Bite. Part 29

Prologue.

T HE silver toe cap on the end of the black snakeskin cowboy boot gleamed under the harsh laboratory lights as it rushed toward Daniel Hart's face. He lurched away, but not before the sharp metal point laid open his cheek. His head snapped back. Blood arced above him, then splattered down on his lab coat like crimson rain as he rolled to a stop on the tile floor.

Bruised and battered, his stomach throwing up into his throat the remnants of the pizza he'd eaten at his desk an hour ago, he s.h.i.+fted to lay flat on his face and planted his palms out beside his shoulders, inhaling the mingled scents of industrial cleaner and blood while he gathered the strength to lever himself up.

Before he could move, another kick flipped him backward. He grunted, and another blow spun him in midair, then another.

His world became a blurry haze of stainless steel tables cras.h.i.+ng to the floor, gla.s.s beakers shattering, instruments flying overhead in a whirlwind of violence and pain, and yet all he could think about was the work he'd dedicated the last three years of his life to. The delicate tests ruined. The data lost.

Well, almost all he could think of. There was the other matter of a few broken ribs, lacerations, a.s.sorted contusions and possibly some internal bleeding to occupy a small portion of his mind, but it all seemed far away, as if it were happening to someone else.

He rolled with another vicious kick, came to rest under the whiteboard filled with chemical equations on the far wall and curled his knees up to protect his abdomen. Something had torn inside him that time. His belly convulsed, his insides wringing like a dishrag. His breath rattled in his chest.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked clumsily, his tongue thick, b.l.o.o.d.y. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with you?"

"What is wrong with me?" The hem of Garth LaGrange's black duster swished over his boots as they scuffed the floor just inches from Daniel's face. He threw his hands in the air and cackled maniacally. "What is wrong with me? Nothing is wrong with me. For the first time in centuries, something is very, very right!"

Centuries? He'd known Garth was a little weird since he'd met him six months ago, but since the man with the penchant for black clothing and late-night business meetings had been the only one who'd stepped up to fund Daniel's research, he'd been willing to overlook a few...eccentricities. Suddenly he wished he'd taken the time to check out his benefactor more carefully. Looked into a few of the more pertinent details of his life.

Like the fact that he was whacked out of his mind.

Pain speared through Daniel, a lightning bolt that struck from his navel to his spine. He clenched his fist around the leg of the table near his head and rode the wave. "Why are you doing this?" he asked again. "What do you want?"

It galled him to lie helpless while Garth stomped through his lab like an angry child knocking over Tinker Toys, but at six foot eight, the guy had a good six inches on him, and who'd have guessed a man built like an underfed flagpole would have the strength of a bull ox? At one hundred and ninety pounds himself, Daniel was no featherweight, yet Garth had tossed him around the room-repeatedly-without breaking a sweat.

"What do I want?" Garth squatted next to Daniel and grinned wickedly. "I want it all. I want the world at my feet."

"You've lost it." Shaking his head, Daniel dragged himself sideways, along the wall. "You're nuts, man."

Garth's face darkened. A scowl scrawled across his lips as he tracked Daniel's progress toward the door. Dropping his arms to his sides, he took a measured step toward Daniel, then another. "You're right. I'm crazy."

He leaned over until his pasty face hovered at the end of Daniel's nose. His breath brought a new wave of bile up Daniel's throat. "After eighteen months of listening to your constant stream of mind-numbing, medico-scientific mumbo jumbo, I'M A RAVING f.u.c.kING LUNATIC!"

Daniel couldn't disagree with that, though he took issue with the cause. He tightened his arms over his ribs, expecting another blow, but Garth spun away with a flourish of his long coat.

"Oh Daniel, you're so smart," he mocked the praise he'd showered over Daniel so freely in the past. "Oh Daniel, you're so dedicated."

Halfway across the lab, he turned. "I cozied up to you. I coddled you. When what I really wanted to do was-"

His face twisted in rage, he made a circle in the air with his hands, as if he were choking an invisible neck, and for the first time, Daniel noticed how long the man's thumbnails were. Thick and yellow, they curved out two inches beyond the ends of his digits, where they sharpened to pinpoints.

Gross, but Daniel didn't have time to contemplate Garth's personal hygiene, because he finally figured out what he should have known all along. Garth had never believed in his research. Never been as excited as Daniel about the potential to help people, to further the greater good.

The man had just been using him all along. "You want my blood."

Garth teased the rim of his lips with his tongue. "You have no idea how badly."

"You want the formula."

"I want what it can give me. Power. Control. A certain..." He flicked his chin up jauntily. His pocked cheeks looked more hollow

than ever, his complexion more sallow, yet there was a dull gleam in his sunken eyes that made Daniel's stomach pitch. "A certain notoriety with women.

"It's not v.i.a.g.r.a, man. It's blood. Synthetic blood."

"It's freedom. It's life!"

"You can't have it."

"I already do." He pulled a CD case out of the pocket of his coat, opened it carefully. Reverently. "By the way, this is now the only copy. I reformatted the hard drive on your PC and destroyed all the data backups."

Daniel's heart kicked on its first spurt of true panic. Getting his a.s.s kicked by a freak with weird fingernails was one thing. Losing

the work he'd dedicated his life to, work with the potential to save thousands of lives, was a whole other level of torture.

