One Lucky Vampire (22 page)

“But when they told you at eighteen, why didn’t she turn you then?” she asked.

“I gather that was the plan,” Jake admitted with a grimace, and then explained, “They told me on my eighteenth birthday. My mother thought it would be a grand gift to tell me all about immortals, and then offer to use her one turn to turn me into one.”

“But she didn’t,” Nicole said with certainty and then arched an eyebrow and asked, “You wouldn’t let her?”

Jake shifted uncomfortably, and then sighed and said, “You have to understand, I was a horror buff. I watched every monster movie ever made. They scared the crap out of me and I slept with a nightlight until I was twelve, but I had to watch them. I was crazy for horrors.” He shook his head slightly at the memory. He’d lost his taste for horror since then, but he’d been addicted to them then and that hadn’t really helped the situation. “Back when I was a kid, they didn’t have your Twilights and True Bloods. In every movie where vampires made an appearance, the vampire was the bad guy and the Van Helsing types were the good guys running around staking them and ridding the world of their evil.”

Jake grimaced. “So, essentially, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother told me that not only was my stepfather and his entire clan a bunch of bloodsucking fiends, but that she’d allowed him to turn her into one, and that the half brother I adored and looked out for was one too . . . and I’d been living with them all, unsuspecting all that time.”

“Seriously?” Nicole asked with suspicion. “Before they told you what they were, you didn’t have a clue?”

“They made sure I didn’t,” Jake said quietly. “I suspect they used some mind control to keep me unaware while they fed, or fudged my memory a bit here and there, not erasing anything, but adding things here or there to explain inconsistencies.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have a clue before then that I lived with what I thought were monsters.”

“And you didn’t agree to the change at that point,” Nicole said quietly.

It wasn’t a question, but he treated it as one. “No. I was shocked, horrified, repulsed. They were all suddenly monsters to me, and I didn’t want to be a monster too.”

“It must have been hard for you,” Nicole said quietly, moving to sit on the stool next to his.

Jake hesitated and then swung the seat slightly toward her and said judiciously, “Probably no harder than it is now for you.”

Nicole smiled wryly, but shook her head. Swinging her stool to the side and back with one foot, she said, “It’s a bit of a shock for me to find out such things exist. But for you . . .” She frowned and stopped swiveling to peer at him solemnly. “It was your family. You must have felt—I don’t know, alone?”

Jake nodded. He
had
felt alone. He’d also felt betrayed, abandoned, lost. “I guess at that point I felt like I was just finding out that I’d really been orphaned at four and had been living in a fantasy world all the years since Roberto came into our lives. In truth, I suppose I ran away emotionally that day, and my actual leaving seven years ago was just me physically following up on what happened emotionally years earlier.”

“Why didn’t you run away back then, at eighteen?” she asked curiously. “I mean if you felt they were monsters . . .”

“My brother,” Jake said quietly. “I was angry at my mother for letting Roberto turn her, but I was close to my little brother, Neil, and it wasn’t his fault he was born immortal. Besides, logically, after she explained everything, I understood that they weren’t monsters.”

“But there was still a part of your mind that thought of them as monsters,” Nicole guessed.

Jake nodded. “Eighteen years of training via horror movies can’t be eradicated that easily.”

“And then you were turned to save your life?” Nicole commented.

“Yes.” Jake’s mouth twisted at the memory. “My boss, Vincent Argeneau, who also happens to be Marguerite’s nephew, was being plagued by someone who was trying to ruin his life. They attacked me, and stabbed me just to the side of the heart. When Vincent found me I was dying and he turned me to save my life. I woke up an immortal . . . and didn’t handle it well.”

“Why?” Nicole asked quietly. “Surely it’s better to be an immortal than to be dead?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Jake said with dry amusement, and then glanced down. After a moment, he sighed and admitted, “I was fifty-one years old, miserable, and bitter.” He smiled wryly and lifted his head again, meeting her gaze. She was silent, waiting, wanting to understand, so he had to explain. “I was in a pretty dark place at that time. I’d had a happy childhood, but after finding out about everything, it felt like that childhood had all been a house of mirrors. After that I went through life feeling like an orphan. On top of that, nothing had turned out as I’d intended. I had no wife or kids, no one but my family and they were monsters as far as I was concerned. By the time I was attacked, I felt alone and tired and, frankly, I guess I was at a place where I was just killing time and waiting for the end . . . and then I got attacked. I remember lying there on the office floor, thinking, this is it, the end of my story. No more loneliness, no more disappointment, no more betrayal . . . and, instead, I woke up a vampire.”

