One of Deadre'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 Deadre 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 around 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 Deadre 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
DEADRE 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 skidde
d 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, Deadre. 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 fiancee."
"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, cruelest, 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 Deadre, used her to make him a vampire and then fed off her while he gained his strength.
But to make love with her, that was an unpardonable sin.
This whole quest was about Sue Ellen. Finding her. Setting her free.
Getting tangled up--literally--with another woman hadn't been part of the plan. Still wasn't.
Except every time he tried to picture his fiancee, to shore up his resolve by remembering her sweet smile, her shy, tinkering laugh, all he saw was Deadre in black leather. All he heard were her moans, her sighs. He felt her hot hands around his--
"You can't kill him," the object of his rumination said stubbornly. "He's like the Terminator on steroids and immortal to boot."
He glanced over to the passenger seat of the borrowed pickup. He and Deadre had passed the day in the basement beneath his lab. He'd cooked up a couple more batches of blood, and now that night had fallen, they were heading west, to an old restored plantation home about twenty minutes outside the city limits. The home Garth had stolen from him.
"Vampires aren't immortal," he said, switching his gaze back to the road. "Not really. They're tough to kill. But they do die."
She cocked an eyebrow at him. "You've been made what, three days, and you're an expert on vampires now?"
"I told you you didn't have to come."
"Oh, and miss seeing all that blood spilled? Are you kidding? Of course, all of it is going to be your blood, but I'll try not to let that spoil the fun."
She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head to stare out the side window.
Aw, hell. What was he supposed to say? She wasn't going to understand. He wasn't sure he understood anymore.
"If you really think he's going to kill me, all the more reason for you to stay behind."
She turned her head. At least she was willing to look at him again. Her dark eyes burned with angry fire. "I told you once already, life as a vampire sucks. And yes, I mean that figuratively as well as literally. Don't you get it? You're the only thing in my miserable undead existence that hasn't sucked. Why would I want to stay behind without you?"
Of all the things she could have said, things that would have made him stop, force her out of the truck, leave her behind for her own good, that was the one thing that disarmed him.
In her own, ineloquent way, he thought she'd just said she loved him.
Jeus--
I mean, Holy Hell.
He smiled. He was learning.
"Just for the record," he said. "I don't think you suck, either."
Her gaze snapped up to his. "Oh, yes, I do. Take me back to the lab and give me some more of your mojo juice, and I'll show you how hard."
He laughed out loud. That was his girl.
"Hold that thought, okay? Maybe we'll give it a go later. First, I've got a vampire to kill."
Not to mention a fiancee, though he kept that part to himself, because once he put a stake through Sue Ellen's heart, there would be no later for him.
T HE thumping in Deadre's chest was slow and sad. Fine time for her heart to start beating on its own, she thought. When all it wanted to do was pound out a dirge.
Her eyes were hot and wet and felt swollen in their sockets. This is what it's like to want to cry, and to force yourself not to, she thought, and the fact that she remembered the feeling from so many years ago, when she'd been mortal, brought more tears to her eyes.
She'd been remembering a lot of things about her mortal years since she met Daniel. What it was like to care about someone else so much that his injuries made her hurt. What it was like to need someone. To love someone.
Now she was afraid she was about to remember what it was like to lose someone.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and looked at Daniel. He had a strong profile. Noble. Determined.
Stubborn as a jackass in a field full of clover.
She'd tried every way she could think of to talk him ou
t of this fool mission of his without luck. All she could do now was pray, and how was she supposed to do that when she couldn't think--much less say--His name?
"Here we are." Daniel killed the engine and the headlights on the pickup truck and coasted to a stop in a grove of pecan trees beside a long, narrow drive.
At the end of the drive, a white house rose up from the green turf like the pearly gates from a cloud. The white wooden pillars lining the porch shone like marble in the spotlights turned on the porch. A magnolia tree bloomed in the front yard, scenting the air with the signature smell of a Georgia summer.
"This was your house?" she asked, whispering though she wasn't sure why. Even with super-hearing, Garth couldn't hear them at this distance.
Daniel nodded. "I inherited it. Grew up here. Haven't really lived here since I was a kid, though. It's been in my family since the Civil War, one of the few plantations spared when General Sherman took Atlanta."
"It's beautiful."
Daniel supposed it was. He'd never thought about the house much before. He'd been too busy with his work. His research. His life.
Funny how he had to die to see that he hadn't really been living at all. He'd been holed up in his lab day and night, obsessed with the quest for synthetic blood. He'd told himself there would be time for the rest later. Even when Sue Ellen came along, she'd always been second to his work. It was a wonder she'd agreed to marry him. A wonder he'd thought to ask. But then, he hadn't really asked, as he remembered.
He'd forgotten that until now.
They'd been talking over pizza in bed after an evening of so-so sex, and she'd asked him if he thought maybe he would ask her to marry him someday. "Yeah, sure," he'd said. "Maybe someday."
The next thing he knew, she was telling his lab assistant and the security guard and everyone else they ran into that they were engaged. He'd felt sort of obligated to get her a ring.
Why not? She was good-looking and a nice-enough girl. Who else was going to put up with his weird work habits and obsession with blood? It was what people did, right? Grew up, earned medical degrees and Ph.D.s in microbiology. Got married. Had kids.
Looking back, he could see what a mistake he'd made. How he'd taken the easy way. He felt like a fool for it now, looking at that big front porch and seeing himself old and gray in a rocking chair with Deadre, not Sue Ellen. Deadre's kids and grandkids puttering about, but what was done was done. That future wasn't to be. He'd made a commitment to Sue Ellen. He couldn't abandon her now. He had to put her soul to rest, and once he did, he couldn't go on living himself. It just wouldn't be right.