"How do they--?"
"I gather it's like the claws on a cat," she said with a shrug, then raised a hand to cover a yawn before finishing with, "At least that's what my brother Bastien says."
"So, you were born with them?" Greg questioned, and when she nodded, he asked, "But surely your ancestors, I
mean the original Atlanteans, they didn't have fangs, did they?"
"No. My ancestors are as human as yours."
Greg couldn't keep the doubt from his face, and she frowned.
"We are," she insisted. "We're just..." She struggled briefly, then said, "We just evolved a little differ-- The nanos forced us to evolve certain traits that are useful, that will help us survive. We need blood to sustain us, so..."
"So, the fangs," he finished, when she hesitated.
Lissianna nodded and yawned again, then said, "I should probably go to bed."
Greg frowned. It was morning for him, and he was wide-awake and curious as hell, but he also knew she worked nights at the shelter and that it was her time to sleep. He wrestled with his conscience for a moment, but his selfishness won.
"Can't you stay a little longer? Here, sit beside me and lean against the wall. It'll be more comfortable for you," he suggested, shifting as far to the side as he could with his hands tied as they were.
Lissianna hesitated, then shifted to sit beside him in the bed. She fluffed her pillow, arranging it over his arm, then leaned against it and got comfortable.
Greg peered up at her, but his mind was on the fact that she smelled really, really good, and she was close enough he could feel the heat radiating off her. After a moment, he managed to draw his mind back to the questions whirling through his head. "What else? What other ways did the nanos evolve you?"
Lissianna grimaced. "We have excellent night vision, and we're faster and stronger."
"To see and hunt your prey. They've made you perfect night predators."
She winced at the description, but nodded.
"And the mind control?"
Lissianna sighed. "It makes feeding easier. It allows us to control our hosts or donors, and to wipe their memories of the experience afterward. We can keep them from feeling pain while we feed, and make them forget what happened, which is safer for both the donors and us."
"So what went wrong with me?" Greg asked curiously as she yawned again.
Lissianna hesitated. "Some mortals are more difficult to control than others. You appear to be one of them."
"Why?"
"Perhaps you have a stronger mind." She shrugged. "I don't know really. While I'd heard of it, this is the first time I've run across it. All I know is I can't read your mind at all, let alone control you, and Mother struggled with you from the beginning."
"She said something about not being able to control me when they first entered my apartment, but she didn't seem to have any trouble getting me to come back here last night," Greg said dryly, then frowned, and added, "Or perhaps it was that Martine woman. She kept touching my arm. She held it all the way here until they tied me up, and the minute she let me go my thoughts cleared; but the night before, it took a couple minutes after your mother left the room for me to think clearly and realize what I had done and the situation I was in."
Lissianna let out a hiss of breath and rubbed her eyes wearily. "They have to be right in your thoughts then, and need to be touching you to make the connection now."
Greg got the feeling from her expression that for some reason she didn't think that was a good thing. He did. He didn't like the idea of being controlled at all, so the fact that it appeared to being getting harder for them to do so was a great thing in his mind.
He glanced her way to say so, only to note that her eyes had drifted closed. She'd fallen asleep.
Chapter 10
Lissianna was sleepy and not at all interested in waking up, but some sense that there was something looming over her kept tugging at her consciousness and urging her awake. She tried to burrow deeper into the nest of pillows and comforter and ignore it, but there wasn't much give to her pillow and there wasn't any blanket at all. Frowning, she blinked her eyes open.
It took Lissianna's half-asleep mind a moment to figure out that it wasn't a pillow her head was nestled on, but a chest. She'd fallen asleep while talking to Greg, she realized, and at some point during the day had apparently cuddled up against him. Sucking in a breath, she stilled, then started to ease away from him, only to freeze at the sight of her cousins. The six of them were gathered around the bed, looming as they stared down at her and Greg with great interest.
Lissianna opened her mouth to speak, then paused and glanced toward Greg to find his eyes open and on her. She quickly sat up and glanced toward her cousins, finding them easier to face than he was at that moment. "What's wrong?"