by Lynsay Sands
Holly frowned at his description and shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything on the news about people getting their throats ripped out in town.”
“They lived in the foothills,” Justin explained. “A small town about an hour away from your own and there were no bodies found, no murders reported, just a couple of locals going missing. The majority of their kills were tourists driving through with no way to be sure where they had actually gone missing from.” He paused briefly and then continued, “We went into the nest, tried to take them peaceably to present them to the council for judgment, but they weren’t interested. They fought, we won, and we were disposing of their bodies when you came upon us in the crematorium.”
“Disposing of their bodies?” she asked with dismay.
“They were immortals. We can’t allow our dead to land in the hands of mortals. If they autopsied them . . .” He shrugged. “All our dead are cremated quickly to prevent that risk.”
“Cremated,” Holly murmured as a memory of a head lying in a pool of blood on the floor came to mind. In that memory, she saw Justin, she also saw—her gaze slid to Anders, and she recalled his picking up the head by the hair and tossing it into the retort like a bowling ball. She clearly recalled it wobbling its way into the flames.
“She’s remembering,” Anders warned in a low tone.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Holly heard the words, but was so disassociated at that moment that it took a count of ten before she realized that they’d come from her.
“Okay,” Gia was suddenly there beside her, lifting her to her feet with a hand under her arm. It didn’t seem like more than a heartbeat later that she found herself in a bathroom, on her knees in front of a porcelain bowl. How the hell had they got there so quickly?
“We’re fast,” Gia answered the unspoken question as she brushed the hair back from her face. “Take deep breaths. It will help.”
Holly took deep breaths.
“You remember everything now,” Gia murmured.
Holly nodded and took another deep breath. Yep, she remembered it all. The stacked-up bodies, the head, the headless body they threw in after it. That one made her stomach roll over again and she leaned her head on the cold porcelain, trying to breathe slowly. But she was wondering why they had all been beheaded.
“It’s one of the few ways to kill our kind—decapitation or fire,” Gia said quietly, rubbing her back. “Lucian, Anders, Decker and Bricker were up against three times their number. They couldn’t afford to merely maim or wound. The rogues would have simply healed quickly and continued to battle. Besides, they weren’t sure there weren’t others there in hiding. Quick, efficient death blows were necessary.”
“Right,” Holly breathed, her mind already moving on to her reaction to the sight of those bodies. Her terror, running . . .
“I stabbed Justin in the throat,” she realized with dismay. Jeez, and she’d thought just trying to rip his throat out had been bad.
“Slashed, I’d say from the memory I read,” Gia said conversationally. “And he healed.”
“Right,” Holly breathed. Because he was a vampire.
“Immortal,” Gia corrected gently.
“Right,” Holly repeated, not really caring what they wanted to call it. But then her brows drew together on her forehead and she said, “I remember him leaning over me in the dark. The ground was cold beneath me. The night sky a hazy starless mist behind him.”
“And you had those scissors buried in your chest,” Gia nodded, apparently still picking up her thoughts.
“I was dying. I knew it,” she whispered. “And I was so scared.”
“But instead, he turned you,” Gia said soothingly.
“Yes.” Holly breathed, recalling how fangs had suddenly appeared in his mouth and he’d used them to tear into his own wrist. He’d then pressed the gushing wound to her open, gasping mouth. She’d tried not to swallow, tried to turn her head away, but she was too weak and then he’d plugged her nose, like she was a child he was trying to get medicine down, and she’d had no choice. She’d swallowed in an effort to clear her throat and breathe, and then she’d swallowed again, and then . . . the memory ended.
“You probably passed out, piccola,” Gia said sympathetically. “And that is good. You do not need memories of the turn. It is supposed to be terribly painful.”
“Is it?” she asked, glancing to her with surprise.
“I was born immortal so cannot say for sure, but yes, I understand it is very bad.”
“I guess I’m glad I wasn’t awake for it then,” Holly muttered. She had never been a fan of pain. Toothaches, earaches and headaches could all reduce her to a sniveling mass. She wasn’t much better at being sick either; pathetic really, and whiny.
“Then it is good you will suffer none of those things again,” Gia said with amusement.
“Yeah,” Holly agreed and realized it was true. Well, if what they were telling her was true, it was. She’d never be down and miserable with illness again. It was a pleasant prospect.
Gia smiled and pointed out, “Your nausea has passed.”
Holly lowered her head briefly to concentrate on the sensations in her body and realized she was right. The nausea had passed.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so,” she murmured and did with Gia’s help. Once upright, she took several deep breaths and then grimaced and said, “Sorry. I don’t usually have such a weak stomach, but those memories were just . . .”
“Gruesome?” Gia suggested.
Holly wrinkled her nose and nodded and so did Gia.
“I have seen a lot in my eight hundred years, but I would have to agree, they were among the worst.”
“Eight hundred?” Holly asked with amazement.
Gia nodded and grinned. “I don’t look a day over seven hundred, hmmm?”
Holly snorted. “More like seventeen . . . years not hundred.”
