Hot Blooded

as that Iraqi sumbitch blew it off."
    "As your Gift triggered, there was a moment when you became pure magical
energy—that was the lightning blast you experienced," Reece explained. "When the
magic reassembled you in your new form, it re-created your leg. Remember, I told
you that would happen when I approached you about joining us."
    "Well, yeah, but… I pictured it regenerating or something." Foster shook his
head. "This Gift is the vampire thing, right?"
    "More or less."
    "Because, you know, I'm definitely a vampire. I was still staring at my new
leg when I realized I could hear the blonde's pulse. Next thing I know, I'm
biting her and…" He grinned, his eyes kindling with the memory. Every other man
at the table grinned back, knowing exactly what it had been like. "So after we
bounce around again, she opens this hole in the air, and we're here. Wherever
the hell 'here' is." He lifted an eyebrow at Reece. "Then she handed me off to
you and left without so much as a 'Call me sometime.' I'd be crushed if I didn't
have such a healthy ego."
    "That's a Maja for you," Lance said dryly.
    "No, she said her name was Isolde."
    He smiled. "I mean she was a Maja. Plural's Majae."
    "Which is what—a code word for drive-by fuck bunny?"
    "Drive-by fuck bunny," Arthur drawled, eyeing Lance. "What an apt term for a
Council seducer."
    Lance barely resisted the urge to flip his liege off.
    "I thought you had to be bitten three times or something," Foster continued,
glancing at them curiously as if wondering what was behind the byplay. "She
never even tried to drink my blood."
    Champion was frowning at Arthur. "That's because she isn't a vampire.
Remember, I told you ninety percent of all the folklore about us is wrong.
Vampires aren't evil, we're not undead, crosses and garlic don't bother us…"
    "And there are no female vampires," Arthur put in.
    "They're all Majae. You could call them witches, but I wouldn't if I were
you."
    "Not to their faces, anyway," Champion agreed. "We don't consider 'vampire' a
polite term either. It's Magus or Magi."
    "I'll keep that in mind." Foster sat back in his chair. "So she put some kind
of spell on me?"
    "No," Arthur said, sipping from his glass. "She only triggered what was there
to begin with. You were a Latent, which means you're one of the very few who
carries Merlin's Gift in your genes."
    "And Merlin's Gift is… ?"
    Arthur put his glass down and raked his fingers through his hair in a gesture
Lance had seen a thousand times. "About sixteen hundred years ago, Merlin and
his partner Nimue came to Earth…"
    "Wait a minute—are you saying they were
aliens
!"
    "Basically. And missionaries of a sort, I suppose. Their people, the Fae, had
seen countless intelligent races destroy themselves once they got
technologically advanced enough to do it. The Fae got the idea to create a race
of Champions for each species who could guide it through its racial adolescence.
So Nimue and Merlin tested groups of people all over Earth, and those that
passed, got the Gift. A number of people at my court—you'd call it Camelot—"
    "You're
that
Arthur? King Arthur?" Then he sighed. "Okay, that was a
dumbass question. If there was a Merlin, and I'm talking to guys named Arthur
and Lancelot…"
    Arthur's mouth took on a dry twist. "At any rate, about fifty of us, male and
female, were chosen to drink from Merlin's cup. Whatever it was in that cup
genetically changed us. From then on, all our descendants carried the Gift gene,
but it remained latent unless they were selected to receive the Gift. Meanwhile
Merlin and Nimue went on to the next planet, leaving us here with the mission of
saving the human race."
    "
I
am a descendant of one of the Knights of the Round Table?" Foster
couldn't have looked more stunned if he'd been told his father was the Easter
Bunny.
    "Bedivere, judging by your scent," Lance told him. "It was a while back. At
least four hundred years, since he's been dead that long."
    "Shit." Foster sat looking dazed for a long moment before he roused. "So let
me get this straight—this gene is activated when a Latent has sex with one of
y'all?"
    "Yeah, except once won't do it," Reece said. "It takes repeated sex with a
Maja—or, if you're female, a Magus. In men, the Gift manifests as vampirism, but
in women, it confers the ability to use the energies of the Mageverse to work
spells. Vampires