Bite. Part 31

"Holy water." He let go of her shoulders when she stiffened. "Only a couple of CCs. It was just supposed to make you weak, not

knock you out."

Wincing and arching her back, she rolled the shoulder he'd stuck with the hypodermic. "It burns."

"Burns? Is it supposed to burn?"

"Ohhhh."

"All right. All right. It burns. What can I do?"

She bit down hard on her lower lip. "Mmmmmmm."

"Okay." He picked her up, curving his shackled left arm behind her back and lifting her beneath her knees with the other. "There's

water at the bottom of the hill. Regular water," he added when she looked up at him with alarm.

She was definitely breathing now, shallow little gasps that tore at his conscience. Maybe she only stopped breathing when she slept. How the h.e.l.l did he know?

At the moment, he didn't really care. He only cared about taking away the pain carved into her ivory-smooth face.

He set her on the creek bank facing land and peeled back her leather jacket, but he couldn't get it off over the cuffs, so he pulled

it down her arm and then lifted her s.h.i.+rt over her head to join it.

She gasped and tried to cross her arms over her chest, but surprisingly enough, it wasn't her b.r.e.a.s.t.s that had him ogling. It was the jagged scar on her shoulder.

Surely to G.o.d he hadn't done that.

Please, don't let him have done that.

"How did this happen?" He reached out to touch the reddened mark in the shape of a cross, but she flinched before his fingers

even brushed the puffy flesh.

"Please." Her voice was close to a whimper. "Don't."

He gave her one searching look, but found no answers in her dark eyes. Unable to stand her pain any longer, he leaned her back,

holding her just above the water with his left arm and spooning the cool liquid over her back and upper arm with his right hand.

"Better?" he asked.

Her hair drifted on the current. Her face gradually relaxed. "Better."

She started looking around. Cicadas serenaded her from the trees. A toad croaked downstream. "Where are we?"

"Cherokee County."

She frowned and jiggled her wrist as if just realizing she was shackled to him. "Why?"

Avoiding her gaze, he dribbled another handful of water over the cross branded over her shoulder blade. "Because it's a long way

from anywhere."

She s.h.i.+fted in his arms. "Did you bring me here to kill me?"

"No."

"Then what do you want?"

"I told you," he said mildly. "I want to be like you."

"No, you don't. Believe me, you don't." She craned her head toward the east. "It'll be dawn soon. You know I can't be out here

when the sun comes up, right?"

"I know."

She scanned the hillside, left and right. "How did we get here? You-You have a car somewhere, don't you?"

"Somewhere." And just in case she decided to kill him and drive off in it on her own, he added, "But the keys aren't with it.

They're hidden."

"You're going to hold me here?" She sat up, turned and tried to backpedal away, but didn't get far. She jerked the end of the short chain between their handcuffs. Her voice rose an octave. "You said you weren't going to kill me."

"I'm not. You're going to kill me." Tired of chasing her up the hill as she continued to back away from him, he pulled her to him.

She wasn't strong enough to fight. Yet. "You're going to kill me and bring me back...like you. Then I'll get the keys, and we'll

drive out of here together. Before the sun comes up."

Once he had the strength and speed of a vampire, he could fight Garth on equal footing. Kill him and free Sue Ellen's physical body from his evil influence.

What he'd have to do later to set his own soul free he wouldn't put words to.

Not yet.

T HE moments before dawn were always the darkest, the quietest, the most peaceful for a vampire. These were the moments Deadre held on to when she thought she couldn't stand being what she was for another night. When she couldn't stand the hunger.

These were the moments she'd always hoped would be her last, should her existence ever come to an end.

She pulled Daniel's coat tighter over her shoulders. After bathing in the creek and having gone so long without fresh blood to warm her, she had been chilled. He'd turned his jacket inside out and settled it over her shoulders. The gesture of simple kindness had touched her.

And confused her.

"Do you know what happens to a vampire in the sunlight?" she asked without looking at him. Pine and magnolia and jasmine all mingled on the breeze.

"I have a vague idea."

"The eyes go first. Our night vision makes us so sensitive to light that we're blinded."

A muscle in Daniel's jaw jumped. He jerked a blade of gra.s.s out of the ground and rolled it between his fingers.

"Then our skin begins to blister and peel. Our hair catches fire, and our internal organs start to liquefy."

"We don't have to be here when the sun comes up. All you have to do is...whatever you do to make me a vampire, and we'll

leave."

"I don't like being used."

He turned toward her. His green eyes looked flat black in the darkness. "How is it using you to ask you to do what comes

naturally to your kind?"

"I'm relatively young for one of my kind," she said. "But I've been a vampire long enough to know that I don't like it much. I won't curse another to suffer this existence."

"You'd rather die?"

"I died a long time ago, Daniel." She turned her face up to the sky. The moon was gone. The first pink tinges of dawn seeped up

from the eastern horizon. Already she could feel her skin p.r.i.c.kling. Soon the heat would replace her never-ending thirst as the source of her misery. "But I'd rather not burn. There are...kinder ways."

His face screwed up as her meaning sunk in. "You want me to kill you?"

"You're already killing me. I'm just asking you to do it mercifully."

"Jesus!" Daniel jerked his hand up to run through his hair, hit the end of the handcuff and winced.

He thought he'd planned for every contingency, taking care to hide the car and keys so she couldn't kill him and take off on her own. So she needed him to survive.

How could he have known she wouldn't want to survive?

Of all the vampires in Atlanta, he had to pick the one with a death wish.

He pulled her close. So close their noses nearly touched. Was her face already turning red from the sun?

"All you have to do is bite me, or cut me or whatever you do to get my blood."

She said nothing, just stared over his shoulder at the blus.h.i.+ng sky.

He pushed her to her back, straddled her, not really putting his weight on her, but pinning her down as he fished a penknife out of

his pocket.