The Reluctant Vampire taf-15

by Lynsay Sands

Tiny glanced at her with surprise, noted her shaky expression, and reached out to take her hand. “It’s okay, Beau,” he murmured. “Better to get it done. If it’s the price of being with you. . better just to get it done.”

  He pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a gentle kiss to it, then glanced from Anders to Drina in question. “So where is the shot with the nanos? Give it to me and let’s get it over with.”

  Drina felt her eyebrows rise and glanced to Mirabeau in question.

  “We haven’t discussed the turn and what takes place,” the woman admitted on a sigh, though Drina supposed she needn’t have bothered. Tiny’s question had given that away.

  “Well?” Teddy barked. “Where’s the shot? Give it to the boy. Don’t make him sit here worrying over what’s coming. Just get it over with.”

  “There is no shot,” Drina said quietly.

  “No shot?” Tiny and Teddy echoed as one.

  “Beau has to give you her nanos,” Harper explained solemnly.

  When Tiny glanced to Mirabeau in question, she hesitated, but then opened her mouth, let her fangs slide out, and lifted her wrist to her mouth.

  “What are you doing?” Tiny asked, catching her arm to stop her. “You don’t have to bite yourself.”

  “Yes, I do,” Mirabeau said quietly.

  “No you don’t,” Teddy said at once. “Tiny’s right. This isn’t a damned vampire movie. Drina there has needles. She can just pull some blood out of you and shoot it in Tiny, and, hey presto, it’s done.”

  “That won’t work,” Drina assured him. “It would just be blood. No nanos would be in it. Or, at least, not enough to start a turn.”

  “What?” the old man asked with disbelief. “How would that be possible?”

  When Drina sighed, it was Harper who explained. “Think of the nanos like rats in a pet-store cage. The shop owner opens the cage and reaches in, and all the rats run to the corners of the cage to avoid being pulled from their nice safe home. Nanos do the same when anything punctures our skin, whether it’s a needle, or a knife, or fangs. They are programmed to keep their host body at their peak, and they can’t do that unless they stay in the body. That is why you will not find nanos in tears, urine, sperm, or any other material that naturally leaves the body. So if you stick a needle into any one of us, the nanos would immediately evacuate the area to avoid removal.”

  “No, no, no,” Teddy said firmly. “From what I understand, our Elvi was turned when some vampire fellow was injured in an accident and bled into her mouth.”

  “A wound such as the one you’re talking about, or like Mirabeau ripping her wrist open, is like someone tearing away the side of the rat cage and turning it to dump the contents. It’s large and unexpected. The nanos in that area will be caught by surprise and get swept along in the blood that flows out. At least at first,” he added dryly. “If the wound isn’t big enough, or she’s too slow pressing it to his mouth, she will have to do it twice, or even more, to give him enough nanos to get the process started.”

  “Barbaric.” Teddy grunted and shook his head. “I don’t know why you just don’t mix up a batch of those damned nanos and keep them for turning people.”

  “Because no one’s been able to replicate the process,” Drina said dryly.

  “What?” Teddy peered at her with amazement. “You people made them. You should be able to make more.”

  “Not us,” Drina said with amusement. “Our scientists did, and they tested them out on guinea pigs first.”

  “You mean none of your scientists tried it themselves?” Teddy asked with disbelief. “I find that hard to believe. It was their idea, and they’d surely want to be young and healthy forever too. It’s probably why they came up with them in the first place.”

  “Perhaps,” Drina said mildly. “But apparently they weren’t willing to risk trying it themselves until they’d perfected them on others, and Atlantis fell before they decided they were perfected.” She shrugged. “They all died in the fall. We have today’s scientists trying to replicate the process, but they haven’t yet been successful.”

  “Is this how you two were turned?” Teddy asked Dawn and Leonora with horror.

  Both women nodded silently.

  “Barbaric,” Teddy repeated with disgust, and then sighed and glanced to Mirabeau. “Well, then I guess you’d best get to it.”

  She nodded, but Tiny was still holding her arm, and he asked uncertainly, “Are you sure you want to do this, Beau? It sounds painful.”

