Twice Bitten: An Argeneau Novel

by Lynsay Sands

  “Elspeth didn’t tell him a damned thing about us,” Valerian said with exasperation.

  G.G. shook his head, a permanent wince on his face now. “I think she only realized today while here that she couldn’t control him and he was her LM.”

  “What is an LM?” Wyatt asked now, recalling G.G. mentioning that earlier.

  The four of them glanced at each other as if each hoped one of the others might volunteer the answer.

  “What the hell was Elspeth doing bringing an uninitiated mortal to The Night Club? She knows better than that,” Tybo groused, slipping his phone back into his pocket as he returned to the group.

  “She didn’t bring him. He followed her,” G.G. explained wearily, and then muttered, “I need to sit down.”

  Tybo and Valerian exchanged another glance and then Tybo nodded. “Let’s move this conversation to your office so you can sit while we figure out what to do.”

  “What about Elspeth?” Wyatt asked at once, his gaze sliding to where she lay. She was still silent and unmoving, he noted, and the blood bag at her mouth was now a dehydrated and wrinkled wad of plastic.

  Valerian ripped the plastic away, then slapped another bag on. Turning to them then, he shrugged. “She’ll be fine.”

  When Wyatt scowled at him, he asked, “Do you want to know what’s going on here or not?” He paused briefly and then added, “We’ll leave the door open and check on her frequently.”

  “Fine.” He sighed and moved back to G.G. to ask, “Are you okay to walk?”

  G.G. arched one eyebrow. Tone dry, he asked, “Why? You planning to carry me if I’m not?”

  “Hell no,” Wyatt said at once. “I make it a rule never to carry cars, tanks, or giants.”

  A bark of startled laughter erupted from the big man. It was quickly followed by a pained wince and a groan.

  “I got this,” Sofia announced and stepped up to scoop the man off his feet as if he weighed little more than a toddler. When G.G. immediately roared in protest, she rolled her eyes and moved quickly toward a door at the other side of the room, muttering, “Oh, stifle it, you big baby. I’ll put you down in a minute.”

  Realizing that the door she was headed for was closed, Wyatt rushed ahead and opened it for her, then watched her carry the huge man in with amusement. Sofia was perhaps five-feet-four-inches and didn’t look like she would weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, but she was carrying the giant like he was the pipsqueak.

  Shaking his head, Wyatt moved into the office and glanced around. It was a good size, with one wall painted dark brown, and the other three painted beige. The floor was hardwood. There was a large desk, a couch, a chair, and a television on one side, while several large filing cabinets, a printer/copier/fax combo, and a shredder took up part of the other side, with a small bar in the far corner. Sofia carried G.G. around the large, solid oak desk and set him in the cushioned leather chair behind it. She then moved over to the bar to pull ice out of the freezer. She dumped some in a glass and then grabbed a bottle of pop and began to pour it over the ice.

  “Tahiti Treat?” Wyatt said with a grin. “Man, I love that stuff. Haven’t seen it in the stores in ages, though.”

  “It’s called Tahitian Treat now,” G.G. told him.

  “He orders it from the States at a ridiculous price,” Sofia said dryly as she replaced the pop container and closed the refrigerator.

  “Hey, I don’t comment on what you drink,” G.G. muttered and then added a surly, “Thank you,” when she handed him his drink.

  Sofia nodded and headed out of the room. “I’m going to open up.”

  “Thanks, Sofia,” G.G. repeated, and then turned to Tybo and Valerian. “So, are one of you guys going to tape up my ribs, or what?”

  “No,” Tybo said at once. “Dr. Rachel’s on her way to do it for you.”

  “What?” G.G. asked with alarm.

  “I’m not going to risk being responsible for one of your ribs puncturing your lungs or heart or something,” Tybo told him firmly. “I will not be known as the immortal who killed the Green Giant.”

  “Neither will I,” Valerian added.

  “Cowards,” G.G. muttered.

  “Rachel should be here soon. She and Sam were already downtown shopping when I called,” Tybo announced as Wyatt moved back to the open door to peer out at Elspeth. She was still lying silent and unmoving on the tabletop, he noted with a frown.