“You keep saying
vampire
, but you told me you guys aren’t vampires,” Nicole pointed out quietly.

“Yeah,” Jake smiled faintly. “But I’ve been thinking of them as vampires so long . . .” He shrugged. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Nicole was silent for a minute, and then tilted her head to peer at him, a frown growing on her face. “Fifty-one?”

Jake smiled wryly. “When I was turned yes. I’m fifty-eight now.”

“You do not look fifty-eight,” she said firmly and then asked, “Is that something to do with the nanos?”

He nodded. “They were programmed to keep their host at their peak condition. I don’t think the developers intended that to include age, but the nanos are basically fancy, hybrid computers, and computers are pretty literal. Every immortal looks somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.”

Nicole considered that and then said, “So Marguerite . . . ?”

“I’m not sure of her exact age, but I know it’s over seven hundred.”

“Oh cripes.” Nicole sagged on her stool.

Jake eyed her worriedly, but waited, and then she suddenly straightened and peered at him accusingly.

“You said she wasn’t even in her forties.”

“I said she wasn’t in her thirties,” he corrected. “And she isn’t. I haven’t lied to you about anything, Nicole. I knew almost from the start that we were life mates and didn’t want to lie.” Jake grimaced and added, “I have kind of a thing about lying anyway . . . ever since finding out I was lied to for so long while growing up . . .” He shrugged.

Nicole was silent for a few more minutes, and then sat up straight again and asked, “So what is this life-mate business anyway?”

“Well . . .” Jake paused and swallowed. This was the tricky part, or perhaps it was just the most important part so felt tricky. If she didn’t accept that they were life mates, and agree to be his, or at least agree to consider it, then it could very well be decided that she should have her memory wiped and be left as ignorant of their existence as she’d been before he’d explained things. It would be necessary to ensure the safety of their kind. But if that happened, he wouldn’t be allowed to be around her again. None of them could, in case their presence made the memories return.

It was an odd thing. Jake
felt
odd and somewhat confused. While he knew that she was a life mate, or could be if she agreed, he hadn’t really known her long. Jake liked Nicole, or at least he liked everything he knew about her so far. He also found her attractive. But he wasn’t experiencing any mad, passionate desire to have her or anything, and he was wondering about this life-mate business himself. Shouldn’t he feel more? Want her more? Shouldn’t his every waking thought be about her?

That last question made him pause, because Jake suddenly realized that his every waking thought had included her in one form or another since meeting her. Still, he supposed he’d expected more.

“Jake?” Nicole prodded.

“Oh, sorry,” he murmured, and then blew his breath out and tried to gather his thoughts to answer her question. Finally, he said, “Well, I mentioned that the nanos didn’t just give immortals fangs, but other skills to help with survival.”

“You said mind reading and mind control,” she recalled and didn’t look pleased. He understood that. He hadn’t been too pleased himself to know that his mother and everyone else could read his private thoughts. It had been pretty inhibiting to an eighteen-year-old full of raging hormones. Made aware that they might all be reading his thoughts, Jake had suddenly become aware that sex played a huge role in most of his thoughts at that age. And forget about masturbation in the same house with them. Dear God, what if they all knew? Or read it in his head in the morning? Even thinking about that now made him shudder.

“It’s not just mind reading and control,” he said when Nicole shifted restlessly on her stool. “We’re faster, stronger, have better hearing, sight, night vision, et cetera.”

“Okay,” she said patiently.

“But, the mind reading, that isn’t just of mortals. We can read each other’s minds too. Usually it’s only older immortals able to read younger ones, but it can go the other way too if the older immortal is distracted or not blocking their thoughts,” Jake explained. “So, it means when we’re around each other we have to constantly guard our thoughts, and of course mortals can’t really guard their thoughts from us. It can make relationships tricky.”

