by Alyssa Day
My human. Luke said she was my human. Could it be possible?
Even as his mind toyed with the idea, bleak pragmatism told him it was ridiculous. Ryan St. Cloud was a healer who lived her life in the bright light of day—he was a predator confined to the night.
She could never be his human.
His woman.
His anything.
“Let’s move Hunter. And then I hear there are pancakes.”
Luke grinned. “Who doesn’t love pancakes?
They bent to lift Hunter together, although either of them could easily have carried the man to the reinforced room behind the tapestry on one wall of the ballroom’s alcove. It was symbolic—they were a team. A family. And now, they were bringing another member into the fold, so they’d do it together.
As they crossed the floor, a random thought occurred.
“Luke.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your favorite movie?”
Luke missed a step, almost dropping Hunter’s legs. “What?”
Bane snorted out a laugh. “Never mind. Just something the doctor and Meara were talking about.”
Luke nodded and thought about it for a minute, and then, after they carefully put the firefighter on a bed, closed and locked the door from the outside, and Bane re-activated the magical wards that would keep Hunter safely locked inside, he finally answered.
“Cleopatra. With Elizabeth Taylor.”
Bane hadn’t expected that. “Really?”
Luke grinned. “Yeah. Liz Taylor was hot.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“What about you?”
Bane shook his head. “I have no idea. Let’s go have pancakes.”
“You’re not planning on having the delicious doctor for breakfast?” Luke dodged out of the way when Bane’s fist shot out, and he held up his hands in laughing surrender. “Just kidding. I promise to behave.”
With that, he headed toward the stairs. Bane followed more slowly behind him, his twisting emotions so tangled that he had no idea what he’d do if the primal side of his nature perceived any threat to Ryan.
Which was laughable, in any case, because the biggest threat to Ryan St. Cloud in this house—anywhere in Savannah—was absolutely clear. Not Luke, not Hunter.
The biggest threat to Ryan is me—and I still haven’t decided if I can let her live.
Chapter Seventeen
Ryan stared at everything. The enormous kitchen, built on the same scale as the rest of the mansion, wasn’t the least bit historically accurate. Instead, everything in it was state-of-the-art, like Bane’s bathroom. Where the bathroom had been marble and glass, this room was gleaming subway tile, shining quartz countertops, massive appliances, and a hanging rack of copper pots, with plenty of fresh herbs in pots lined up on the windowsills and potted plants of the decorative variety on other surfaces.
On the windowsills…
“How can you have windows? Do they, um, the vampires, not come in here?”
Mrs. Cassidy smiled. “It’s a special glass Edge developed. It doesn’t let in any of the harmful rays that might be a danger to them.”
“Edge?”
The housekeeper’s cheerful expression faltered. “He…you’ll meet him later.”
And then she turned quite deliberately to her pots and pans, signaling that she didn’t want to discuss the missing Edge any longer, so Ryan continued her survey of her surroundings. In spite of being a showpiece of a kitchen, it was clearly well used, quite possibly the center of the house. A discarded copy of the Savannah Morning News lay folded on one end of a massive wooden table that bore the scars and scratches of decades of use. A pair of glasses exactly like the ones Mrs. Cassidy wore sat on an open cookbook on the counter. Heaps of pancakes, bacon, potatoes, and fluffy scrambled eggs already sat steaming on platters on the table, but no plates or silverware were out yet.
“Can I set the table?”
Mrs. Cassidy glanced at her, startled. “Oh. Well, that would be lovely, but you certainly don’t need to do that. I mean, you’re a doctor.”
Ryan smiled. The elderly housekeeper, all white curls and comfortable roundness, had said doctor with tones of reverent awe that Ryan certainly didn’t associate with herself or her job. But Mrs. Cassidy was from a different generation, and even Ryan’s own grandmother had felt like that about her granddaughter’s chosen profession.
She missed Gran so much. And somehow, she doubted her grandmother would be surprised by vampires. After all, she’d always believed in ghosts.
