Bane's Choice

by Alyssa Day

  He held up a hand before she could get any more carried away. “Maybe, and I still agree to let you try—only on me—but I seriously doubt it. I think magic explains more about our status than science, Doctor.”

  Ryan, who’d started pacing back and forth, turned to stare at him. “You don’t know that! We don’t know anything until we analyze anything and everything we can learn about what makes you—” She waved her hand, apparently to encompass both him and the state of being a vampire, all at once. “What makes you, you. Certainly, a blood sample isn’t going to tell me why you can fly, but it might tell me about your sensitivity to the sun.” She pointed at the open door. “It might tell me if sedatives will work on him, to help get him through this Turn that you don’t know why he’s not doing properly. Or, at least, maybe it could help when you want to…if you want to do this again in the future to someone else.”

  She swallowed, hard, and an expression of barely concealed panic crossed her face. She must have been remembering what they’d talked about before. Her visceral reaction to even the thought of becoming a vampire told him more than her words had done.

  To so powerfully reject the idea of becoming like him told him a lot.

  None of it good.

  He dismissed the thought and closed and locked the door before Hunter could wake up again. “I don’t know about sedatives. He’s in a kind of magical stasis during the Turn—or, at least, he’s supposed to be. Right now, he’s caught between human and vampire, and I don’t know what might work on him. It’s not like I’ve ever had medical assistance during the process before.”

  “I need to get to the hospital and get my bag. Get some supplies.” She paused and leaned against the wall, shoulders slumping. “Clothes. And I need to do it soon, before I keel over. That nap was fine, but not enough.”

  “You can sleep in my room,” he decreed, which had the expected effect of her complete disregard.

  “Maybe, but you destroyed your bed. Nice job, by the way.” She shook her head. “Temper, much? Second, I need clothes and my things. Finally, I need to get some supplies and equipment, if I’m going to do any kind of effective job at studying you—”

  “But—”

  “Which you said I could do,” she continued, steamrolling right over his attempt to interrupt the flow of words. “So, there you have it. Shall I call a car, or can Mr. Cassidy drive me? And do you have anything less conspicuous than a limo?”

  He pressed his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, just for a second or two, but when he opened them, she was still standing there.

  Still waiting.

  Still real, even though he didn’t deserve such a gift.

  “I can’t let you go,” he said, stalling while he tried to come up with a reason that she’d accept. “I—my family! You know too much about my family. Secrets that aren’t only mine. I can’t just let you walk out of here, knowing that you might change your mind and tell someone about us.”

  Her beautiful smile slowly faded. “I thought we were past this. I thought we had a certain measure of trust between us after, you know, I let you put your teeth on my…private parts.”

  She blushed again, to his amusement, but then memories of her private parts seared a flash of heat through him. “I’d like very much to do that again. Let’s go to my room, for now, and then later—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “There is no later if you can’t trust me.”

  And there it was. The gauntlet, thrown down by a woman who hadn’t even lived in the days of duels over breaches of honor. She’d called him out, and he had no choice but to respond, with his trust, though, instead of swords at dawn.

  “I—yes,” he rasped out. “Yes, I trust you. Do you—do you swear to return?” Each word was ground glass shredding his throat. “I can’t go with you, in case Hunter gets worse.”

  Her eyes widened, and she slowly crossed the few paces separating them. Then she reached up and touched his face. “I’ve seen you angry, and arrogant, and aroused. But I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you vulnerable.”

  A chasm opened up in his gut. “Monsters are never vulnerable.”

  “You’re not a monster, and yes, I swear I’ll come back,” she whispered, and then she kissed the corner of his mouth.

  From the doorway to the hall, the sound of slow clapping interrupted whatever he’d been about to do to her.

  “Am I the only one getting a La Belle et La Bête vibe here?” Meara leaned against the doorway, studying her fingernails.

  “Quit calling me a beast,” Ryan said, grinning at his sister. “Hey, you want to ride to my place and the hospital with me, to make Bane feel better? You can sleep in the car.”

