Bite. Part 35

"Hmmphh."

The path ended at a pond polka-dotted by floating lilies.

Daniel skimmed a stone across the moonlit surface. "How often do you need blood?"

"Every few weeks or so. But it's been a little longer this time."

He had raised a rock for another throw, but he paused. "Am I hurting you by taking your blood when you haven't fed?"

She shrugged, hoping he wouldn't see the weariness in the gesture. "I'm a little weak, that's all. I'll feel better once we're back in

the city."

In truth, she wished she never had to go back to the city. To face the Enforcer.

"Once you take a mortal's blood," he said, the words tinged with revulsion.

"I don't kill my donors. I only take enough to sustain myself without harming them."

"How do you do it?" He lifted his head. His green eyes looked black, bleak, under the quarter moon. "I tried. I was so desperate

for blood, I wanted to go into that farmhouse, drink from whoever lived there, but I couldn't. It made me sick to think about it."

He sat down in the gra.s.s, pulled his knees up and hooked his arms around them.

She lowered herself next to him, mimicking his position, and grazed her fingertips over the nape of his neck, down his spine.

"Eventually you'll have to take blood from someone besides me."

He stared out over the water for so long that she thought he wasn't going to respond. That he wasn't ready to face that reality.

But finally he said quietly, "What if there was another way? Could you give up mortal blood? Would you?"

"What other way? Snapping the heads off chickens?"

He winced. "No, no animal blood. That's a lesson I won't forget."

"Then there is no other way." Daniel sighed, and got such a faraway look on his face that Deadre wondered where his thoughts

had taken him. "Daniel?"

He stood and brushed himself off, then offered a hand to help her up. "We'd better get back. It'll be dawn soon."

Deadre's own thoughts did some wandering on the way back to the farmhouse to collect the jacket she'd left in the barn. "Let's

don't go back, Daniel. Back to Atlanta, I mean. We can sleep today in the storm shelter, then head out tomorrow night for

wherever we want to go."

She'd never thought about leaving her home city before. Vampires congregated in clans and to be separated from the clan was risky. They supported each other, watched each others' backs. Clans tended to be wary of strangers, especially strange vampires. The clan in a new city wasn't likely to welcome them with open arms.

More likely they would brand them as rogues, cut off their heads and bury them facedown.

She'd rather take her chances with a strange clan than with the Enforcer, though. She couldn't go back to Atlanta and face the High Matron and her thug. She couldn't take Daniel there.

Her excitement grew with every step. "California, maybe. I've always wanted to see the coast."

"I can't."

"Or the mountains. What do you think about the mountains?"

At the back of the farmhouse, he stepped in front of her, stopped her with firm hands on her shoulders. "Deadre, I can't. I have to

go back to Atlanta."

She jerked away. The goats in the pen against the barn bleated. The mommas ran back and forth across their corral, their babies

at their heels. The cattle next to them joined the ruckus, mooing and snorting.

"Because some man stole your house and your car and your work," she said bitterly, remembering his words from the rave club.

"And you have to kill him."

"Because he killed someone I care about. My..." His voice broke. "My fiancee."

"Your what?"

"He's not a man, Deadre. He's a vampire. And he...he made her one, too."

She shook her head, not believing any of this. "So you used me to make you a vampire so you could win her back?"

"I used you to make me a vampire so I could set her free. She is-was-sweet and gentle. She wouldn't want to live like that.

She wouldn't want me to leave her a-"

"A what?" She raised her hands out to the sides. "A monster, like me?"

He didn't answer her question. He straightened his back and looked her straight in the eye. "He's a vampire. As a mortal I had no

chance against him. He's too strong. Too fast."

"What will you do if you manage to kill him, huh? Then you'll still be a monster? What will you do then?"

He looked her straight in the eye, his face solemn and sad. "Then I'll set myself free, too."

Her eyes went wide. Her stomach pancaked on the floor of her abdomen.

He'd used her. To find his fiancee, a vampire, so he could kill her.

And then he was going to kill himself.

Her beautiful Daniel.

Her mouth rounding in a silent, "No", she ran around him into the barn and nearly mowed down a sleepy-looking elderly man in a

bathrobe and rubber boots. The farmer held a double-barreled shotgun, and her momentum sent him stumbling back. The stock of the gun connected with a support beam. His hand jerked on the trigger. There was a tremendous explosion, then a flash of flame from the end of the gun.

And two loads of double-ought shot tore through Deadre's chest.

D ANIEL felt the concussion of the shotgun blast all the way outside the barn. He charged through the back door in time to see Deadre sway once, her spine straight and arms at her side, then topple backward like a domino. A red stain the size of a dinner plate bloomed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The farmer dropped the rifle and backed up until his shoulders. .h.i.t the wall. His eyes were huge and round, set deep in his face, his complexion waxy. "Whaa-? No. Oh, no. I thought it was those wild dogs in the barn again, botherin' my stock. I didn't know. I didn't mean to do it. It was an accident."

Daniel stood immobile for a long moment, then dropped to his knees beside Deadre. He was pretty sure a gunshot couldn't kill her, but it was still quite a shock seeing her fall, seeing her lying on the ground, still and pale.

He checked her vitals quickly. She wasn't breathing, had no pulse. By all outward appearances, she was dead.

The farmer shuffled toward the door, mumbling. "Nine-one-one. I gotta wake the wife and call nine-one-one."

"No." Daniel touched Deadre's lips once before he rose, both a plea and a promise. He hoped she heard both in that deep sleep

vampires went into when they needed to heal. Just because she couldn't die from a gunshot wound didn't mean she couldn't suffer

from one. Feel the agony of torn flesh and splintered bone.

He needed to get her out of here, take her somewhere where he could help her. Where he could hold her, if nothing else. But first he had to deal with the farmer.

"You can't call anyone," he said, moving slowly and kicking the gun away as he approached the farmer.

The man shook like a child who'd played too long in the snow without his mittens. "B-but she's..."

"She's going to be fine."

He could see how hard the farmer tried to believe that. But the man shook his head sadly. His voice broke about the same time

tears sprung to his eyes. "She's dead."

"She's not." He advanced on the man slowly, trying not to spook him.

"She...She's not?"

Daniel felt his confusion. He was sorry for the old guy, but a call to the cops could cause him and Deadre a lot of trouble. The last

thing he needed was the police on his tail when he took her out of here. If they found her, they'd take her to the morgue, do an autopsy.

He suppressed a shudder. What if they cremated her afterward? Then she really would be dead.