by Alyssa Day
“Never believed in ghosties or haunts or things that go bump in the night? Betcha feel a little bit different now.”
She returned his grin. “I kind of do, Mr. Cassidy, I have to admit.”
“Go on and call me Tommy, then. Meara does. We’re not much for formality, Doc.”
“And please call me Ryan.”
“Sure thing, Doc.” He chuckled and then pointed. “And that’s the clubhouse, just there, of course. Bane has hinted a time or two that there’s an underground tunnel that used to go from the mansion to the area just beyond the clubhouse, but I think he’s pulling my leg.”
“Where do the other vampires live?” She glanced hastily at Mr. C. “I mean, if that’s okay to ask. I don’t want you to give away any secret vampire resting places.”
When he started laughing, she groaned, realizing that most of what she thought she knew about vampires came from Buffy.
“They live all about, in regular places like everybody else, so long as they have safe rooms. Only Bane, Meara, Edge, and Luke live at the house with us.”
A tasteful sign sported the outline of a motorcycle, drawn in gold. It read VMC and nothing else. The clubhouse was long and low and looked a little bit like a fancy version of a country store. There was a front porch with rocking chairs and benches all down its length that she hadn’t seen before, which meant that she and Bane must have come out a side or back door earlier. The parking lot started in front and wrapped around to the side, and it was dotted with maybe a dozen bikes.
She thought about Marisela and smiled. Maybe she’d found a potential new friend there.
“To the hospital? Savannah General?”
“Yes, please. I need to pick up some things and then go home. Or you can take me to my place for my car, first, if you have things you need to do.”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m at your disposal. If I left you alone, Bane would have my head. He’s a bit protective of you, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I feel that way about him, too,” she murmured, wondering when exactly that had happened. Sometime between hearing about the free clinics and having her mind blown in the backseat of this very limo, she suspected.
Before long, they were pulling into the visitors’ parking garage at the hospital. Mr. Cassidy found a spot in a dark corner that was the farthest from the elevators and stairs and parked the car lengthwise across two spaces.
“Here you go, Doc. I’ll stay in the car with Meara. Text me when you’re on your way out? I’ll give you my number.”
She blinked, suddenly realizing she didn’t have her phone. Hadn’t had her phone in almost twenty-four hours…and hadn’t missed it at all.
Technology: 0, Vampires: 1
The window between the seats suddenly rolled down, and Meara popped her head up. “I’m not going in with you. Too many windows, and hospitals and doctors’ offices smell like death. No offense.”
“Why would I be offended? I actually wasn’t going to ask you to come in. Much quicker if I just run in alone. But if you dislike doctors’ offices so much, why did you build the free clinics? Why not fund art galleries or something like that?”
Meara gazed at her through sleepy eyes for a moment and then shrugged. “I give money to the arts, too. But as far as the clinics, it was those or donut shops. Clinics don’t make my ass wide.”
Ryan, whose ass was at least a little bit wider than it might have been, thanks to her fondness for donuts, had to laugh. “That’s a lie. You’re as much of a do-gooder as Bane is.”
“Bane? A do-gooder?” Meara stared at her in patent disbelief. “Are we talking about my brother? Tall, blond, rips the arms and heads off warlocks for fun?”
“What?” Again with the warlocks. She needed to find out what the hell that was about. But not now. She blew out a sigh. “Look. I want to hear more about this. Later. But now I need to go inside, get a few things, and then we can go to my place. My spare bag with keys to my house is in my locker, since I didn’t exactly bring my purse with me when your brother abducted me.”
Meara rolled her eyes and rubbed her index finger and thumb together. “Whatever. Tiny, tiny violins playing sad songs for you.”
“I’ll be back soon,” Ryan promised, rolling her own eyes. “But I can’t text. I left my phone at home when Bane kidnapped, ah, whisked me away.”
Meara turned serious. “If you don’t come back, I don’t know what Bane will do. I’ve never seen him like this before.”
Ryan doubted that. He’d lived a very long life. “Over a human, you mean?”
“Over anyone. Ever,” Meara said, and the bleak expression on her face told Ryan that she didn’t think it was all that great that it was happening now.
“I’ll be back,” she repeated. “I promise.”
Meara nodded. Then she curled up on the seat, her eyes closed before her head touched the leather.
…
The hospital, oddly enough, looked exactly the same as it had every other time Ryan had been inside it, which seemed impossible, given how her world had shattered and reformed into an entirely different version of reality.
She wondered how many of life’s greatest epiphanies came with this sense of disjointedness—this feeling that the world was slightly off-kilter from the way she’d left it. And the hospital didn’t smell like death, thank you, Meara, but like antiseptic and healing.
Like home.
Perhaps it was a matter of perspective. The patients, some in pain and filled with despair, might see it differently. She just knew that she and her colleagues did their very best to help and to heal. To offer hope to those who had little.
Sometimes, discovering an accurate diagnosis was the beginning of finally being able to conquer an illness. But sometimes—often—her surgical skills were required. She cut into live bodies, like a psychopath or a serial killer, which was hard for some people to understand. Certainly, some of the guys she’d met through friends or dating apps had a very hard time with it.
