by Lynsay Sands
“Is that guilt I hear in your voice?” he asked with surprise. While he himself would rather think she used bagged blood like the others than that she ran around biting people like some ghoulish female version of Dracula, he hadn’t expected it to bother her.
“Blood banks became the main source of feeding for my people some fifty years ago. Everyone switched over, and I started to be fed intravenously,” she explained. “After fifty years of not feeding directly from mortals you can almost convince yourself that they and the bag of blood hooked up to the IV have nothing to do with each other. Mortals just become neighbors and friends and—”
“I understand,” Greg interrupted, and he did. He supposed it was similar to the phenomenon humans enjoyed, where meat came wrapped in neat little packages and one could forget that the veal they were eating came from the cute little calf with spindly legs and big eyes.
Greg’s mind went back to the conversation he’d had with Thomas his first night here, when the man had pleaded Lissianna’s case, explaining that her phobia was causing them all to worry she might turn out like her father. He puzzled over the matter, his mind slowly putting things together. Lissianna had struggled to be less dependent on her mother, she’d got a degree, a job, and her own apartment. She—
“You work at the shelter,” he said with realization.
“Yes,” she said warily.
“You feed there.” It wasn’t a question. This was the only thing that made sense. If she was feeding the old-fashioned way and had got a degree and a job to do so, she had probably picked a job where she thought she’d best be able to feed.
“I thought I could help people and take care of my own needs at the same time,” she explained.
Greg nodded to himself. It made sense. It would help ease any guilt she felt about feeding after doing so intravenously for so long.
“I also thought the people at the shelter would change nightly.”
“Don’t they?” Greg asked with surprise. He didn’t know much about shelters.
“Unfortunately, no. It’s often the same people over and over for months at a time, though there are a few who come and go quickly.”
“But a lot of the homeless have drinking or drug problems,” he said, understanding what was concerning the family. If a large percentage of the clientele at the shelter had a substance abuse problem, and she was regularly feeding from them…
“Some do,” she said quietly. “Not all. For some the alcohol or drugs are what helped them become homeless; they lost their jobs, families, homes…For others, circumstances left them homeless, and they may now drink or take drugs to forget their situations for a while. But they aren’t all substance abusers.”
Greg smiled faintly at her defensive tone. She obviously cared about the people at the shelter as more than just dinner. That was good to know.
“But many of them aren’t healthy either,” she went on. “They have little or no money and aren’t eating properly. Some only get one meal a day, breakfast at the shelter in the mornings.”
“Which is why your family are worried and want me to cure your phobia,” Greg guessed. “If you aren’t feeding from people who have alcohol or drugs in their systems you’re feeding off people who aren’t eating healthily, so you aren’t eating healthily.”
“Yes.” She grimaced. “I exist on the equivalent of a fast-food diet; filling, but containing very little in the way of nutrients. But I really don’t think that bothers Mother as much as the alcohol.”
Greg nodded, but he couldn’t seem to take his gaze away from her mouth. He’d never paid much attention to her teeth, his attention until now had always been focused on her lips and what he’d like her to do with them. Still, he thought he should have noticed her fangs at some point. “Can I see your teeth?”
Lissianna stilled, her eyes locking on his face. “Why?”
“Well…” Greg shifted his weight and frowned. “I mostly believe you people are what you say you are. I saw the bite marks, I know I’ve been being controlled, but…”
“But you want more proof. Physical proof,” she guessed when he hesitated.
“I’m sorry, but what we’re talking about here is pretty incredible,” he pointed out. “Vampires from Atlantis who aren’t cursed or soulless, but live forever and stay young and healthy-looking? It’s rather like being asked to believe in the Easter Bunny.”
Lissianna nodded in understanding, but still hesitated another moment before opening her mouth, revealing her teeth. They were straight, pearly white, but—
“No fangs,” he said with disappointment.
