FANGED

Chapter Forty-Five

Saxon and I were working on our third plate of nachos drenched in beautiful, orange, fake cheese sauce and topped with a mountain of jalapenos while we gossiped like a couple of teenagers. Each bite was pure heaven in my mouth, or was. To be honest, the jalapenos were so hot, I really couldn't feel my tongue anymore, and my teeth were pretty much numb at this point. Luckily, there was an endless supply of Diet Coke on tap to help relieve the pain, and chase down the half-ton of sodium and yellow number six I was consuming like it was my last meal. But thanks to my new found vamp status, I no longer had to worry about the amount of toxins I was happily dumping into my system. Not that I ever really did. The government may have forced me to have health insurance, but they could never force me to respect my body. Besides, I figured if I was going to have to pay for the stuff, I might as well make my doctor earn his money.

For the most part, Saxon was pretty easy going and fun to talk to. I mean, the man actually mourned the loss of the McDonald's McDLT. How can you not respect a guy like that? But he had one major default. He was an ice-chomper. In-between his slurping and munching was a non-stop chomp-chomp-crunch-crunch cacophony that made my eye start to twitch. Seriously, the sound waves emanating from his mouth from the constant grinding of ice was beginning to damage my brain cells. The only time the annoying noise stopped was when he was talking, and I suddenly came up with the perfect plan to keep his lips moving and his gnawing on ice silenced.

"Tell me more about immortals," I said loudly over the crushing of the iceberg he had just dropped into his jaw.

Crunch-crunch-squeak-slurp-chomp-chomp. I think I just lost my ability to do addition, I thought as the annoying sound rattled through my head.

"What do you want to know?" he finally asked as he swallowed.

"How are they made? I know they drink the blood of a vampire, but how does that work exactly?"

That question made him narrow those mesmerizing oceanic eyes at me. "I am sure Drake has told you that creating immortals has been outlawed for centuries, and the turning of one will result in an instant death sentence for any vampire caught breaking the law...including the Queen."

There's that word again, and I cringed, my face burning hotly. "Yeah...yeah...I get it. No turning humans into immortals." Sheesh...these vamps were like broken records. "I just wanted the gist of it," I said moodily. Picking up a chip, I scooped up an enormous amount of cheesy goo, and popped it in my mouth.

After hesitating for a moment, he leaned in, and crossed his well-muscled arms on the counter. "It's fairly simple. A vampire bites down on a major vein, usually the jugular, and drains most of the blood of whomever they've decided to take on as an immortal. It's important not to go too far or their heart will stop. You have to find that sweet spot right before that happens by listening for the sluggish sloshing of the heart. It makes a low swish-swish sound, sort of like if you were plunging a toilet in slow-motion. Then the fun part begins." His eyes grew large with excitement while my stomach started to do lazy somersaults.

"The body becomes really cold and twitchy, turning a bluish-grey tinge. When that happens, you know you are in the right range. Once they are minutes away from death, you quickly bite or slice your own vein, and feed them your blood. You have to pick a real good gusher because at this point, if you fart around too much they'll up and die on you. Most pick their wrists. You slice that sucker open like you are committing suicide, and make sure you hit an artery." Taking his finger, he made a cutting motion down the inside of his wrist. "Just remember, cut down the street not across the road. They're a little limp and unwieldy, so you have to make sure you tip their head back so the blood can flow down their throats easily." Plucking off one of the jalapenos, he stuffed it in his mouth, licking the leftover cheese sauce off his fingers one by one.