by I. T. Lucas
Chapter 45: Sharon
Her dream guy was turning out to be a toad. First was that stupid joke about immortals, and now he was drunk on all that Scottish beer he’d been gulping as if it were water. She’d read the label—the stuff had an alcohol content to knock out a horse.
With an exasperated sigh, Sharon licked her finger clean and lifted her eyes. “Holey moley!” She leaned away at the sight.
Robert had put in a pair of gleaming white fangs. “Shit, these things look realistic. And they are sharp too.” She licked her finger again. “They should put a warning label on the packaging. No kissing with those babies in.”
With a groan, Robert closed his mouth, not all the way because the prosthetic fangs protruded over his lower lip. “I never expected you to give me so much trouble over this,” he said while scratching his head.
His words had come out slurred, but at least now she knew it was the prosthetics’ fault and not the beer’s.
“I think I’m being a very good sport about all this.” She waved a hand at him. “Are you and Julian planning a costume party?”
Robert clasped her hand. “Look into my eyes and tell me what you see. Then try to pull one of my fangs out.”
His eyes were glowing.
Sharon looked around for the source of the reflected light, but couldn’t find any. She looked again. Robert’s eyes were still glowing.
What the fuck?
Had he put something in her drink and she was hallucinating?
Reaching with her finger, she touched the top part of a fang. It was smooth, exactly the same as tooth enamel. She leaned closer and patted the gums above the fang. If this was a prosthetic, it was excellent quality.
Robert lifted her off his lap and put her down on the bed so her back was propped against the pillows. “It’s not fake. My fangs elongate when I’m aroused or when threatened. I have venom glands that produce venom. The composition of the venom is different when I bite during sex than when I bite to incapacitate an opponent, so you don’t need to worry about harmful effects. What you get is a powerful dose of aphrodisiac and euphoric. It also has healing properties.”
He was dead serious. “Look at my mouth and watch my fangs retract.”
The fangs were shrinking in front of her eyes or rather receding into the gums. No prosthetic could do that.
There was still the possibility that Robert had drugged her, but she didn’t really believe he had. Her mind was clear and she wasn’t woozy. Besides, what did he have to gain by drugging her? She was already in his bed.
“Start from the beginning, and please talk slowly because the circuits in my brain are not ready to accept what you’re telling me. You weren’t kidding about reality being stranger than my shows.”
Robert sighed in relief. “I’m glad you finally believe me. Otherwise, I would have had to cut myself to provide further proof.”
“Why?”
“Immortals heal very quickly. If I made a cut on my forearm, the wound would have closed while you were watching and after a few moments not even a scar would’ve remained.”
“Fascinating. What else can you do?”
“I’m stronger than a human male, and all my senses are enhanced. I can see better in the dark, I can hear what is being said in the next apartment, and I can smell strong emotions like fear and arousal. I can also thrall humans and make them forget things or remember things that never actually happened.”
So he could’ve made her see fangs that weren’t there, but being able to do that was even stranger than having fangs. “You don’t suck blood with those, do you? Because I’ve seen you eat regular food.”
“I’m not a vampire.”
“Right. Can you teleport?”
He chuckled. “No. But I can make a human believe that I do.”
“You keep saying you can do all those things to humans. Does it mean you can’t do that to other immortals?”
“Correct. Immortals can’t manipulate each other’s minds.” He seemed impressed with her logic. “When you decide to listen, you actually pay attention to the details.”
“Duh, I’m an assistant detective.”
Was it really such a huge leap of faith to believe a divergent humanoid species lived on earth along with regular humans? If she could accept that aliens existed, why not have them living on earth?
The hardest part was getting used to the idea that Robert was one of them.
He smiled. “A detective should know which questions to ask, and you didn’t ask the most important one.”
“Which is?”
“Why am I telling you this?”
That seemed obvious. “You want to come clean, right? Get it off your chest?”
He shook his head. “If it were only about getting it off my chest, I would’ve never told you any of this because I’m not supposed to. Keeping our existence secret is a top priority for immortals. In fact, I can get in a lot of trouble if the others discover that I revealed who I am to you. I trust you to keep it a secret and pretend you don’t know anything, which will be difficult around the other immortals.”
Sharon waved a hand. “Being a great actress is part of my job. No one will suspect a thing.”
“Good.”
“So why are you telling me this?” She hoped the answer was that he loved her and wanted no secrets between them.
“A tiny fraction of the human population carry dormant immortal genes. The venom of an immortal male can activate those genes in a Dormant. They can become immortals.”
“What about an immortal female’s venom?”
Crap, did Eva grow scary long fangs when she got horny? No wonder she’d never dated before meeting Bhathian.
“Immortal females don’t have fangs or venom. Only the males do.”
“That’s not fair.” Sharon crossed her arms over her chest.
“On the other hand, these special genes are only transferred through the mothers. Which means that if you are a Dormant and you have a child with a human, that child will carry the immortal genes. If I have a child with a human, that child will not carry them.”
