by Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, Vickie Taylor
He needed to get her out of here, take her somewhere where he could help her. Where he could hold her, if nothing else. But first he had to deal with the farmer.
"You can't call anyone," he said, moving slowly and kicking the gun away as he approached the farmer.
The man shook like a child who'd played too long in the snow without his mittens. "B—but she's…"
"She's going to be fine."
He could see how hard the farmer tried to believe that. But the man shook his head sadly. His voice broke about the same time tears sprung to his eyes. "She's dead."
"She's not." He advanced on the man slowly, trying not to spook him.
"She… She's not?"
Daniel felt his confusion. He was sorry for the old guy, but a call to the cops could cause him and Déadre a lot of trouble. The last thing he needed was the police on his tail when he took her out of here. If they found her, they'd take her to the morgue, do an autopsy.
He suppressed a shudder. What if they cremated her afterward? Then she really would be dead.
No, he couldn't let the old man call the cops.
"You didn't shoot anyone," Daniel said firmly, holding the man's gaze. He wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but there had to be a way to convince the man it was in his best interests to forget what had happened tonight.
If that didn't work, he just tie the geezer up and leave him for his wife to find in the morning, after Daniel was long gone.
"I didn't shoot anyone," the farmer repeated. His voice was going flat and his eyes took on a faraway sheen.
"There was no one in the barn."
"No one in the barn."
Daniel raised his eyebrows. That was easy.
Too easy.
"It was just a couple of wild dogs bothering your stock. You scared them off."
"I scared off some wild dogs."
Daniel waved his hand in front of the guy's face, but he didn't blink. He'd suspected from his research that vampires had some way of mesmerizing their victims, making them forget. Now he knew for sure.
He just didn't know how he'd done it.
As long as he had, though, he might as well take full advantage. "I need to borrow your truck," he said.
The farmer stared off into space with unfocused eyes. "Keys are under the floor mat."
Excellent. "Go back to the house and go to bed. If your wife is awake, you'll tell her that you scared off the dogs."
"I'll tell her I scared off the dogs."
The old man turned to shuffle back to the house, but Daniel called out to him before he reached the door. "Wait!"
Daniel looked from the old man's slack face, to Déadre's pale one, and back. He figured he had less than two hours of darkness left. Enough time to get Déadre to Atlanta, where he could help her, before sunrise, but he was going to need all his strength to do it.
Daniel couldn't feed off Déadre. In her condition, he risked draining her dry and killing her. But she'd said he couldn't go more than a few hours without blood, either, newly made as he was. Already he was feeling lightheaded and clammy.
The solution to his problem stood at the barn door in a natty bathrobe and rubber boots. Could he do it? Could he drink the blood of a mortal? A living, breathing man?
The thought repulsed him at first, but he was also curious. Was he mortal or was he a vampire?
He couldn't straddle the fence forever.
He couldn't straddle the fence and build the strength he needed to fight Garth. Not quickly.
His stomach flipped and he realized his heart was beating, fluttering really, in his chest. He looked back at Déadre, her pale, elfin ears and the way her long lashes lay so still over her cheeks.
He forced himself to relax by thinking of her. Doing what he needed to help her.
He began to hear his own pulse in his ears. The blood lust beat a rhythm that couldn't be ignored. With his breath coming in short strokes, his thumbnails lengthening, he turned back to the farmer. He saw fear deep in the man's eyes, behind the veil of the thrall in which he held him, and smiled to ease his dread as he punctured the farmer's jugular and lowered his mouth over the wounds.
Daniel moaned, lost in the pleasure as the essence of life poured down his throat, sweet as honey with a coppery tang, and he drank long and deep.
Much to his surprise, he liked it.
DRIVING south down I-95 toward Atlanta in the farmer's rattling old pickup truck, Daniel suppressed the urge to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand for the thousandth time. He could still taste blood on his tongue, feel the man's pulse beating beneath his lips. He still reeled from the heady rush of heat suffusing his dead heart, his veins.
He was dead, and yet he felt more wonderfully alive than ever. Taking blood made him strong, invulnerable. Immortal.
It was a high far beyond anything he imagined cocaine or PCP could induce. If it was like that for all vampires, and he assumed it was, it was a wonder there were any mortals at all left in the world. How easily that kind of trip, that surge of power, could become an addiction.
He had to respect, if grudgingly, the control it must take for the undead to walk the streets night after night, surrounded by ready sources of that magic elixir, and not go on a rampage, drain the city dry.
More control than he had, he feared. If Déadre hadn't stirred as he'd been gulping down the farmer's life force, Daniel didn't know if he could've stopped, or if he would have kept drinking until the man had no more blood to give.
Until he'd killed him.
But she'd moaned, and her hand had twitched. Her eyes had scrunched in pain, and her pain had called him back from the dark edge he'd been teetering on.
Thank God.
Ow!
He really had to stop doing that.
One of Déadre's hands clenched his pant leg and he glanced down at where she lay curled up on the seat of the truck, her head resting on his thigh. Her fragile shoulders looked narrower than ever as she hunched them and moaned again. Her eyelids fluttered again.
