The Rogue Hunter (34 page)

Her eyes widened incredulously and she asked again, "For how long?"

"Well, that differs for everyone, of course. Nanos can't prevent against accidents. If one of us is beheaded, or burned to death in a fire…" He shrugged. "We die."

"Right, but barring an accident or being burned to death… how long will you stay fit and healthy and
young
?" Sam asked grimly.

"No one knows the answer to that," Mortimer admitted.

"No one knows," she said slowly, her mouth pursing with displeasure. "Then how old is the oldest immortal?"

"The oldest?" He shifted and glanced away, looking uncomfortable. "I guess the oldest one I know of is my boss, Lucian."

"And how old is he?"

"I'm not sure. He was born in Atlantis before the fall, but I don't know the exact year. He's—"

"Born in
Atlantis
?" Sam squawked. "And Atlantis fell—what? A couple
thousand
years ago?"

"Close enough," Mortimer muttered.

"And he looks as young as you are?" she asked with horror.

"Pretty much. We all look about twenty-five to thirty."

Sam sat back in her chair as she tried to accept that, and then glanced at him sharply as a question suddenly occurred to her. "How old are you?"

"Me?" he asked with a grimace.

"Yes. You aren't a couple thousand years old, are you?"

"No, no," he assured her quickly, and Sam was just starting to relax when he added, "I was only born in 1210."

The air washed out of her with a whoosh and then she sucked it back in to gasp, "You're, like, eight hundred years old!"

"Thereabouts," he admitted apologetically.

"But that—I—You could have dated my grandmother. My great-grandmother even."

"Highly unlikely," Mortimer assured her, and then added wryly. "I lost interest in women centuries ago."

Her eyebrows rose and she snapped, "You could have fooled me by last night's events. If that was disinterest, I'd hate to see what interest is for your people. You'd probably cripple me if you were interested."

"Oh, well, I meant I had no interest in other women; I
am
interested in you," he explained, and then added, "That's because you're my life mate."

When she stared at him blankly, Mortimer explained, "I can read the minds of most women, and control them too. It takes all the fun out of it. You don't have to guess what they like, you just pluck it from their minds. You don't have to have conversations; it's easier just to read their thoughts. As for sex…" He paused and made a face and then said, "Well, frankly, you might as well just masturbate because without meaning to, you'll have them doing everything you want. Sex, like feeding, is intimate enough that our mind instinctively takes control."

Mortimer reached for her hand and looked her in the eye as he said, "But you're different. None of that is a worry with you. I can't read or control your mind."

Sam sighed. He looked and sounded earnest, and part of her wanted to throw her arms around him and hug him, but she still had so many questions. Grimacing, she retrieved her hand and said, "I still don't understand everything. Like, where does the whole fangs and blood issue come in?"

"Oh." Mortimer grimaced. "Well, the nanos use blood to fuel themselves as well as to make the repairs and regenerate and so on, but they use too much blood for our bodies to supply. It forces us to find more blood for them," he explained. "That wouldn't have been a problem if the nanos had deactivated and broken down as they were expected to do once they'd finished their repairs. But the scientists hadn't taken into account that the body is constantly in need of repair."

"It is?" she asked with surprise.

"Sure. Sunlight damages the body, as do environmental factors, and things we eat or drink. Even the simple passage of time damages the body. As we sit here your cells are aging, breaking down and dying, slowly, one by one. The body is never without something that needs repair."

"So the nanos never shut down and disintegrate," she realized.

He shook his head.

"And the fangs?"

"When the nanos were first created, the people who had been injected with them were given daily blood transfusions to keep the nanos from attacking the host's organs in search of blood. But when Atlantis fell, those who survived found themselves stranded in a world that was nowhere near as advanced as Atlantis. There were no doctors or blood banks and donors."

Sam nodded, imagining how horrible that must have been. It would be like her suddenly finding herself transported to the Dark Ages, only with a health issue. She couldn't imagine it. "What did they do?"

"Some died a horrible, painful death as the nanos attacked their body, eating away at their organs in search of blood. Others—"

"Others what?" she asked when he hesitated, knowing she wasn't going to like what was coming.