“I’m happy to do it. I feel very lucky to have someone else cook for me, to be honest. It’s mostly protein shakes and cafeteria food in my normal life.”
Mrs. Cassidy shuddered. “Those protein shakes should be outlawed. Nasty things.”
“I have to agree with you there, but sometimes necessity wins out over luxury.”
“It’s a sad day when eating a real meal is a luxury, but you young people do things differently, I know that. The flatware’s in the drawer in that sideboard.”
Ryan turned around and caught her breath. The sideboard in question was rosewood, in an Art Deco style, almost certainly from the twenties or thirties, and definitely worth a fortune. She didn’t know a lot about antiques in general, but she knew a bit about furniture from trips to estate sales with her grandmother.
“That’s a stunning piece. Do you know who the designer is?”
The sound of heeled boots preceded Meara into the room. She grinned at Ryan, glancing up and down her cobbled-together outfit.
“Nice clothes. Maybe you could call it homeless-person chic? Here. I brought you a pair of sandals, since we seem to be about the same shoe size.” She held out a pair of gold, strappy sandals that looked perfect for a night out on the town but not so much for breakfast with vampires.
Ryan refused to feel embarrassed about clothes at a time and place like this but appreciated the gesture of the shoes, which she immediately slipped on. “Thank you. And maybe. If homeless people wore Armani pants.”
Meara laughed. “Point to you. And that sideboard is by Jules Leleu, from 1935 or thereabout. I always loved his style. I believe Bane won it at cards.”
“He plays cards for antique furniture?”
Luke sauntered in. “He gambles on anything that happens to be handy. There was this one time in 1966 that—”
The man—vampire—himself strode into the kitchen, in all his casually arrogant, blond-god gorgeousness, and Ryan suddenly had to remember how to breathe.
“Shut it, Luke,” Bane said, never taking that burning blue gaze off her face. “Ryan, are you all right? Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head, trying not to feel overwhelmed by being surrounded by three vampires in a kitchen that sported an antique French sideboard that was probably worth as much as her entire townhouse. They were dangerous, and they were rich, and she was entirely vulnerable, and yet she was staying for breakfast?
Next she’d be having tea with werewolves.
Werewolves…
“Do werewolves exist?”
Nobody started laughing, like she’d expected. They traded glances that read a lot like, “How much can the human handle?” instead. She reached for a chair and fell into it, suddenly boneless. “Really? Werewolves? What else?”
“Many, many things, Doctor,” Mrs. Cassidy said matter-of-factly. “Meara, dear, please get out the flatware. I think everyone needs a good meal inside them before we shock Dr. St. Cloud with any new revelations.”
“Dr. St. Cloud agrees that might be a good idea,” Ryan said slowly, her mind whirling. “Oh! And I’m sorry. I meant to set the table. I just got distracted by the…well. By the everything, I guess.”
Many, many things?
What else had been hiding in the dark?
“Do you often speak of yourself in the third person?” Meara asked with interest, placing the silverware on the table. “Bit like the royal We, isn’t it? ‘Dr. St. Cloud would like her breakfast now.’ ‘Dr. St. Cloud thinks the patient in room 208 has a nice ass.’”
“Room 208 is in obstetrics, so definitely not that,” Ryan said absently, her mind still on the fact that now not only vampires but other things actually existed. “What kinds of other things? Trolls? Leprechauns?”
Bane sat down next to Ryan and reached for her hand but then froze and rested it on the table instead.
When she realized what he’d been doing—preparing to comfort the human whose worldview had just exploded—a wave of welcome warmth spread through her. She dared to put her hand over his, where it rested on the table, and a spark of sensation raced from their joined hands all the way to her toes, causing her breath to stutter.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “This is—this is a lot.”
Those amazing glowing blue eyes—the color of the sky on a cloudless day—widened, and he turned his hand over and entwined his fingers with hers. “I’m not sure you should thank me, Doctor. I’m the villain in your story.”
