Single White Vampire (Argeneau #3)(44)

"Love it," he said, and shifted his mouth to her other breast. "Someday I'll rub it all over your body and lick it off as proof."

Kate squirmed at the erotic image, then realized it was not unsimilar to the one they were already playing out. She was naked; he was licking her. Dear God! She lost track of her thoughts as his hand slid between her thighs.

"Luc," she breathed. Much to her amazement, he stopped, heaved a sigh and shifted to sit beside her.

"Okay. Let's get this out of the way. We're obviously not going to get anywhere until we do," he said with exasperation.

Realizing he'd thought she was going to ask another question, Kate opened her mouth to correct him, then decided against it. She really did want to understand.

"My great-great-grandfather was from what you people call Atlantis."

Kate recoiled. This was the very last thing she'd expected him to say. He sounded like a nut.

Lucern ignored her reaction. "As some have speculated, Atlantis was far advanced scientifically. My great-great-grandfather was a scientist. Just before the city's fall, he developed what people today call nanos—tiny little computerized gizmos. I won't bother explaining the whole of it, but suffice it to say that he combined the science of nanos with microbiology to create microscopic little nanos—a virus of sorts—that when shot into the bloodstream, live there and replicate. They're a parasite of sorts," he explained. "They live off the host, but in return repair and regenerate the host. Which keeps the host, and in turn themselves, young and vital for an indeterminate length of time."

"A virus?" Kate asked with disgust.

"It cannot be caught by touching, and it cannot be caught by kissing."

"What about biting?" she asked, her hand going unconsciously to her neck.

"No. Not by biting. The nanos have to be either shot directly into the bloodstream or consumed."

"Like when Dracula cuts himself and presses his wrist to Mina's mouth?"

"Dracula!" Lucern heaved out a sigh. "Bram's character was based on a cruel, boastful, barbarous bastard. And if he could have kept his mouth shut whilst drinking, Bram Stoker would have never written that damned book—which was mostly wrong due to the fact that his informant was dragged off before he could say too much."

Kate stared, wide-eyed, unsure whether she believed Luc or not. Perhaps they'd both lost their minds.

"I am alive, not dead. I have a soul. I can smell, eat and touch garlic. Crosses have no effect, and I can go into churches as you very well know since you attended my brother's wedding."

"But you can't go out in the sun," Kate said.

"I can," he corrected. "It is just that the sun does a great deal of damage to flesh, which means more blood is needed for the nanos to repair it. Tanning isn't really good for people. It ages the skin. Our bodies won't tan, and the nanos try to replace the skin as it ages. That consumes quite a bit of blood. The more skin exposed and the longer the exposure, the more blood is needed. In the old days there were no blood banks, which meant we had to take the blood from humans and increased the risk of our drawing attention. It was easier to avoid the sunlight and limit our blood-intake requirements. It was also easier to hunt at night."

"And you hunted 'humans.'"

He nodded.

"So you're not a human?"

"Yes. Well." He frowned. "I'm an Atlantian. Same species, different race."

"Oh." She breathed out a sigh, then just sat there digesting it all until her eyes drifted to Lucern's leg. His very pale leg. She supposed a tanning salon was out, and recalled how sometimes he was terribly pale and other times flushed with color. "So when you're really pale it's because—"

"Because I am in need of feeding," he finished. "I'm dehydrated, and the blood has all moved closer to my organs to keep them functioning. When I am flushed, I have fed."

"Dehydrated." She nodded. "Why can't you just drink lots of water? Why do you have to have blood?"

"The nanos use blood to repair and reproduce themselves. The body can't make blood at a fast enough rate. The nanos cause the hunger for blood when they need more by creating some sort of chemical reaction in the body."

"And the teeth?"

"They create those first. It's some sort of genetic encoding." He sighed wearily. "Kate, I've entrusted you with my life and the lives of my family by telling you this. Were you to tell anyone… well, most people would think you mad. But it's possible someone might believe, and just one person is enough to endanger all my people."

"How many of you are there?"

"Under five hundred."

She let her surprise show. "So few?"

"Yes. It would be dangerous to have too many. Each of us is only allowed to have one child per century to keep the population down."

"But there should still be more of you. If there are five hundred now, and all of them have children—"

"The five hundred include men, women and children. Out of those, there are perhaps one hundred couples. And then we have a certain number of deaths in each century, too."

Kate was surprised. "I thought you couldn't die."