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 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 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.”