She gave him a long look. “You’re taking too much credit. Maybe you can be part of a subplot?”
He pretended to glare at her, and she laughed.
“And now, I’m switching rapidly between wanting to laugh in wonder and wanting to scream in terror at this new world to which you’ve all opened my eyes.”
When she looked around the table, she saw that they were staring at her hand and Bane’s, clasped and resting on the table, with varying expressions of shock. Her face heated up, and she pulled her hand away.
“What—” she began, but Luke cut her off.
“We prefer the screaming,” he said, heaping eggs on his plate.
“Screaming and running,” Meara said, a sly smile on her face. “Can’t forget the running. It’s more fun when we get to chase them.”
And, just like that, Ryan was back to what the hell am I doing here mode.
“What—what happens to me now? Nobody knows about vampires and werewolves. Is this an ‘I know too much, so now you have to kill me or lock me up forever in your lair’ moment?” She swallowed, hard, against the boulder that suddenly seemed to be lodged in her throat. An icy tendril of fear whispered in her mind that she was damned right to be afraid, just like she’d been terrified the first time she’d placed a central line or performed a tracheotomy in the emergency room. Those had been firsts where she’d been in danger of killing a patient.
This time, the potentially imminent death was hers.
And he still wasn’t denying it. In fact, the silence from everyone at the table was deafening.
Bane blinked, and then that unfairly sexy smile spread across his face. “My lair? I never quite thought of my rooms as my lair, but I guess I could try to set up a Bat Cave of sorts. There are a lot of secret underground spaces here in Savannah, many of which pirates used for smuggling.”
Meara passed the platter of pancakes, and Ryan took two, even though she was sure she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite, because she was suddenly starving in the “this may be my last meal” kind of way, she loved pancakes, and she wanted to keep up her strength, in case she was the next designee in the “running and screaming” agenda.
Plus, everything smelled delicious.
“So, how is it you eat food? It’s almost dawn; will you fall into a deep sleep or…or die? When did you become vampires? Why? Are there lots of you? Bunny shifters?” That was the right tone. Flippant was good. It made her sound like a badass, right?
“We eat any food we want; I adore caviar. And chocolate, though not together,” Meara said, taking a bite of eggs. “Bane and I have been vampires since the same night a little more than three hundred years ago. And no, usually only predators are shifters, like wolves. Lions, tigers, and bears.”
“Oh, my,” Ryan chimed in automatically, but her mind wasn’t on movies.
Three hundred years?
“You look pretty good for being older than the entire country,” she said, still stunned by the thought.
“Older than this country,” Meara said.
Luke pointed his fork at Ryan. “How do you think Bane knows so much about those tunnels? He used them back when he was a smuggler.”
“When he was a smuggler,” Ryan said faintly. “Which was when, exactly?”
“Technically, he still is,” Meara said. “Coffee?”
“Please. Or maybe something stronger? I feel like I need whiskey for this conversation.” Ryan looked at Bane. “You’re a smuggler? Today? And since when?”
He took a long sip of coffee and then looked at her. “You’re asking a lot of questions about illegal activity for someone who’s afraid to end up in my lair.”
Meara handed her a mug of coffee. “And no breakfast whiskey drinking. That would be a sign of a serious problem.”
“Yes, nobody would want that,” Ryan replied, only a hint of sarcasm in her tone.
“And, to answer your question, don’t you think science needs to know about you?”
A muscle clenched in Bane’s jaw. “About my smuggling history?”
“No, of course not. I don’t—I’m not the smuggling patrol. I would never tell anyone about that,” she rushed to say. “About your…about what you are. You healed Hunter from burns that should have killed him. I mean, he might be dying now, but you healed his burns first, and…”
She finally shut up when she realized everyone was staring at her.
“It sounded better in my head,” she offered, not knowing where to go from there. Why would they want to tell anybody about themselves, when they’d undoubtedly end up in cages and being dissected by government scientists?