Bane, though, hadn’t seemed to be deterred one bit by her chosen profession.
Of course, he also had no problem with cutting—biting—into live bodies. She didn’t know how to feel about that, either, so maybe those men she’d dated hadn’t been so wimpy, after all.
She kept walking, waved at people, and said quick hellos, but didn’t stop to talk, intent on getting to the residents’ lounge before she had to field too many questions about her unusual attire. She grabbed a lab coat off the first laundry cart she saw and pulled it on, relieved to have her unrestrained breasts covered up. She hadn’t been able to get away without wearing a bra since she was about thirteen years old.
Like not wearing a bra is what’s unusual about today.
She snorted a laugh and quickly turned it into a fake cough when she saw a couple of med students giving her odd looks. Probably wondering why Old Reliable Ryan was wandering around in fancy sandals, laughing to herself.
Rounding the final corner, she ducked into the residents’ lounge, delighted to see that it was empty except for her very best friend in Savannah, Dr. Annie Coates, the finest pediatrician Ryan had ever met.
“Where have you been, girl?” Annie put her hands on her hips. “I texted you a dozen times. I covered for you, but I was starting to worry!”
“Let me run and change, and we’ll talk.” Ryan hurried to her locker, before anybody else came in, and grabbed her backpack that contained her spare keys, and the extra sets of scrubs, sneakers, and socks she kept at the hospital. She also had a bra in there, thank goodness. She was tired of bouncing with every step she took.
After she changed into clothes that made her feel like herself again, she walked back out to chat with her friend. Annie was five feet, four inches of trouble packed into a slender, graceful body with an angelically innocent face that belied her great talent for mischief. She�
��d been a ballet dancer, professionally, until she’d turned twenty-five and realized that her shelf life in dance would probably be over soon, thanks to frequent injuries. Then she’d whizzed through college and medical school, done her residency here in Savannah, and stayed to build a practice, even though her family called Atlanta home.
“Thanks! I was—” Ryan broke off, staring at her friend. “The braids! Those are new. I love them!”
Annie did a twirl. “I’m going with box braids for a few months, trying it out. I’m looking forward to going back to natural, but this transition stage is a pain.”
“Well, they look amazing with your killer cheekbones.” And, of course, they did, just like everything Annie wore or did with her hair, because she looked exactly like the ballerina princess she’d been before. Ryan loved to hear stories of all the little girls who had been so excited to meet a ballerina who looked like them, instead of always seeing only white dancers.
“Misty Copeland is doing God’s work,” Annie liked to say. They’d made a deal to go see Misty dance in New York one day soon.
Ryan wondered what Annie would say if she found out about vampires.
Probably nothing good, and she sure as hell wouldn’t want Ryan to have anything to do with them. She might like Meara, though. Annie was joyfully bisexual and had a special thing for tall blonds of every gender and skin tone.
Ryan was discovering that she had a thing for tall blonds, too. Or at least one of them.
“What is that smile on your face? Oh my God, you got some. Finally! Praise the lord and pass the lubricant. Who is it?” Annie ran over and threw her arms around Ryan in a quick hug. “Tell me right now. Is it that new resident in the ER?”
“No! Doctor Douchehead? Euwww!” Ryan shuddered. “Why would you think I’d be attracted to an arrogant asshole like that? He mansplained a simple surgical procedure to me last week, and I finally had to tell him that after he’d finished his residency, we could talk. Jerk.”
Annie tapped her foot. “Then who? And don’t tell me nobody, because I recognize that glow, my friend.”
“I—it’s so new, I don’t want to talk about it yet, okay?” Ryan knew she sounded honest, because it was the truth, as far as it went. She certainly didn’t want to talk about Bane. She couldn’t share the truth, for one thing. For another, she found that she wanted to hold the secret of him to herself for a while longer.
“Well.” Annie grinned at her. “Fair enough. Gotta run, break over, those kids need their ballerina doctor. But my birthday is this weekend, remember? So when we go out for drinks, you have to spill all.”
“I will,” Ryan lied.
She would spill nothing.
Instead, she would, to quote Elizabeth, after Darcy proposed and she turned him down, have so much to conceal.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ryan popped into HR and told them she had to take emergency leave for a week, due to a family emergency—it was no problem, she was assured, since she had several weeks of leave built up. Old Reliable Ryan worked all the holidays, after all, so the doctors with families could be home. Then she made another, more surreptitious, stop to get a few of the supplies and some equipment that wouldn’t be missed here but would be very helpful at Bane’s place.
After that, she found herself rushing out to the parking garage, almost afraid that the car—and Meara and Mr. C, her links to Bane—would have disappeared into the dark abyss of her imagination, where she’d dreamed them up in the first place.
She ran up the three flights of stairs, raced across the aisles, and then stopped, a sound almost like a sob escaping her throat.
It’s still there. I didn’t dream him.
This is all real.
When she got closer, Mr. C popped out of the car and made as if to walk around and get the door for her, but she waved him off.