  “Not as painful as the turn,” she said solemnly. “And I’d go through this and a lot more to keep you as my life mate.”

  Tiny sighed and reluctantly released her wrist with a nod. Mirabeau didn’t hesitate or give either of them a chance to reconsider or agonize. The moment he released her arm, she whipped it up to her mouth. Her fangs were out by the time her wrist reached her teeth, and she bit into it as viciously as a dog, not just puncturing the flesh, but tearing into it and then ripping away a good-sized flap so that it hung from her arm like a torn pocket. Even as blood began to spurt from the open wound, she was turning it to press against Tiny’s mouth.

  “I’ll get bandages,” Harper muttered, and headed for the door to the adjoining bathroom.

  Drina nodded absently, but her attention was on Tiny. Despite knowing what was going to happen, the violence and suddenness of it all appeared to have caught him by surprise. He instinctively tried to pull away when Mirabeau pressed the wound to his mouth, but caught himself almost at once and allowed her to do it. Still, he choked a bit as the blood coursed into his mouth, no doubt unable to subdue his natural repulsion at the thought of drinking anyone’s blood.

  “You have to swallow. Try to relax,” Drina said quietly. Tiny met her gaze over Mirabeau’s arm. Seeing the distress in his eyes, Drina instinctively slid into his mind to help, soothing his thoughts and making his body relax, so that he could swallow as much of the blood as possible before the nanos made the bleeding stop.

  Inside his head as she was, Drina knew when the gushing began to slow. It quickly reduced to a trickle, and when it stopped altogether, she released her control of him.

  Tiny immediately removed his mouth from Mirabeau’s arm and sank back on the mattress.

  “Are you all right?” Mirabeau asked with concern, hardly seeming to notice that Harper had returned with bandaging and was tending to her wound. “Tiny?”

  Nodding, he raised his head and forced a smile. “I’m fine. You?”

  His gaze slid to her wrist, but there was nothing to see now that Harper had bandaged it. Still, he grimaced at the swath of white and then sighed and asked, “How long does it usually take to start?”

  “It differs for different people,” Harper murmured, setting the roll of cotton bandaging on the bedside table. “With some it starts right away, and with others it takes a while before they notice a difference, and then it’s sometimes just a slow onset that builds up.”

  “How do you feel?” Mirabeau asked worriedly.

  Tiny smiled wryly as he took in the circle of concerned faces around him. But shrugged. “Fine. I don’t feel any different. I guess I’m going to be one of those slow-buildup kinda guys. I-” He paused, eyes suddenly widening, and then began to convulse on the bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Chains,” Harper barked, as Tiny went into convulsions, and the room was suddenly a hive of activity as the group broke off into pairs. Leonora and Alessandro threw themselves at Tiny’s right leg, Edward and Dawn took his left one, Mirabeau and Anders went for the right arm, and Harper hurried around the bed to join Drina at Tiny’s left arm as Teddy and Stephanie tried to squeeze their way up between the others surrounding the bed to help.

  Even with two immortals to a limb, it was a struggle to get Tiny chained down. His body was thrashing wildly, jerking his limbs about. It wasn’t until Teddy gave up trying to help hold one of Tiny’s legs to implement an alternate plan that they made any headway.

  Harper saw the
old mortal straighten and move around the people crowded around the bed. Even so, he wasn’t at all prepared for the sight of the man suddenly grabbing up Stephanie, and pretty much tossing her on top of Tiny’s chest. He then quickly climbed onto the bed, and dropped to sit on Tiny right next to her. The two hung on for dear life as the mountain of a man bucked and thrashed beneath them, managing to stay put and weigh him down, easing his movements long enough for the others to get the chains in place.

  The moment Harper managed to get the wrist he and Drina were struggling with locked up, she reached around and grabbed up the bag of drugs she’d let drop. She quickly prepared a shot and jabbed it into Tiny’s arm, pushing the plunger home. Still, it took a moment after that before Tiny’s struggles eased.

  “Well,” Teddy sighed, mopping his brow as he climbed off of Tiny. Tucking the hankie in his pocket, he turned back and helped Stephanie off as well, muttering, “That was exciting. Like riding a wild bronco.”

