by Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, Vickie Taylor
"Been there, done that. Got the blood-stained T-shirt," he said and laughed. "But I'll take great pleasure in passing the favor on to you, instead."
Daniel's heart thumped like he was alive again. He threw the ropes off his wrists and pulled out the sickle jammed under his coat between his shoulder blades. The crowd of vampires gasped, took a step back as a unit.
"Sorry," Daniel said, flashing the razor-sharp blade in the candlelight and circling Garth. "Not interested."
"Well, well, Daniel. You do surprise me."
"I'm going to do a lot more than that to you." He spoke over his shoulder, keeping one eye on the crowd and one on Garth as he moved. A still target was a dead target.
Garth's hand lashed out at supersonic speed. Daniel dodged left, swiped the blade down hard. It was only a glancing blow, and still it sliced his wrist to the bone. He lifted the bloody limb and gaped at it.
"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 assembly, "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 Déadre 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 assembly 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 Déadre to confirm or deny his assumption. "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, asshole." 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 Déadre. 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 testicles would be.
He swayed, his hands moving to his crotch and his boot inching closer to Déadre'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 Déadre 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 Déadre's waist. "Enough for everyone."
"We need blood."
"We need it now."
"Get ready to run," he whispered in Déadre'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 Déadre 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."
9
"DANIEL, no! You can't go back in there." Déadre 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 Déadre 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 Déadre 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 relationship 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!
Déadre 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 Déadre as if she didn't exist.
"Here, baby," the woman crooned. "Here, Danny. Come to me."
Déadre 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 int
o the light cast by the gas hurricane lantern on the sconce by the door.
Déadre 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 Déadre associated 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.
Déadre stopped him, grabbing hold of the back of his jacket. "You can't have him!"
The High Matron smiled as he pulled free of Déadre'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.
A moment later, she raised her head. Daniel's blood trickled out one corner of her mouth. She swiped the drop away with the tip of her tongue. "Mmmm. Good. Strong. Powerful."
She lowered her head to suckle on him again.
Déadre's arms went stiff at her sides. Her fingers curled into her palms. Her skin went cold and her blood boiled. "You tricked him. You knew about his research all along and you pretended to fall in love with him."
"Of course I did, darling." She lapped at Daniel's neck like a cat at a puddle of spilled milk.
"He loved you. He came here to save you!"
The High Matron raised her head, patted Daniel's cheek. "Did he now? Then I shall have to make him my special pet. With Garth gone, Daniel will make a fine new Enforcer."
No. Déadre couldn't let this happen. Daniel wouldn't want to live like this. She wouldn't let it happen.
She grabbed the kerosene lantern from its hangar on the wall. Before the High Matron could raise her head in surprise, Déadre threw the lantern. Fuel splashed all over Daniel and the woman. Flames engulfed them.
Yelling, "No!" but not sure any sound actually came out of her closed throat, Déadre reached into the flames and pulled Daniel back. She threw him to the floor and slapped at his burning pants leg, the cuff of his coat, smothering the flames with her body. "No. No, no, no!"
"You bitch!" The High Matron stumbled backward into the satin-draped wall. The wall covering ignited. She swatted at the cloth, but only succeeded in tangling herself in it further. Screaming, she spun, and the burning cloth encased her like a shroud. A moment later, her whole body burst into flames and disintegrated.
Daniel's eyes snapped open as if he'd awoken from a nightmare. His arms closed around Déadre as his lungs dragged in a ragged breath. He rolled with her, away from the fire. Away from the pile of ashes that was all that was left of the High Matron.
"Sue Ellen!" he yelled, but Déadre heard the difference in his voice. The betrayal. "Sue Ellen," he said once more, quieter, before he pulled Déadre to her feet and down the stairs, out the door and into the fresh night air.
"NICE digs," Daniel said. He sat on what he supposed doubled as both dining room and coffee table since it was the only table in the twelve-by-twelve crawl space underneath the maintenance shaft to Track 11 of Atlanta's metro rail system. The walls were bare, the only furniture besides the table was a coffin lined with dirt in the center of the room.
At least the ceiling had some décor. If you could call heavy metal rock posters and stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars décor.
"Don't be a funny boy." She spooned a glob of burn medicine out of a blue jar with her finger. "Or I'll have to mix a little holy water with your salve."
He leaned away from her approaching finger. "You wouldn't."
She daubed the glob on the end of his nose, then swiped it down his chin. "No, I wouldn't. But it wouldn't hurt for you to show a little respect."
"Honey, after what you did to Garth, I'm downright afraid of you."
Her chin wobbled. "It's been a long time since I killed anyone. And I've never done it on purpose."
"You didn't kill Garth. I did."
She ducked her head. "The High Matron…"
"She was using me. Pretending to be mortal, dressing in prissy outfits and playing sweet and helpless and dumb, when all along I was the stupid one. She was just waiting for me to perfect the synthetic blood. She had to have been working with Garth all along. She's the one who introduced me to him, said he could fund the research. She would have made me into what he was, eventually."
He captured Déadre's chin between his thumb and forefinger and brought her face up to his. "You saved me from that. A fate worse than death."
"You don't want to die, now that her soul is free?"
He touched his lips to hers, tasted her fear and her passion, and whispered, "Not when I have you to live for."
She looped her arms around him and pressed herself into him. Their noses bumped. Burn salve squished across their cheeks and brows as they nuzzled and kissed each other. That didn't matter. They'd both been burned.
"We have a lot of work to do, getting your blood to the vampires of Atlanta—everywhere, for that matter—so that they can live and thrive without feeding off humans," she said between biting his earlobe and running her tongue over the crease of his eye.
"I want to get it into human hands, as well. There's still a lot of need there."
She wiggled her hips against him. "Maybe we can keep enough for ourselves to keep life interesting at home, too."
"We'll keep plenty."
He felt her smile on the side of his neck. "I love you, Daniel."
"I love you, too, Déadre."
He opened his legs and she stepped into his body where she belonged, where the blood lust beat intimately between them.
For eternity.