“How exactly were you going to do that?” she asked skeptically.
“I hadn’t figured that part out yet but obsessed over it constantly.” He smiled. “When I wasn’t fantasizing about making love with you, that is.”
Yes, he was still her Aidan. So likable she just couldn’t stay mad at him. “I’m guessing that—since you had to preface it—you think the way you became immortal is going to freak me out?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Let’s hear it.” How bad could it be, considering everything else she had learned tonight?
He drew in a deep breath. “I became immortal after a vampire bit me and infected me with the vampiric virus.”
Dana stared at him as long minutes ticked past.
“Dana?” he asked finally.
“I’m sorry. I was trying to find a nice way to tell you how utterly ridiculous that sounds but couldn’t come up with anything that isn’t insulting.”
He smiled. “I understand. I know it sounds fantastical, but… don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not.” It was too ridiculous to scare her.
“No. I mean, don’t be afraid of this.” He parted his lips enough for her to see the tips of his straight white teeth.
As she watched, two fangs descended from the gums above his canines.
Two long fangs.
Aidan’s heart sank as Dana leapt off his lap and backed all the way to the doorway, gripping the frame on either side with white-knuckled fists.
He held up both hands. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “It’s okay. I’m still Aidan. I still suck at dating. I just have weird teeth on top of everything else.”
He could hear her heart pounding in her breast.
“You’re a vampire?” she demanded incredulously.
“No,” he swiftly denied. “I’m not a vampire. I’m an immortal.”
“But you just said a vampire bit you and now you have fangs and you don’t age and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this as if vampires are real, because that’s insane.”
“They are real.”
She shook her head. “Vampires are fictional. And even if they weren’t, they’re dead. Or undead. You aren’t. You breathe. You have a heartbeat. You eat. You drink. You can go out in daylight. I’ve seen you in daylight. You aren’t all gross like the vampires in From Dusk till Dawn. And you don’t sparkle in sunlight like you’re wearing glitter makeup.”
He rose but didn’t approach her. “I don’t know anything about your last two references. But I can tell you that vampires and immortals are both very much alive. Vampires are humans who have been infected with the virus. Immortals are gifted ones who are infected with it.”
Fear entered her pretty features. “How contagious is this virus?”
“You can’t get it from kissing or making love,” he reassured her, assuming that was direction her thoughts had taken. “You can only become infected through one of two means. If a vampire feeds from you—”
“Feeds from me? As in drinks my blood?”
He clamped his lips together. Judging by her appalled expression, she wasn’t going to take his requiring periodic blood infusions well at all. “I’ll get to that in a moment,” he promised. “When you’re exposed to the virus through a bite, your body can’t create memory B cells to grant you immunity from it if you’re exposed to it again in the future.” At least, he thought that was how Melanie had explained it. “So when a vampire feeds from you, the virus compromises your immune system a bit. If you’re not bitten again, you recover, like you would from a cold. But if the vampire bites you again in a short enough period of time, then does it again and again, the virus will eventually cripple your immune system enough to gain a foothold and replace it entirely. Then you will transform and become an immortal.”
“And the other way?”
“If a vampire drains almost all your blood, then returns it to you after it’s mingled with his own, you’ll be infected on a massive scale and transform within days. That’s the shorter way of doing it. And I can personally attest to the fact that it’s less hard on you than the longer way.” He shrugged. “At least the longer way was harder on me. But the vampire who infected me also tortured me a good long while, so that may have only made it seem worse.”
She stared at him.
“Blink,” he ordered.
She blinked. “I keep forgetting to do that.”
“It’s understandable.”
“This is so unreal.”
“I’m sorry to say it’s very real indeed.”
That didn’t appear to make her feel better. “So the big difference between immortals and vampires is that immortals have gifts and vampires don’t?”
“It’s one of the differences. The other big one is that the virus causes progressive brain damage in humans who transform, so they rapidly descend into madness and prey upon innocents. But the advanced DNA in gifted ones shields us from the more corrosive aspects of the virus, so immortals don’t.”
Her grip on the doorframe didn’t loosen. “You aren’t in the private security business, are you?”
“No. I and my brethren hunt and slay vampires for a living. We call ourselves Immortal Guardians.”
She offered no reply, just kept staring at him. And his teeth.
He shifted, uncomfortable beneath her regard. “I didn’t think it a lie since we do ensure the safety of humans by slaying the vampires who would otherwise prey upon them. So it’s a kind of private security business.”
Again she said nothing.
“Dana?” he asked, wishing he could read her thoughts, but he didn’t want to make things even worse by abusing her trust.
“Don’t you think everyone would know if vampires really existed?” she asked him. “Wouldn’t the vampires’ victims—the ones who weren’t killed—come forward?”
He shook his head. “When vampires and immortals transform, glands form above our fangs that release a chemical similar to GHB under the pressure of a bite. So those who are bitten retain no memory of it.”
She frowned. “Even so, this is the information age. With the internet and cell phones that can record video and upload it instantly, don’t you think everyone would know? I mean, someone had to have seen something by now and caught it on camera.”
He didn’t begrudge her the doubt. He hadn’t wanted to believe it in the beginning either. “We’ve worked hard to ensure knowledge of vampires’ existence—as well as knowledge of our own—never reaches the public.”
“Why? I mean, if vampires are real, don’t you think people should know? Forewarned is forearmed and all that.”
He shook his head. “Do you remember my telling you that I lost two brothers not long ago because knowledge of us was leaked to the wrong ears?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they were slain when a mercenary group learned of the virus and decided they’d use it to create an army of supersoldiers they could hire out to the highest bidder.”