believe. It was their idea, and they’d surely want to be young and healthy forever too. It’s probably why they came up with them in the first place.”
“Perhaps,” Drina said mildly. “But apparently they weren’t willing to risk trying it themselves until they’d perfected them on others, and Atlantis fell before they decided they were perfected.” She shrugged. “They all died in the fall. We have today’s scientists trying to replicate the process, but they haven’t yet been successful.”
“Is this how you two were turned?” Teddy asked Dawn and Leonora with horror.
Both women nodded silently.
“Barbaric,” Teddy repeated with disgust, and then sighed and glanced to Mirabeau. “Well, then I guess you’d best get to it.”
She nodded, but Tiny was still holding her arm, and he asked uncertainly, “Are you sure you want to do this, Beau? It sounds painful.”
“Not as painful as the turn,” she said solemnly. “And I’d go through this and a lot more to keep you as my life mate.”
Tiny sighed and reluctantly released her wrist with a nod. Mirabeau didn’t hesitate or give either of them a chance to reconsider or agonize. The moment he released her arm, she whipped it up to her mouth. Her fangs were out by the time her wrist reached her teeth, and she bit into it as viciously as a dog, not just puncturing the flesh, but tearing into it and then ripping away a good-sized flap so that it hung from her arm like a torn pocket. Even as blood began to spurt from the open wound, she was turning it to press against Tiny’s mouth.
“I’ll get bandages,” Harper muttered, and headed for the door to the adjoining bathroom.
Drina nodded absently, but her attention was on Tiny. Despite knowing what was going to happen, the violence and suddenness of it all appeared to have caught him by surprise. He instinctively tried to pull away when Mirabeau pressed the wound to his mouth, but caught himself almost at once and allowed her to do it. Still, he choked a bit as the blood coursed into his mouth, no doubt unable to subdue his natural repulsion at the thought of drinking anyone’s blood.
“You have to swallow. Try to relax,” Drina said quietly. Tiny met her gaze over Mirabeau’s arm. Seeing the distress in his eyes, Drina instinctively slid into his mind to help, soothing his thoughts and making his body relax, so that he could swallow as much of the blood as possible before the nanos made the bleeding stop.
Inside his head as she was, Drina knew when the gushing began to slow. It quickly reduced to a trickle, and when it stopped altogether, she released her control of him.
Tiny immediately removed his mouth from Mirabeau’s arm and sank back on the mattress.
“Are you all right?” Mirabeau asked with concern, hardly seeming to notice that Harper had returned with bandaging and was tending to her wound. “Tiny?”
Nodding, he raised his head and forced a smile. “I’m fine. You?”
His gaze slid to her wrist, but there was nothing to see now that Harper had bandaged it. Still, he grimaced at the swath of white and then sighed and asked, “How long does it usually take to start?”
“It differs for different people,” Harper murmured, setting the roll of cotton bandaging on the bedside table. “With some it starts right away, and with others it takes a while before they notice a difference, and then it’s sometimes just a slow onset that builds up.”
“How do you feel?” Mirabeau asked worriedly.
Tiny smiled wryly as he took in the circle of concerned faces around him. But shrugged. “Fine. I don’t feel any different. I guess I’m going to be one of those slow-buildup kinda guys. I-” He paused, eyes suddenly widening, and then began to convulse on the bed.
Chapter Eleven
“Chains,” Harper barked, as Tiny went into convulsions, and the room was suddenly a hive of activity as the group broke off into pairs. Leonora and Alessandro threw themselves at Tiny’s right leg, Edward and Dawn took his left one, Mirabeau and Anders went for the right arm, and Harper hurried around the bed to join Drina at Tiny’s left arm as Teddy and Stephanie tried to squeeze their way up between the others surrounding the bed to help.
Even with two immortals to a limb, it was a struggle to get Tiny chained down. His body was thrashing wildly, jerking his limbs about. It wasn’t until Teddy gave up trying to help hold one of Tiny’s legs to implement an alternate plan that they made any headway.
Harper saw the old mortal straighten and move around the people crowded around the bed. Even so, he wasn’t at all prepared for the sight of the man suddenly grabbing up Stephanie, and pretty much tossing her on top of Tiny’s chest. He then quickly climbed onto the bed, and dropped to sit on Tiny right next to her. The two hung on for dear life as the mountain of a man bucked and thrashed beneath them, managing to stay put and weigh him down, easing his movements long enough for the others to get the chains in place.
The moment Harper managed to get the wrist he and Drina were struggling with locked up, she reached around and grabbed up the bag of drugs she’d let drop. She quickly prepared a shot and jabbed it into Tiny’s arm, pushing the plunger home. Still, it took a moment after that before Tiny’s struggles eased.
“Well,” Teddy sighed, mopping his brow as he climbed off of Tiny. Tucking the hankie in his pocket, he turned back and helped Stephanie off as well, muttering, “That was exciting. Like riding a wild bronco.”
Harper smiled faintly at the man. “It was fast thinking on your part to sit on him.”
“I couldn’t see what else to do.” Teddy shook his head and glanced from face to face before saying, “I suppose it’s a little late for this, but it seems to me it would have been smarter to chain him up before feeding him the blood.”
Drina grimaced. “It seems cruel to chain them up before necessary, and usually you get a little more warning than this. They don’t go into it this quickly as a rule.”
“Right. . well. .” He shook his head again and strode to the door, muttering, “I need a drink.”
“She’s a good kid.”
Drina turned from peering at Stephanie, who had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner, and nodded at Mirabeau’s words. They had decided to divide into four-hour shifts. Harper and Drina were taking the first shift with Mirabeau to watch over Tiny. Stephanie was there as well, mostly because the teenager had refused to leave. She seemed to like Tiny and had watched over him anxiously until exhaustion had overcome her, and she’d dozed off in her chair. She’d done so about five minutes before Harper had fallen asleep in his own chair beside Drina.
Dawn, Edward, and Anders were going to take the second four-hour shift, with Anders administering the drugs Drina had been giving Tiny every twenty minutes to half an hour since the ordeal had started.
Leonora, Alessandro, and Teddy were supposed to take the third shift. For that one, Leonora, who it turned out had been a nurse before retiring some twenty years ago, would take over administering the drugs.
Mirabeau was supposed to rest during the second and third shifts, but Drina suspected the woman would insist on staying by Tiny. It was what she would have done if it were her life mate lying there.
“She seems to be fond of you and Tiny,” Drina murmured finally in response to Mirabeau’s comment. Stephanie had brought up the other couple a lot during the last few days. It was always Beau this, and Tiny that.
“The same is true of you two,” Mirabeau said quietly. “But then I think she’s desperate to connect to someone. She’s pretty alone right now.”
Drina nodded and glanced back to the girl again.
“She has a lot of questions,” Mirabeau murmured, drawing her attention again. Meeting her gaze, Mirabeau grimaced, and explained, “She doesn’t really know a lot about what she is now. She only had her sister to ask, and Dani would go to Decker to get the answers and, with them being new life mates, they would invariably get distracted and never get around to answering her, so she kind of gave up asking. The only other immortal female she’s had much contact with until now was Sam, and Sam and Mortimer are new life mates too, so-”
“Sam isn’t turned.”
Both women paused and glanced toward Stephanie as she made that announcement, alerting them to the fact that she was now awake.
Mirabeau peered at the girl blankly for a moment, then said, “Sure she is. Sam and Mortimer have been