Daniel tightened his fingers on the steering wheel. She was going to wake up soon, and when she did, she was going to hurt like hell.
She was also going to need blood and lots of it.
Turning his gaze back to the road, he punched the accelerator and sped through the darkness.
By the time he slowed down to cruise by the two-story brick warehouse that had once been his lab, he figured he only had about forty-five minutes left before the sun rose. If he was wrong about the lab still being relatively intact, he wasn't going to have a chance to find another hidey-hole.
Luckily, he wasn't wrong.
The windows had been boarded up to protect against vandalism, but that would work in his favor. The wood would hold the sunlight at bay, give him more time.
He carried Déadre to the stoop, set her down while he easily shouldered his way through the double dead-bolt locks on the door, then lifted her against his chest and took her inside.
He felt disconnected from himself, a sort of out-of-body experience as his Nikes crunched over broken glass and kicked aside a fallen chair. This lab had been his life once. All he cared about. Now the only value that history held for him was its ability to help him help the woman in his arms. To take away her pain and make her whole again.
In the middle of the room, he righted a table and stretched her out on the stainless steel. Her body bowed. She bit her lip and mewled, and he eased her back down.
"Easy, baby. Easy. I'm gonna help you now. Just a few more minutes."
There was no need for lights. His newly acquired night vision allowed him to work in the darkness—it was easier on his eyes, anyway—gathering the supplies he needed and repairing the equipment Garth had damaged. Had it really been eight weeks ago?
It seemed more like a lifetime.
Actually, it had been a lifetime, he supposed. His lifetime.
Sometimes he forgot he was dead now.
As the first pink fingers of dawn crept aro
und the edges of the boards over the broken windows, he stood back and studied his work: a full liter of synthetic blood in an IV bag, and more cooking.
He had the rubber tubing and large bore IV needle ready, but as he listened to Déadre whimper in the dark, her head thrashing side to side, he realized he couldn't do it. He couldn't pump it into her.
He hadn't gotten anywhere near the point of human testing in his research. Even if he had, that wouldn't have proven the synthetic blood safe for vampires. The last thing he wanted to do was cause her more pain.
His decision made, he yanked the tourniquet tight around his left arm by holding one end with his right hand and pulling the other with his teeth, then probed the inside bend of his elbow with the needle until he found a vein, and ran the IV wide open.
He watched as the dark liquid flowed down the clear tube. The synthetic blood hit his body with a sizzle that made him jolt, then made him dizzy.
Whoa. Head rush.
Fire poured through his veins. A sweat broke on his forehead. His vision swam. His insides swooped up to his throat, then plummeted to the pit of his abdomen. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation, just… unsettling. Like riding a roller coaster without being quite sure there really was an engineer behind the controls.
Panting, he lowered his head and went with the flow. It was too late to turn back now. As if he'd want to. The liter bag was nearly empty and every cell of his body felt gorged with life, with oxygen, with energy.
At last he understood why Garth had gone to such lengths to get the formula. It hadn't been for his people, to save them having to take human blood. It hadn't even been about money.
No, it had been about one thing: power.
If Daniel had been stronger after feeding before, he was Superman now.
Smiling, he disconnected his IV and hung a fresh bag.
All he had to do was bring his Lois Lane back to life, and he'd be unstoppable.
6
DÉADRE awoke on the back of a giant black stallion galloping through the dark of a moonless night, galloping straight toward a cliff, the booming sound of waves crashing against rock rising up to her from far below. Her muscles rippled with his. Wind whistled through her clothes, tore at her hair. All she could do was wrap her fingers tighter in his mane and hang on for the ride.
Hooves clattered over stone. She felt his haunches gather for the leap, heard a scream and realized it was her own, then she was flying, soaring through the night, but doomed to fall, to break against the rocks below like the next wave.
She opened her eyes for one last look at the world, the night… and found she wasn't riding a giant horse through the sky, wasn't falling. Daniel held her, safe in his arms.
He sat on the edge of a cold metal table, cradling her head against his chest, rocking her. "Shh. Shh, now. It'll get better in a minute. A lot better."
Her heart was beating, she realized, beating hard without her even trying, and she was breathing without any effort at all. Fresh blood flowed through her system, pooled between her legs and rushed her toward fulfillment.
She clutched at Daniel's jacket, grabbed his hair by the handful and bent him back over the table, her greedy mouth latching on to his, sucking and kneading, while her hands raked over miles of hot, silky skin and hard muscle. He mumbled something that she sure hoped wasn't "stop" because she couldn't have stopped if she'd tried. Even if her life, or her unlife, had depended on it.
Lost in a frenzy that was somewhere between the fury of an erupting volcano and the big bang of a new star being formed, she pulled Daniel to her and rolled. He landed on the floor beneath her with a thud, but she didn't think he was going to complain. He grabbed her T-shirt by the neck and tore it in two as easily as if it had been made of paper. Absently, she noted that the gunshot wound had healed. Her breasts were pink and perfect, bobbing over his face while she pressed her thigh against his erection and rubbed encouragingly.
Not needing much encouragement, he fumbled her zipper down and peeled off her leather pants, then she straddled him.