  Bane stood, stunned, as Ryan started toward Meara. She would do that? Invite his sister along, just to make him feel better?

  He could never deserve this woman.

  Fuck that.

  He flashed forward and pulled her into his arms. “If you’re the beast, what does that make me, Doctor?”

  “It’s Ryan, okay? You don’t have to keep calling me ‘Doctor’ after you, after we, well. You know.” She grinned, blushing. “And, duh. Obviously, you’re Beauty. It’s totally unfair, and quit making me admit it.”

  “I’ll go with you. Meara can stay here.”

  “You will not. You need to take care of Hunter. I’ll be perfectly fine,” she told him, eyes snapping with the beginning of temper.

  He bent his head to hers and took her mouth in a searing kiss, not stopping until she was trembling in his arms, and then finally raised his head, his own temper flaring. “If you’re lying to me about returning, Heaven itself will not keep you safe.”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “If I punch you in the head for these melodramatic comments, you won’t feel all that safe, either. I took boxing lessons once, you know.”

  Before he could think of a single response to that, she kissed his cheek, twisted out of his arms, and ran down the stairs with Meara.

  Luke followed Bane to the landing, and they watched Ryan and Meara chat with Mr. C and then head into the garage. Just before she left, Ryan smiled up at them and waved, and then she was gone.

  “You know better,” Luke finally said.

  “Don’t.”

  “Claiming her? What were you thinking? What are you thinking? She’s human. She’ll grow old and hate you when you don’t. Or, worse, she’ll beg you to Turn her and…”

  Bane waited for the rest of the sentence. Was unsurprised when it never came. “And she’ll die. Like your lady did, Luke. It’s been fifty years. Don’t you think you could take a chance again?”

  Luke’s laughter singed the air with its bitterness. “Like you did? What happened the last time you fell in love?”

  The last time Bane had thought he was in love. With a woman who’d had all of Ryan’s fire but none of her goodness. She’d betrayed him. Tried to kill him, so she and her lover could rob him of all he had.

  He’d killed the lover but left her alive to suffer for it.

  And then she’d died in a fire. In the fire.

  And he’d never trusted a woman with his heart since.

  “Meara told me. Seventeen ninety-six. The fire that destroyed all of Savannah. Almost nothing was left, and certainly nothing was left of you,” Luke said, speaking aloud the ugliness that had iced over Bane’s soul more than two centuries before. “So, why her? Why now?”

  It was a good question. Unfortunately, he had no answers, so he shrugged. “The heart wants what the heart wants? Get some rest. We need to find that necromancer. Tonight.”

  The expression on Luke’s face was priceless.

  When Bane reached his room, though, the smile faded, and he looked at his hands, which had started to shake. He was dangerously long past feeding, and he’d given too much to Hunter. Plus, he hadn’t gotten nea
rly enough sleep lately.

  Let’s quit lying to ourselves, shall we? You’re shaking like a junkie who can’t get his fix—except your fix isn’t drugs, but Dr. Ryan St. Cloud.

  It was true. He’d had to fight his own instincts with everything he had to keep from stopping her. To keep from imprisoning her in his rooms, tying her up, tying her down, never, ever letting her go.

  He crossed to a mini-refrigerator and took out two bags of blood, heated them with a swift pulse of magic, and then downed both, one after the other. There was one problem solved. Now, to sleep.

  It wasn’t until he’d shoved open the door to his bedroom that he remembered his bed. “Temper, much?” she’d said. He smiled at the memory.

  He yanked the mattress and some blankets into a pile, walked into the bathroom to wash his hands, and stumbled to a stop at the sight of her clothes, forgotten on his floor. Almost in a trance, he bent to pick them up, his hands clenching convulsively on the scraps of silk. Silk like her skin. Like the warm, wet honey that he’d tasted while he pleasured her.

  Forget sleep. He needed her. Again.

