“Robertson said he can’t swing a sword as well as you can.”
Matthias laughed. “Tim doesn’t do himself justice. I am older, and when I grew up we didn’t have Glocks and tasers.”
“Crosses and holy water?” She suspected she knew the answer.
“I spent some time studying in a monastery.”
“Garlic?”
“Love the stuff. Can’t make a good shrimp scampi without it.”
“Are there are vampires who don’t know what they are?”
“Look at you. All the Clans try to keep track as much as possible. In Asia it was easier because they lived in a remote region and controlled who married whom. As I already told you, the Eastern European Clan was nearly destroyed by the World Wars. The African Clan has encountered problems because of civil wars. Many of them relocated to Europe and merged with the Western European Clan for protection. The South American Clan is scattered, but I have contacts there. Many of them are descended from the Eastern European Clan.”
“Do they all run businesses?”
“Well, to a certain extent. Our Clan here is descended from the Western European Clan, which is now based in Great Britain. The Eastern European Clan handles the EU region. The Indonesian Clan takes care of Australia, too. We all help each other, try to identify and bring in anyone who—”
“Is like me.”
Matthias nodded. “If someone is just a hybrid, we try to leave them alone but keep tabs to see if they develop a strong and traceable mutation. Not all hybrids have the longevity and healing ability.”
“Are you the oldest in the States?”
“That I am aware of.”
“What about your cousin, Rafael?”
“He’s three hundred and forty. His grandfather and my grandfather are brothers. He’s very strong, but quite not as strong as me.”
“Why do we start out like normal humans?”
“Not totally normal.” He smiled. “Tim said you were powerful, even as a baby. The best guess we have right now is hormones. At birth your blood would have appeared nearly normal. Not different enough to raise any red flags. Once the body finishes puberty, hormones settle, the aging process slows to a crawl, and genetics takes over. The mutations you have determine how fast you age.”
Her mind reeled again, and her stomach growled. He took the burger wrapper and handed her another. “Eat. We’ve got to go to dinner.”
She started to protest, then realized how famished she was. She gobbled the burger down in just a few ravenous bites. Still, she felt hungry. “Why can’t the government know about us?”
His expression grew hard and cold. “When have you ever known the government to take knowledge like this and use it for the common good? Do you want to end up a lab rat? Vivisected, lying on a table while they ask you questions about how it feels to have them poking around inside you?”
“Okay, okay.” Her appetite faded again. “I get it.”
“That’s why one of my divisions is research. I’ve purchased three different pharmaceutical companies and four research labs to squelch research that threatens us.”
“Has the government captured any vampires before?”
He nodded. “One that I know of. I missed his lineage. He enlisted in the army to fight in the first Gulf War. I learned through my contacts they had him in Atlanta at the CDC, but before I could develop a plan to get him out, he’d killed himself. Fortunately, I got my hands on the files, and his remains were cremated before being returned to his family.”
She gasped. “Why did he kill himself?”
“If you realized you were going to spend the rest of your life as a science experiment, with no possibility of freedom, wouldn’t you rather die?”
She shuddered. “Yes.”
“He didn’t know what he was. Had he known, he most likely could have found a way to escape.” Sadness lined his face. “I don’t want anyone else to experience that again if I can help it. I work very hard to prevent our kind from being captured.”
“So is there or isn’t there supernatural stuff? What about the Others? And the daemon pulverem?”
He considered his answer. “If you took a working television back to the time of Jesus, what would they think?”
She considered. “That it was some sort of possessed box.”
“Or the word of God speaking.”
“What?”
“I’m not saying that’s what happened. But you and I would say, ‘Oh, that’s just Matt Lauer and The Today Show.’ We would think it’s normal. Consider some of the extremely isolated indigenous tribes. What they must have thought the first time they saw an airplane fly overhead.”
“Okay, I get your point. Just because it’s weird and outlandish, doesn’t mean it can’t be true or natural.”
“I’m not saying I’ve got all the answers. You’ll hear me tell you, ‘I don’t know,’ quite a lot, and I’m sure it’ll piss you off.”
She snickered, but he continued. “I won’t lie to you.”
“Anymore.”
“Anymore,” he agreed.
“Why didn’t you try to date me instead of hiring me?”
“You wouldn’t have let me. You would have run so far in the other direction I never could have gotten close to you again. You would have sensed something was up and kept me at arm’s length.”
He was right. Damn it.
She looked at him. “I’m a vampire?”
He nodded. “You and I are vampires.”
“That’s going to take some getting used to.”
He noticed she’d finished eating. “Come.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go to dinner.”
She stood then sat down again.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked at him. “I’m not on the Pill right now. I don’t want to get pregnant!”
“You won’t. It’s not the right time of the month.”
“How would you know.” She looked at him, and he blushed. His face turned bright red, in fact. Her eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I just mean…” He looked at her. “I just know. I can only sense it with you, if that’s what you’re wondering. I don’t know how I know. I don’t know if it’s because of your scent or because of what we’ve gone through together or what.”
She held up a hand. “Never mind, big guy. Sorry I asked.” She studied him. “Will you let me know if it’s not safe?” Now that she worked the calendar in her head, he was probably right.
He nodded, the color fading from his face. “We have a few more days.”
“I need to see a doctor when we get home.”
He nodded, seemingly genuinely relieved to drop the topic.
He obviously isn’t the type to pick me up a box of tampons on the way home from work. His face went beet red again as he must have heard her thought. She laughed. “Sorry.”
He shook his head, smiled, and then took her into his arms for a kiss. “Go easy on me, Taz. I might be an old guy, but I’m still just a guy.”
After dinner, Taz and Matthias returned to the cabin. While he wanted her to go to sleep, she managed, without the help of supernatural charms, to coax him out of his clothes and into bed with her.
He nuzzled her neck with his lips, working his way down her chest to her breasts. He sucked her nipples into his mouth, teasing and tasting, sending floods of juices straight to her pussy.
No man ever had this effect on her before, the desire to just throw all caution to the wind and get utterly, completely, thoroughly fucked.