“You are good for my ego,” Gia said with a chuckle. “I think we should be friends.”
Holly smiled faintly at the comment. She was pretty sure she’d like that. She didn’t really have girlfriends. The only friends she had were Bill and Elaine, and they were “couple friends.” Bill worked with James and they went out as couples, doing couple things; dinner and a movie, dinner and a play, dinner and a concert and so on. Bill and James had become good friends, but she and Elaine hadn’t really bonded. Holly blamed that on herself. Her less than normal childhood had hampered her somewhat socially and she was often awkward or silent in such situations. It made it difficult to gain friends. It would be nice to have one, especially one who understood her new and special needs. Cripes, she was a vampire. The words echoed in her head, sounding as inconceivable now as they had the first time she’d acknowledged it. She was a vampire. Nosferatu. Satan spawn. A bloodsucker.
“Please, Holly. You have to start thinking of us as immortals. I do not think I can take much more of this vampire and Nosferatu nonsense,” Gia said, her voice pained as she urged her out of the bathroom and back along the hall toward the kitchens. “We are not cursed and soulless. You are alive. Deal with it.”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “It’s just . . . I mean we suck blood.”
“We need extra blood to survive,” Gia agreed. “So does a hemophiliac. Would you call them Nosferatu?”
“That’s different,” Holly protested.
“Is it?” Gia asked quietly.
“Yes, we have fangs . . . and they have a disease,” Holly pointed out. “While you—I mean we,” she corrected herself quickly and then frowned. “What exactly does make us vampires? Is it a disease for us too? It must be, Justin passed it to me in his blood.” She stopped walking as she recalled, “He said something about nanos at my house. How do they tie into it?”
“I think I’ll leave that up to Justin t
o explain to you,” Gia said as she urged her to continue on into the kitchen.
Justin was on his feet, watching for their return, Holly noted, and wondered if he’d just been standing there the whole time they’d been gone. Not that it had been that long, just a few minutes, still . . .
“How are you feeling?” he asked with concern, doing a strange sort of shuffle. He started to move forward as if to approach her, his hands rising, but then caught himself back and dropped his hands to his sides again as if he didn’t dare get too close.
“Don’t worry, I don’t have puke breath. I didn’t get sick in the end,” she assured him, thinking that must be the reason he avoided getting too near.
“Good,” he muttered and then glanced around briefly before returning his gaze to hers and asking, “Are you hungry? I mean for food,” he added quickly. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I,” Decker said.
“And me,” Anders added.
“You boys have eaten three times already today,” Gia said with a shake of the head. “I swear, you three are as bad as my uncle and cousins. They are always hungry too.”
“Wait until you meet your life mate, Gia. You’ll understand then,” Anders said with a shrug.
When that brought a snort from the woman, Decker assured her, “You will. Besides, it’s breakfast time.”
“You mean dinnertime,” Holly said quietly.
Gia laughed and moved toward the refrigerator. “No, he means breakfast, piccola. We sleep during the day as a rule. If Lucian hadn’t arrived this morning and kept the three of us up all day until he left, we’d all be sleeping, or just waking up.”
“So you can’t go out in sunlight?” Holly asked.
“We can,” Gia assured her, frowning at the contents of the refrigerator. “But it means we need more blood so we avoid it.” Closing the refrigerator door, she turned to say apologetically. “There is nothing left to eat. Vincent knows I do not eat, so did not leave much and what he did leave is now gone thanks to you three.”
“We can go out for something to eat,” Justin said quietly.
“That is best, and you perhaps should stop and get groceries on your way back,” Gia said, turning to head for the door. “Have fun, piccola. I’m to bed for a nap. Wake me when you get back if you want to talk.”
“Why does she keep calling me piccola?” Holly asked the moment the other woman was out of earshot. “What does it mean?”
“ ‘Little one,’ ” Justin answered.
“It can mean that,” Decker agreed, “But it also means ‘young one.’ It’s a term of affection. Gia must like you.”
“She hardly knows me,” Holly said dryly.
“She can read your mind,” Anders pointed out quietly. “She probably knows you better than people who have been in your life for years. We all do.”
“Except me,” Justin said with a scowl. “I can’t read her.”
“Except Bricker,” Anders allowed.
“Oh,” Holly murmured and immediately began to worry about what might be in her thoughts. Just how well could they all read her? Did she have to consciously think of something for them to read it? Or could they pluck out thoughts and memories from her mind like a harpist picked strings, all of them visible and available and there for the plucking?
“Between being a new turn and—” Decker’s gaze slid to Justin. “Other things, you will be very readable to most immortals. Younger immortals will only be able to read your surface thoughts. Anyone over three or four hundred years old, though, should be able to read some of the thoughts not on the surface unless you use tricks to block them.”
“There are tricks to stop you from reading me?” Holly asked with interest and when all three men nodded, she asked, “What are they?”
“That is part of your training,” Decker said.
“You have other more important things to learn first, though,” Anders added firmly.
