Bane's Choice

by Alyssa Day

  “I didn’t even get to finish watching Die Hard,” she muttered.

  “I told you. I won’t kill you unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Bane growled.

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” she snapped, because if she was going to die anyway, what the hell.

  Bane scowled at her. “You are a very rude woman. But if it’s the only way to allay your concerns, let’s go see Hunter. He’s asleep. Well, you’d probably consider it a coma, actually. And he’ll be out for almost three days, if all goes well.”

  He slowly floated them back down to the ground, and her heart quit trying quite so hard to pound its way out of her chest. It was Savannah, after all. So, there were vampires. There were also pirate ghosts, or so people claimed. She could handle this.

  She could handle this, she told her weak knees.

  Bane caught her hand in his and led her out of the alcove and around the corner into another huge room, which was filled with a whole lot of nothing, except for a large table in the center of the room, with a man lying on top of it, sleeping. There was also a chair next to the table, in which another man was also asleep, and a small table next to the door they’d just entered, which held a tray with bowls, spoons, a basket of bread, and a soup tureen.

  A faint rumble of appetite caught Ryan off guard for a moment, but then she forgot her stomach, the food, and the fact that she was standing in what appeared to be a ballroom in her pajamas.

  Because the man on the table turned his head toward her, and his eyes snapped open.

  His red eyes.

  And flakes of burned skin fell off his body as he fought against the ropes she only just now saw were holding him down.

  “Hunter,” Bane called out, releasing her hand and racing over to the man, who—impossibly—must be Hunter Evans. “No!”

  The man in the chair startled awake and then lunged up and caught Hunter’s legs, helping Bane hold him down, and then Bane…

  He…

  Ryan’s mind tried to shut down. Her logical, scientific, always-rational mind decided that she’d had quite enough and tried to force Ryan to turn and walk out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.

  Far, far away from a place where the man she’d been kissing, only hours before, could rip his wrist open with his fangs and hold it out to a dying burn victim, so the man could clamp his jaws onto Bane’s wrist and drink.

  She felt herself being torn into two separate and opposing forces.

  Ryan wanted very, very badly to run away from these people. These vampires.

  But the part of her that was Dr. St. Cloud? Dr. St. Cloud wanted to stay.

  Terror fought scientific curiosity.

  Scientific curiosity won.

  Dr. Ryan St. Cloud took a deep breath and crossed the room toward the three men.

  The three vampires.

  “I’m a doctor,” she told Hunter Evans. “I’m here to help.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Bane watched in mounting disbelief as the human pushed past her shock and fear, visibly schooling her expression into one of calm confidence, as she crossed the room toward him. Even in skimpy pajamas—even with wild hair and smudged makeup—she was every inch the professional.

  Damn, but he had to admire that.

  She knew what he was, and she was still walking toward him. Toward Hunter, who was clearly on the edge of a crazed, homicidal bloodlust that the Turn shouldn’t be provoking in him this soon.

  Hunter lunged in Ryan’s direction, almost breaking free of Bane’s hold.

  “Oh, fuck no,” Bane snarled. “Stay back,” he roared at Ryan, hoping sheer volume would work where his attempts to enthrall her had not.

  She kept coming, her only response a raised eyebrow. “This has a déjà vu feel to it, but I think you can’t really expect me to listen to you when you ignored me so completely in the hospital. Also, you need to explain to me how you disappeared, but maybe later. Now.” She took a deep breath and raised her chin. “Now, I want to examine my patient.”

  “Yesss,” Hunter growled through a mouthful of blood, looking almost exactly like a hideous caricature of a monster in a bad vampire movie, which—for some strange reason—made Bane want to hide him from Ryan’s view.

  Why?

  The answer, when it came, caught him completely off guard.

  He didn’t want her to see a monster and associate it with him.

  The realization made his blood run cold—even colder than usual—and he filed it away, under things to think about later or maybe never, because the unbelievably fearless human was less than a foot away from him now, which meant that he could smell her and hear her heart beating far faster than her calm demeanor would have led him to expect.

  And if he could smell her and hear her heartbeat… He tightened his grasp on Hunter a second before the man lunged at Ryan.

  “Want!”

  Bane caught his shoulders and pressed him down, and Luke, clearly suffering from blood-loss-induced exhaustion, based on the way his wrist was chewed up, got a firmer grip on Hunter’s legs.

  “This isn’t good,” Luke snapped, glaring at Ryan.

  “Thank you, Captain Understatement,” Ryan snapped right back at him. “Maybe you two can move out of my way so I can examine Mr. Evans and figure out what the hell you’ve done to him.”

  “Maybe you can move back across the room so I can get him under control,” Bane gritted out from between teeth clenched so tightly he was surprised they didn’t shatter. “He can smell you. Don’t you get it? Your presence is aggravating his condition.”

  She looked uncertain for a split second, her gaze flashing to Hunter’s face, but then Bane got fed up with the entire situation and made the decision for her, smashing his fist into the side of Hunter’s head, knocking him out.

  For how long, who the hell knew, but it solved the matter momentarily.

