“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.