“I might be inclined to let you study me,” Bane said slowly. “Only you—nobody else could know—and only me. You stay away from the rest of my family. But it would be good to know the science, after all these long years.”
Ryan caught her breath at the idea that he was even considering agreeing.
“It’s not science. It’s magic,” Mrs. Cassidy said, speaking up from her post near the stove, where she was cooking something that smelled like fried grease and sugar—Ryan’s favorite food groups.
“Well. Perhaps,” Ryan conceded, because why wouldn’t it be magic? There were werewolves, too, for Pete’s sake. “But a lot of things that were thought to be magic in the past have been proven to be science. Maybe, if we studied exactly what happens to you—”
“We, Doctor?” Bane’s voice suddenly had a dangerous edge. “Do you have any idea what would happen to our kind if multiple scientists find out about us? Would you like to know what has happened in the past, perhaps in vivid, brutal detail? Would you be so willing to see my family in cages, being tortured and experimented upon? When I said just you, I meant it.”
“No, of course, I don’t want to see any of that. But—” She glanced around and then swallowed whatever she’d been about to say.
Read the room, Ryan. Keep this up, and you might be in serious trouble.
“I…I’m sorry. Yes, just me,” she muttered, taking a bite of pancake that still looked and smelled amazing but now tasted like sawdust in her mouth.
Bane put his fork down, turned in his chair until he faced her completely, and pinned her with a searing gaze. “We won’t be analyzed, dissected, or tortured in the name of science or progress, Dr. St. Cloud. Don’t doubt the lengths to which I’ll go to ensure that this never, ever happens. If you enjoy Savannah when it’s not a miles-long patch of scorched ground, you’ll never bring up the idea of other scientists being involved again.”
Ryan turned away from him, unable to bear the contempt on his face.
Meara’s expression was kinder but wary. “This is too much, I know. It’s
why we never tell humans anything about us. Ryan, don’t worry. Of course, we’ll compel you to forget, right after breakfast, and take you home. We wouldn’t have told you otherwise.”
Bane shook his head. “Compulsion doesn’t work. Luke and I both tried. It brushes off her like water off a duck. Even when I reinforced the push with touch, she broke through it in minutes. We’ll have to think of another way.”
“You’ll not kill a doctor,” Mrs. Cassidy blurted out, waving a spatula at them. “I won’t have it.”
Ryan’s neck tightened at the baldly stated assumption that killing her was an option. Somehow, coming from the sweet, kind housekeeper made it frighteningly more real.
Of course, it’s real. Because: vampires.
Bane smiled at his housekeeper with apparent fondness. “No, of course, we won’t. We just need to think about—”
But Ryan didn’t get to hear what they needed to think about, because that’s when the kitchen erupted into chaos. An elderly man and an enormous dog that looked like a cross between a wolf and a Sasquatch burst in from the door on one end of the kitchen, and a white-haired man who appeared to have been beaten nearly to death burst in from the door on the other end.
The dog immediately started to bark and advanced on her, ears back, teeth bared, and a growl like thunder issuing from its throat. It—he—hurled his enormous, furry body between Ryan and the stranger, as if protecting her.
The injured man fell to the floor before anyone at the table could get to him.
“Tommy. Get Bram Stoker out of the kitchen if he can’t behave,” Bane ordered. “Edge. What happened to you?”
“Your dog’s name is Bram Stoker?” Ryan didn’t wait for an answer; the question was irrelevant. The second the man pulled the leashed dog back, Ryan was out of her chair and across the room to the injured man.
“Hot water and clean cloths,” she snapped. “And call 911—no, scratch that, I guess that’s not an option. Sir? Edge? I’m a doctor. Can you tell me what happened to you? Were you beaten? Shot? Do you feel any broken bones?”
The man, whose face was far too young for the fall of white hair that framed it, turned startlingly silver eyes up to her and scowled. “Get the hell away from me, human.”