“I’m good. Sorry if I took too long.”
“No worries. Meara slept the entire time, and I’ve been caught up in a killer game of Scrabble.”
She gave him directions to her house, and they chatted a bit about her job at the hospital, Meara still asleep in the back. She told him she worked at the clinic two days a week, usually.
“I can’t believe I’ve worked there for more than a year and finally meet the woman who founded it…and she’s a vampire.”
“They’re good people,” he said, taking a turn quickly before a carload of drunk tourists from Michigan could sideswipe the limo.
Savannah was a hot tourist destination. Ryan usually avoided them, but it was always fun to catch a ghost tour once in a while or buy a round of drinks for a bachelorette party in town for a destination wedding.
“Have you known Bane and Meara for a long time?”
“Luke, too. We’ve been with them for more than sixty years, now, I guess. Well, I have. Mary Jo has been with them all her life. Her parents and grandparents ran the house before her. I married up, you might say.” He grinned at her, eyes twinkling.
“Married up?”
“I was fresh out of the Army and couldn’t find a job other than working at the filling station. What you call the gas station these days. When she drove in with an almost-flat tire, I took one look at her and fell so hard I never came back up for air to this very day.”
“That’s all it took?”
“That’s all it took. I believe in love at first sight, you can be sure of that.” He threw a sly glance her way. “I bet Bane does, too, now.”
She couldn’t bring herself to smile. “I’m sorry to say it, and no disrespect to you and Mrs. C, but I don’t believe in love. My parents…my father pretended to love my mother but treated her so badly that she… Well. It didn’t end well. I find it’s safer not to venture anywhere near anything that looks like romantic love.”
Ryan had learned a valuable lesson in all those years of pain, though: it was better to protect your heart than risk it being shattered on the rocks of someone else’s contempt.
Meara sleepily chimed in from the backseat. “That’s a lonely way to live your life, Ryan.”
Ryan stiffened but glanced back at her. She didn’t need pity from anyone, especially not a vampire who’d apparently spent hundreds of years alone. “I don’t see you doing any better.”
“I’m only alone now because I chose to be,” Meara said, her eyes darkening.
“What does that mean?”
The vampire shook her head and sank back against the seat. “A story for another time, Doctor.”
They drove the rest of the way to Ryan’s in silence.
…
It took her almost five full minutes to convince Mr. C and Meara to return to the mansion without her. She was perfectly able to drive her own car back there and intended to do so. She finally asked them if they planned to drag her into the car, and Meara rolled her eyes.
“So dramatic, human.” She waved a hand at Mr. C, who looked concerned but ultimately acquiesced, and then turned a serious gaze on Ryan. “See you later. But remember what I said. If you betray my brother, I don’t know what will happen to him…or to you. I like you, but I love my brother. I won’t take well to anyone hurting him.”
“I’ll be there in a few hours,” Ryan said, exasperated, and then she slipped out the door before she had to sign a blood oath or promise her firstborn child.
Vampires.
She ran up the stairs, unlocked her door, and all but collapsed into the familiarity of home. It should have been so welcoming. So reassuring. And yet…
It was not.
Her townhouse smelled abandoned, like stale wine and mustiness, as if she’d been gone for a month instead of not even a full twenty-four hours.
There, her phone lay discarded on the coffee table, probably flashing with texts and notifications and all the things she wondered if she’d ever care about again.
Al
l those years of plodding along. Of sporadic bouts of bleak depression and loneliness. Relationships that never got off the ground. And now—now, she was on the wildest ride of her life.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, life had handed her a gift. The promise—the reality—of what shining adventure—what gift—her life might bring, if she could survive just one more hurdle.
And if her shining gift just happened to be a deliciously hot vampire with glowing blue eyes?
“More power to me!” She laughed a little, in spite of the tears she almost hadn’t realized were running down her face. If she ever decided to quit practicing medicine, she could have a career writing greeting cards.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to spend one minute more than necessary in this lonely place. She changed into her favorite red sun dress and rushed through her bathroom and bedroom, stuffing clothes and toiletries in a bag, grabbing the cherished medical bag that Gran had given her, and—at the last minute—taking the four unopened bottles of wine she still had and putting them carefully in a tote.
Vampires might not drink wine, as far as she knew, but she had a feeling she was going to need quite a lot of it in the coming days. Suspension of disbelief came so much easier with wine, and she and Meara had a date for movie watching, after all.
Maybe Interview with the Vampire.
She snorted out a laugh at the thought of Bane’s opinion of Tom Cruise as Lestat, and then she locked up, packed everything in her ten-year-old Prius, and headed out for her date with a vampire.
There’s the title of my memoir:
Date with a Vampire: Dr. Ryan St. Cloud’s Introduction to a Strange New World (before she died a bloody and horrifying death).
She laughed out loud, with only a touch of trepidation beneath her amusement, and switched on the radio so she could sing along. Another thing she hadn’t done in…years? The first song that came up on the Oldies channel was “Walking on Sunshine.”
Because, of course, it was.
She smiled and sang all the way to Bane’s house.