In response to his comment, Lissianna leaned a little closer. He saw her nostrils flare slightly as she inhaled, and her canines shifted, sliding smoothly out as is if on tracks under the outer teeth. Two long, pointed fangs suddenly protruded from her mouth.
Greg felt himself pale and went still. “Does—” He paused to clear his throat when his voice came out unnaturally high, then tried again, “Does that hurt?”
Lissianna let her teeth slide back into their resting position before trying to speak. “You mean the teeth extending and retracting?”
He nodded, his eyes still fixed on her mouth.
“No.”
“How do they—?”
“I gather it’s like the claws on a cat,” she said with a shrug, then raised a hand to cover a yawn before finishing with, “At least that’s what my brother Bastien says.”
“So, you were born with them?” Greg questioned, and when she nodded, he asked, “But surely your ancestors, I mean the original Atlanteans, they didn’t have fangs, did they?”
“No. My ancestors are as human as yours.”
Greg couldn’t keep the doubt from his face, and she frowned.
“We are,” she insisted. “We’re just…” She struggled briefly, then said, “We just evolved a little differ—The nanos forced us to evolve certain traits that are useful, that will help us survive. We need blood to sustain us, so…”
“So, the fangs,” he finished, when she hesitated.
Lissianna nodded and yawned again, then said, “I should probably go to bed.”
Greg frowned. It was morning for him, and he was wide-awake and curious as hell, but he also knew she worked nights at the shelter and that it was her time to sleep. He wrestled with his conscience for a moment, but his selfishness won.
“Can’t you stay a little longer? Here, sit beside me and lean against the wall. It’ll be more comfortable for you,” he suggested, shifting as far to the side as he could with his hands tied as they were.
Lissianna hesitated, then shifted to sit beside him in the bed. She fluffed her pillow, arranging it over his arm, then leaned against it and got comfortable.
Greg peered up at her, but his mind was on the fact that she smelled really, really good, and she was close enough he could feel the heat radiating off her. After a moment, he managed to draw his mind back to the questions whirling through his head. “What else? What other ways did the nanos evolve you?”
Lissianna grimaced. “We have excellent night vision, and we’re faster and stronger.”
“To see and hunt your prey. They’ve made you perfect night predators.”
She winced at the description, but nodded.
“And the mind control?”
Lissianna sighed. “It makes feeding easier. It allows us to control our hosts or donors, and to wipe their memories of the experience afterward. We can keep them from feeling pain while we feed, and make them forget what happened, which is safer for both the donors and us.”
“So what went wrong with me?” Greg asked curiously as she yawned again.
Lissianna hesitated. “Some mortals are more difficult to control than others. You appear to be one of them.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps you have a stronger mind.” She shrugged. “I don’t know really. While I’d heard of it, this is the first time I’ve run across it. All I know is I can’t read your mind at all, le
t alone control you, and Mother struggled with you from the beginning.”
“She said something about not being able to control me when they first entered my apartment, but she didn’t seem to have any trouble getting me to come back here last night,” Greg said dryly, then frowned, and added, “Or perhaps it was that Martine woman. She kept touching my arm. She held it all the way here until they tied me up, and the minute she let me go my thoughts cleared; but the night before, it took a couple minutes after your mother left the room for me to think clearly and realize what I had done and the situation I was in.”
Lissianna let out a hiss of breath and rubbed her eyes wearily. “They have to be right in your thoughts then, and need to be touching you to make the connection now.”
Greg got the feeling from her expression that for some reason she didn’t think that was a good thing. He did. He didn’t like the idea of being controlled at all, so the fact that it appeared to being getting harder for them to do so was a great thing in his mind.
He glanced her way to say so, only to note that her eyes had drifted closed. She’d fallen asleep.
Chapter 10
Lissianna was sleepy and not at all interested in waking up, but some sense that there was something looming over her kept tugging at her consciousness and urging her awake. She tried to burrow deeper into the nest of pillows and comforter and ignore it, but there wasn’t much give to her pillow and there wasn’t any blanket at all. Frowning, she blinked her eyes open.