  “What’s the matter? The bag’s not empty already, is it?” Valerian asked, moving up beside him to look at Elspeth as well.

  “Nearly,” Wyatt said, but asked, “Why isn’t she screaming and thrashing again? Isn’t she healing anymore? You said that’s why she reacted that way after the first bag, but she’s not reacting at all now and that’s her third bag.”

  “She will,” he assured him solemnly. “She just wore herself out with her first round. She’ll start up again. Soon,” he added darkly as they heard a soft moan. “I’m going to change out the blood bag. Tybo, why don’t you start explaining about immortals to Wyatt while I do?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tybo said and then eyed Wyatt speculatively. “So . . . Elspeth hasn’t told you anything at all about us?”

  Wyatt shook his head and glanced out to the kitchen as Valerian tugged the empty bag from Elspeth’s mouth and slapped another on.

  “Great,” Tybo said lightly. “So, okay, here’s the deal. Our ancestors come from Olympus.”

  Wyatt swung around to blink at him. “Olympus?”

  “Yeah, we’re the children of Gods and nymphs, so we’re super strong and also super sexy.”

  A burst of laughter slipped from G.G. that was quickly followed by a gasped curse. “Damn, Tybo, cut that out. It hurts to laugh.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Tybo said with a grin, and then taunted, “But if you’d let your mother turn you, you wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like broken ribs. You’d already be healed.”

  “Oh, just shut up about that and tell him the truth,” G.G. growled with irritation.

  “All right. Jeez, you’re turning into a grumpy sod in your old age, G.G.,” Tybo accused.

  “I’m thirty-six,” G.G. muttered, rolling his eyes. “A damned sight younger than you. Now start again, and the truth this time.”

  Six

  Wyatt waited patiently as Tybo gathered his thoughts. It seemed to take a while, but finally the man settled on the corner of G.G.’s desk, crossed his arms, and began.

  “So, there was this doctor fellow. Kind of a mad scientist type. He wanted to find a way to heal injuries and fight illnesses such as cancer and stuff without having to perform surgeries, or administer chemo or radiation. He felt those things just caused more damage. He wanted something that worked from inside the body. Understand?”

  Wyatt nodded. So far the man was making sense. Raising his eyebrows, he suggested, “And the nanos Sofia mentioned are what he came up with?”

  “Yes,” Tybo said. “But they aren’t your typical tiny machines. He managed to bioengineer nanos that travel in blood, and use blood to propel themselves and perform their work as well as to replicate themselves. That way they could be injected into the body without fear of the body’s immune system attacking them. They could also make more of themselves if higher numbers were needed for more serious wounds.”

  “Okay,” Wyatt murmured when he paused. “Sounds brilliant.”

  “Yeah,” Tybo agreed. “But after working to get his idea to that point, our scientist got lazy. Rather than develop nanos programmed for each different injury, or illness, he made one program with a map of the male and female body at their peak condition and the executive order for the nanos to ensure their host was at that peak condition. Once they’d accomplished that, they were supposed to self-destruct.”

  “What went wrong?” Wyatt asked, knowing something must have. There was no other explanation for these immortals who apparently had the nanos living inside them.

  “Our mad scientist didn’t consider that th
e body is always under attack. There’s pollution, sunlight, airborne germs, bacteria on every surface . . .” He shrugged. “Even the simple passage of time. The nanos never finish their assigned task of getting their host at their peak. They never self-destruct, so just continue to work inside their host, keeping them from aging, getting ill, or—hell, even getting cavities. They just stay, toiling away and keeping their host forever healthy and forever young.”

  “What about the fangs?” Wyatt asked when he fell silent. “And the superhuman strength? I mean, Sofia carried G.G. around like a baby, and Elspeth was throwing everyone around like some crazy strong bull.”

  “Yeah,” Tybo said with wry amusement. “They weren’t part of the programming. The nanos apparently came up with that stuff themselves.”

  “What?” he asked with disbelief, but Tybo nodded.

  “See, this mad scientist developed this stuff way back before Jesus Christ.”

  Wyatt stiffened, the first grains of disbelief slipping into his mind, and he said sarcastically, “Right. In Olympus.”