“Right,” Holly muttered with resentment. To her, preventing their reading her was the most important thing. Of course, they wouldn’t think so. No doubt being able to read her came in handy. For instance, she could hardly plan an escape with them able to read her every thought.
“True,” Decker said with amusement, obviously having read the thought she’d had. Standing, he crossed toward her adding, “Come on. I need food before I faint . . . and Justin can explain about nanos on the way to the restaurant,” he added coaxingly.
Holly wasn’t hungry, but supposed if she wanted answers she’d best go with them, so didn’t protest when Decker took her arm and turned her toward the door. At least they weren’t going to keep her locked up in the house like a prisoner.
“You are not a prisoner,” Decker assured her.
“Unless you try to escape,” Anders added, stepping up to her other side.
“She won’t try to escape,” Justin said, sounding annoyed and Holly glanced over her shoulder to see that his expression matched his tone of voice as he followed them.
“You can’t read her, Bricker,” Anders said solemnly, which made Justin turn a worried gaze her way, his eyebrows raised in question.
Holly just turned her head forward. What did he expect? She didn’t know any of them. She’d been knocked out and transported to some house outside Los Angeles and was being kept there for training with four strangers. Of course she had thoughts of escaping. That was just common sense, she assured herself. So why had his expression made her feel guilty?
Seven
“So . . . nanos?” Holly prompted. They were in an expensive black sedan with tinted windows, one that belonged to her absent hosts, Vincent and Jackie, would be her guess. Anders was driving, with Decker in the front passenger seat and Justin in the back next to her. But she couldn’t help noticing he was scrunched up against his window, as far away as he could get. Holly tried not to be insulted by that. Was he afraid she’d try to bite him again? Shrugging the question away, she said, “Justin? Nanos?”
For one moment Justin continued to peer out the window and she thought perhaps he hadn’t heard her, but then he turned and said, “That’s what I gave you with my blood. Nanos. Right now there are millions of bio-engineered nanos racing through your blood stream, traveling to any parts of your body that need repair, or where viruses or germs have gathered.”
“Millions?” Holly asked with disbelief. “Surely you didn’t give me millions when you—”
“No,” he assured her. “But they multiply quickly when necessary, using our blood to clone themselves. That would have been the first thing they started doing after I gave them to you. Well, one of the first things. Some would have been busily doing that while others were sent to stop the bleeding and begin repairs on your chest wound. They act like white blood cells and surround and remove germs, parasites, fungus, poisons, and whatnot from our systems, but they also repair anything that needs repairing in us: organs, cells, skin—”
“Is that why Gia looks so young when she’s eight hundred years old?” Holly asked.
“Yes. The nanos are programmed to keep us at our peak condition, so we never age past a certain stage.”
“You all look about my age,” Holly murmured, glancing to the two men in the front seat. “How old are you three?”
When Justin hesitated, Decker announced, “Anders is over six hundred and I’m over two hundred and sixty.”
Holly’s eyebrows rose, though she wasn’t sure why. Gia was much older. She turned to Justin curiously. “And you?”
“Over a hundred,” he said evasively.
“Okaaay,” she said slowly. She was riding in a car with three octogenarians, she thought and then frowned. No, that was someone in their eighties, wasn’t it? Not over a hundred. So was she riding with centurions?
“We’re centenarians,” Anders corrected. “A centurion was a commander of a century, a hundred sol
diers.”
“Oh,” Holly murmured and thought, you really do learn something new every day. Well, some days anyway. Shaking her head, she glanced to Justin. “So these nanos keep you young and healthy. Why the need for blood?”
“They use blood to do their work as well as to clone and propel themselves,” Justin explained. “It takes a lot of blood, more than we can produce ourselves.”
She considered that. “So, if you stopped taking in the extra blood, would the nanos just die off and leave you mortal again?”
“No,” he assured her solemnly. “They would devour the blood in your veins and then go after the blood in your organs, causing excruciating pain and eventually madness, so that you became a ravening beast who would attack and destroy anything to get blood.”
“Riiiight,” Holly said weakly. “So taking blood regularly is good.”
“Definitely,” he said dryly. “I’m sorry. There is no cure, no way to rid yourself of the nanos. Not yet anyway.”
Holly sighed. “Well, I guess it’s better than dead.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
Holly nodded, “So, you gave it to me through blood. Can it be passed via other bodily liquids? Say kissing or sex?”
He shook his head. “Blood only.”
“So a blood transfusion or . . .” She didn’t bother finishing because he was already shaking his head.
“Too many nanos are needed to start a turn. A blood transfusion wouldn’t work.”
“Why?” she asked with surprise. “If they’re in the blood, then—”
“Think of it like fish in a dammed-up river. You stick a net in to try to catch one and the fish will all scram. Knock a small hole in the dam and maybe one or two fish who happen to be close by come out with the water, but the rest will instinctively swim away as quickly as possible from that small hole, maybe out of that tributary altogether and to another part of the system. But if you open the floodgates, or blow up a section of the dam, loads of them come flowing out before they can get away from it.”