It took Lissianna’s half-asleep mind a moment to figure out that it wasn’t a pillow her head was nestled on, but a chest. She’d fallen asleep while talking to Greg, she realized, and at some point during the day had apparently cuddled up against him. Sucking in a breath, she stilled, then started to ease away from him, only to freeze at the sight of her cousins. The six of them were gathered around the bed, looming as they stared down at her and Greg with great interest.
Lissianna opened her mouth to speak, then paused and glanced toward Greg to find his eyes open and on her. She quickly sat up and glanced toward her cousins, finding them easier to face than he was at that moment. “What’s wrong?”
“We’re hungry,” Juli announced. “We haven’t eaten since your party.”
“The twins aren’t used to a liquid diet, and hunger pangs woke them up,” Elspeth said apologetically. “They checked the kitchen, but Aunt Marguerite didn’t get to buy groceries as planned because they brought Greg back. So they woke me up to see if I thought it would be all right for them to order in something to eat.”
“But the pizza place and Chinese restaurants don’t open for a couple more hours and Aunt Marguerite lives far enough out that no one else will deliver,” Jeanne Louise took up the explanation. “So I suggested we wake Thomas up to see if he’d drive them to a restaurant for breakfast, and then maybe a grocery store.”
“How did you end up being there?” Lissianna asked Jeanne Louise with confusion.
“They got Elspeth’s room mixed up with mine and woke me by mistake.” Jeanne Louise shrugged. “When they explained they were looking for Elspeth, I tagged along.”
Lissianna grunted. That explained why everyone was up but Mirabeau, but before she could ask, Mirabeau announced, “My room’s between Jeanne Louise and Elspeth’s. All the racket woke me up.”
“And when they came to see me about a ride, I suggested we check and see if Greg was hungry, too,” Thomas announced, explaining their presence around the bed.
“Oh.” She turned to glance at Greg.
“He’s starved,” Mirabeau announced dryly.
“You can read his mind, too?” Lissianna asked, recalling her conversation with Thomas the night before.
“He’d just told us that he was starved before you woke up,” Mirabeau explained, then added, “But, yes, I can read him.”
Lissianna frowned at this news, then let her gaze sweep her other cousins. “Can the rest of you read him too? Surely I’m not the only one who—?”
“I can read him,” Juli announced. “He thinks you’re beautiful in the morning, even with bed head.”
Lissianna raised a hand to her hair with dismay and could feel it was a knotted mess.
“He’s wondering if you have morning breath,” Vicki added with a giggle.
Lissianna snapped her mouth closed, afraid she probably did.
“He’s glad to know you aren’t dead and thinks that for a bunch of bloodsuckers we’re a rather nice family.” Elspeth smiled at Greg. “We like you, too.”
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“He wants to see you cured, but he’d rather someone else do the actual therapy because he’s interested in you in ways it isn’t ethical for a therapist to be interested,” Jeanne Louise announced, showing that she, too, could read him. To Greg she said, “I admire your ethics, but this isn’t really your standard case is it? I mean, surely you can’t be held to the same ethics as you would if she’d come to your office as a patient?”
“I—Er…” Greg shook his head. “I come from a pretty close family, but this is just a little bit much.”
“Give him a break, girls,” Thomas said with amusement. “The poor guy isn’t used to this stuff. Besides, I can read his mind, too, and he isn’t kidding about being starved. He hasn’t eaten since Friday afternoon. He also has no intention of trying to escape, so I suggest we take him and the twins to a restaurant that serves all-day breakfast, then pick up some groceries on the way back.”
“Thomas, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mirabeau said quietly.
Thomas glanced at her, and merely said, “You can read his mind. Read it, Beau.”
