortals, and we were suddenly left without our technology. While Atlantis had been advanced technologically, the world we now found ourselves forced to join was peopled by far less advanced societies; hunters and gatherers, for the most part. There were no more transfusions, no more science, but the nanos were still doing what they did and using up our blood to keep us alive and in peak condition. Most of us had never known the hunger for blood until then and were consumed by it, but the nanos were programmed to see to our survival, and on some the nanos made the necessary changes to see to that survival.”

“The fangs,” Leigh breathed, understanding.

“Yes. The nanos made us evolve into beings able to get the blood they needed... we needed. They made us stronger and faster to be more efficient at the hunt, they improved our night vision so we could hunt at night and avoid the damaging rays of the sun that would increase our need for blood, and they gave us fangs to get the blood we needed.”

“They made you night predators,” she realized.

“Yes. And you are now one, too,” Lucian said quietly.

Leigh stared at him with dismay. “But other humans are our prey.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he assured her quietly. “Especially now that there are blood banks again.”

Leigh felt relief rush through her. Of course, there were blood banks. She wouldn’t be expected to run out and attack poor unsuspecting people and suck on their necks.

“Despite popular lore, we do not have to kill our prey,” Lucian said quietly. “In fact, it’s better if we don’t. As my nephew Lucern likes to say, that would be like killing the cow that gives the milk. It also would draw attention to our existence. Before the advent of blood banks in this society, we fed a little here, a little there, and did our best not to do anything that would increase the need to feed; hence the reason we avoided sunlight.”

“But we can go out in the sun,” Leigh said, wanting to be clear on that point.

“Yes, but it means consuming more blood,” he reminded her. “And the less we had to feed back then, the better if we wanted to avoid detection. Of course, now we can go out in daylight when necessary with little problem so long as we have a supply of extra blood with us.”

“I see,” Leigh said slowly, then asked, “How much stronger and faster will I get?”

“Really strong and really fast.”

Leigh considered his words, recalling how swiftly Donny had moved last night, if it had been last night. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since then, but now that her thoughts had shifted to her attack and turning, other questions crowded into her thoughts.

“Why didn’t you kill me along with the others in that house?” she asked. Leigh’s memories were becoming clearer as time passed and her confusion lifted. She’d heard the shouts and sounds that broke out once the men left her in the kitchen and hurried down into the basement. She’d understood at once that Morty and Bricker and the third man she now knew was Lucian had been killing the vampires she’d seen in the basement. It was the impetus that had given her the strength to get out of the house and try to escape. By that point, she’d been fleeing them as much as Morgan and Donny.

“There was no need to terminate you. Morgan hadn’t had a chance to convince you that you were one of his ghouls, and get you to feed off mortals and so on.”

Leigh nodded in understanding, thinking she was lucky in the timing of her attack and when Lucian and the others had made their approach.

“They were rogue. You weren’t. So you were spared,” Lucian said simply.

Leigh frowned at the answer. “What is a ‘rogue’?”

He paused, considering before answering, “There are rules our kind have to live by. If you break these rules you’ll be considered a rogue and go up before the council. If you can defend your actions, fine. If not, or if you don’t show up, you’ll be marked for termination.”

“And Donny and the others were rogue?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What are these rules?”

“The first rule is that you can turn only one mortal in a lifetime. The second is that you can only have one child every hundred years.”

“One child every... hundred years?” Leigh stared at him with horror. Spacing kids out was one thing, but one every hundred years? Dear God. “Why?”

“Population control,” he answered promptly. “It wouldn’t be good to let our population outgrow the blood source.”

“Oh, I see,” she murmured, and did. “So, no turning more than one mortal in my life and no more than one child every hundred years.”

“Yes. The other rule is we are restricted to bagged blood except in cases of emergency.”

“Okay,” Leigh said. It seemed like a good rule to her. She had no desire to go around chomping on neighbors and friends anyway, but just to be clear on things she asked, “What kind of an emergency?”

“If you’re in a car crash, or an airplane accident away from blood banks and unable to call in help,” Lucian said as an example. “You could feed on a human then if necessary.”

“If I survived,” Leigh said dryly.

“Unless you’re decapitated, your heart’s ripped out, or you’re trapped and burnt up, you will survive,” he assured her. “And even with the burning, you quite literally have to be burnt up. You’ll survive third degree burns all over your body. You basically have to be cremated.”

Leigh grimaced at the thought, but said, “I’m guessing the biting is what made Morgan a rogue. He bit me.”

“He did more than that, he turned you,” Lucian pointed out. “He’s turned a lot of mortals, and all of them are feeding on other mortals. He has to be stopped. He’s turning people willy-nilly and he’s turning them rogue as well.”

Making a face, Lucian shifted unhappily in the tub. “The man had them living in that dump, sleeping in coffins, letting them think they had to hide from the sun, and feeding off other mortals and only mortals, and not nicely.”

He made a sound of disgust and added, “He, like other rogues before him, is churning out some heartless, bloodthirsty immortals that think they’re living a really bad vampire movie. From Dusk till Dawn and so on.”

Leigh tilted her head curiously. “Do many of your kind go rogue?”

“Our kind,” Lucian corrected, reminding her she was one of them now. He paused and seemed to consider her question, then said, “Even one going rogue and turning innocent mortals into monsters is one too many.”

Leigh supposed that was true. “What makes them turn?”

“What?” He seemed surprised by the question.

“Well, why is Morgan doing this? I mean, Donny was an okay guy, but from what you’re saying, he probably thinks he is a soulless, cursed creature of the night.” Or rather, child of the night, as she recalled Morgan using that term. “Why is he doing this?”