  “No. Atlantis,” Tybo responded.

  Wyatt snorted with disbelief.

  “He’s telling the truth this time,” G.G. said a little breathlessly. “Atlantis did exist and it was more developed technologically than the rest of the world.”

  “They were isolated from the rest of the world by mountains and the sea and advanced much more quickly than everyone else,” Tybo explained. “But then Atlantis fell. A series of earthquakes sent it sliding into the sea. The only survivors were the Atlanteans who had the nanos. But these nanos use a lot of blood to accomplish their work, more than the human body can produce. They handled that in Atlantis with blood transfusions, but when the survivors crawled out of the ruins of a collapsing Atlantis and joined the rest of the world, it was to find that world barely past the caveman stage.

  “There were no doctors or scientists to help them, and no blood transfusions to supply the blood they needed to survive. Some killed themselves rather than suffer the agony the lack of blood caused. Some went crazy with blood hunger and were so desperate to get the blood they needed, they attacked the primitive people they encountered. But the nanos in another portion of them lived up to their programing. Their directive was to keep their host at their peak condition. They needed blood to accomplish that, so the nanos forced a sort of evolution on their hosts to get the blood they needed—the fangs, increased strength, night vision, mind reading, and the ability to control their prey.”

  “So the nanos turned you into vampires,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “The correct term would be immortals,” Valerian said dryly, returning to the room. “Do not call us vampires.”

  “Told you,” G.G. said with amusement.

  Wyatt nodded an acknowledgment, but asked, “Why? It’s what you are, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Valerian snapped. “Vampires are dead, soulless corpses that crawl out of their graves at night to drink the blood of the living. We are neither dead nor soulless and do not have graves to crawl out of. We are merely mortals made nearly immortal by scientific advances.”

  “If you’d read one of the gazillion vampire romances out there, Valerian, you wouldn’t mind being called a vampire.”

  Wyatt turned with a start at that amused comment and stared at the lovely redhead with silver-green eyes who stood behind him in the doorway.

  “Vampires are considered sexy nowadays,” she continued. “While immortals . . .” Wrinkling her nose, she shrugged. “No one’s even heard of immortals.”

  “Which is just the way we like it,” Valerian assured her.

  “Let Rachel in, Wyatt,” G.G. said, sounding relieved at her arrival.

  “You’re the doctor,” Wyatt said, his gaze sliding past her to Elspeth even as he moved to the side.

  “I looked at Elspeth on the way in. She’s doing fine,” Rachel told him gently as she entered the room.

  Wyatt nodded, and then glanced at the woman following Rachel. He recalled Tybo saying the doctor had been shopping with someone named Sam. This woman appeared to be Sam. She was slender with long, wavy dark hair framing a face with large eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a full mouth that all somehow worked together to make a very attractive face.

  “Hi,” she murmured, offering him her hand. “You must be Elspeth’s life mate.”

  “Her what?” he asked with surprise.

  “Er . . . Sam?” Tybo said with amusement. “We hadn’t got around to explaining to him about LMs yet.”

  “Oh.” Grimacing apologetically, she slipped past Wyatt to join Rachel as she walked around the desk to the injured giant.

  Wyatt frowned after her and then shifted his gaze to Tybo in question as he recalled G.G. saying he was Elspeth’s LM to Sofia. “So, an LM is a life mate?”

  “It’s what G.G. calls them,” Valerian explained.

  “Okay.” Wyatt nodded. “So, what the hell is a life mate, then?”

  Tybo opened his mouth to respond, but Elspeth chose that moment to start shrieking and thrashing about in the next room.

  “So . . . life mates!”

  Wyatt dragged his gaze away from the closed office door to gape at Tybo with disbelief when he shouted that. Cupping a hand to his ear, he yelled, “I’m sorry. Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you over the headbanger music from the bar, and the screaming coming from the kitchen. You know, where Elspeth’s suffering the agonies of hell?”

