“Do you eat regular food or just blood?”
Ethan laughs, “Don’t you remember you’ve seen me eat? We are alive after all, and the living need food to survive. But we do need to supplement our diet with blood or we will die.”
“How often do you need it?”
“Once every four or five days normally, depending on the individual.”
“Do you sleep in a coffin?” Okay, I admit that one was a little out of line, not to mention corny.
“Of course not,” he laughs loudly. “I sleep in a bed.” A pause. “Would you like to see it?”
“No thank you,” I reply, he’s flirting with me again and when he does I find it difficult not to succumb to his charms. “You said that Delilah is half human, does that mean that vampires and humans can reproduce?”
He shoots me a lazy grin. “Yes we can reproduce together, although the infant mortality rate for vampire/human pregnancies is extremely high, very few of the infants survive past their first year, even when they do make it
to being born. Delilah is a rare and lucky case.”
“Are you immortal?”
“No, but we vampires can live very long lives, sometimes up to a thousand years.”
“Wow, that’s - incredible, how old are you?”
“Old enough,” he answers, evading my question.
“Ethan, you promised to answer me.”
He sighs. “I’ll be two hundred and seventy-seven this year.”
“Seriously?” That’s old. Too old.
“No joke.”
“So when you told me that your ancestors moved to America from Romania that was really you?”
“Correct.”
“You’re old enough to be my grandfather several times over.”
“Do I look like your grandfather Tegan?”
“No, I guess you don’t.”
A moment of silence ensues and my head fills with questions. Imagine living that long, through all of that history, the world must seem so different from his perspective.
“So when you throw in the odd bit of Romanian here and there, it’s because that’s what you started out speaking?”
“Romanian is my mother tongue yes.”
“And those fangs of Lucas’ that I thought were fake, those are real?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see yours?”
When I ask this I hear him growl low in his throat. “It is a very intimate thing for us to reveal our fangs to a woman, it’s a sign that we are attracted.”
I’m embarrassed when he tells me this. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know.” Is that why Lucas’ were out when he was around me? Ugh.