by I. T. Lucas
Dropping his chin, he let his bangs slide down and cover his face again. “I don’t find masturbation satisfying. That’s why I don’t watch porn. What about you?”
Did girls even watch porn? He didn’t know, and he also didn’t care if Wendy indulged in it, but he needed to deflect the spotlight from himself before he was burned to a crisp by it.
“Girls don’t need visuals like guys because sexual stimulation is more cerebral for us, or maybe because we have better imaginations, but I stumbled upon a few hentai.” Wendy blushed. “That’s what animated porn is called. A couple of them were very nice and romantic, so I looked for more, but many were really perverted, and that kind of soured the entire thing for me.”
Vlad knew what hentai was, and he wasn’t surprised that Wendy, who was an anime addict, had watched a few.
He cast her a sidelong glance. “Why did you ask?”
Wendy’s cheeks got even rosier. “Because we both lack experience. How are we supposed to know what to do?”
What was implied in her question was clear, and his response to it was powerful and immediate.
As blood surged into his groin and venom slid into his fangs, causing them to start elongating, Vlad’s instinct was to get out of there as fast as he could and not come back until he was back in control.
Instead, he shifted away from Wendy and cast a shroud around himself. She would still see what she expected, and as long as she didn’t touch his mouth, his secret was safe.
“What’s just happened?” Wendy asked.
“What do you mean?”
He knew precisely what she saw. That was why shrouding should always be done away from watchful eyes. But it was either that or running off.
“You shimmered for a moment. It was like a projection that winked out and then returned. I also can’t feel you like I usually do.”
Maybe it was time to fess up after all?
Not yet.
Wendy knew that he could shroud, and she probably guessed what he’d done, but not the why of it.
The best thing was to make a joke out of it. “You’ve got me. I’m an alien on a planet millions of light years away from earth, and what you see is my projection. I’m so powerful that you can even touch and smell me.”
Only because he was actually there.
He wasn’t as powerful as Yamanu, who could fool all human senses.
Rolling her eyes, Wendy slapped his shoulder. “I know that you shrouded yourself. Why did you do that, though? If you’re hiding an erection, that’s just silly. I know that you are attracted to me, and your response is natural.”
He could say that yes, he was hiding a boner, but then Wendy would tell him to drop the shroud, and he couldn’t do that.
“It’s more than an attraction. I love you.”
Smiling, Wendy reached for his hand. “I know. And I love you too. Now, drop the shroud and let me see your face. I don’t care if you are as red as a tomato.”
“Not yet. I need to tell you something first.”
“That you are an alien projection? You’ve already told me that.”
“Actually, it wasn’t entirely a joke. I’m not an alien projection, but I might be an alien. At least partially.”
“Pfft.” Wendy snorted. “You don’t have to make up stories to impress me. I love you just the way you are.” She took his hand and put it on her chest between her breasts, causing another surge in arousal. “You are quirky, handsome, talented, both artistically and paranormally, and you are the nicest person I’ve ever met. Nothing you can tell me can top that.”
It was nice to hear, but what he was about to tell her might be a downer, not an upper.
“I have fangs.”
“I know that. I’ve seen them. So what?”
“You’ve seen them in their resting state. They elongate.”
56
Wendy
“Okay…”
Vlad was starting to weird Wendy out.
She shouldn’t be surprised, though.
When someone seemed too good to be true, it was because he wasn’t true, and she’d fallen for a guy who was missing a couple of screws.
“Promise that you won’t freak out when you see them, and I’ll drop the shroud.”
Wendy stifled the urge to roll her eyes again. Vlad believed that he had real vampire fangs, and she shouldn’t make fun of his psychosis. Maybe if he admitted that to Vanessa, she could give him something to get rid of his delusions. But until then, Wendy was going to pretend as if everything he was telling her was real.
“I promise.”
He clasped her hand as if to hold her so she wouldn’t run away when she saw his imaginary vampire fangs. “Here goes. One, two, three…”
Wendy gasped but then chuckled. “Nice party trick. You put in fakes while shrouding yourself.”
Vlad groaned. “No, I didn’t. I’m not fully human. I’m immortal, and so are Bowen and Leon and all the others you’ve met from my clan. We are not an organization of paranormally talented people. Some of us don’t have any paranormal talents other than thralling and shrouding. But don’t tell Richard. If you do, we will have to thrall him to forget it, and doing that too often can cause brain damage.”
He sounded sincere, and oddly what he’d said resonated with some subconscious suspicions she’d been having. The people she’d met had other oddities besides their paranormal talents. They didn’t behave like most of the people she knew. The differences were subtle, and they could be attributed to growing up in a different country, or maybe even the sort of upbringing they’d had. But there were enough of them to raise tiny red flags all over the place.
“You can pull on them if you want,” Vlad said. “They will not come off. Just be careful. They are very sharp.”
As he opened his mouth wide, Wendy leaned closer to take a better look. If those were fake, they were movie prop quality. She couldn’t see a seam between the top of the fang and the gums.