  The moment Elspeth had begun to shriek, loud music had started thumping in the bar. Apparently, Sofia was trying to drown out the screaming so The Night Club’s customers wouldn’t be troubled by it. Wyatt had no idea if it was working in the bar area, but it wasn’t back here. Elspeth’s piercing cries seemed to drown everything else out for him. Turning to Rachel, he asked with frustration, “Can’t you give her something to help with the pain?”

  “I did,” Rachel reminded him as she finished taping up G.G.’s ribs. “But at this point it will barely touch the pain. She’ll just have to fight through it. If it makes you feel better, I can tell you she won’t remember this when she wakes up. While the drugs can’t do much for her pain when it’s this bad, they will at least ensure she doesn’t remember her suffering.”

  It didn’t make him feel better. He would remember this. Wyatt suspected Elspeth’s mangled face twisted in a rictus of pain and her frenzied shrieks and struggles against the chains would haunt his nightmares for years to come. He’d never seen such suffering before, and hoped to God he never did again. As ashamed as he was to admit it, he’d been relieved when Rachel and Tybo had forced him back into the office once Rachel had done all she could for her. He wanted to be there for Elspeth, but this was unbearable.

  “So . . . life mates!” Tybo shouted again.

  Wyatt released his breath on a sigh. “Fine! What the hell is a life mate?”

  Now that he had his attention, Tybo paused briefly, as if considering how best to explain. Finally he said, “You know how wolves mate for life?”

  “What?” Wyatt asked with bewilderment, not following what wolves had to do with immortal life mates, and then, horror claiming him, he said, “Please tell me immortals aren’t werewolves too.”

  “No, of course not,” Tybo snapped, sounding annoyed. “Look, there are animals that mate for life, like wolves, coyotes, beavers—”

  “Termites,” Wyatt added dryly. “So what’s that got to do with life mates?”

  “Immortals mate for life too, and that’s what a life mate is,” he explained with exasperation. “An immortal’s mate . . . for life.”

  “Well, at least until one of them dies,” Valerian put in. “Then, if they’re lucky, the survivor might find another life mate.”

  “And you guys think I’m that for Elspeth?”

  All five of them nodded, and then G.G. said, “But Elspeth will fight it. As I mentioned, she’s led a very sheltered life. She hoped to enjoy a little taste of freedom before she settles down with a life mate.
Finding you right away wasn’t in her plan.”

  Wyatt supposed he could understand that, but let it go for now and asked, “Why do you think we’re life mates?”

  “She couldn’t read or control you,” G.G. said solemnly.

  Wyatt recalled him saying something about that before, and frowned. “Well, surely you all encounter a person once in a while you can’t read?”

  “The only mortals an immortal can’t read are either insane, or life mates,” Valerian assured him.

  “And we know you aren’t insane because the rest of us can all read you,” Rachel assured him.

  “Except me,” G.G. added with wry amusement and said, “Mortal here, remember? Can’t read anyone.”

  Wyatt nodded and turned back to peer at the immortals. They could read him? That was alarming. Had they been reading him all this time?

  “Of course we have,” Rachel said with amusement as she put away the items she’d been using to tend to G.G.’s ribs. “Aside from the fact that you’re shrieking your thoughts at us, the way you’ve been gripping that knife would be rather alarming if we didn’t read your mind to reassure ourselves that you weren’t planning to use it on someone and were just holding it as a security blanket.”

  Wyatt glanced down at the knife in his hand. He’d forgot he still had it. Now he felt like a fool. A security blanket? The description made him think of Linus from Charlie Brown with his blanket against his face and his thumb in his mouth. Grimacing, he set the paring knife on the corner of G.G.’s desk and then paced back to the door, before swinging back to ask, “But Elspeth can’t control me? You’re sure about that?”

  “She tried when you first came into The Night Club,” G.G. told him. “Mortals aren’t really welcome here. At least, not if they do not know about immortals. She tried to take control of you and send you out of the club, but couldn’t. She admitted that while you were in the men’s room.”

  “Oh,” Wyatt frowned at this news. For a moment, he’d thought he found the explanation for that strange disassociated feeling he’d experienced when he’d found himself on the porch with her jacket in hand, and then when he’d pressed her face to his throat. He’d thought perhaps she’d controlled him, but if G.G. was right, it couldn’t have been her.