it from there.”
“Very well.” Kian motioned for her to begin.
“I suspected Emmett of being an immortal probably since day one. The clues were all there, but since he didn’t trigger Peter or Leon’s immortal male alert, I shelved that suspicion.”
“What made you suspect him?” Andrew asked.
“He had a reputation for bedding several women a night, and given that he was supposed to be in his fifties, that was odd. Then when we tried to get one of the women to talk about her experience with him, she couldn’t remember any of the details. And the last clue was the state in which the women left his place. They were so exhausted that they needed a day off to recuperate.”
Andrew frowned. “That shouldn’t have happened following a venom bite. If they were bitten by him, they should have been perfectly fine the next day. I would have suspected Viagra or some other drugs.”
“That was precisely what threw us off. We suspected drugs as well.” Eleanor shifted in her chair. “I wanted to find out whether he used compulsion or drugs or both on the women, so I asked for an audience with him, which was basically like asking for a hookup. I got invited. He was careful, testing me to make sure that I was susceptible to compulsion. I did a good job of faking it, and once he was sure that I could be compelled, he gave me a glass of spiked wine. I pretended to be high, and he took me down to his basement. Naturally, I intended to stop him before things got heavy, but I didn’t expect him to be so strong and to go straight for my neck. He was more interested in snacking on my blood than having sex with me.”
Andrew’s eyes grew wide. “What the hell? Is he a vampire?”
“He thinks that he is a different kind of immortal,” Peter said. “His story was very convincing, but some of the things he said didn’t add up, which is why I suspect that he might be insane, and that he'd made it all up.”
“What did he tell you?” Andrew asked.
“He said that his people were relative newcomers to Earth, which was the best indication that he was making it up. According to him, the original settlers are called pure-bloods, and they are long-lived but not immortal. Emmett is supposedly a first-generation born to a human mother and a pure-blooded father. They have fangs and venom, and he implied that their females have them too. They are a matriarchal society because of gender disparity. For every four males, only one female is born. They operate as a tribe and don’t have family units. The females choose who they want to breed with, and it sounded like they own the males in their communal harem.”
“Did he actually say that?” Onegus asked.
Peter nodded. “In so many words. When I told him that Eleanor had a mate and that Greggory came from a different group of immortals, Emmett asked whether he belonged to her or to his former mistress.”
Eleanor snorted. “Emmett told me that he was raised to respect women, but apparently that was a gross understatement. He was raised to be their sex slave.”
“I’m still stuck on the blood-sucking,” Andrew said. “Is it a sexual thing? Or a nutritional need?”
“He’s definitely a carnivore.” Peter leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “When we stopped at a fast-food place, he ordered four naked medium-rare burgers and ate only the meat. He said that was the only thing he could consume without getting an upset stomach.”
“He said that my blood was potent,” Eleanor added. “It was like an energy drink for him, and he also said that I smelled delicious. I think it’s both sexual and nutritional.” She shrugged. “Or he’s nuts, and the blood-sucking is a fetish.”
“Any progress with Emmett’s laptop?” Kian asked William.
The guy had gotten it last night, but he doubted William had had enough time to hack it.
“It was easy to break into, but I need more time to try to decipher the language. It’s not my specialty. I’m also checking on the company that he sent the email to, but I sincerely doubt that it belongs to his people. Kumei is a multi-billion telecommunications company, and it has been in the news lately, so he might have picked up the name from the internet or from television and used it in his fantasy. I will be stunned if he gets