  Harper smiled faintly at the man. “It was fast thinking on your part to sit on him.”

  “I couldn’t see what else to do.” Teddy shook his head and glanced from face to face before saying, “I suppose it’s a little late for this, but it seems to me it would have been smarter to chain him up before feeding him the blood.”

  Drina grimaced. “It seems cruel to chain them up before necessary, and usually you get a little more warning than this. They don’t go into it this quickly as a rule.”

  “Right. . well. .” He shook his head again and strode to the door, muttering, “I need a drink.”

  “She’s a good kid.”

  Drina turned from peering at Stephanie, who had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner, and nodded at Mirabeau’s words. They had decided to divide into four-hour shifts. Harper and Drina were taking the first shift with Mirabeau to watch over Tiny. Stephanie was there as well, mostly because the teenager had refused to leave. She seemed to like Tiny and had watched over him anxiously until exhaustion had overcome her, and she’d dozed off in her chair. She’d done so about five minutes before Harper had fallen asleep in his own chair beside Drina.

  Dawn, Edward, and Anders were going to take the second four-hour shift, with Anders administering the drugs Drina had been giving Tiny every twenty minutes to half an hour since the ordeal had started.

  Leonora, Alessandro, and Teddy were supposed to take the third shift. For that one, Leonora, who it turned out had been a nurse before retiring some twenty years ago, would take over administering the drugs.

  Mirabeau was supposed to rest during the second and third shifts, but Drina suspected the woman would insist on staying by Tiny. It was what she would have done if it were her life mate lying there.

  “She seems to be fond of you and Tiny,” Drina murmured finally in response to Mirabeau’s comment. Stephanie had brought up the other couple a lot during the last few days. It was always Beau this, and Tiny that.

  “The same is true of you two,” Mirabeau said quietly. “But then I think she’s desperate to connect to someone. She’s pretty alone right now.”

  Drina nodded and glanced back to the girl again.

  “She has a lot of questions,” Mirabeau murmured, drawing her attention again. Meeting her gaze, Mirabeau grimaced, and explained, “She doesn’t really know a lot about what she is now. She only had her sister to ask, and Dani would go to Decker to get the answers and, with them being new life mates, they would invariably get distracted and never get around to answering her, so she kind of gave up asking. The only other immortal female she’s had much contact with until now was Sam, and Sam and Mortimer are new life mates too, so-”

  “Sam isn’t turned.”

  Both women paused and glanced toward Stephanie as she made that announcement, alerting them to the fact that she was now awake.

  Mirabeau peered at the girl blankly for a moment, then said, “Sure she is. Sam and Mortimer have been together since last summer. Mortimer would have turned her right away.”

  Stephanie shook her head and stretched. “Sam refused because she didn’t want to leave her sisters behind in ten years.”

  When Mirabeau frowned at this news, Drina asked with amusement, “Mortimer’s the head of the North American Enforcers, right?”

  “Yeah, under Lucian,” Mirabeau murmured.

  “And you’re an enforcer?” Drina asked.

  Mirabeau nodded.

  “So, haven’t you met this Sam? I mean, if she lives at the enforcer house, and you’re an enforcer, you’d have to go there quite a bit. Surely you would have met her and realized she was mortal?”

  Mirabeau frowned, and it was Stephanie who answered, saying with amusement, “Beau’s been avoiding the house ever since I got there. She goes straight to the garage when she has to meet with Mortimer. And Sam pretty much arrived on the scene just days in front of Dani and me, so I doubt she even met her more than once thanks to trying to avoid me.”

  Mirabeau looked alarmed, and quickly said, “It wasn’t you, Stephanie.”

  “I know,” Stephanie said, some of her humor slipping away. “It was just my situation. Losing my family and all. It reminded you of losing your own, and so you tried to avoid me to avoid thinking of it.”

  Drina glanced to Mirabeau curiously. “You’ve lost your family too?”

  “It was a long time ago,” Mirabeau said quietly, her gaze moving back to Tiny when he stirred restlessly. She reached out and brushed her fingers along his cheek. Her touch seemed to soothe him.

