Bane's Choice

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Bane's Choice Page 12

by Alyssa Day


  Bane crouched down next to them and grabbed the man’s jaw. “Shut up and let her help you. What happened?”

  “Little problem with a wolf who’d been forced to shift by a warlock. Oh, and the warlock crashed my bike first. Not a big deal.” Edge flinched when Ryan started to unbutton his shredded shirt to see his torso, and his hand shot out to grab her wrist. “I don’t need your help, I said.”

  “Too bad. You’re going to get it anyway. Now take your hand off my wrist, or I’ll punch you right in this puncture wound,” she threatened, feeling something fiercer than her normal bedside manner was called for.

  A hint of amusement gleamed in his silver gaze, but then he sighed and shook his head, turning his attention to Bane. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll heal. But Bane—you need to know. The necromancers are still here, or at least one of them. She walked right into Wolf Pack MC and dumped me there and told Carter Reynolds that I was a gift.”

  Bane scowled at him. “Did Reynolds take her up on it?”

  “Nope. We had a talk. The truce holds. The wolves want nothing to do with the Chamber, either, and Reynolds had the same reaction to a necromancer that we did. Since we were on the same page about all that, I almost asked him about joining up on the drug runs but figured that could wait for another day.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Meara knelt down on the other side of the injured vampire and put a hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away from her touch and would not look at her.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Warlocks? And drugs?” Ryan rocked back on her heels, shock and revulsion almost choking her. “You—you’re not just vampires, but you’re drug dealers?”

  She glared at Bane, thoughts of the addicts she’d treated burning in her mind. “Tell me the truth.”

  He said nothing, just stared at her, his face set in an expressionless mask.

  “Tell me, damn you. Are you a drug dealer?”

  His eyes flared red, and she flinched.

  “Yes, Dr. St. Cloud,” he said, biting off each word. “We use the Vampire Motorcycle Club as a front to run drugs.”

  Meara started to say something, but Bane sliced a hand through the air, cutting her off, still staring at Ryan. “Vampires and drug dealers. Fine crowd you’ve found yourself in, isn’t it?”

  “Better vampire than drug dealer, any day of the week,” she said, ice freezing her veins. “If you’re sure he’ll heal on his own, then I’m out of here.”

  She jumped to her feet and turned to go but found the dog blocking her way.

  “Bite me or get out of my way, but I’m leaving. Now,” she told him, only belatedly realizing that the vampires in the room could take that as directed at them, too.

  The dog fell to his side and rolled over, legs up in the air, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth, and gave a gentle woof.

  “He wants a belly rub,” Mrs. Cassidy ventured. “He likes you.”

  “I like him, too, but I also want to wake up in my own bed and find that all of this was just a very bad dream,” Ryan said. “We can’t always get what we want, though, can we?”

  She leapt over the dog and started running for the door. Movement blurred past her peripheral vision, and then Bane was in front of her, blocking her way.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but I won’t let you leave me. Not like this.” His eyes blazed red, terrifying her, and then he leaned down until his face was inches from hers. In a lightning-quick move, his hand shot out and took hers. “Sleep now.”

  As Ryan’s knees gave out, and she felt herself falling into the dark, she faintly heard first Meara’s voice and then the rumble of Bane’s response.

  “She won’t forgive you for that, Brother.”

  “I could never deserve her forgiveness. I may as well earn her hatred.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ryan woke up in a place that was decidedly not the kitchen she’d just run from. It looked, instead, like the armory of the militia in a scary movie.

  The walls were bare brick, lined with shelves and racks, all of which held a dizzying array of weapons. There were guns, but not as many as she would have expected, given the feel of the room. Mostly, there were swords.

  And knives.

  And…would those be called daggers?

  All of this she took in at a glance, while scanning her surroundings from the bench she lay on, to figure out where the hell she was this time. At first, she thought she was alone in the room, but by the time she shoved herself up and off the bench, she caught sight of Bane in a corner, seated on a stool, holding a long-bladed knife in one hand and a rectangular sharpening stone in the other.

  He stood, too, putting the knife and stone down on a low table, and then waited for her to speak.

  “If you ever put me to sleep again like that, I’ll find a way to hurt you,” she said, rage pulsing beneath each word. “You asked me for permission to touch my hair, and then you do this? Again?”

  His eyes, glowing brightly in the dimly lit room, turned to blue ice. “Do not push me too far,” he said quietly. “I am not human—do not forget it.”

  Every word was a threat. Even his existence was a threat.

  But somehow, for some reason, she was not afraid. Stupidity? Perhaps. Or maybe familiarity did indeed breed, if not contempt, a certain lack of giving a crap.

  But then again, the drugs. The thought infuriated her all over again.

  “No, you’re not human. You’re a bloodsucking drug dealer,” she spat out, looking for the exit. “Where are we? I need to get out of here, now. Or are you going to kill me, now that I know about your criminal enterprise?”