  “Why did you do that?” Ryan demanded, outrage ringing in her voice. “You can’t just—”

  “I can, and I did. Now, maybe we can figure out why he keeps waking up when he should be out for three days. And we need some better restraints.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Luke muttered. “And maybe you can explain why your human is here? I mean, play with them, fine, but keep them in your bedroom or at the club in the basement. We don’t need her here.”

  Before Bane could answer him—or beat the shit out of him, which was his first inclination—Ryan pointed her finger at Luke’s face.

  “Hey. Asshole. Your bullshit lines didn’t work on me at the hospital, and I’m sure as hell not going to listen to you now, when we’re in a room filled with vampires. So, shut up, or I’ll shut you up.”

  A peculiar feeling fizzled in Bane’s chest at her words. Was it…laughter?

  Pride?

  What the fuck was happening to him?

  Luke, inexplicably, grinned. “Hey, doll face. We’re not in a room filled with vampires. You are. And my name’s Luke, not Asshole.” He flashed his fangs at her, still smiling, and Ryan took an almost-certainly involuntary step back, because then she immediately scowled.

  His human was a fighter, then. The realization pleased him for the roughly two seconds it took for pleasure to turn to horror that he kept thinking of her as his.

  “I can’t…okay. I might need to sit down.” Ryan made an abrupt right face, marched over to the far wall, and slid down to sit on the floor in a graceless heap, pulling her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

  Everything about her body language suddenly screamed defensive posture, maybe an inch away from helpless terror.

  The doctor had finally had enough.

  Luke laughed. “Nice jammies, by the way, human.”

  Bane swung around, leading with his fist. He didn’t aim for Luke’s face but for a point about three inches
inside his skull. When the blow landed, Luke’s head rocked back, and his entire body lifted off the floor and flew a good six feet across the room before he hit the wall opposite the one where Ryan huddled.

  “Keep your rude comments to yourself, or I’ll be sure you’re unable to speak at all,” Bane snarled.

  “You—” Luke gathered himself to leap off the floor, muscles bunching in readiness for attack, but then looked—really looked—at Bane and slowly dropped back down, wiping blood off his mouth with the back of one hand. “Fine. I have no idea what you’re up to, but fine.”

  “My motivations are none of your fucking business, especially when you insult my…guest,” Bane told him, substituting guest for human at the last second, cognizant of exactly what shit would hit the fan if the doctor heard him say that she was his—human or otherwise.

  “I need to go home now,” Ryan said quietly. Too quietly, as if the fight and determination she’d shown had drained out of her like the blood Hunter had drained from Luke’s wrist.

  Bane blew out a sigh. He’d expected her to break. Had even wondered why it was taking so long.

  The human brain had only a certain elasticity, in terms of being able to suspend disbelief.

  Believe the unbelievable.

  See the possibility in the impossible.

  Hollywood, novels, and the internet had brought humans a long way toward what they’d accept as credible—on the page or on the screen.

  Not so much in their reality.

  If the monsters were real, then humans weren’t the gods of their domains that they believed themselves to be. And human brains were absolutely not wired to go along with that.

  So legitimate sightings of the supernatural were scoffed at as hoaxes. Mocked as the fakest of reality TV nonsense. Laughed at by skeptics, scorned by science.

  But science, though hailed as the religion of the modern age, the true dogma in which to believe, with physics and chemistry the gospel of that contemporary church…

  Science couldn’t comprehend magic.

  And monsters lived in the darkness of the interstitial spaces between science and magic—between logic and emotion.

  Between life and death.

  Twas brillig, indeed, but vampires, as well as the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe. Lewis Carroll had gotten it partly right, but humans need beware of more than the Jabberwock.

  Far worse creatures walked the night.

  The problem was getting the humans to believe it.

  Dr. Ryan St. Cloud was obviously crossing the threshold of scientific skepticism into belief, so the next question was plain:

  Would her mind break under the strain?

  Before he could come to a conclusion, Meara strode back into the room, her arms full of towels.

  “All right, human. I’ve come to save you from the stink of stale wine and humiliation.”

  …

  Ryan, still clutching her knees to her chest, opened her eyes at the female vampire’s—Meara’s—cheery announcement, when the words broke through the haze of hopelessness mixed with disbelief that had driven her to this position with her back literally against this wall.

  “Quit calling me human. My name is Ryan. Or Dr. St. Cloud. Or even you bitch. Just not human. Got it, vampire?”

  The vampire narrowed her gorgeous—and also glowing—eyes but then apparently decided to take Ryan’s insult as a joke, because she threw back her head and laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement.

  “She’s got guts, Bane. I’ll give her that. She smells like the place that a hangover goes to die, but she’s got guts.”

  Ryan sighed and dropped her head back to her knees, her momentary spurt of rage-induced energy fizzling out. What was she thinking? Insulting vampires, even those who looked like Valkyries, was not a great way forward to a long and happy life.

  “Cheer up, Doctor. Maybe we’ll be great friends and watch movies and eat popcorn together,” Meara said cheerfully.