  “Dree’s parents were killed when Rome invaded Egypt, but she has all her brothers and sisters still,” Stephanie announced.

  “How do you know that?” Drina asked with surprise.

  “You just thought it,” Stephanie said with a shrug.

  Drina just stared at her. She was pretty sure she hadn’t just thought that though she supposed it could have been stirred in her subconscious. Still-recalling the accident, she asked, “You were reading Harper’s mind during the accident? It’s how you knew there was something wrong with the brakes?”

  “I told you, I don’t really read you guys. You shout your thoughts at me,” she said, looking uncomfortable, and then admitted, “Except Lucian. Him I actually have to concentrate a bit to read.”

  “Concentrate a bit?” she queried, eyes narrowing.

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “With most people, mortals and immortals alike, it’s like a freaking radio playing on full volume, and I can’t turn it down or shut it out. But with Lucian, I actually have to concentrate to hear what he’s thinking. Anders is kind of like that too.”

  “Anders?” Drina asked sharply, aware that her voice had been sharper than she’d intended. Lucian was still relatively new in the life-mate game, and new life mates were known to be easily read, which could explain away what Stephanie was saying. However, Anders was old and mateless. Even Mirabeau probably couldn’t read him. Yet, Stephanie, who had only been an immortal for six months, could.

  Drina glanced to Mirabeau and saw the troubled expression on her face and knew without a doubt that it reflected her own expression.

  “Well, we already knew you had mad skills when it comes to reading thoughts,” Harper said mildly, apparently awoken by their discussion. His hand covered Drina’s and squeezed gently in warning.

  Getting the message, she tried to blank out the worry from both her mind and expression and noted Mirabeau’s suddenly clearing her own expression as well. Harper continued, “You’re a whiz at reading minds. Have you noticed any other new skills since your turn?”

  “Like what?” Stephanie asked, looking uncomfortable.

  “Anything that is different now that you’ve been turned,” Harper said easily. “Some edentates have special talents other immortals don’t. Maybe you’re one of the gifted ones.”

  She bit her lip briefly, but then admitted tentatively, “Well, I know when life mates are around, and usually who is whose. Like I knew Dawn and Edward were mated and Alessandro and Leonora were each othe
r’s mates before you guys introduced them even though Dawn was helping Leonora in the kitchen while Alessandro and Edward set the table.”

  “Really?” Drina asked with amazement. “How?”

  “There’s this kind of electricity between them, and this energy that comes from them,” she said, and then frowned and tried to explain, “The closest thing I can compare it to is what comes from cell phones and satellites and stuff. I sense these kind of. . waves or streams of something coming from cells and satellites. It’s the same kind of thing that flows between life mates. Like a million nanos are sending out text messages back and forth between them.”

  Frustration crossed her face, and she said, “I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. But anyway, I knew the minute you got here, Dree, that you were Harper’s because both your nanos started buzzing.”

  “I wonder if that’s how Marguerite zeroes in on finding life mates for each other,” Mirabeau said thoughtfully. “Maybe she picks up on these waves too.”

  “But Marguerite can find them without their being in the same room. I was in New York, and Harper was here in Canada when she decided I would suit him. She wouldn’t have sensed waves between us,” Drina said with a frown.

  Stephanie shrugged. “Well, she probably recognized that the sounds are the same from both of you.”

  “Sounds?” Harper queried gently.

  She looked frustrated again. “I don’t know what to call it. Frequencies maybe.”

  “Marguerite can’t be finding life mates by zeroing in on these frequencies,” Mirabeau realized suddenly. “Tiny is mortal. In fact, most of the life mates she’s put with immortals have been mortal. There wouldn’t yet be nanos in the mortal to communicate with.”

  “True,” Drina murmured, then glanced to Stephanie and said, “Were you able to tell that Tiny and Mirabeau were life mates?”

  She nodded.

  “How?” Mirabeau asked.

  “The electricity you each give off is the same.”

  “Electricity?” Drina asked with a frown. The girl had mentioned electricity and energy earlier, but she’d thought she’d just been using two different terms to try to describe one thing.