Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(23)

“What?” I spluttered. Though, now that I really thought about it, they did have that whole bat thing going on, at least with the wings. I had definitely read stories in vampire lore where vamps and bats had close ties, I just… never imagined that they actually looked like this… or existed.

“Vampires? Coldbloods? But why are you so hot?” Lauren asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

“That is a long story,” Navan replied somberly, and his eyes became clouded, distant, as if he were sifting through a long and troubled history in his mind.

He then cast a glance toward his brother and Ianthan. “Where do you think I should begin?”

Ianthan shrugged.

“You might as well start at the very beginning,” Bashrik replied. “We still have time.”

Navan rolled his eyes. “I don’t remember signing up to be the leader of story hour.” He then clasped his hands together, leaning forward in his seat, and cleared his throat as though he were bracing himself for something. “So… I suppose the first thing you ought to understand is that the life forms you humans are aware of, and who live amongst you on this earth, are not the only life forms in the universe. There are others… many, many others. Coldbloods are just one. We come from a place called Vysanthe—it is a world in a far corner of the universe where the sun barely touches.” He looked at Bashrik. “This is stupid. I feel stupid.”

“You’re doing great,” Bashrik said.

“Whoa, whoa, wait. Wait,” Angie interrupted. “Another world? You… You guys are aliens?!”

The faintest smile touched Navan’s lips, and his whole face seemed to light up. My stomach fluttered at the sight, much to my annoyance. “We are aliens to you as much as you are aliens to us,” he replied.

“Mind. Officially. Blown,” Lauren breathed, her eyes bugging as she continued to stare at the strange silver sphere. Yeah, that thing definitely looked like it came from another world.

I pressed my fingers to my temples and returned my attention to Navan. “So… You’re not from Earth. Why are you here?”

Again, Navan shot a look at Bashrik. “They’re not going to understand,” he said.

Bashrik nodded encouragingly. “Just try to explain.”

Navan huffed, almost petulantly, before resigning himself to continuing. “We are highly advanced,” he said, “in ways that a human probably could not even comprehend. We are light years ahead of you in terms of otherworldly travel, and our rulers are constantly pushing their citizens for further innovation, in all fields of life… their current obsession being life extension.”

“But . . .” I looked at Angie and Lauren to see if they had picked up on that. “If you’re vampires, aren’t you immortal?”

“We are trying to be.”

“Uh, please explain,” Lauren said, staring at him blankly.

“Your vampire lore is not accurate. We do possess some of the qualities featured in your stories—such as enhanced speed, strength, and sensual awareness. But we are born the same way humans are born—through conception—and we die the same way humans die, after approximately one hundred years, assuming external factors don’t claim our lives sooner.”

“Wow. So your lifespan is no longer than that of humans?” Angie reiterated.

“Our natural lifespan is more or less the same as humans,” Navan corrected, casting his brother a grim look.

“If we consumed nothing but the blood of animals native to our planet,” Bashrik explained, “then we would die after about a hundred years.”

“So you do consume blood, then?” Lauren asked. “Only blood?”

“Blood is our preferred meal,” Navan replied. “And though we can drink other substances, too—especially for medicinal purposes—our bodies are not designed to eat solid foods.”

“So… are you, like, sitting there lusting after our blood right now?” Lauren ventured, a morbid look on her face. “I’m totally not offering it to you,” she added quickly. “Just curious.”

Bashrik chuckled.

Navan looked less amused. “Your blood is too foreign to be immediately tempting to us,” he said, looking at me even though it was Lauren who had asked the question. “It would have to be synthesized in order for us to benefit from it. After synthesis, however…” His expression grew dark as his voice trailed off. He looked away, toward the woods, focusing on no specific thing. “After that… your blood could prove to be very valuable to us, indeed.”

His words hung ominously in the air, and for a few moments, no one said anything.

“What Navan means is,” Ianthan said, breaking the silence with his higher-pitched, nasally voice, “your blood is most likely what our race has been seeking for the past four years.”

Angie jerked forward. “Our blood?”

“Human blood in general.” Navan’s gaze had returned to me, and there were so many layers of emotion glimmering there that I could only wonder what he was thinking. “Four years ago, one of Vysanthe’s most… esteemed alchemists put forward what became known as the Immortality Theory. The basic essence of the theory is that the right type of blood could extend our lives indefinitely, as long as we kept taking it. For decades, we have known the effect that certain foreign species’ blood can have on us—we have already figured out how to extend our lives for up to fifty years past our natural expiration with the use of blood from neighboring planets. So, immortality is naturally the next step.