Her mouth latched on over the open cut and she sucked as greedily as a newborn. She rubbed herself against him, mewling as she drew down hard on him.
He fought the urge to resist. She needed this; he’d almost killed her. And he wanted this. It was the only way he could kill Garth LaGrange and free Sue Ellen. But now that the moment was here, panic swelled. He could feel the life force being drained out of him by the pint.
His head spun. He felt like a drunk on a three-day binge. The blood loss should have rendered him incapable of maintaining an erection, but he grew harder and thicker than ever and wondered if his stamina was a result of the thrall the authors of his research material had speculated about. The sexual excitement that stole a vampire victim’s senses, made him unaware he was being fed upon until it was too late.
If so, he could understand where vampires got their reputation as masters of eroticism.
They’d earned it.
His limbs went numb. His heart stuttered, restarted, stuttered again like an engine running out of gas. He was dying, and it didn’t seem to matter. He was almost there. Ready to climax.
Déadre was ready, too. He could feel it. Her thighs quivered on each side of his hips. She tilted her head back and took one long, last draw from his wrist, then dropped the limp appendage. With his blood smeared across her chin and cheeks, her jaw slack and eyes glazed in ecstasy, she sat down on him hard and pushed her pelvis forward, trapping his shaft in her body’s natural channel. Her upper body stiffened, hung suspended above him for a long moment, then fell forward, kissing him with a gusty sigh, and Daniel let go.
The last living things he knew were the fiery eruption of his body, the sound of her name in his throat, the taste of his blood on her mouth.
He managed to mumble four words against her slick lips. “Bring me back. Please.” But in her fevered state, he wasn’t sure she heard them.
Then with one final, shuddering pulse, his heart stopped, and his life ended.
Spent.
3
DÉADRE woke up with a muzzy head and a bad case of cotton mouth. She couldn’t quite figure out why she was awake at all. It was daytime, even in the dark she could feel the sun in the warmth of the air, the dry heat of her grave.
Except this wasn’t her grave. This place was larger, deeper underground, and she wasn’t lying on the freshly turned earth of her homeland. She was sprawled across a broad male chest.
A still, cold, broad male chest.
It all came back to her in a rush of pain. Heat. Arousal.
Daniel.
She snapped upright. “Daniel?”
With her excellent night vision, she could see his pallor was gray as stone. Though his lips were parted, she could discern no breath passing through them. She couldn’t hear his heartbeat or the blood swishing through his veins.
Terror clawed at her.
“Daniel?” She shook his shoulders, but got no response.
She’d killed him.
No, no, no, no, no. Yes.
He was dead. In her fever, she’d drank his blood until he had no more to give. None to sustain himself.
She’d murdered him.
She scrabbled backward until her shoulders hit the rough cement block wall, and stuffed her fist in her mouth. She hadn’t killed a mortal since 1934, when she’d been made a vampire by the elderly gentleman down the row from her to whom she sold milk and eggs twice per week.
One week, dairy and poultry hadn’t been enough to satisfy his hunger. He’d taken her blood. And initiated her into the ways of the undead.
When she was strong enough, he taught her how to hunt, to feed. He’d picked victims for her that were weak so that they wouldn’t pose a threat, for she believed old Jonathan Rue had loved her in his way. He didn’t want her hurt.
In her inexperience, she had taken too much from one old grandmother, a neighbor of Jonathan’s. She hadn’t realized the woman was bedridden and in frail health even before Déadre had slaked her thirst at the woman’s throat. She hadn’t realized she was killing her until it was too late.
Jonathan had comforted her, told her they all made mistakes at first, but Déadre would never forget the slack expression on the grandmother’s face, the open mouth, as if she’d tried to cry out and couldn’t. The lifeless eyes that looked just like Daniel’s did now.
She could put life back in those eyes, or a semblance of it.
No. She’d never made a vampire. Wasn’t sure she knew how.
It was what he wanted. What he died for.
Daniel, with the body to rival any Greek statue. Beautiful Daniel, with the body cold and gray as stone.
No. Yes. She had to do it. Had to try.
He’d saved her life. He’d fed her.
He’d hurt her. Almost killed her.
He’d come as close to making love to her as any man had in decades, since Jonathan had been staked through the heart by a mob in ’46.
She couldn’t leave Daniel here to rot. It might already be too late. How long had it been? How long had she slept? She had no way to tell.
“Don’t let it be too late,” she pleaded to no one and crawled forward. Cradling his head on her lap, she extended her thumbnails and pricked her index finger, then squeezed a drop of blood onto his tongue, then another. “Come on, Daniel. This is what you wanted. You can do this.”
She closed his mouth, worked his jaw, simulating a swallow. When she’d repeated the process three times with no effect, she slapped his cheek. “Don’t you give up on me, dammit. You started all this. Don’t quit on me now!”
She opened a bigger gash on the palm of her hand, let the blood stream freely onto the back of his throat for a full minute, then closed his mouth and worked his throat again.
Tears welling in her eyes, she rubbed his chest, pounded on him with her fist, threatened and begged and pleaded with him to move until his left hand twitched.