He could re-create the formula for the first non-organic human blood subst.i.tute, but it would take time. Reproducing the tests and doc.u.mentation the drug manufacturers would insist on seeing before they committed their resources to the project would take even longer. Months and money he didn't have.

He found the strength to push himself to a sitting position. "You need me. And my medico-scientific mumbo jumbo. You'll never get a major pharmaceutical company's backing without me. You won't get in the front door."

"I have no intention of trying to get in the front, or any other, door."

"Even you don't have enough money to push a product like this to market yourself. It would cost you millions just to get it past the FDA. Tens of millions."

"The market I'm targeting doesn't require FDA approval."

"What market is that, the black market? Africa? Latin America? Where the people are too poor to afford the luxury of asking where their medicines come from, or in too much pain to care?"

Garth cackled again. "Such a humanitarian. But you overestimate my ambition. I was actually thinking of a consumer group much

closer to home, and money is not an issue with them."

Nothing Garth said made sense to Daniel, but then his brains had been pretty well scrambled this evening. All he knew was that the man who had claimed to support his work was trying to steal it, and that the same man was more concerned about his own profit than helping humanity with a medical breakthrough.

Synthetic blood would save thousands of lives. Unlike the products most of the pharmaceutical companies had in development now, Daniel's brainchild didn't require any biological components at all. It could be ma.s.s produced on demand from simple chemicals, had an unlimited shelf life and none of the threat of blood-born pathogens such as hepat.i.tis and HIV that accompanied the real thing. It had to reach the market-the legal market.

Clutching a set of metal shelves, Daniel dragged himself to his feet. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You can't do this. I won't let you do it."

Garth smiled the way Daniel imagined a hunter would smile at Bambi. Right before he shot him. "Oh, do try to stop me. Please."

Daniel put his head down and charged, only to find himself flung back by an unseen hand. His back slammed into the wall behind

him with enough force to knock a man-sized hole in the Sheetrock before he slid to the floor.

How had he done that? Garth hadn't touched him.

Shaking his head to clear it, Daniel braced his back against the drywall and pushed himself to his feet for another run, only to find

himself knocked flat on his face.

Except there wasn't anyone behind him to knock him on his face. There wasn't anyone else in the room at all. Except Garth.

Okay, now this was getting spooky.

He raised his head to squint at his benefactor-c.u.m-nemesis through burning, swollen eyes.

"You're finished. You have nothing left," Garth spat down at him. "I've got the formula. I've got the lab. I've got your house."

A groan tore its way out of Daniel's throat. The note he'd signed for the research funding. The collateral he'd put up, including the

house that had been in his family for over a hundred years...

"I've got your car. That pitiful little savings account you call your nest egg."

Garth stretched his hand out toward the door to the lab, and what little breath Daniel had been able to draw into his aching chest

caught in his throat.

Another black-clad figure sashayed into the room. Her leather pants squeaked as she rolled her hips. Her D-cup b.r.e.a.s.t.s spilled out of her leather lace-up bustier.

"Sue Ellen?" Daniel rolled to his knees, swayed sickly. Sue Ellen walked by as if she hadn't seen him. What was wrong with her?

Why was she dressed like that?

Garth smiled as she stepped into his waiting arms and rubbed herself against him like a feline. "I've even got your girl."

"Sue Ellen, get away from him!"

But she seemed to have no inclination to run. Instead, she flicked out a long thumbnail, scratching Garth's neck and scooping up a

drop of blood. Then she brought the blood to her lips and licked it off with a dreamy look of enjoyment on her face.

G.o.d, what had he done to her? What sort of spell had he put her under?

Daniel watched, frozen in horror as Garth placed his hands around her neck, caressed the line of her jaw, then squeezed. Hard.

She should have struggled. He had to be hurting her, but she didn't seem to care. She seemed to be enjoying the pain. Eyes

glazed over with antic.i.p.ation, she let her head fall back as if he were caressing her like a lover, not choking her.

Daniel staggered to his feet. "What are you doing?"

Garth drew his thumbs over the column of her throat, licked his lips, and then dug his pointed nails into her flesh.

Daniel charged again, growling. Again the unseen hand stopped him, this time s.n.a.t.c.hing him from behind and lifting him like a dog caught by the scruff of the neck. It pulled him up until he had to stretch to touch his toes to the floor, then beyond.

Garth pulled his thumbs back, and bright red blood bubbled out of the twin wounds he'd inflicted.

Daniel flailed in midair. "Let her go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Let her go. I'll kill you for this. By G.o.d, I swear I'll kill you for this."

Garth flicked a careless look at Daniel. "You can't touch me. And neither can your G.o.d."

He winced as if he suffered some sudden pain, then lowered his head and suckled on the punctures he'd made on Sue Ellen's neck, a thin red stream of blood-her blood-trickling out the corner of his mouth as he drank.

A T a corner table in the condemned warehouse that had been converted to a bar, at least for the night, Deadre Rue hunched over her tonic water and watched the throng of sweaty, drunken bodies on the dance floor gyrate to the sound of heavy metal rock with l.u.s.t in her eyes.

Blood l.u.s.t.

Sometimes the ache, the desire, the never-ending, sharp-toothed, razor-clawed, freaking craving for blood was so strong she thought she might die from it.