up to explain everything? He’d probably really rather do it himself,” he pointed out, and when her expression didn’t change, said, “No, huh? Okay, then, how do I— Oh! I know, so you’ve heard of Casper the Friendly Ghost, right?”
CJ’s eyebrows rose, but she nodded.
“He was a good happy little ghost, not scary like the other ghosts?”
CJ nodded slowly again.
“Well, we’re like that, only we’re vampires, not ghosts. Happy Casper vampires.”
“Oh, my God, Bricker!” Dani turned to scowl over her shoulder at Bricker, snapping, “What the hell are you trying to do? Scare her right out of the house? Mac is so going to kill you.”
Bricker grimaced and turned back to CJ with a sigh. “Okay, so we’re not really vampires, that just sounds sexier. We’re actually immortals. We’re human just like you with souls and all that other good human-y stuff like consciences and so on, but we have these little bioengineered nanos in us that use blood to heal injuries, fight disease, and keep us young. But it takes more blood than we can produce to do all that, so we have to top up the old red juice on a regular basis,” he said, holding up the bag of blood between them. He then peered down at Mac and reached to open his mouth.
CJ had seen Mac’s teeth and had never noticed fangs in his mouth before this, so wasn’t surprised not to see them now either. But then Bricker opened his own mouth. Like Mac’s, his teeth looked perfectly normal . . . until his canines shifted and dropped down. While she gaped at him, he punctured the end of one index finger on the tip of one of those fangs, bringing about a pearl of blood that he then waved under Mac’s nose. It twitched as Mac caught the scent, and then his canines did the same shift and drop that Bricker’s had, presenting very long, pointy-tipped fangs.
While CJ gaped, Bricker slapped the bag of blood to his mouth and released it and they both watched as it began to shrink like Marguerite’s had, and then CJ murmured, “You said these nanos keep you all young.” Raising her head, she eyed him with curiosity and asked, “Are you saying you’re older than you look?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said with a grin. “While you’ve been treating me and even thinking of me like a younger brother the last few weeks, I’m actually older than you.”
“How much older?” she asked dubiously. He didn’t just look younger than her, he acted younger too. It was hard to imagine he was older.
“I’m over a hundred years old, CJ,” he said with a grin. “I’m just young at heart still.”
“You are not!” she said at once.
“I am,” he assured her. “I was born in 1910.”
“No way.”
“Way,” he assured her.
“But that’s—”
She’d snapped her mouth closed before the word old could slip out, but he laughed and said, “If you think that’s old, Decker is at least twice that,” he told her, and then glanced toward Decker to ask, “What are you now—260, 270?”
“I was born in 1750,” Decker answered. The man was standing next to the bed, his eyes shifting between his wife and his aunt.
While CJ goggled at Decker, Bricker continued, “Dani is the youngest. She’s only in her forties, and I know Marguerite was born in 1265, but I’m not sure about Julius. I think he’s a lot older than her. He—”
“I was born in 534,” Julius announced, and then added, “b.c.”
CJ stared at the people around the bed. They all looked in their mid-twenties, just like Bricker, and just like— She turned to stare down at Macon.
“When was Mac born?” Bricker asked the room at large.
“1009 . . . b.c,” Marguerite answered. Her voice sounded weary now, but at least the breathless panting had ended. It looked as if the pains or contractions she’d been suffering had stopped.
That had to be a good thing, CJ thought. She stared at Mac silently now, recalling thinking that he was lying about his age and was younger than her. She’d been right, he’d been lying, but if what Bricker said was true, he definitely wasn’t younger than her.
But how could what Bricker said be true? she asked herself with a small frown. They didn’t have the kind of technology he was talking about now let alone two, three, or even four thousand years ago.
“The Atlanteans did,” Bricker said suddenly.
“Did what?” she asked with confusion.
“They had that kind of technology,” he explained. “Atlantis