  Ryan tilted her head to stare up at the woman. “You like movies and popcorn?”

  “And licorice. Not the black kind, though.”

  “Sure. I’ll play along. You’re a vampire who wants to have popcorn with me. What’s your favorite movie?” Ryan gently thudded her head back against the wall, because it just seemed like the thing to do when one had conversations with vampires about movies.

  “Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth,” Meara answered instantly. “I love the part where Elizabeth Bennet decides to fuck him after she sees the size of his house.”

  Ryan’s mouth fell open. “What? You—that’s not—that’s not what happened. At all. She learned what a good guy he was, because of how he treated his servants—”

  “He made them call him The Master. That’s messed up,” Meara said, striding over and tossing a pile of towels to the floor next to Ryan.

  “And his sister—”

  “He treated her like a helpless child. Plus he was too much of an asshole to stop Bingley’s sisters from talking shit about Lizzie.”

  Ryan scowled at her. “You’re so completely wrong about all of that, I can’t believe it.”

  With the insightful, calculating part of her brain, Ryan was measuring distances to exits, wondering just how fast these creatures were, and wondering how fast she could get the hell out of this place.

  The rest of her brain was blathering on about movies and trying not to freak completely out at the high probability of her imminent, horrible death.

  “I can’t believe we’re talking about movies when Hunter might wake up any minute and go full bloodlust on us,” the rude one Bane had knocked to the floor—Luke—snarled. He jumped up and made a point of straightening his clothes and then shoving his hair out of his face.

  “Look. I’m sorry I insulted your human, Bane. My apologies, Doctor.” This, with a flourish in her direction. “But we need to figure out what’s wrong with Hunter and fix it, or do we even know if the Turn will take? If he goes through all this and dies anyway…”

  He was right. She hated everything about him, but he was right. Plus, they clearly cared about the firefighter enough that she might use that for some kind of leverage.

  She grabbed the towels and stood. “Good. Right. Show me to your bathroom, please, Meara? I’ll get cleaned up and take a look at Hunter. Do you also have any clothes that might fit me? Um, sweatpants or something?”

  Meara’s perfect lips pulled back in a grimace. “As if I’d have sweatpants. And you’re a good five inches shorter than me—”

  “I’m five-six,” Ryan told her, pointedly eyeing the woman’s heeled boots. “And without those boots, I bet you’re only five-eight. So…”

  “Yes, but you’re rounder than I am,” Meara said, but not in a bitchy way, just matter-of-factly. “I’d kill for that cleavage, to be honest. Come on, we’ll find you something.”

  She turned and strode out of the room, leaving Ryan rooted to the floor, heat flooding her body and undoubtedly turning her face hot pink, because she could already see the flush on her chest. But not so much with shame as with…pleasure? The most beautiful woman she’d ever seen envied mouse-like, boring Ryan for her cleavage?

  Something that felt a bit like confidence tingled its way into her mind. She’d always been confident about her work, but her looks? Well, no. She was forgettable, and she knew it. Except for the wrong kind of attention, when she was a teenager growing into D cups before most of her friends even got training bras.

  She’d never been the smartest, the fastest, the prettiest, the most charming.

  She’d been Boring Ryan.

  Ryan St. Grindstone.

  She’d always been the person who could be completely and utterly counted on to work harder than anybody else. To be reliable and sensible and level-headed.

  To definitely not be standing in a
room filled with hot, supermodel-like vampires—in her skimpy pajamas—being complimented on her cleavage.

  Although what the hell was she doing thinking about any of this under the current circumstances? She must still be drunk.

  “Doctor? Are you coming or not?” Meara’s impatient voice called out from down the hall, and Ryan suddenly realized that she was going on a mental flight of fancy in a room that was still filled with vampires.

  She looked up and caught Bane’s gaze and came to another realization: she wasn’t the only one who’d been standing there thinking about her cleavage.

  His eyes burned hot blue fire, and his body almost imperceptibly strained toward her, even as he stood perfectly still, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

  “You should go,” he growled, his gaze dropping to her breasts—tangible as a caress—and then back to her face. “You should go, now.”

  She clutched the towels to her chest and quickly walked out of the room, forcing herself not to run. When she took the left turn in the hallway to follow Meara, she heard the rude one’s laugh again.

  “From the look on your face, you’re the one who’s fucked, my friend.”

  Bane made a deep growling sound that made the tiny hairs on the back of Ryan’s neck stand up. “Shut up, Luke, or I’ll shut you up.”

  Luke’s only response was more laughter.

  Ryan paused, looking back toward the stairs behind her. She could escape down those stairs and out of the house and never, ever look back.

  But Hunter Evans…she would not abandon him.

  Meara leaned out of the last doorway on the right, at the end of the hall. “Are you coming, or is there something about looking and smelling like hell that’s making you happy?”

  Ryan sighed, took one long, last look at the stairs, and then headed toward Meara.

  She’d get clean, she’d get a closer look at Hunter, and then she’d get out.

  Call the police if she had to.

  Protect her patient.

  Never, ever see vampires again in her lifetime.

  Except…why did she hate that idea so much?