Reaching with two fingers, she gave one a gentle tug. It didn’t budge, but Vlad groaned as if she’d just touched his erection.
“Did I hurt you?” She looked up and gasped for the second time that evening. “Your eyes are glowing.”
It wasn’t metaphorical. One eye was casting blue light and the other green.
She knew he wasn’t wearing contact lenses, and even if he were, she’d never heard of ones that could emit light.
“When I get excited, my fangs elongate, and my eyes start to glow. Sometimes in that order, and sometimes in reverse. It also happens when I’m very angry, but that’s rare. Mostly I have that reaction when I’m around you. I’ve had a hell of a time trying to hide it.”
There was no denying it any longer. Vlad was an alien who had fangs and glowing eyes, and she’d been surrounded by his kind ever since she’d escaped the program with the other recruits.
They’d all seemed so normal, though, or as normal as paranormally talented people could be. And they weren’t evil bloodsuckers either.
Or were they?
Maybe they'd fed on her and then erased her memories? In movies, if a vampire didn’t suck his victim dry, that was what he did. And the shrouding was just another name for the vampires’ glamour.
Except, she was an empath. They couldn’t have hidden their blood lust from her, and there had been none.
“Why tell me now?”
“Because I couldn’t hide it anymore. Once we go beyond kissing, I won’t be able to control my fangs. I didn’t want to freak you out without warning, so I asked for permission to tell you.”
“From Bowen?”
“No, from Kian. The security of our clan depends on secrecy, and no one is allowed to spill the beans without getting permission first.”
Wendy shook her head. “Why would he allow it? I’ve been proven untrustworthy.” Then she remembered that the director was dead, and she no longer had anyone to tell even if she wanted to. “Did Kian allow it because my uncle is dead?”
“Ma
ybe. I don’t know. I explained the situation with my fangs, and he agreed.”
“So, not all the men of your species have that problem?”
“They do to a lesser extent. I have what’s called trigger-happy fangs.”
Wendy felt like giggling but stifled the urge. Was that the equivalent of premature ejaculation? Vlad had admitted that his fangs elongated when he got excited, so there was some connection between them and sex.
“Why do you have fangs to begin with? Do you need to drink blood in addition to eating regular food?”
“No, the fangs are for injecting venom. Not that I ever have. But that’s because of a lack of opportunity, not because I can’t. Every immortal male grows fangs around the time he reaches puberty, and they become functional about six months later.”
“What are they for? I mean, obviously, they are for biting.” She shook her head. “Scary. But never mind that. Venom usually means poison, but I assume that’s not what’s going on because Jin would be dead by now. And speaking of Jin, how come I didn’t see any bite marks on her? She and Arwel got busy every night. He is also an immortal, right?”
57
Vlad
Vlad nodded. “Arwel is an immortal, that’s correct.”
“Is Jin?”
“She is not.”
Soon Jin would transition, but Kian had told him not to tell Wendy about dormancy yet.
“So, what is the venom for?”
Vlad’s ears got hot. “For the ladies, it supposedly triggers the best orgasms and euphoria. But it can also be used in a fight. The kind of venom produced depends on the stimulation. Aggression produces venom that can incapacitate an opponent, and sexual stimulation produces the kind of venom that induces the good stuff.”
The sudden scent of fear indicated that Wendy hadn’t reacted well to his explanation. She’d been okay so far. Why had talk about orgasms scared her?
“What happens when a male gets aggressive with a female?” Wendy asked. “What kind of venom is produced then? Can he kill her?”
Given her past, of course, that was where her mind would immediately go. Vlad shook his head. “I’ve never heard of that happening.”
“That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t. Men get violent and hurt women all of the time, and it has nothing to do with sex. Rape is an act of violence. Are immortal males different?”
Running a hand through his hair, Vlad thought how to best answer her truthfully.
The problem was that he didn’t know.
If an immortal perpetrated an act of violence against a human female, who was going to find out about that?
There had been a few cases in the Bay Area, which Doomers had been responsible for, but those had been premeditated to lure Guardians. Did Doomers rape and kill human females?
He would have to ask Dalhu or Robert, but right now, he didn’t have an answer for Wendy. All he could tell her was what he knew of clan law on the subject.
“We have very strict rules about using our powers. We are not allowed to thrall a partner to have sex with us. Consent must be given freely and explicitly, and males are allowed to only thrall away the memory of the bite to keep our existence secret. Females don’t have active fangs, so that’s not a problem for them. That’s also the reason why most immortal females don’t bother to even learn how to thrall. But since I can’t be sure that everyone always obeys the rules, I can’t tell you that it never happens. What I can tell you is that if someone is caught breaking them, the punishment is extremely severe.”
She arched a brow. “How severe?”
“I’ll give you an example. An immortal teenager who didn’t make sure to get consent before touching a human girl’s breast was sentenced to whipping. They were kissing, and he got carried away. And you know who reported him?”
“The girl?”
