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 effects 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.
She glided to the barn without a sound and found Daniel on the floor bent over a puddle of vomit, a decapitated chicken in one hand and blood trickling out both corners of his mouth.
Daniel turned his face away. He didn’t want Déadre to see him like this, on his knees, puking his guts up.
“I was so thirsty,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it. But the people in the house…I couldn’t do it.”
“You need to feed every few hours when you’re newly made. Later, you can go longer.”
He shook his head. “Something is wrong. I can’t drink the blood. It comes right back up. Maybe I’m not really a vampire. Maybe it didn’t work.”