"Some became butchers, killing mortals, draining their blood into bowls or pails and then drinking it to survive. It's a time our people aren't proud of," he admitted unhappily, but then rushed on to say, "But in others, the nanos evolved. They'd been programmed to keep their host alive and so brought about physical changes to aid them in the new circumstances. For instance, our people—realizing that sunlight damaged the skin—avoided it as much as possible and moved about mostly at night so that they would have to take in as little blood as possible. In response, the nanos altered our eyes to allow for better night vision." He paused then and hesitated before admitting, "They also brought on the teeth as a medium to use to gain blood."

Sam closed her eyes. He'd said they didn't bite people but fed off blood from blood banks. Of course, that may very well be true, but the first blood bank had only been established in the 1930s. They'd had to get blood before that an alternate way… by feeding off
mortals
.

Dracula did exist, Sam realized. It was just that in reality, he was the result of science not a curse, and he wasn't undead, but still had his soul. Jesus, she thought suddenly, the man she loved was eight hundred years old.

Sam stiffened. She loved him? Of course she did. That was so her. Fall in love with a cute, lead singer of a not-too-successful band and he turned out to be a vampire. Perfect, she thought, and then frowned as she recalled that he wasn't in a band.

"So you hunt rogue vampires for the council of vampires," she recalled.

"Well, they're just called the Council, not the council of vampires," he said, looking pained.

"Whatever." Sam waved that away. "And you're up here looking for one now?"

"Yes."

"And what did this vampire do to become a rogue?"

"He or she has been biting mortals up here," he admitted reluctantly.

"I thought you said your people didn't bite my people but used bagged blood," she said accusingly.

"I did. We do," Mortimer said quickly. "That's what makes this guy a rogue. Biting mortals is against our laws. It's the reason we're here. To stop him, catch him, and present him or her to the Council for judgment."

Sam sat back in her seat with a small sigh. She supposed she couldn't blame them all for one bad apple. Mortals had criminals who broke their laws too. That thought made her ask with interest, "So your people have their own set of laws?"

"Oh yes. We can't really be bound by yours. I mean, mortals couldn't make immortals follow their laws. It's too easy for us to slip into your minds and convince you we haven't done something, or we weren't there, and so on."

Sam nodded slowly. She supposed it would be a nightmare for mortals to try to police immortals and that having their own laws and enforcers would be necessary. It made her curious though. "What are your laws?"

"We aren't allowed to bite mortals unless it's an absolute emergency, and we aren't allowed to turn more than one mortal in a lifetime."

Sam waited, but when he didn't add anything else, she asked with disbelief, "That's it? That's all there is? A couple thousand years to come up with your own laws, and that's the extent of it?" She snorted with disgust. "Jeez, even Moses had
ten
commandments."

"Well, we have a few more," he said defensively. "We aren't supposed to draw attention to our people or let mortals find out about us."

"Well, you've blown that one," Sam pointed out. "You just told me all about it."

"That's different, you're my life mate."

"Life mate?" She clucked impatiently. "That's the third time you've mentioned my being your life mate and Decker said something about it too. What is a life mate?"

Mortimer hesitated and then said, "It's the one person we can't read or control. That's the first sign of a life mate."

"The first sign?" Sam asked with interest. "There are others?"

He nodded. "When we first meet our lifemate it becomes difficult to block our thoughts from being read by other immortals."

Sam's eyebrows rose. "You have to block your thoughts from other immortals?"

"We can read each other just like we read mortals if we don't block our thoughts. It's something we learn to do early. It's not difficult, but requires a certain amount of concentration that appears to be lacking when we first meet our life mate. We're suddenly open and vulnerable to being read by others," Mortimer admitted with a grimace, and then quickly added, "Another symptom is a sudden reawakening of appetites. For food… and sex," he added, and then quickly explained, "Most immortals lose interest in food shortly after they pass their first century. After that they will eat on occasion, special functions and such, but mostly they subsist on blood."

Since the man had eaten like a horse since she'd known him, Sam merely asked, "You lose interest in sex too after the first century?"

"That passes at different times depending on the individual," he said with a shrug. "For me, I lost interest about… I'm not sure, two or three hundred years ago."