That evened the score. Although she would’ve loved to have fangs. It could’ve been cool.
“Wait a minute. How do you know I’m a dormant carrier? Did you take a blood sample from me?” She narrowed her eyes. “Did Julian?” After all, he was a doctor, and if he was rooming with Robert, he was probably an immortal too.
Robert shook his head. “I wish it was that easy to identify Dormants. There is no blood test, and even genetic screening doesn't reveal anything. One hypothesis was that Dormants have paranormal abilities, and some of them do, but some don’t. We go by a hunch. Eva is sure every member of her crew is a Dormant. Tessa, by the way, has already transitioned.”
Sharon sat up straight. “What?” What kind of a detective was she that this had happened under her nose and she hadn’t had a clue? Though in her defense, how the hell could she have suspected something that was completely in the realm of fiction up until now?
“Remember when she got sick? That was the start of the transition.”
“Jackson is an immortal.”
Robert nodded.
“Did he tell Tessa before?”
“I don’t know. They don’t tell me everything.” He chuckled, but it was without mirth. “In fact, they don’t tell me anything. I’m an outsider, a former enemy who crossed over and is still not fully trusted. For some reason, though, Amanda liked me and decided to give me a chance with you. Or maybe she thought we fit. I don’t know. I’m just grateful that she did. That is the real reason why I can’t take you out on dates. I’m not allowed to leave. Not without someone to keep an eye on me, that is.” He lifted his arm with the odd piece of jewelry he always wore. “This is a locator cuff. If I try to leave they would know.”
It angered her that he was treated like that. Robert was a good man. “It’s not fair that they keep you locked up and still expect you to work for them.” Unless he’d lied to her about his job.
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“No, I like to work, and I’m getting paid for it. Eventually, I’ll gain their trust.” He put a hand on her thigh. “I was supposed to wait until I was sure what we have is real, and only then tell you. The thing is, once I did, you would have become a prisoner in here just like me. After you transition and become part of the clan, you’ll be trusted to walk around with the secret of immortals’ existence. But I didn’t want you imprisoned while we waited for that to happen.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. I would have hated being locked up. And I hate that they are doing it to you.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind. Or rather I didn’t mind until I met you.”
Damn, and she’d kept pushing him when he could not have done anything about it. “I’m sorry about giving you a hard time over that. I figured you were strapped for cash or something like that.”
“I’m not. As I said, they pay me well, and I have very few expenses. I save most of my pay.”
“That’s good.” Sharon fiddled with a corner of the comforter, pulling out loose threads. “So let me get it straight. If I am a Dormant, and you bite me, your venom mojo is supposed to activate my immortal genes?”
“Yes.”
She touched her neck at the spot she now knew he’d bitten her. She’d thought it was a phantom bite. There was a lingering memory of the sensation but no physical mark. “You bit me here.”
He nodded.
“So why am I still human? Maybe Eva is wrong, and I’m not a Dormant?”
Robert rubbed a hand over his chin, which meant he was uncomfortable. If what he’d revealed before didn’t bother him, whatever he was about to say next was probably devastating.
Sharon braced for the worst.
“We used condoms. To activate a female Dormant, the biting has to be done together with insemination. I felt it wasn’t right to turn you without your consent. Now that you know, you can decide if you want to become an immortal or not.”
Sharon couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her throat. “So the only thing standing between me and immortality is a rubber?”
“Basically.”
That was it. The laughter that burst out of her sounded hysterical and for a good reason.
This was the craziest thing she’d ever heard, and yet in her heart and in her gut, she knew it was all true. Hell, on some level Sharon had always known that she was different. There was a reason she couldn’t stick with any guy until Robert came along, or that the only people she’d ever felt truly comfortable with were Eva, Nick and Tessa, and later Bhathian and his gang.
They were her people.
Chapter 46: Kian
The Guardians were coming back, and the keep was buzzing with excitement.
A blackboard had been hung on the wall across from the clan’s private elevator bay, listing the names of those who were coming back within an hour or two of him getting notified.
Waiting for the council members and Guardians to arrive, Kian wondered who was the source of the leak. Most times Anandur was the usual suspect, but this time Kian was betting on Shai.
A day after Bridget’s presentation there were already forty-two names up there, and the list was still growing. Kian wanted to commend whoever was leaking the news. The morale at the keep had never been higher.
Hell, he hadn’t felt so optimistic about the clan’s future since the day they’d leveled the Doomers’ camp in Ojai and rescued the women that had been imprisoned there.
One more milestone on the road that had led him to this date.
The Fates had been pushing Kian to do something about the slave market for a while now, but he’d been slow to connect the dots.
Perhaps it had taken him so long to realize where all of this was leading because he was a skeptic and an iconoclast. Kian had scoffed at his mother’s belief in fate. He’d regarded it as nonsense, a comforting illusion created by people to explain the inexplicable and to make sense of a chaotic world.
Annani was well aware of his dismissive attitude toward her beliefs, and yet she hadn’t been offended by it. She’d known the day would come when he would be forced to accept that there was some higher power at work.