He brought his hand to her, feathered his fingers through her curls, but she pushed his wrist away. "I can't wait. Can't wait."
She jerked down his fly, pulled him out, squeezed once and then lowered herself until she'd taken him to the hilt.
Her eyes closed. Her head fell back. Her hair brushed her bare shoulders as he put his hands on her hips to hold her down and then bucked beneath her.
She was back on the horse, the black stallion, galloping, the wind in her hair, the night air in her lungs. His muscles rippled with hers. He lifted, she clenched. They both groaned.
She quickened the pace, rode him hard. This time, the crashing she heard wasn't waves against rocks, it was her own blood in her ears. She spurred him on, knowing the dark cliff lay ahead, insane for it, mad with the need to fly off it with him. She urged him faster with her hands, her heels, then leaned over and used her teeth, her tongue.
She wanted more; he gave her more. Another powerful stride. Another powerful stroke. He tensed beneath her, gathering himself. She clutched his mane, holding on. Blind. Deaf. But able to feel. Feeling every shudder, every gasp, every ripple as they catapulted off the cliff together. Fell, arm in arm.
She landed on top of him—again—this time splayed across him like a piece of limp spaghetti.
"If this is how you recover," he said, his warm breath fanning her damp forehead. "I'm going to have to shoot you at least once a week."
She lifted her head weakly and grinned at him. "If this is how I recover, you won't have to bother. I'll shoot myself."
A laugh rumbled beneath the ear she had pressed to his chest. "Maybe we should think about a little less bloody form of foreplay."
"Bloody." Her heart skidded to a stop. "Oh, damn. I've taken blood." No way she could have recovered so quickly—or so passionately—otherwise.
She grabbed his neck and scanned for every inch of earthy-smelling male skin. "You don't understand. You can't give blood yet. If I take too much, it'll kill you." Her hands trembled on his trachea. "How much did I take? Are you okay?"
"You took plenty." He wrenched his head away. "But it wasn't mine."
She looked around the room, not convinced, still afraid she'd hurt him. "Whose? How?"
"No one's. It's synthetic. A product I've been working on for three years. I'm a microbiologist, Déadre. It's what I do."
"A microbiologist." She hesitated, wanting to believe him but not quite daring. If he was trying to protect her from the truth… If she'd hurt him… "And you've made fake blood?"
"Completely non-organic. Doesn't even require human hemoglobin like the products the big drug companies have been working on. It's so simple I'm amazed no one thought of it before. All I did was compound perfluorocarbons."
"Perfluoro-whats?"
"PFCs. Flourine and Chlorine." His eyes lit up and he laughed. "I knew it would work. I knew it would. The PFCs are even more efficient than real red blood cells because they just absorb the oxygen, instead of bonding it to iron the way blood does."
"If you say so."
He clasped her shoulders. The touch zinged through her hyperstimulated nerves.
"Can't you feel it?" he asked. "The PFCs are forty times smaller, so they can fit into the smallest capillaries, literally reach every cell in your body, yet they carry twice as much oxygen. Can't you feel how strong it makes you? How alive?"
She did feel different. Warmer. Not so tired.
He lurched to his feet, fastened his pants and threw her jacket and pants to her. He didn't bother with the ruined shirt.
Pacing, he dragged a hand through his hair while she dressed. "This stuff is powerful mojo. Not only will it help mortals, but it could mean a whole new life for vampires."
She zipped her pants and shoved her arms in the sleeves of her jacket. "New life?"
"No more feeding off mortals. No more killing, accidental or otherwise. And the power it will give us, it's tremendous."
/>
It sounded good, so why was her stomach turning. "You know what they say about power corrupting."
He stopped, turned to her. "Son of a bitch."
"What?"
"That's why you and every other vampire in the city haven't already heard of the synthetic blood. He wasn't going to share it with the rest of you. He wants it for himself. He wants to be the biggest, baddest-ass fucking vampire in Atlanta."
He picked up his own coat and punched his arms into the sleeves. "Well, I've got news for him. He's not the only vampire who can cook up a pot of this joy juice, now. Garth LaGrange is going down. For good."
She dropped the test tube she'd been holding. Glass shattered at her feet. "Garth LaGrange?"
"The one who wrecked my lab and stole my work."
"The one who turned your fiancée."
"Yeah." He looked down at his feet, then raised his head. Color spotted both cheeks as if he'd just realized, as she had, that they'd made love while he was engaged to another woman, but she couldn't think about that now.
"The one you're going to kill," she said flatly, already knowing how he would answer.
"Tonight. Right after I drink so much synthetic blood that an M-one tank couldn't stop me."
Oh, God.
She winced, the pain flaring instantly. Crap! She hadn't done that in decades. Rubbing her temples, she hoped it would be decades, or longer, before she did it again, assuming she was around that long.
Which she might not be, since the vampire she'd just made—the man she loved—was determined to try to kill the evilest, crudest, most powerful being in Atlanta.
Garth LaGrange, the High Matron's Enforcer.
7
IT was a good thing Daniel was dead already, because he didn't think he could live with himself after what he'd done.
Bad enough he'd kidnapped Déadre, used her to make him a vampire and then fed off her while he gained his strength.