  And again and again.

  He might not survive this separation.

  MEARA! KEEP HER SAFE FOR ME!

  A moment or two passed, and then he could hear his sister’s laughter in his mind.

  ALREADY? YOU’VE GOT IT BAD, BROTHER.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  I’LL KEEP YOUR HUMAN SAFE FOR YOU. YOU CAN RELAX NOW. WE’RE ALMOST AT THE HOSPITAL. WE’LL BE BACK SOON, BANE. HAVE A CARE: IF YOU HOLD ONTO HER TOO TIGHTLY, YOU’LL EITHER LOSE HER OR DESTROY HER.

  He knew that. It was part of what terrified him.

  Meara was the strongest fighter he knew. He could trust her to keep Ryan safe—at night. But even Meara was severely weakened during the daytime.

  He gently placed Ryan’s discarded clothing on the counter next to the sink and forced himself to crawl into the bed and close his eyes. He needed to recharge before they went after the necromancer tonight; the warlock was too dangerous to face in a weakened state.

  When his head touched the pillow, he fell almost instantly into a deep sleep, where he dreamed of Ryan, lying broken and bloody on the ballroom floor, dying in his arms.

  “If you want to protect her, you have to let her go,” Meara told him.

  “I’ll never let her go!” he roared. “She is mine. Nothing is more important than what I want!”

  “Yes. You keep saying that, and you keep killing her. Over and over and over.”

  Bane moaned in anguish, tightened his arms on his cherished, dying love, and looked down at her precious face.

  Ryan’s eyes snapped open. “Why do you keep killing me?”

  And then she died.

  When he woke up, his face was wet and his throat ached, but he shook his head hard to dislodge the remnants of the nightmare. “No. It was just a dream. None of it was real. She’s mine.”

  Her beautiful, dying face flashed into his mind from his nightmare, and he roared out his denial.

  “No! It will never happen. She’s mine.”

  When his heart quit racing, the inexorable pull of sleep pulled him back under, and yet again, he dreamed of Ryan, dying in his arms.

  And then he dreamed it again.

  Again and again and again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Constantin put himself into a state of deep meditation in order to commune with his god, reach his true center, and focus his consciousness until he was as one with the universe.

  Also, he wanted to fuck with the vampire.

  He sent yet another blast of insidiously hypnotic magic through the conduit he’d prepared, into the heart of the vampire’s home—into his mind. Into his dreams.

  Then he opened his eyes and started laughing.

  “What is it?” Sylvie, lounging on a blue velvet couch and licking blood off the face of the human who owned the house they’d taken over, shot him a lazy glance. “Doing foul deeds for fun time again?”

  “I don’t know exactly what Bane is dreaming about, but it’s sure as hell not good,” he told her, reaching for his glass of champagne. The human’s wine collection was truly fantastic.

  She laughed. “Bad dreams can drive even vampires insane. I once caused an entire village of them to set themselves on fire, back in Italy in the late 1700s. I can tell you—”

  “You already have,” he interrupted, sick to death of her stories. “Big fire, started in the church, blah blah blah.”

  Sylvie narrowed her eyes but didn’t dare talk back to him. The power structure was clear between them and in the Chamber as a whole: Constantin was the master—the one who made the plans and carried out strategy. He wore twelve-thousand-dollar bespoke suits and handmade shoes of English leather.

  She wore slut-black leather pants and high heels from Hookers R Us.

  But damn, she was vicious. And in their job, vicious was good.

  Vicious was excellent.

  He was distracted, though, by what he’d seen in the servant’s brain. “There’s a human.”

  Sylvie shoved the homeowner off the couch and used his back for a foot stool. “What human?”

  “A woman. A…doctor. Bane’s attached to her somehow. It’s not clear. The old man is fighting the spell.” He stood and started pacing the enormous room, curling his lip at the chrome and glass decor. Apparently, the interior designer had died sometime in the 1990s and the place had never been updated.