Mirabeau hesitated, then turned her gaze to Greg, and Lissianna found herself glancing at him too, but when she again tried to read him, she came up against a brick wall of nothingness. This time she wasn’t just confused by her inability to penetrate his thoughts, she was also somewhat alarmed. Everyone else could read him. Why couldn’t she? Her conversation with Thomas about his possibly being her true life mate came to mind, but before she could consider it too deeply, Mirabeau said, “You’re right, Thomas. He can go, too.”
It seemed that whatever she’d seen in his mind had been enough to convince Mirabeau it was safe to take him out, that he wouldn’t try to escape.
“We have to shower and change then!” Juli was suddenly in a panic.
“And do our makeup,” Vicki added, and Lissianna watched the pair run for the door in their baby dolls, then glanced at the others, only then noticing that they were all still in their nightwear.
“Meet back here in half an hour?” Thomas suggested, heading for the door.
Elspeth snorted as she followed. “You have got to be kidding. It’ll take that long for the twins to decide what to wear. You’d better make it an hour.”
“What about Greg?” Jeanne Louise asked, bringing everyone to a halt. When they turned to look at her, she pointed out, “He’s slept in his clothes and might want a shower and change of clothes, too.”
Lissianna glanced at Greg, guilt assailing her that she hadn’t thought of this. The man was still wearing the jeans and T-shirt he’d had on when she’d arrived home, the clothes he’d obviously been wearing when he’d been brought here last night.
“He’s a little bigger than me, or I’d loan him something,” Thomas said. While Thomas and Greg were about the same height, Greg was wider through the chest and shoulders, more the size of her brothers.
“He should fit in your brothers’ clothes,” Jeanne Louise pointed out, her thoughts apparently running along the same line as Lissianna’s. “They leave clothes here, too. I’ll grab some on my way back.”
“Thanks,” she said, as the foursome continued out of the room.
“I’d better get ready, too,” Lissianna murmured, avoiding meeting Greg’s gaze as she slid off the bed. She found herself suddenly terribly aware of how she must look in her sleep-wrinkled clothing, her hair a mess, and her face without fresh makeup. Not that
she wore a lot of makeup anyway, but still…
Lissianna walked to the dresser, grabbed a pair of panties and a bra from the top drawer, stopped at the closet to pull out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, then went into the bathroom. A glance at herself in the mirror made her groan. Bed head wasn’t a joke. It looked like someone had gone at her hair with a mixer. Grimacing, she decided a good dose of cream rinse was probably the only thing likely to get the knots out of her hair which meant a shower was in order.
Fifteen minutes later Lissianna was showered, changed, had brushed her teeth and slapped some lipstick on and was about to dry her hair when she realized that she’d thoughtlessly left Greg tied to the bed. Setting her hair dryer aside, she hurried out to the bedroom, apologizing as she went, “I’m sorry, Greg. I should have untied you instead of just taking off like that.”
“That’s okay, but I’m glad you remembered when you did. I could use the bathroom,” he admitted, as she set to work on the ropes.
“There are towels in there if you want to shower,” Lissianna said once he was untied and scrambling off the bed.
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and I’ll bring you a toothbrush. Mom always keeps new ones in the linen closet for visitors.”
“Well, I guess dental care is a big deal for you guys,” Greg commented as he crossed the room to the bathroom door.
Lissianna was trying to figure out how she should take that, when he glanced over his shoulder with amusement, and said, “That was a joke.”
“Oh.” She relaxed and managed a smile as he disappeared into the bathroom.
“Idiot, of course it was a joke. Wake up,” she muttered to herself once the door was closed.
Lissianna headed out in search of a toothbrush, but her mind was busy guessing what time it was. A little after noon by her guess, which meant she’d slept no more than five hours again. It was becoming a habit, she thought with a sigh.
As it turned out, the linen closet was fresh out of toothbrushes. Lissianna went downstairs to check the pantry just to be sure they hadn’t been put in the wrong place, but didn’t find any there. She did find her mother’s housekeeper on the way back; Maria explained that several guests had forgotten their toothbrushes this time around and used them all. She had them on the list for her weekly shopping trip, but there were none at the moment.