Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32) - Lynsay Sands Page 0,123
was more advanced technologically than we are even now. The nanos were one of their last great discoveries or inventions before it fell. They were still working on fixing the flaws when earthquakes and whatnot destroyed it.”
“The flaws?” she asked.
“Well, they hadn’t intended it to be a fountain of youth, for one thing,” he admitted with a wry smile. “It was just supposed to cure cancer and mend wounds.”
“But isn’t the ‘keeping you all young and healthy’ bit a good thing?” she asked, finding it odd that they would see something that men had searched for forever, the fabled fountain of youth, a bad thing.
“No society can exist if the people don’t die,” he pointed out, sounding suddenly older and more mature than he’d ever seemed. “Not with new babies born all the time. The earth couldn’t support us all if we kept just having babies and no one died.”
CJ supposed that was true.
“That’s why we have the law that each immortal couple is only allowed to have one baby every hundred years. It’s to help prevent our outgrowing our blood source.”
CJ grimaced at the “blood source” bit, but asked, “So Marguerite can’t have another baby for a century after this one?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “It’s been a little over two hundred years since she had her last child, and will be another hundred before she can have her next.”
“Marguerite and Julius already have another child?” CJ asked with surprise.
“Yep. They have a son, Christian, together,” he told her. “And Marguerite has four other children besides that from her first husband: Lucern, Bastien, Etienne, and Lissianna.”
CJ peered at Marguerite, amazed to know the woman had five children, soon to be six. At one hundred years apart, her oldest must be at least six hundred years old. But then, he’d said she was born in 1265, so the lovely younger friend she’d thought she’d made was actually well past seven hundred and fifty years old. Yet she didn’t look over twenty-five. CJ shook her head. It was really quite amazing.
“So,” she said slowly, “the nanos fight disease and keep you young, but the trade-off is you have to take in extra blood to power them.”
Bricker nodded solemnly.
“But you don’t bite people, you use blood banks to get that blood?” she asked.
“Usually, yes.”
CJ stiffened. “Usually?”
“Well, emergencies crop up,” he said with a shrug. “And if an emergency does crop up, say, a car accident or plane accident in the Alps or someplace far from blood banks, it’s better for an immortal to feed carefully and judicially on a mortal than to lose his shit and attack them.”
CJ supposed that was true. Still, it kind of rankled that they drank blood at all. Essentially, it sounded to her like mortals were cattle for these immortals or vampires, or whatever they were.
“Immortals,” Dani said firmly from her position by Marguerite. “Vampires are dead and soulless. We aren’t.”
CJ frowned at the woman. It sounded like she was correcting the thought she’d just had. Bricker had said he could read her mind. Surely the woman hadn’t done that?
“Yes. I’m just monitoring your thoughts to make sure Bricker isn’t freaking you out,” Dani said, sounding distracted, and then she straightened from clasping Marguerite’s wrist and said, “Your pulse rate has gone back down. How is the pain? Are you still experiencing contractions?”
“Just barely. It’s like they are fading away,” Marguerite assured her, sounding relieved to be able to say it.
“Good,” Dani said with a smile that didn’t hide her own relief. “Just keep breathing deeply.”
CJ turned to stare at Bricker. “You guys can really read my mind?”
He nodded, his gaze on the shrinking bag of blood on Mac’s face. “Read, control, put memories in that aren’t real. The nanos give us any skills we might need to survive.”
“Control?” she asked with concern, and wondered if Mac had controlled her. Was she really so crazy attracted to him or had he controlled her and made her think she was?
“Mac can’t read or control you,” Bricker said, proving he could indeed read her mind. “That’s why you’d be perfect for him. Actually, that’s how we recognize possible mates. We can’t read or control them and the sex is—” He licked a finger, held it up, and made a sizzling sound. “Sex is hot, hot, hot between life mates.”
“Life mates?” she questioned sharply. Mac had mentioned the word a couple of times on the island. He’d like her to be his life mate, he’d said.