  Constantin was a man who liked his simple pleasures: fine wine, elegant and expensive homes, and the sheer joy of raising a corpse and commanding it to do his bidding.

  “She can’t be important to him,” Sylvie scoffed, stretching like a cat. “They only use humans for food, except for their servants. He’s probably just fucking her before he kills her. We can’t use a human as leverage over a vampire, Constantin. It would be like trying to use a pork chop as leverage over a hungry lion. It might annoy him for a minute or two, but then he’d turn around and rip your throat out and to hell with the pork chop.”

  He sneered at her. Her metaphors were as tiresome as the stupid Goth clothes she’d been wearing for the past forty or so years.

  “Well, this pork chop is a doctor, and the Minor demon followed Bane to a hospital, didn’t he? So maybe the pork chop is more important than we know. Put somebody on her.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  She stalked out of the room, careful to swear at him beneath her breath so he couldn’t quite call her out on it. Or so she thought. One of these days, he’d decide he was tired of her insubordination, tired of her mouth, and tired of her stupid clothing choices.

  And then she’d be the pork chop.

  He started laughing, and the human cringing on the floor started to weep.

  Constantin smiled. He loved it when he made the pork chops cry.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Why don’t you ride up here with me so Meara can sleep in the back and you can look out at the scenery?” Mr. C opened the door to the front passenger seat and smiled at Ryan.

  She glanced at Meara, who waved her in and then yawned before climbing into the back and pulling the door closed. Before they even pulled out of the garage, though, Meara rolled down the privacy glass and tapped Ryan on the shoulder.

  “Really? In the car?”

  Before Ryan could answer or even have time to wish a hole would open up in the floorboard and swallow her up, Meara pealed out a laugh, leaned back, and powered the window back up. Face burning, Ryan resolutely stared out the side window so she didn’t have to see Mr. C’s expression.

  “Don’t mind them, Doc,” he said cheerfully. “They just don’t understand human embarrassment after all these years. When they found out Mrs. Cassidy and I were out skinny dipping in the pool, we didn’t h
ear the end of it for weeks.”

  Ryan thought about how long ago that must have been, given the Cassidys’ ages.

  “And that was just last month.” He shook his head. “Why have a pool if you don’t sneak in a midnight swim once in a while, I say.”

  “Last month,” she said faintly.

  Wow. Even septuagenarians had more exciting love lives than she did.

  Not anymore.

  Her thighs clenched as she remembered exactly what they’d been doing in that backseat, and she realized she’d put up with any amount of embarrassment for another round of that.

  Mr. Cassidy pushed a button, and both of their windows rolled down, letting in the steamy fall air. “Too beautiful to always be cooped up in the dark when you don’t have to, am I right? Especially in these parts.”

  In the light of the morning sun coming through the window, though, he looked tired.

  “Is it a lot, trying to keep vampire hours?”

  He glanced over at her, his smile fading. “No, not usually. We get plenty of sleep. I’ve just been fighting a bug, I think. Pretty tired.”

  “Do you want me to take a look?” She didn’t want to be pushy, but maybe he was hinting, and she’d be glad to check him out.

  “Oh, no, no. I’ll have a nap later, and I’ll be fine. See what’s over there?”

  Ryan decided to keep an eye on him and take his temperature later, when she had her bag. She looked out the window, realizing that she really had no idea where they were, and then sat up straight in her seat. “Hey! That’s Bonaventure Cemetery! I didn’t realize we were all the way out here. It’s so beautiful.”

  “Yep. The house is right on the Wilmington River, too, just down a ways from Bonaventure.” He glanced over at her. “The cemetery doesn’t frighten you, does it?”

  “No. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” she admitted. “My gran took me there a lot when I was a little girl, to pay our respects to the dead, as she used to say. She claimed she saw ghosts there all the time, but I’ve always been a scientist. I’ve never believed…” Her voice trailed off when she realized what she’d been about to say, and Mr. C laughed.