Bite. Part 34

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 gra.s.sy meadow in one easy leap and smiled.

It pained him to leave Deadre 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.

I DIOT.

Deadre 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 relations.h.i.+p as well. Vampires were, by nature, sensual, s.e.xual creatures. Biologically speaking, the taking of blood meant a sudden increase in volume of blood. Increased blood volume meant increased blood flow to the s.e.x 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 l.u.s.t 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 bloodsucking urges, or if he would go rogue and have to be put down by his own kind.

A farmhouse rose out of a gra.s.sy 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, Deadre 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 l.u.s.t 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 Deadre 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."

He hadn't heard her move, but suddenly she was crouched beside him. "It's the animal blood. You can't have it. It isn't compatible."

He coughed, choked, spit. "Oh, G.o.d-Ow!-No kidding."

Gently she pried the chicken from his fist and, holding one wing between her thumb and forefinger, deposited it in a muck bucket

next to the horse stall.

He worked up the nerve to glance her way and was relieved to see she wasn't laughing at him. "You couldn't have told me about this animal thing?"

"You didn't ask."

Still on his hands and knees, he laughed sardonically. "Guess there are a lot of things I didn't ask."

She knelt next to him and dabbed the chicken blood from his lips with the hem of her T-s.h.i.+rt. "There's still time to make up for

that. But first you need to feed."

She sat with her back against the wall and pulled him to her. He was too weak to resist. The barn spun around him like a gyroscope.

She lifted her T-s.h.i.+rt, but he brushed her hand away from her breast. "Wait, wait. One thing I have to ask first."

She frowned down at him. "What?"

"Is it normal for me to get totally turned on when I drink your blood?"

"Very normal. Although you'll learn you do have the ability to control it, if you want to."

He thought about that a moment. "Like if I decide to take a nip from a ninety-year-old crone with the face of a weevil?"

"That would be a good time, yes." He could tell she tried to suppress her smile, but it broke through.

He was still contemplative, though. "Is it...as good...for you, too?"

She brushed her hand through his hair. "Not as good as for you, at this point. But when you're stronger, we'll exchange blood,

and then it will be."

He nodded, feeling queer about contemplating a future with her. A future had never been in his plan. He was going to kill Garth, and then himself and Sue Ellen so that they could rest in peace. Wasn't he?

He thought it would be simple. He would become a vampire, and he'd have super strength and use it to kill Garth.

Unfortunately things hadn't worked out quite that way. He'd become a vampire, all right, but he was about as strong as a newborn lamb, and Garth was the big, bad wolf.

Obviously, he had some recalculating to do. Not tonight, though. Tonight, he needed to feed. He needed blood to quench the fire

that threatened to consume him. He needed Deadre.

He rested his head on her shoulder and she beamed such a beatific smile down at him that this time, he extended a thumbnail and opened the wound on her breast himself.

The scent of fresh blood was like the smell of the ocean to a sailor. It cleansed him. Stirred him. His skin tingled and a low throb

pulsed in his s.e.x.

Lying next to her, he turned to his side and hooked one leg over her, rubbing with his calf, pressing himself into her hip. He smoothed his palm down the soft planes of her belly and under her waistband to the nest of curls between her legs.

She drew his head down with her hands, offering nourishment, offering her blood, but tonight he wouldn't just take. He would give

as good as he got.

As good and better.

"HOW long until I don't have to feed so often?" Daniel asked.

Hand in hand, they walked on a footpath through the woods behind the farmhouse. Nocturnal eyes peeked at them from branches and scrub brush, then scurried away.

Deadre couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so at peace. When she'd still been mortal, maybe.

"It's different for everyone," she said. "But most of us are able to sustain ourselves for at least a day or two after the first couple

of months."

His face twisted. "Months?"

"In vampire years, a month is hardly the blink of an eye."

"Vampire years. Is that kind of like doggie years?"

"Yeah, except a lot longer."