She froze, watching, hoping.
His fingers clenched rhythmically. His eyes rolled to white, then back to murky green as his chest bowed. His back arched off the floor as if he’d been defibrillated and he dragged in a deep, rasping breath.
Remembering too clearly the confusion he would feel as he regained consciousness, the pain, the inexplicable rage and the blood lust, she backed away. The next few moments would be worse than death, worse than a thousand deaths, but there was nothing she could do to help him. Not until his rage was spent.
Eyes wide and lips snarling, Daniel rolled to his knees, then staggered to his feet. He rushed the cement block wall of the storm shelter as if it were a demon after his own soul. He pounded the concrete with his fist. The flesh split, bone shattered, but he didn’t bleed. He had no blood left.
She hated to see him hurting himself, but it didn’t really matter. The pain of transformation was so great that he’d never notice a little thing like a few broken bones, and once he was undead, he would heal quickly.
Eventually his temper died to the point where he became aware of her. He cocked his head and stared at her with insensible eyes. Animal eyes.
She beckoned him with a motion of her hand. “Come to me,” she said softly.
He growled and rolled to the balls of his feet, ready for attack.
“Come to me.”
His shoulders sagged. He slid one foot forward as if he were too tired to lift it.
“That’s it. Come. It will get better soon. I have what you need.”
He stumbled forward and fell into her arms. Gently, she lowered him to the dirt floor, their backs against the wall, and opened her shirt. With a flick of her thumb she sliced the side of her breast, pulled his head down and stroked his hair as he fed.
DANIEL had a vague notion that time had passed, though he couldn’t guess how much. Time seemed elastic now. Hours rushed by in the blink of an eye. Days were a blur of sleep, warm, coppery drink and soft hands.
The hands were on him now, pressing something cool and damp to his forehead. He opened his eyes
and found her studying him.
“Daniel? Are you there?”
Arms shaking, he pushed himself up on one elbow. “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?
She wrung out her cloth and laid it across the sports water bottle he remembered from her Jeep. “Never-never land, maybe? Or wherever you’ve been for the last three days.”
“Three days?” He levered himself to a sitting position, leaned back against the block wall. “Jesus, I—”
He winced. It was like someone set off a firecracker in his head. He dug his fists into his eyes. “Christ.”
Bam. Bam. Bam. Bright white lights exploded in his vision.
“You might want to choose a non-religious expression,” Déadre said. “Vampires and Him don’t mix too well.”
“Vampires? What do you—” He pulled his hands away from his face and looked down at his chest. Had he always been so pale? For that matter, how could he see his skin tone at all in the dark?
His gaze flew to hers. “Did you…? Am I…?”
Biting her lower lip, she nodded.
“I don’t feel any different.”
Never taking her eyes off his, she walked to him, picked up his hand and laid his palm over the left side of his chest. “Feel that?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
He slid his hand side to side, searching. “My heart’s not beating.”
“You’ll learn to make it beat when you want it to, later. Comes in handy when you have to get close to a mortal. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
She stared at the floor. “For killing you. I didn’t mean to. I—I lost control.”
He grabbed her by the upper arms, made her look at him. “I asked for this.”
Her glistening eyes tore him apart inside. Amazing how his heart could be dead in his chest and still cause him so much pain.
Her bowstring lips quavered, and he couldn’t stand to see them tremble, so he stopped them the only way he knew how. He captured them with his own.
She stiffened, but only momentarily, then she leaned into him with a pleading mewl. He slipped his tongue past the seam of her lips and answered with a groan. Their mouths fused, he tugged the hem of her tank top out of her leather pants and slid his hand underneath.
She might have been a creature of the night, but she felt more like an angel filling his palm. He backed her up to the wall and, pinning her there, slipped a second hand under her shirt.
There were advantages he hadn’t thought of to this vampire business, like not having to breathe. He could ply her with kisses endlessly, never breaking contact, while his stealthy hands kneaded her, memorized her shape and texture.
The underslopes of her breasts were soft as clouds, the nipples tight as rosebuds. The tear-shaped sides were—
Bloody. A sticky mess.
He pulled his head back and yanked her shirt up. “Jesu—” he squeezed his eyes shut as a cherry bomb went off in his head. “Ow!”
“I told you—”
“I know, I know.” The flash of pain already receding, he squinted at her chest. “What the hell happened to you?”
She hesitated only a moment. “You are a voracious eater.”
“I did this?”
“Not exactly. I opened the wounds so you could feed.”
Very tenderly, he lowered her shirt and then took a step back. “Thank you. I won’t be feeding off you any longer.”
He turned his back to her, but she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder before he could walk away.
“Whatever you’re thinking, get over it. Feeding is a fact of life for vampires.”
He wheeled. “Maybe it’s time the facts of life changed.”
Already he could feel the hunger gnawing at his bones, though. He was so thirsty he thought he might dry up and blow away like the ashes of a cold campfire. He trembled with raw, powerful need.
Jesu—
Ow!
He had to learn not to do that.
Clenching his fists, he fought the urge to go to Déadre. To take what she offered, no matter what the cost to her. Or to his self-respect.
