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“A microbiologist.” She hesitated, wanting to believe him but not quite daring. If he was trying to protect her from the truth…. If she’d hurt him…. “And you’ve made fake blood?”
“Completely non-organic. Doesn’t even require human hemoglobin like the products the big drug companies have been working on. It’s so simple I’m amazed no one thought of it before. All I did was compound perfluorocarbons.”
“Perfluoro-whats?”
“PFCs. Flourine and Chlorine.” His eyes lit up and he laughed. “I knew it would work. I knew it would. The PFCs are even more efficient than real red blood cells because they just absorb the oxygen, instead of bonding it to iron the way blood does.”
“If you say so.”
He clasped her shoulders. The touch zinged through her hyperstimulated nerves.
“Can’t you feel it?” he asked. “The PFCs are forty times smaller, so they can fit into the smallest capillaries, literally reach every cell in your body, yet they carry twice as much oxygen. Can’t you feel how strong it makes you? How alive?”
She did feel different. Warmer. Not so tired.
He lurched to his feet, fastened his pants and threw her jacket and pants to her. He didn’t bother with the ruined shirt.
Pacing, he dragged a hand through his hair while she dressed. “This stuff is powerful mojo. Not only will it help mortals, but it could mean a whole new life for vampires.”
She zipped her pants and shoved her arms in the sleeves of her jacket. “New life?”
“No more feeding off mortals. No more killing, accidental or otherwise. And the power it will give us, it’s tremendous.”
It sounded good, so why was her stomach turning. “You know what they say about power corrupting.”
He stopped, turned to her. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
“That’s why you and every other vampire in the city haven’t already heard of the synthetic blood. He wasn’t going to share it with the rest of you. He wants it for himself. He wants to be the biggest, baddest-ass fucking vampire in Atlanta.”
He picked up his own coat and punched his arms into the sleeves. “Well, I’ve got news for him. He’s not the only vampire who can cook up a pot of this joy juice, now. Garth LaGrange is going down. For good.”
She dropped the test tube she’d been holding. Glass shattered at her feet. “Garth LaGrange?”
“The one who wrecked my lab and stole my work.”
“The one who turned your fiancée.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at his feet, then raised his head. Color spotted both cheeks as if he’d just realized, as she had, that they’d made love while he was engaged to another woman, but she couldn’t think about that now.
“The one you’re going to kill,” she said flatly, already knowing how he would answer.
“Tonight. Right after I drink so much synthetic blood that an M-one tank couldn’t stop me.”
Oh, God.
She winced, the pain flaring instantly. Crap! She hadn’t done that in decades. Rubbing her temples, she hoped it would be decades, or longer, before she did it again, assuming she was around that long.
Which she might not be, since the vampire she’d just made—the man she loved—was determined to try to kill the evilest, cruelest, most powerful being in Atlanta.
Garth LaGrange, the High Matron’s Enforcer.
7
IT was a good thing Daniel was dead already, because he didn’t think he could live with himself after what he’d done.
Bad enough he’d kidnapped Déadre, used her to make him a vampire and then fed off her while he gained his strength.
But to make love with her, that was an unpardonable sin.
This whole quest was about Sue Ellen. Finding her. Setting her free.
Getting tangled up—literally—with another woman hadn’t been part of the plan. Still wasn’t.
Except every time he tried to picture his fiancée, to shore up his resolve by remembering her sweet smile, her shy, tinkering laugh, all he saw was Déadre in black leather. All he heard were her moans, her sighs. He felt her hot hands around his—
“You can’t kill him,” the object of his rumination said stubbornly. “He’s like the Terminator on steroids and immortal to boot.”
He glanced over to the passenger seat of the borrowed pickup. He and Déadre had passed the day in the basement beneath his lab. He’d cooked up a couple more batches of blood, and now that night had fallen, they were heading west, to an old restored plantation home about twenty minutes outside the city limits. The home Garth had stolen from him.
“Vampires aren’t immortal,” he said, switching his gaze back to the road. “Not really. They’re tough to kill. But they do die.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been made what, three days, and you’re an expert on vampires now?”
“I told you you didn’t have to come.”
“Oh, and miss seeing all that blood spilled? Are you kidding? Of course, all of it is going to be your blood, but I’ll try not to let that spoil the fun.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and turned her head to stare out the side window.
Aw, hell. What was he supposed to say? She wasn’t going to understand. He wasn’t sure he understood anymore.
“If you really think he’s going to kill me, all the more reason for you to stay behind.”
She turned her head. At least she was willing to look at him again. Her dark eyes burned with angry fire. “I told you once already, life as a vampire sucks. And yes, I mean that figuratively as well as literally. Don’t you get it? You’re the only thing in my miserable undead existence that hasn’t sucked. Why would I want to stay behind without you?”
Of all the things she could have said, things that would have made him stop, force her out of the truck, leave her behind for her own good, that was the one thing that disarmed him.
In her own, ineloquent way, he thought she’d just said she loved him.
Jeus—
I mean, Holy Hell.
He smiled. He was learning.
“Just for the record,” he said. “I don’t think you suck, either.”
Her gaze snapped up to his. “Oh, yes, I do. Take me back to the lab and give me some more of your mojo juice, and I’ll show you how hard.”
He laughed out loud. That was his girl.
“Hold that thought, okay? Maybe we’ll give it a go later. First, I’ve got a vampire to kill.”
Not to mention a fiancée, though he kept that part to himself, because once he put a stake through Sue Ellen’s heart, there would be no later for him.
T HE thumping in Déadre’s chest was slow and sad. Fine time for her heart to start beating on its own, she thought. When all it wanted to do was pound out a dirge.
Her eyes were hot and wet and felt swollen in their sockets. This is what it’s like to want to cry, and to force yourself not to, she thought, and the fact that she remembered the feeling from so many years ago, when she’d been mortal, brought more tears to her eyes.
She’d been remembering a lot of things about her mortal years since she met Daniel. What it was like to care about someone else so much that his injuries made her hurt. What it was like to need someone. To love someone.
Now she was afraid she was about to remember what it was like to lose someone.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and looked at Daniel. He had a strong profile. Noble. Determined.
Stubborn as a jackass in a field full of clover.
She’d tried every way she could think of to talk him out of this fool mission of his without luck. All she could do now was pray, and how was she supposed to do that when she couldn’t think—much less say—His name?
“Here we are.” Daniel killed the engine and the headlights on the pickup truck and coasted to a stop in a grove of pecan trees beside a long, narrow drive.
At the end of the drive, a white house rose up from the green turf like the pearly gates from a cloud. The white wooden pillars lining the porch shone like marble in the spotlights turned on the porch. A magnolia tree bloomed in the front yard, scenting the air with the signature smell of a Georgia summer.
“This was your house?” she asked, whispering though she wasn’t sure why. Even with super-hearing, Garth couldn’t hear them at this distance.
