Bite. Part 40

"Yeah, that's right," Daniel said. "I'm as fast as you. I'm one of you. It's a fair fight, now."

Garth screamed out at the a.s.sembly, "Take him!"

Daniel wheeled, swung the sickle at neck level, the threat of decapitation-one of the few sure ways to end a vampire's existence-obvious. No one moved. "He's been holding you hostage with blood and his punishments," Daniel said, his gaze roaming from face to haggard face in the crowd. There wasn't one among them without sallow bags under their bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks. They were thin to the point of emaciation. "For how long now? How long have you let him torture you, starve you while he has all the blood he needs stored right here in the house?"

"Kill him!" Garth yelled, holding his injured wrist.

No one moved.

"I know where he keeps the blood," Daniel told them. "There's enough for everyone. You don't have to take it from mortals.

You don't have to ask his permission."

A ripple of murmurs spread round the room.

"Don't listen to him. He lies." Garth took a step forward.

Just then the double doors to the ballroom banged open and two burly vampires dragged Deadre in.

She lifted her head and looked up at him with ravaged eyes through the hair that had fallen over her face. "I'm sorry."

He jerked his head sharply once. "You have nothing to apologize for."

She'd come back for him. He couldn't quite wrap his mind around that fact. He knew how afraid she was of the Enforcer, and yet

she'd come back to help him.

"Ms. Rue. How nice of you to join us. Bring her up here," Garth ordered. "I presume since you're skulking about instead of joining the a.s.sembly that you're with him." He jerked his head toward Daniel.

The guards laid her on the floor on her back. Garth lifted his boot over her and she turned her head away, hissing in pain.

"You know what this is?" he asked Daniel without waiting for Deadre to confirm or deny his a.s.sumption. "What it does?"

"I've seen your handiwork," Daniel answered.

"Ah, then the two of you have been...close. If I touch the metal cross to her skin, she burns. If I hold it there, it burns all the way

through her." He moved his boot until it hovered inches above her chest. "If it burns through her heart, she dies. Permanently, this time."

"Let her go, a.s.shole." Daniel swung the blade, but Garth ducked. "I'm the one who came to kill you."

"Kill me?" Garth laughed. "I eat bugs like you for breakfast, boy. You're not going to kill-"

As he was talking, Garth took his eyes off Deadre. She took the opportunity to slide a small wooden stake out of the sleeve of her coat and jam it upward, right about where his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es would be.

He swayed, his hands moving to his crotch and his boot inching closer to Deadre's chest. As if moving in slow motion, he leaned.

His boot came down.

And Daniel lopped off his head with one clean swipe before he could put his weight on it.

Grabbing her by one arm, he dragged Deadre away from the corpse, which decayed to dust in seconds.

The crowd hushed for a moment. Then one of the vampires fell to his knees, crawled forward and bowed his head, holding on to Daniel's pants leg and calling him "Master."

"Leggo," Daniel said, shaking himself free.

A few of the vampires broke into sobs. Others began to crowd around him. Unsure what they intended, he waved them off with the sickle.

"You said you knew where there was blood," someone yelled.

"Plenty of blood."

"I do," he answered, still backing toward the door, one arm looped around Deadre's waist. "Enough for everyone."

"We need blood."

"We need it now."

"Get ready to run," he whispered in Deadre's ear, and then told the crowd, "It's in the cellar. Bottles of it, and it's more powerful

than anything you've known. Once that is gone, I can make more. But only for those who don't abuse it. Only for those who

don't take blood from humans, or harm them in any other way."

Then he made for the door, towing Deadre along with one hand. They skidded into the hallway, around a corner, then another, while the mob fought each other to get downstairs.

At the back of the house they ducked out the same window they'd come in, and ran across the lawn, not bothering with the shadows this time, until a voice from a second-story window jerked Daniel to a stop as if he were a dog on a leash.

"Daniel?" Sue Ellen's pretty voice called. "Daniel, is that you? Help me, Daniel. Please, I need your help."

"DANIEL, no! You can't go back in there." Deadre tugged on his hand once and gave up, the futility of her efforts written on his face.

It was useless; she'd lost.

"Daniel, please," the sickeningly sugary voice in the window said. She couldn't see the face in the darkness, but Deadre just knew it would be a pretty face. Women with voices like that were always pretty.

"Don't leave me here," the woman called. "I'm afraid."

Daniel turned and walked slowly back to the house. He didn't seem to know where he was, or what he was doing. He sure didn't seem to know Deadre was with him.

She talked to him anyway. "This is crazy. There are two dozen ravenous vampires in there."

He kept walking, one slogging step after another.

"Without the Enforcer to control them, who knows what they'll do. Once they've had a taste of your synthetic blood, they'll be

powerful, and they'll be angry at what's been done to them all this time. What they've suffered. Who knows who they'll decide to

take that anger out on."

He pulled away, and she let him go. His eyes never wavered from the dark window, the gauzy curtains fluttering around the silhouette of a female form. He stumbled through a side door almost as if he were sleepwalking.

Or...the woman upstairs held him in thrall.

How could that be? She was a vampire, yes, but she was almost as newly made as him. She would had to have had a relations.h.i.+p with him-vampire to mortal-before tonight for her to control him from this distance, with just her voice.

How could that be...unless...

No!

Deadre hurried to catch up with Daniel. She tried to tackle him as he climbed the stairs, but he threw her back. Her head

smacked the wall and she had to take a moment to clear the little birdies before she could go after him again.

On the landing, she tried to get in front of him, to block him. "Daniel, she's not who you think she is. She's not what you think she is!"

"Sue Ellen?" he called and shoved past Deadre as if she didn't exist.

"Here, baby," the woman crooned. "Here, Danny. Come to me."

Deadre followed him into a huge bedroom. The walls were draped with black and red satin. Night and blood, the curse of the

vampire. The bedcovers and curtains were all dark. Heavy wooden shutters were folded back against the wall on each side of the

window, ready to be pulled closed at dawn to block out the sun.

Daniel didn't seem to notice the unusual decor. He stared transfixed at the shadowy figure in the corner until finally, holding out her arms to him, she stepped into the light cast by the gas hurricane lantern on the sconce by the door.

Deadre sucked in a breath, barely resisted the automatic urge to drop to her knees, press her cheek to the floor with her arms out

to the side in the position of subjugation. "High Matron," she said, her voice breathy.

The High Matron of clan Atlanta stopped, folded the velvet hood back from her head. "What are you doing here, little girl?" Her voice had lost the sugary tone and taken on the rasp Deadre a.s.sociated with the queen of the vampires.

"Sue Ellen?" Daniel said as if he hadn't heard either of them.

The High Matron beckoned him with the curl of one finger. Daniel took a step forward.

Deadre stopped him, grabbing hold of the back of his jacket. "You can't have him!"

The High Matron smiled as he pulled free of Deadre's grasp and stepped into her arms. "I already do," she said again in Sue

Ellen's sweet voice, and then hooked her thumbs into his throat and lowered her lips to the two bubbling wounds she'd made.