  “Bloodsucking is a little unfair. I didn’t call you a coffee-sucking human. Why do you keep asking me if I’m going to kill you? You must know on some level that you will not like the answer.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she shot back, lying through her teeth.

  “That would make you brainless, and I know that’s not true. Perhaps we can leave it as I will not kill you yet.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Yet. Oh, that’s great. And better brainless than a drug dealer. If you’d seen what I see at the hospital, from drug use…”

  “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, from the lack of drugs,” he countered. He looked at her for a long moment and then took a step toward her, and she took a step toward the door, keeping the same amount of space between them. He immediately stopped moving but still said nothing.

  “I want to leave, Bane. If you’re not going to kill me, you have to let me go.” She took another tentative step toward the door, waiting for him to attack her, put her to sleep again, or decapitate her with one of the many blades that could so easily slice through skin and muscle, tendon and bone.

  “I’m not a drug dealer. Not in the way you’re thinking,” he finally said.

  She took another step, but her stupid curiosity won out, again, and she stopped before reaching for the door handle and turned to face him. “How can you be a drug dealer but not a drug dealer?”

  “I—we—life is a long wasteland of dull nights, when you live for centuries,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair.

  “You turned to a life of crime because you were bored?”

  “No! Well, yes, but there was more to it than that.” He started pacing, careful not to walk any closer to her.

  “Do tell,” she drawled, leaning back against the door and folding her arms. “This should be good.”

  He shot her a look. “Sarcasm. Yes. Thank you.”

  She waved one hand in a “go ahead” motion.

  “There was a child. She was ill.”

  She waited. And waited. “Look. If you want to tell me—”

  “She was my sister,” he said, rushing through the words now. “Jane. She was very, very ill. A form of childhood cancer, I think it must
have been, although we did not know that then. There was no treatment that would help.”

  A stab of pain pierced her stomach, as it always did when a child was involved. Doctors weren’t gods. They couldn’t save everyone. Ryan knew she was supposed to be calm and objective when she lost a patient, even a child, but she’d never learned how to do that.

  “And what happened?” she asked, her voice gentle. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he, too, had felt real pain for the child.

  “She died,” he growled. “What else? She died, as so many children died then and so many still die today.”

  He bent his head, averting his face from her gaze, and his shoulders bowed.

  She wanted to go to him, for some insane reason. Comfort him. She knew this feeling of loss and pain. But there were no words that could form the shapes of healing. Only time could do that. And if he still hurt from her death after three centuries…

  “If it had only happened today.” He clenched his fists and pounded them down on a table. “I have more money than I could ever need in a thousand years. If my human family had lived in this time, I’d have found some way to help. You have medicines and treatments today… All cancer does not have to be fatal.”

  “That’s true, but even today, so many die from cancer. Too many,” she said, finally reaching out to touch his arm. “I’m so sorry, Bane.”

  “All these centuries, it has haunted me, somewhere in the back of my mind,” he admitted, his face drawn into harsh lines. “But several years back, when I looked up from my own narrow view of the world, I learned that so many can’t afford the medicines they need. In this century, with its wealth of science and medicine that earlier centuries would have seen as miracles or magic—in this century, children still die from not having money for medicine. It’s obscene.”

  She agreed with every word out of his mouth. It was why she dedicated two days of every week to working in the free clinic. But still…

  “I agree with you. I’m sorry, though, but I still don’t see what that has to do with you becoming a drug smuggler.”

  He shrugged. “I fund purchases of mass quantities of medicines. And then we—Meara, Luke, Edge, and I, together with some of the members of the Vampire Motorcycle Club—smuggle the prescription drugs down the eastern seaboard from Canada, and we provide them to a select group of free clinics that we have connections with, like the—”

  “The Delacourt Free Clinic downtown,” Ryan gasped, making the connection. “Meara Delacourt—you—she’s that Delacourt?”

  His smile faded. “And now, yet again, I’ve provided you with a secret that I can’t wipe from your memory, which endangers both my people and your life. What am I going to do with you, Ryan St. Cloud?”

  “Trust me,” she whispered, her framework for understanding him having just been shattered and rebuilt to separate dimensions in her mind. “Trust me and let me help you—help Hunter Evans. Let me try to understand, try to study—”

  His eyes shuttered. “Study us?”

  She shook her head, frustrated. “No. Well, just me. And only you. Like you suggested. But not to report to some governmental agency or shadowy cabal—”

  “Cabal?” His eyes sparkled. “Would they meet in a lair?”

  “Okay, I watch too many movies,” she admitted, her words tumbling over each other as her mind caught fire. “But yes, maybe if I can study you, I can help you understand how the Turn works. Maybe we can figure out how to use this gift you have of healing in a way that could benefit even more people—”

  “I don’t give a damn about benefiting people,” he growled. “I’m so far from caring what happens to anybody but those who are mine—”

  “To benefit children, then,” she said, without missing a beat. “Without disclosing your secrets.”

  A muscle in his jaw clenched, and he looked away. “Fine. For the children, then,” he muttered.

