Runaway Vampire (Argeneau, #23)

“Si.”

“How?” she asked curiously. “I mean the engine is humming, the windows are cracked open and a breeze is coming in, and everything is jingling and rattling in the back. How can you possibly hear my heart over all of that?”

“The nanos—”

“And where the hell did the fangs come from?” she burst out suddenly, bringing up something that had been nagging at the back of her mind since he’d bitten Dave. “You said the nanos kept your people at peak condition. Peak condition for humans does not include fangs for sucking blood.”

“They—”

“Come to that,” she interrupted again, growing a bit agitated. “Reading and controlling minds isn’t a usual condition for humans either, at their peak condition or not.”

“Mary?” he said softly.

“Yes?”

“Sta’zitto,” he suggested gently, and then added, “Per favore.”

Mary blinked. “What does that mean?”

“Please, shut up,” he translated, his tone affectionate. “I will explain if you just let me.”

Mary narrowed her eyes, but nodded, and waited for these explanations.

“In Atlantis, the nanos kept their hosts at their peak condition. “But, as I mentioned, Atlantis fell and the survivors, the ones with the nanos, found themselves in a world much less advanced. There were no more transfusions. No more blood. But the nanos had work to do, and kept using the blood that was in their host.” Dante paused briefly to narrow his eyes at the rear camera screen, and then continued, “Grandfather says it was a bad time. When the blood is low in the veins, the nanos seek it out in the organs. It is very painful. Many of the survivors died. Often killing themselves.”

“So you can die?” she asked. “You aren’t really immortal?”

“We can die, but it is hard to kill us. You must cut off the head and make sure it is kept away from the body for a certain amount of time. Or we can burn to death.”

“So these immortals that killed themselves . . . ?”

“Set themselves on fire, usually. Or convinced someone to cut off their head for them.”

“Oh,” Mary breathed, thinking the agony must have been extreme to drive those poor people to such a terrible end.

“Those who survived did so because they did not give up. The nanos eventually forced a sort of evolution on their hosts to get the blood they needed to continue their job.”

“The fangs,” she guessed solemnly.

Dante nodded. “Our people developed fangs to gather the blood we needed. But they also developed increased speed and strength to help them in the hunt, as well as better hearing, better vision and even night vision.”

“Is that why your eyes glow silver?” Mary asked curiously. “The night vision, I mean? Cats’ eyes kind of glow in light at night and they’re supposed to have good night vision.”

“I am not sure,” he admitted. “I know the silver has something to do with the nanos. All immortals have silver or gold flecks in their eyes that glow in certain circumstances.”

“What kind of circumstances?”

“When we need blood,” he answered. “Or when we feel . . . passionate.”

“Ah,” Mary muttered and lifted her mug to her lips. Finding it empty, she set it in the holder, and clasped her hands in her lap, simply waiting.

“We also suddenly had the ability to read minds and control people, which made hunting without being discovered much easier.”

“I imagine so,” she said dryly, and then frowned and asked, “But how did the nanos do that? I mean, they weren’t programmed to do that.”

“No, but their main directive was to keep their host at their peak condition,” Dante pointed out.

“Yes.”

“And they needed blood to do that.”

“But they use more blood than the human body can produce,” Mary remembered his earlier words.

“Si.” He nodded. “So, I presume the nanos just added getting blood as part of their task to complete the original task.”

“You presume?” she asked. “Don’t the scientists who developed this have some idea—?”

“The scientists who developed the nanos did not survive the fall of Atlantis,” he interrupted.

Mary raised her eyebrows. “None of them had the nanos?”

“Apparently not,” he said with a shrug.

“So, only the human guinea pigs survived Atlantis,” she said slowly. “And they have no idea about how the stuff in their bodies works?”

“We have some knowledge now,” Dante assured her. “We have scientists among our ranks who have discovered much and are always working to discover more. However, as I say, technology in the new world our people found themselves in was far behind Atlantis. And none of them were scientists. They had to wait for science to catch up a bit. Most of the discoveries about our nanos have been made in only the last century.”