“Ah.” Beth shook her head. “Using his charm on you, then.”
“He was all right,” Donny said with a shrug. After a minute he added, “He was super worried about you, though. I thought he was going to get us both killed, speeding the way he was to get to the house. I’ve never seen telephone poles blur together like that before.”
That was rather surprising news to Beth. As far as she knew, Scotty didn’t think much of her so shouldn’t have rushed to her aid. Mind you, he had claimed she was wrong on how he felt about her. Unfortunately, he’d been interrupted before he could explain further, but that might be for the best. If the man said he felt sorry for her or something, she would have had to punch him for ruining any future sexual fantasies that might have included him. She could hardly have sex with a man who felt sorry for her, even if it was only in a dream.
“How come you don’t like him?” Donny asked suddenly, and Beth glanced at the ginger-haired man with surprise.
“Who said I don’t like him?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “if you liked him you wouldn’t have enjoyed my accidentally shooting him so much. And you really seemed to enjoy shooting him yourself.”
“Oh, that.” Beth waved the issue away. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I just . . .” She hesitated briefly and then blurted, “The man hates me.”
“What?” Donny asked, sounding shocked, and then shook his head firmly. “He doesn’t.”
“He does,” she assured him.
“But he—” Donny cut himself off, and instead asked, “What makes you think that?”
“He—” Beth began and then snapped her mouth closed. She’d decided ten years ago not to dwell on bad things anymore. She’d spent more than a hundred years wallowing in the misery of her mortal life and her turning. By doing so, she’d been unable to move forward. It was hard to experience life and be happy when you were sunk in the anger and depression of yesteryear. In a way, by doing that, she herself had continued the torture and humiliation her past abusers had visited on her, and long after they’d stopped and even died. Beth had come to realize she’d wasted all those years, and had decided it was time to let the past go and live only in the moment. The odd thing was, it was a dog that taught her that.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said now, and then changed the subject. “So, are you originally from Toronto?”
“No. I’m not Canadian. I was born and raised in Kansas,” Donny said.
“Kansas?” she asked with surprise.
Donny nodded. “It’s where I was turned. Where Leigh was turned too,” he added.
“Lucian Argeneau’s life mate, Leigh?” Beth asked with interest.
Donny nodded. “We were both turned by the same rogue.” He pressed his lips tightly closed briefly, and then blurted, “It’s my fault she was turned. I had a crush on her, and my sire read it from my mind and said he’d let me turn her, but the truth was he’d decided to turn her himself. It ended up lucky for me because otherwise . . .” He shook his head. “Well, if not for her, I’d probably be dead. Lucian saved her, and I’m pretty sure she talked him into saving and sparing me too.”
“So, like me, you were turned and not born immortal,” Beth murmured, watching the telephone poles glide by.
“Yeah. It was pretty awful,” Donny muttered.
Beth grunted in response, but her mind was on memories of her own turn. Grinding her teeth, she crossed her arms over her chest to try to dispel the shuddering those memories brought on.
Donny must have noticed the action, because he added almost apologetically, “I guess it probably always is.”
“Yes,” she agreed solemnly and then took a deep breath, pushed the old memories away and said, “But it’s over now. And look at all that we’ve gained—immortality, good health, good teeth, good everything. Physically we’re the best we can be and always will be so long as we don’t get ourselves beheaded or burned alive.”
“And beheading only works so long as you keep the head separate from the body.”
“True,” she said with a nod.
“And we’re not even dead and soulless,” Donny added wryly. “It was a relief to find that out.”
Beth looked at him with surprise. “You thought that to be the case when you were first turned?”
“Yeah, of course. That’s what all the movies say. Vampires are dead and soulless.” He glanced at her with curiosity. “Didn’t you think that too?”
“No.” She shook her head firmly.
“But you were turned by a rogue too, weren’t you?” he said with a frown. “Surely he didn’t bother to explain—”
“No, he didn’t,” she said with a wry smile. “But I knew Dree long before the rogue who turned me came along. She—”
“Dree?” Donny interrupted.
“Alexandrina Argenis Stoyan,” Beth explained.
“Wait, you knew Drina Argeneau before this rogue who turned you came along?” he asked with a frown.
“Argenis,” she corrected him. “Dree is from the Spanish branch of the family.”
Donny snorted at the distinction. “She’s Lucian Argeneau’s niece. That makes her an Argeneau no matter how they change the name.”
Beth opened her mouth to argue the point, but then closed it again and conceded, “I suppose.”
“So, how did you know Drina before you were turned? Did you work for her as a maid or something? Those are usually the only mortals who know about our kind. It’s hard to hide it from them and—”
“We were friends,” Beth interrupted. “And sort of business partners, but mostly friends for a good thirty years before I was turned. And during that time she’d already explained everything to me. It was probably the most interesting conversation of my life,” she added with a wry smile as she recalled learning that Atlantis had really existed. That the scientists there had been more advanced technologically than the scientists were even today. That in a search for a better way to deal with illness and internal injuries, they’d developed bioengineered nanos that could be introduced to the body via the bloodstream, which would move throughout the body, fighting disease and repairing injuries.
The thing she’d found most interesting had been that even back then, in a society supposedly so much more advanced, it was laziness that had brought about the invention of the closest thing to immortality man had yet to come up with. Not wanting to have to create hundreds of different programs for the nanos for every illness or possible injury a mortal could suffer, the scientists had simply programmed them with a blueprint of a mortal male and female at their peak condition and given the nanos the directive to ensure or return their host to that condition and then self-destruct.
What the scientists hadn’t taken into consideration was that the nanos would consider aging a disease too and would reverse the effects of that aging. They also hadn’t considered that the human body was constantly under assault from the sun, from polluted air, even from the simple passage of time, and so the nanos would never finish their work and self-destruct. Instead, they constantly worked at keeping their host at their peak. “Forever young, forever healthy . . .”
Beth didn’t realize she’d said that last part aloud until Donny grimaced and added, “And forever needing blood because the nanos use it to make the repairs and fight disease, as well as to propel and reproduce themselves. More blood than we can produce.”
“Nothing is perfect,” Beth said with a shrug.
“Being a blood-sucking vampire is miles away from not being perfect,” Donny argued, his tone dry.
“Blood-sucking vampire?” she echoed with amusement.
“Well, that’s what we are,” he pointed out.
Beth shook her head and then shrugged. “I prefer to think we’re not unlike hemophiliacs. They occasionally need blood transfusions because their blood doesn’t clot. We need it more often because we don’t produce enough to support the nanos in our bodies. A simple medical need.”