Argeneau Family 12. The Renegade Hunter(49)

Jo nodded. "Otherwise you guys would probably be hunted down and experimented on and probably drained dry so the fat rich could become like you."

"That is an issue now," Nicholas acknowledged. "Though until the last few centuries it was more a concern of being hunted down and killed."

Jo grimaced, but said, "You mentioned Sam is his life mate. Bricker has said that a time or two as well. I just thought it was some weird Californian term for girlfriend, but—"

"A life mate is much more than a girlfriend or even a wife," Nicholas interrupted her quietly. "She, or he, is rare and precious. They are the one person in all the world that an immortal can relax around and be him or herself with."

"Why?" Jo asked at once. "What makes them so special?"

"Ah… well…" Nicholas frowned and glanced away. It was a moment before he glanced back and said, "To explain that I have to explain some other things."

"Go ahead."

He nodded, and then took a breath and began, "The nanos gave us more than fangs."

"Speaking of which, I understand why the nanos gave you fangs, but how did they do it? Surely the nanos weren't programmed to alter you physically in that way?"

"No. They were programmed to keep us healthy and at our peak. In Atlantis, the fangs weren't necessary. Those who had been injected with the nanos were given transfusions to make up for the problem of not producing enough blood on their own to sustain the nanos. But then Atlantis fell and there were no more transfusions. Atlantis had been very isolated by the ocean and a ring of mountains. When it fell, it sank into the ocean and the survivors—mostly immortals—had no choice but to cross the mountains and rejoin the rest of society, but the rest of the world wasn't nearly in the same league technologically as Atlantis had been. The people were ages behind, still primitive. There were no more transfusions."

"I'm guessing that was a problem," Jo said dryly.

"Most definitely," Nicholas agreed. "So the nanos altered their hosts, giving them what they needed to survive in the new terrain. They gave them fangs, made them faster, stronger, and gave them better night vision, making them nocturnal predators."

"Why the night vision?" she asked. "You said you could go out in daylight."

"We can, but it's something we try to avoid," he said and explained, "The sun causes damage, and more damage means more blood is needed to repair it, and more blood needed means biting more people since we were forced to feed off the hoof back then."

"Off the hoof… cute," she muttered.

Nicholas shrugged apologetically.

Jo sighed and said, "So you avoided going out in sunlight to avoid the damage and reduce the amount of blood needed."

He nodded.

"Sensible," she murmured, and then cleared her throat and said, "So you used to actually run around biting people, but now just get blood from the blood bank?"

Nicholas was silent for a moment and then cleared his throat and said, "It is against our laws to bite mortals now."

Jo's eyes narrowed. She hadn't missed the fact that he was avoiding her eyes as he said that… and that he hadn't really answered her question and said whether he'd bitten people in the past, but now fed on bagged blood. She let it go for now, however, and said, "What else can you do?"

Nicholas looked wary. "What do you mean?"

"The guy at the check-in desk downstairs and the other one who was telling us dogs aren't allowed in the hotel, but then suddenly did an about-face," she reminded him dryly, and Nicholas grimaced.

"Oh yes." He sighed. "Well, the nanos also make us able to read and control people. It makes it easier to hunt them, and that way we can make it so they don't feel the pain of the bite. We can send them our pleasure instead. We can also read if they're healthy and so on."

"Nifty," Jo said dryly, now wondering what thoughts of hers she'd been unknowingly sharing since meeting Mortimer, Bricker, and Decker up north… or more worrisome, when she'd been controlled and what she'd been made to do.

"The ability isn't just with mortals though," Nicholas continued quickly, probably noting her upset. "We can read other immortals too if they aren't guarding their thoughts and they can do the same with us. It makes it rather trying at times. Around other immortals we are constantly on our guard, constantly having to remember to keep up a mental wall to keep our thoughts and feelings our own… except with a life mate," he added solemnly. "They are that very rare person we can neither read nor control. Being with them is like finding an oasis in a desert. You can be yourself without having to guard your thoughts all the time. They are your mate for life, a very long life that gets terribly lonely if you don't have one."