and convince him that he hadn't been speeding, and, in fact, that the officer had never seen him. It was pretty much the same for every law. Having experienced having her mind controlled and what they could make mortals do against their will, Jackie knew how scary their abilities were. One of their kind could probably kill someone in front of a room full of witnesses and make every last person forget what they'd seen. Their enforcers were necessary.
As for their own set of laws, while Jackie wished they had to follow all mortal laws, she understood that immortals were so spread out that the enforcers couldn't possibly keep up with making them follow every law. So, they'd decided on the laws that were important to them such as restricting them to bagged blood and not feeding off mortals except in emergencies and in cases of medical issues that required live donors. Most of the rest of their laws seemed to simply be meant to prevent the possibility of overpopulating the earth; restricting them to having only one child every hundred years, and allowing each to turn only one mortal in their lifetime.
Jackie knew these laws were enforced with death, and not a very pleasant one either. According to her father's files, the last immortal to try to turn more than his allotted one, had been hunted down here in California. He'd been staked out in the sun all day, then beheaded at sunset. The beheading had probably been the kinder action. Leaving him out in the sun all day, so he dehydrated and his nanos began to eat his organs in search of needed blood was apparently the true punishment. According to Bastien, there was no worse torture for one of their kind and the man would have been grateful for the beheading when it came.
"How many enforcers are there?" Jackie asked suddenly. It was a subject she'd always wondered about.
"I'm not sure," Vincent admitted. He guessed, "Perhaps a dozen or so here in North America."
"How many of your people are here?"
He shook his head. "To tell you the truth, I'm not sure about that either. I'd guess there are about five hundred here in North America."
"And Europe?"
"More," he said solemnly.
Jackie nodded. She knew that the European immortals were ruled by a different council than the North American council and that there had been friction between the two for centuries. It went back to when some of the immortals had first moved to the Americas, scared out of Europe by the witch hunts. The European council had felt the immigrants should still have to answer to them, but the immigrating families had different issues, and felt the European council was out of touch with their needs. They'd wanted to rule and police themselves.
According to Bastien, the battle that had ensued had paralleled the American battle for independence in a way, but on a much smaller scale. In the end, the European council had just washed their hands of their people in the new world. They hadn't really had a choice. They weren't in the Americas to enforce their control.
Jackie steered the topic away from the councils and asked something she'd wondered about since arriving in California. "How much blood do you need a day?"
Vincent hesitated, then said, "Most go through three or four bags a day. Some need more. It varies."
"And you?" she asked. "How many people do you bite a day?"
"Only one or two a day now."
"Why do you need less blood?"
"It's not that I need less, but..." He shrugged indifferently. "I only feed enough to get by."
"Enough to get by," Jackie echoed, recalling Tiny saying Marguerite thought Vincent had lost weight when she'd seen him in New York. Obviously, feeding "enough to get by" wasn't enough. "Why?"
Vincent didn't pretend not to understand what she was asking, but avoided her gaze as he said, "I'm beginning to find the hunt a terrible bother."
"A bother?" Jackie asked with concern, positive this was bad.
"Everything seems to be a bother these days," he admitted with dissatisfaction. "You were right. I didn't eat before you and Tiny got here. I stopped eating about three hundred years ago. I shouldn't have, because it helps in building my own blood and reduces the amount I need to feed, but having to eat food as well as hunt became a bother. Food became boring, and hardly worth the trouble."
"Food became boring?" Jackie goggled at him, sure he was joking. She'd never imagined boredom was the