He still didn’t believe, not fully, but he could no longer dismiss it either. Even if he could somehow convince himself that the chain of events leading up to his intervention in the abhorrent sex trade was random, he could not do that in regards to the Dormants.
Suddenly, after centuries of searching, they were popping up one after the other. Even a skeptic like him could not in good conscience call it a coincidence. Especially since it seemed it wasn’t the result of Amanda’s efforts. Callie had no paranormal abilities, and neither did Tessa. There had been nothing to indicate that they were Dormant other than their mates' reaction to them.
He wished the reaction could be measured or quantified, and that it could be used to search for more. Except, the reaction was subjective. Brundar hadn’t reacted to Tessa, and Jackson would not have reacted to Callie. Bottom line, searching for Dormants was futile. As much as he hated the thought, it seemed that the Fates decided when and who.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Amanda said as she walked into his office and took the seat to his right.
“I can’t believe you’re the first one to arrive.”
“That’s what you were thinking so hard about?”
“No. I was thinking about Dormants and how we have to rely on the fucking Fates to find them.”
Amanda slapped his back. “Shush, you idiot. Do you want to provoke their wrath? You should be thanking them morning and night for Syssi.” She grinned. “And me too. I was the matchmaker.”
“Thank you, yenta.”
She kissed his cheek. “You see? That wasn’t so hard.”
Despite calling her a yenta, he could not have made Amanda happier if he’d invited her mate to sit on the council. Not that Dalhu would’ve ever accepted the position. The ex-Doomer had become an artist and loved what he was doing. If needed, Kian had no doubt Dalhu would fight by his side as he had at Ojai, maybe even relish the rush of excitement, but otherwise Amanda’s guy was satisfied with his solitary artistic endeavors.
Dalhu had earned his nirvana.
As the last participants were seated, Kian motioned to Shai to start the recording. He was no longer opening the sessions by announcing their number. There was no need. Shai added the necessary tag later while editing the footage.
This wasn’t a regular council meeting though. Turner, a human, was present, as was Vanessa who wasn’t on the council. The therapist was the first clan member Bridget invited to be part of the team she was putting together.
“Brandon, you’re first.” Kian addressed the media specialist who was now wearing two additional hats—a fundraiser organizer, and a permit facilitator with the various municipal agencies, expediting the clan’s latest building project.
“I got a retired movie star, Belinda Rochester, if any of you remember her, excited about the project, and she is helping me organize the charity ball, by which I mean she took the project over. I trust her since she’s done many of those in the past, successfully. I might add. She freed up my time for all the other things I need to do. Like stroking the ego of Santa Barbara's mayor.”
Kian arched a brow. “Why would you need to do that?”
Brandon leaned back in his chair and flashed his toothy smile, looking like a very well dressed shark. “Do you want to rebuild the monastery in three months or in twenty-four?”
“It’s impossible to do in three months.”
Brandon’s grin widened. “It is if we use the original plans which should be fine to start with. I convinced the mayor that allowing an expedited process to restore what used to be a historical building, while at the same time providing a school for the girls, would be great publicity and help with his reelection.”
“Was the building a historical site?” Edna asked. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“No, but I claimed that it should’v
e been. It was an old building. One of the first to be built in Ojai.”
“Good work, Brandon,” Kian said.
“Thank you. Now you need to find a fast crew to build it.”
The fastest crew he’d ever had the pleasure of working with were the Chinese. It was good they didn’t have another job lined up, a rarity for them, because he needed them to stay and build a new section for the village. All those Guardians needed a place to stay, and they had been promised houses in the village. The question was whether they could split up and rebuild the monastery as well. Perhaps they could bring in more people.
“I have a fast crew.”
Brandon crossed his arms over his chest, stretching the fabric of his designer jacket. “The Chinese? Don’t you need them for the new village?”
“It’s not a new village, it’s an extension of the old one. I will ask if they can bring more crews.”
“But people are about to move in,” Bridget said. “What about secrecy and security?”
Kian waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not going to be a problem. I told the contractor we needed to protect the current occupants from the dust and the equipment of the new construction, and he suggested we build a tall, temporary fence separating the completed section from the new one.”
“Do we have enough land to build on?” Amanda asked.
Onegus answered before Kian had a chance to. “We have the whole mountain and the area around it. We can build a city if we want to. Originally, the plan was to use only a small portion of the land for the village, and the rest was supposed to act as a buffer. But since we are supplying our own utilities and are not limited by municipal restrictions, we can add as many homes as we want.”
Amanda chuckled. “At this rate, we will soon need to change the name from The Village to The Metropolis.”
That earned her a few chuckles. Calling the new place The Village was already an exaggeration, but it had a nice sound to it.
“What are we going to do with the girls we rescue until the monastery is ready?” Vanessa asked.
“I’m in the process of acquiring an old hotel. I plan to demolish it and build a new one, but until the monastery is ready, we can use the building to house the girls.”