“I would think so,” Nicole said dryly.

Jake nodded, but added, “Any relationship. I mean, you can’t imagine what it’s like to be eighteen and know your mother can read your thoughts.”

“I think I know,” she said grimly. “Perhaps not what it’s like to have a mother reading your thoughts or control you, but if you, Dante and Tomasso can read and control me—”

“I can’t,” Jake interrupted.

Nicole tilted her head and peered at him uncertainly. “Why? Is it because you were only turned seven years ago?”

“No. I have gained the skill, and can read most mortals,” he assured her, and then grimaced and added, “I resisted it at first. I didn’t want to be like my family. But in my job it’s a handy skill and so I eventually gave in and have used it pretty regularly . . . on the job,” Jake added to ensure she didn’t think he ran around reading and controlling people willy-nilly.

“Okay,” she said slowly.

“However, I can’t read or control you,” he added.

“So you said,” Nicole reminded him.

Jake grimaced and nodded. “And that is the sign of a life mate.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Which is what?”

“It’s—” He frowned, wanting to get it right, to find the perfect words to make her understand and at least be open to the idea of being his life mate. “A relationship wouldn’t work if both parties could read each other, or even if one could read and control the other.”

“You said that,” Nicole pointed out quietly.

“Yeah, I guess I’m struggling here,” Jake admitted on a sigh, and then shook his head and said, “Forgive me, this is the first time I’ve had to explain any of this.”

“Right. Sorry, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said wryly.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and then said, “Look, basically a true life mate is someone that an immortal can’t read and control. It’s the one person they can relax around and not constantly guard their thoughts.”

“Surely you don’t have to guard your thoughts around mortals?” Nicole asked. “We can’t read you.”

“No, but some mortals think really loud and we have to put up guards against that too. Otherwise it would drive you crazy. People are always thinking, and sometimes just the stupidest, most nonsensical things. We have to keep our guards up against that as well, filter it out, basically.”

“I see.” She tilted her head again. “But you don’t have to do that around a life mate?”

“No. We can relax around them,” he said. Jake gave her a moment to consider that and then added, “Of course there are other things that are special about a life mate.”

“Like what?”

“Well, actually, nobody’s ever explained it to me and I’m not sure what they all are,” he admitted on a wry laugh. “But I know from watching my mother and Roberto that . . . well, it’s a special relationship. They seemed to have mostly the same tastes and values. Like the same things, enjoy each other’s company. They still had disagreements and such, but much less often than I think most couples do, and they seemed to get over them really quickly. They just seem so bonded . . . and apparently, if Dante and Tomasso are to be believed, the physical relationship is much more intense.”

Nicole was silent, which made him worry that she wasn’t getting how important a life mate was, but then he wasn’t sure he fully understood himself.

“It’s also very rare, or hard to find,” Jake added. “Some immortals wait centuries to find one, and some never find one at all.”

She was still silent.

“I’ve heard that the nanos have something to do with selecting a life mate, that they recognize them as a good mate for the immortal and are the reason the immortal can’t read that particular mortal or something. So that it works, I guess.” The conversation where he’d been told that had been a while ago and he hadn’t paid much attention.

Nicole stared at him.

Jake stared back, his mind racing around in search of something to say to help convince her that being a life mate was a good thing, or at least not reject it out of hand. But he feared he had an uphill battle ahead of him. Nicole had just come out of a terrible relationship. She wouldn’t be interested in getting involved again so soon. This was really bad timing.

“I don’t—” Nicole began and Jake was sure she was going to tell him she wasn’t interested, and if she did, he was screwed. He’d lose her. Jake didn’t want that. He wanted what his mother and Roberto had. He’d always wanted that. It was why he’d still been alone at fifty-one. There had been women he’d cared about, and even maybe loved somewhat in his life, but having watched his mother and Roberto together all those years, nothing less than that kind of relationship would do. So when she started to say, “I don’t,” he flat-out panicked and resorted to Dante and Tomasso’s advice. He stood up, stepped forward and bent his head to kiss her.