  He glanced down, and she realized that somehow, without even noticing it, she’d taken his hands in hers. She forcibly stopped herself from backing away from him. If she showed him fear, he’d never believe her. Never trust her.

  Never let her help.

  And, she suddenly realized, she’d never wanted anything more in her life than she wanted him to let her inside his world.

  Reliable Ryan wanted an adventure.

  And this man used his immortal life to help children get the medicines they needed.

  “Please?”

  His eyes widened, and then he glanced down at his hands in hers and then back up at her face. “It has real power, doesn’t it? That word. Please.”

  “I hope so. Let me in, Bane. Let me look at your blood under my microscope. Let me help you understand what you are.”

  “It’s dangerous to be part of my world,” he murmured, leaning down until his forehead touched hers and closing his eyes. “What kind of monster am I that I’m even considering it?”

  She closed her eyes, too, and breathed in his enticing scent. Pine trees, perhaps? And sandalwood?

  He sighed and squeezed her hands so tightly that it almost hurt and then released them.

  Her eyes flew open, and she caught her breath at the intensity of his gaze.

  “If I say yes, you have to promise to keep what we are a secret,” he said, his voice quiet and somber. “I can’t—I won’t stand by and watch you put my family in danger.”

  She didn’t even need to think twice. “I promise. You’re trusting me. You deserve my promise and my secrecy.”

  Before she could take even a single step back toward the bench, he put his hands on her waist and effortlessly lifted her to sit on the table behind her. A purely primal, feminine satisfaction that she’d never experienced before spread warmth through her chest, and she smiled at him. “Super vampire strength, huh?”

  Those golden eyebrows drew together. “What?”

  “You know,” she muttered, already regretting the conversation. “Lifting me so easily. I’m a lot, I know.”

  The memory of her last boyfriend, nearly two years ago now, making a loud “oof!” sound when she sat on his lap at a party burned through her, and she could feel her face turn hot.

  Bane, unexpectedly, laughed. When her gaze flew up to meet his, she could almost touch the desire flaring in his glowing blue eyes and slightly bared teeth.

  “Oh, beautiful one. Men of this age are fucking weaklings. In my day, you’d have been pursued for your gorgeous hair, your blue eyes, and even your brilliance, but—most of all—for that lovely round ass that I constantly have to fight to keep from grabbing.”

  Heat of an entirely different sort than embarrassment seared through her, and she had to bite her lip to keep it from trembling. He was so close to her, standing practically between her legs, and he looked like that, and he’d just said that he wanted to grab her, and suddenly that delicious heat raced through her, straight to her core, and she could feel tingling all the way from her breasts to her…to her…

  “I want to kiss you again, Doctor.” His voice was smoke and velvet, and it wrapped around her in a sensual caress, until she caught herself leaning into him, turning her face up to his like a flower turning to the sun, and then the irony of comparing him to the sun—a being so completely of the night—snapped her out of her trance, and she jerked back.

  “I have to call the hospital,” she blurted out.

  A muscle clenched in Bane’s jaw, but he moved back a half-step, and the dangerous electricity between them subsided enough for her to think clearly again.

  Thinking is overrated.

  “The hospital?”

  “I’m due to work today and have coffee with my friend Annie before my shift, and I can’t just not show up because I disappeared into thin air with a strange man.”

  He nodded, his expression solemn. “I am a very strange man.”

  She smi
led just a little, in spite of herself. “Bane. I’m already on thin ice at work after I spent last night interrogating everybody about Mr. Evans. They all think I need a serious vacation. How did you do that?”

  “Luke used compulsion. Edge used computers. Between the two of them, there’s no record of Hunter being there.”

  Her head started to hurt again. All those hours, thinking she was going crazy. “Anyway, why did you save Mr. Evans? You’re all big on ‘we only like humans for the running and the screaming,’ but he’s definitely human, or at least he was, and—”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I have time.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Unless you need to get to your coffin or something.”

  He slanted an amused look at her. “I don’t have a coffin. But I’m starting to think you have some kind of coffin fetish, the way you keep bringing it up.”

  She shrugged. “I like horror movies.”

  “This explains a lot about you. You’re not afraid of us, because you’re attracted to the dark. Horror movies, night shifts at the hospital. You’re practically one of us already.”

  She watched the shape of his lips as he spoke. The curve of his shoulders where they met the muscle of his arms. The movement of his throat.

  Attracted to the dark.

  Maybe.

  And he was the dark come to life.

  “I’m attracted to you,” she blurted out, feeling almost as if she were caught in the enthrallment he’d tried and failed to use on her before.

  He put a finger under her chin and lifted her face until he could stare into her eyes. “You don’t want anything to do with me, Ryan. I’m dangerous.”

  “I’m sitting here surrounded by blades of every shape and size, and yet I’ve probably sliced into more human bodies than you have,” she told him, reaching up to put her hands on his shoulders, suddenly needing help to balance herself where she sat. “Maybe I’m the one who is dangerous.”

  “Certainly to my peace of mind,” he growled. “Ryan, I want to kiss you again.”

 

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