"I notice that appetite survived longer than the one for food," she said dryly.

Mortimer grinned. "
C'est la vie
."

His words surprised a short laugh out of Sam, and then she sighed. "What now?"

"Now," he said slowly, "you have to decide if you are willing to be my life mate."

"I thought I already was," she said with surprise. "You said you had all the symptoms."

"Yes, I do. And
you
are
my
life mate, but that doesn't mean that you will agree to
be
my life mate in return," he said quietly. "You might not wish to join your life to mine."

"What happens if I don't wish to?" she asked curiously.

Mortimer blanched at the suggestion, but said, "If you don't, your memory of me will be erased and your life will go on as if we'd never met."

Sam didn't care for that idea at all. "And if I
am
willing?"

"Then you have to decide if you are willing to be turned."

"Turned?" Sam frowned. "You mean I could be… ?"

"Immortal," Mortimer finished and nodded.

"Immortal," she whispered. Sam supposed that would mean some sort of transfusion of his nano-rich blood but was more concerned with the results of being turned. Being an immortal. The idea of staying young forever wasn't bad. And being stronger and faster sounded cool, but the biting-bags-of-blood bit was really kind of gross. She'd put up with the grossness, maybe, to be with Mortimer, but…

"What's the catch?" she asked suddenly.

"Catch?" Mortimer asked.

"The downside," she explained. "There's always a downside. You're offering me eternal youth, with you, a handsome, intelligent amusing mate… Biting bags of blood doesn't sound great, but there have to be more negatives than that."

"Well, you'd have to stay out of the sun as much as possible," he admitted.

"You went out in it the day we went shopping, and the day we went Sea-Dooing, and—"

"We can go out into sunlight, but it means consuming more blood."

"Oh." She considered that. "What about garlic and all that other stuff?"

"Garlic is delicious," Mortimer said simply. "You can eat garlic if you like. And go into churches. All those things in the vampire movies are myths…"

"But?" she queried sharply. "I hear a
but
."

Mortimer sighed and nodded slowly. "But we don't age. It can cause questions if you live anywhere near, or interact with, mortals for more than ten years or so and show no signs of aging. Most of us have to move every decade… and those who work among mortals have to change jobs that often as well."

"The catch," Sam breathed, and it was a doozy. She was working herself to death for a career she might have to give up in ten years, Sam realized, and then Mortimer told her the deal breaker.

"You'd have to leave your sisters in ten years too."

Chapter Eighteen

Sam stared out the window, eyes fixed on Decker's cottage, searching for any sign of Mortimer. If the men were awake, she hadn't yet seen any sign of them, but wasn't surprised. Mortimer was avoiding her, trying to give her the chance to make her decision. He'd said that was what he intended to do when he'd left her last weekend after explaining the downside to what he offered her. Sam understood that he was giving her the space and time to think, and appreciated it, but she missed him.

A little frustrated sigh slipped from her lips, and she paced away from the window, only to whirl back and return to the spot she'd been haunting in the evenings since that night. Alex and Jo had taken to leaving the cottage after dinner, expecting that she and Mortimer would use that time to be together. Sam had allowed them to think that, knowing she needed the time alone to decide her future… and theirs, and Mortimer's too.

Whatever she decided affected everyone she loved, which was what made it such a hard decision to make. Did she grab that brass ring and choose Mortimer… and have to disappear from her sisters' lives in ten years? Or did she choose her sisters and have to give up Mortimer, even the memory of him?

The very thought made her mouth go dry and her muscles clench with anxiety. It was hard to believe that until a week ago he hadn't even been on her radar. In that time he'd somehow made so much of a place in her heart that she now found it hard to continue on without him. Mortimer was always on her mind, her thoughts caught up in everything he'd said and done, her eyes constantly searching out the cottage next door in the hopes of just catching a glimpse of him walking to the SUV as the men left for their nightly hunt for their rogue. Only then would she give up her spot by the sink, and then it was only to pace the floor, her thoughts racing until she finally went to bed, where they continued to race until she heard the SUV return and could sit up to watch Mortimer make the short trek back inside the cottage again. Then Sam would finally drift off to sleep, only to be haunted by him in her dreams.