“No, his own mother. That’s how important the rule of consent is to us, and it’s drilled into our heads, starting with the onset of puberty.”
“Whipping seems excessive for touching someone’s breast, especially if it was done during kissing. He wasn’t a random stranger, and she agreed to the kiss, right? I know that what I’m saying is not politically correct, and that consent for one thing does not mean consent for another, but still. A whipping?”
Vlad nodded. “It happened a long time ago, and girls were not supposed to let guys touch them. Still, a whipping for an offense like that would have been excessive for a human. Not for an immortal, though. We have immense power over humans. We can thrall most to do what we want, and teenage boys are difficult to control. In that, we are not so different from humans. It’s very tempting to use our powers to gain an unfair advantage, so the deterrent must be brutal. Besides, the whipping might hurt an immortal just as much as a human, but an immortal will heal in a few hours instead of days, and there will be no mark left on his skin.”
“Would you think I’m a bitch if I said that I applaud whoever made those rules?”
“Not at all. I applaud her too.”
“Her?”
Vlad hesitated for a moment before revealing the biggest secret of all. “The head and founder of our clan is a female. A goddess, one of the only two surviving gods on earth. The other is her half-sister.”
Wendy’s eyes widened. “Get out of here. A real goddess? Like Athena or Venus?”
“Precisely. The gods were real.”
“What happened to the others?” She chuckled. “Did they go home?”
“No, they were killed. One god conspired against the others and dropped a weapon of mass destruction on their assembly. They were all killed except for the founder of our clan, who escaped before that happened, and her half-sister, who was on her way to marry the god who killed the others.”
“That sounds like a plot from one of my anime shows.”
Vlad chuckled. “Now I get why you are not freaking out about all this. The anime you watch exposed you to many fantastical worlds. Your mind is open to the strange and unusual.”
“Who knew that it would be good for anything other than distraction, right?”
He nodded. “It can be good for other things as well. Maybe it will inspire you to write a story that could be turned into an anime series.”
Wendy grinned. “That could be cool. I can write the story of your clan, modified, of course, to obscure its existence, and you can illustrate it.” She flopped down on the bed. “We will make millions.”
He lay down next to her. “It could happen.”
She turned on her side and propped her head on her hand. “So if gods can die, immortals can die as well, which means that you are not really immortal.”
“We don’t age, and we don’t get sick, and we can recover from most injuries, but not all. So yeah, we can be killed. It’s just not easy to do.”
“How much are you allowed to tell me?”
“I can tell you everything.” Almost. “You can’t go anywhere, and if for some reason you choose to leave, Bowen will remove your memories.”
“Why not you?”
“I’m not skilled enough to do that. And it would be too difficult. I don’t want you to leave. And I don’t want you to forget me.”
“I don’t want that either.” She leaned in and kissed his lips. “Your fangs have retracted. They are back to their normal size.”
“If you keep kissing me, they will elongate again.”
“Later. Now I want to hear the whole story.”
“It will take a long time.”
“I’m not in a rush to go anywhere.”
He nodded. “It all started with the gods taking humans as mates because there weren’t enough of them. The children born to them had some of the godly attributes, but they weren’t as powerful…”
58
Kalugal
As Jacki leaned against the bank of drawers and wiped her forehead, Kalugal rushed to her side. “What’s wrong? Are you feeling worse?”
Ever since she’d told him last night that she wasn’t fee
ling well, Kalugal had been vacillating between worry and optimism.
But that was when her symptoms had been mild. Now it seemed that she’d taken a turn for the worse.
“I’m dizzy.”
He put a hand on her forehead. “You’re burning hot.”
Lifting her into his arms, he carried Jacki to the bedroom and laid her down on the bed. “I’m calling Kian. He needs to send Bridget over.”
“Why? We are going to see them in less than an hour. There is no point in dragging the doctor here and making everyone wait.”
“I’m calling anyway.”
Jacki waved a dismissive hand and slung her legs over the side of the bed. “I need to finish packing.”
“Stay!” He pointed a finger at her. “I’ll finish packing for you.”
“Ugh. You’re so bossy.” Jacki lifted her legs back on the bed.
Sitting next to her, he dialed Kian’s number.
“Are you on your way?” His cousin sounded as gruff as usual, and Kalugal wondered whether he was still using the voice translating application when talking to him.
Probably not. Kian hadn’t used it the entire two days they were dealing with the mess after the attack.
“We are still here. Jacki hasn’t been feeling well since yesterday, and now her temperature's shot up. I want to ask Bridget what to do.”
“Hold on. I’ll put her on the line.”
“Hello, Kalugal. Let me talk with Jacki.”
“Of course.” He handed her the phone. “Bridget wants to talk to you.”
“Hi, Bridget. I’m really sorry that Kalugal bothered you. I can make it to the hotel, and you can examine me then.”
“Do you have any symptoms other than rising fever?”
“I get dizzy, but that’s because of the fever, and I’m also achy, like during a cold or flu.”