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.