For the first time, Daniel began to understand what synthetic blood could mean to these people. To him. He began to see why Garth had been so desperate to have the formula.
But if he’d stolen the formula to feed his people, why didn’t they have it already? Garth had walked out with the discs more than two months ago.
Garth. Thinking about Garth was good. Anger staved off the hunger. Raised a different kind of blood lust.
He stoked the rage inside him, used it to do what he needed to do. It was time. Time to leave Déadre and time to do what he had to do. He climbed the short staircase to the door.
She called out to him in a high voice, “What are you doing?”
“I have to go.”
“You can’t.”
He bowed his head, telling himself to go on. He couldn’t turn back now.
“I made a vow, D. To—” He flicked a gaze skyward. “Him who shall remain nameless, and to myself. I can’t give it up now.”
“You’re not ready.”
“I’ll never be ready, if I stay here.”
He didn’t need Déadre anymore. She’d fulfilled her purpose. He probably should kill her—she was a vampire, after all—but he didn’t kid himself. He’d never be able to bring himself to do it. He couldn’t stay with her, either, though. It would be too easy to lose sight of his goal. To be distracted by her, by this awful, aching thirst that never seemed to go away.
Rallying his resolve, he flung the overhead door back on its hinges. Cool, night air rushed in, full of the heady smells of summer. The stars shone overhead, each one bright as a moon to his newly heightened senses. He heard a tune playing on a car radio that must have been miles away, felt the strength in his muscles as he sprang out of the shelter and into the grassy meadow in one easy leap and smiled.
It pained him to leave Déadre behind, it really did, but he couldn’t think about that now. He was finally ready to fight Garth LaGrange, take back what he’d lost. To free Sue Ellen.
He was a vampire, and at long last, vengeance would be his.
4
IDIOT.
Déadre rolled her eyes. Did he really think he could just walk away from her?
She could have tried to explain that he was newly made. That he was bound to her, at least for a while, as she was to him, but she doubted he’d have listened. Some lessons one had to learn for oneself, and this was going to be a particularly painful one, if Daniel Hart was as stubborn as she believed, which she was sure he was.
He’d left her the car—probably being chivalrous—and set out on foot, but she couldn’t drive after him. Now that he was undead, he’d hear her coming for miles. Besides, it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t get far. So she gave him a ten-minute head start and then marched down the road after him.
He wasn’t hard to follow. His footsteps sounded like a stampeding herd of elephants to her sensitive ears, which reminded her to keep her step as light as his was heavy. Even with his new super senses, he wouldn’t have a clue he was being tailed.
Poor boy, he had a lot to learn about being a vampire.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about teaching him. Creating a life, or un-life, in this case, was a big commitment. The vampire equivalent of having a child. Until he learned the ways of the undead, his safety was her responsibility.
But there was a very un-childlike side to their relationship as well. Vampires were, by nature, sensual, sexual creatures. Biologically speaking, the taking of blood meant a sudden increase in volume of blood. Increased blood volume meant increased blood flow to the sex organs, resulting in arousal.
Some vamps couldn’t get off without gorging themselves. Some couldn’t gorge themselves without getting off. Either way, it made the exchange of blood a very personal, and often intimate, interaction.
So far, Daniel had been too weak to feel the full ef
fects of the blood she’d given him. His body had been focused on survival, but he was getting stronger by the hour. Sooner or later, he was going to want more from her than blood, and she had to decide how much she was willing to give him.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice until she rounded a bend that the road stretched out long and straight before her. Long, straight and empty.
Where was Daniel?
She stopped, scanning the trees on either side of the lane, listening for him. She finally heard his breathing, harsh and labored, and knew that he’d reached the end of his endurance. New vampires needed to feed every couple of hours. He would be weak, sick. The blood lust would be on him like a horse master’s whip, driving him forward, driving him to feed.
This was a difficult time for a new vampire. A test period, during which he would find out if he had the mettle to control the blood-sucking urges, or if he would go rogue and have to be put down by his own kind.
A farmhouse rose out of a grassy meadow to the south. Potted geraniums on the front porch added a splash of red to the silvery moonlit scene. Daniel stood in the driveway beside a pickup truck, his head turned up to the curtains fluttering in an open, dark, second-story window.
There were mortals inside. Even from this distance, Déadre could smell them. Ready prey.
She crept toward the house, willing Daniel away. “Come back to me, little vampire. Back to me.”
But when she broke out of the tree line, Daniel was nowhere in sight. Her stomach clenched. He wouldn’t do it. He was a moral man. That wouldn’t be lost in the vampire he’d become. He hadn’t been able to kill her, he wouldn’t kill the mortals in this house, either.
The blood lust was strong, though, and he hadn’t learned control. He might not want to hurt anyone, but he could make a mistake, the way she’d made a mistake so many years ago with that poor old woman…
She had started toward the house after him, hurrying now, not caring if he heard her, when the bleat of a goat drew her attention toward the barn. She stopped, her senses alert, and heard more animal snuffles, a rustling of hay. Normal barnyard sounds.
Or not.