by Alyssa Day
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bane had been up and pacing his study floor for an hour, pushing away the memory of the nightmares and making calls. To contacts of his in the city, who all claimed to know nothing. To Edge, who never slept much during the day, anyway. Edge had been surly and barely verbal on the phone, responding only in the negative.
No, he hadn’t been able to find anything out about the Chamber’s presence in Savannah.
No, he hadn’t discovered where the necromancer had gone to ground.
No, and no, and no. No useful information of any kind.
When Bane had asked him what the hell computers were good for, anyway, if they couldn’t find out this basic information, Edge had graphically informed him exactly what Bane could do with his laptop.
That had pretty much ended the conversation.
Luke was asleep. Meara was asleep. Almost none of Bane’s connections were answering their phones, and those who were had nothing to say.
And—worst of all—necromancers had no problem walking around in the daytime. Their powers were weaker than at night, but there were a hell of a lot of very bad things that Constantin could be up to while Bane was trapped in his house.
He hurled his phone to the floor and left his rooms, fleeing both his feeling of utter uselessness and his recurring nightmares of murdering Dr. St. Cloud.
Ryan.
Dying in his arms. Again and again.
He knew they were only nightmares and yet—and yet. He never dreamed. Almost never. Meara had told him his daytime sleep was more akin to a coma than true sleep, and he was “bloody well hard to wake up out of it.”
Why now?
He’d had premonition dreams before, it was true, but he refused to believe this was one of them. He didn’t want to kill her—would do anything and everything in his power to avoid it.
Unless she betrayed you.
And then he’d have no choice.
Denial rose in his throat, burning like bile. No. He’d never harm her. He’d pack up and take his family far away from Savannah, if it came to that. Edge could be sure that nobody would ever find them again. The doctor would be mocked, and nobody would believe her if she tried to tell her story to a world that didn’t believe in vampires.
That won’t work. If she betrays me, I’ll have to kill her. There’s no other choice.
He stumbled to a stop, disgust and self-loathing rising like bile in his throat. Perfect. All she’d asked for was his trust, and here he was already plotting how to destroy her when she inevitably betrayed him.
Proving, yet again, that he was a monster—even when it had nothing to do with fangs or magic.
She deserved so much better than him, a small, seldom-heard voice in the back of his mind tried to insist. The resurrection of his long-dead conscience?
“Never,” he snarled, as if responding out loud to the voice in his head were in any way normal.
When he heard the garage door open, he flew down the stairs, his feet never touching the ground, and yanked open the door. Mr. C was climbing out of the car. Meara, too.
And no one else.
“Where is she?” He barely restrained himself from grabbing the man by the throat. “Where is she?”
Before Mr. C could answer, Meara smacked Bane in the shoulder. “Hey, dumbass. Fighting below your weight class there. If you want to bully someone, try it with me.”
He whirled and got right up in his sister’s face. “Where. Is. She?”
Meara, proving yet again that she had no sense of self-preservation, yawned and rolled her eyes. “She’s at her place, getting some of her things. She promised to follow in her car as soon as she could.”
Bane barely managed to keep from putting his fist through the concrete wall of the garage. “And you let her?” he roared.
She shoved him, knocking him back and away, and he realized that she’d lost her temper, too. “I must be to put up with you for all these years. Look, Bane. Your human is smart and honest, so far as I can tell. Better than you deserve, to be sure. She promised she’s coming back. You need to trust her or you’ll lose her. And you know you can’t travel through Shadow during the day, so don’t even try it.”
With that, she pushed past him and left the garage. “I’m going to bed. Call me if you need—no, you know what? Just don’t call me. I don’t need this merde.” She stalked off, calling him creative names in the French slang of three centuries before.
Bane watched her go, all but vibrating with rage and terror. A hand clasped his shoulder from behind.
“Now, there, son, your sister’s right. You just have to trust the Doc. She’s a woman of her word, I can tell, if a bit sad. You going off half-cocked and acting like a raging bull isn’t going to help her trust you any, right?”
Bane briefly closed his eyes while Mr. C walked around to face him, trying to let himself believe. Trying to understand why it felt like his world was ending.
“Thank you,” he finally said, and then he felt worse when the man’s shoulders almost imperceptibly relaxed, as if he’d been afraid Bane would hurt him.
Tommy smiled, but his face was still pale. Maybe Bane really had frightened him. A wave of shame washed over him. “I’m sorry. My…emotions are in a roil from this woman, and I don’t understand why, but I’d never harm you. I’d never survive Mary Jo’s wrath if I did.”
“That’s the truth. More scary a woman you’ll never meet—human, vampire, or werewolf.” He patted Bane’s arm. “I told the doctor our story, and she said the saddest thing. She said her life has been such that she doesn’t believe in love at all.”
Bane stared at him, unable to speak a single word.
“Terrible thing, that. Maybe you can help change her mind.” With that, he winked and trudged off, undoubtedly to join his wife and plan more skinny-dipping adventures or something equally likely to make Luke’s head explode.
Bane’s lips twitched. That had been quite the night. Maybe if—
The doorbell rang, and Bane flashed through the house faster than thought. If some unlucky salesman stood at the door, he might not live to see another day.
He put a hand on the doorknob, and Mrs. C came rushing down the hall.
“Don’t you do that! It’s three o’clock in the afternoon. You’ll get far worse than a sunburn, for sure.”
But it might be Ryan.
He growled at his housekeeper, who flapped a dishtowel at him.
“Oh, hush.” She moved in front of him and opened the door, but he didn’t wait to see, because he already knew. He could feel her heartbeat. It was Ryan.
Ryan.
Ryan had come back to him. She stood, silhouetted by the sun, as if an angel had come to visit. An angel with long, dark waves of hair, wearing a simple red dress.
His angel.
He reached out and yanked her into his arms, barely noticing the sun burning his exposed hands. Her bags and boxes went flying, except for one she clutched tightly that made clinking noises. He buried his face in her hair and tightened his arms around her until she made a protesting noise.
“I’m glad to see you, too, but you’re cracking my ribs, Bane.”
He breathed her in—her scent first calming him and then wrapping itself around his nerve endings and seducing him into fantasies of silken skin and passion—and then finally opened his eyes to see that the front door was closed and Mrs. C was nowhere to be seen.
“I can’t breathe, either,” he confessed, staring into the blue eyes that seemed to see directly into his soul. Touching the lips that he dreamed of touching his body in so many ways. “You came back to me.”
She smiled “I told you I would. I said you could trust me.”
But he couldn’t. Couldn’t trust that she’d come back to him again. Couldn’t trust that he’d survive it if she betrayed him.
<
br /> Didn’t know how to control the waves of relief and gratitude and terror for what might have been—she could have been harmed, she could have run away, she could have been in a car accident. Humans were so fragile.
“Please don’t leave me again,” he commanded, using his Voice, even though he knew it didn’t work with her. Tightening his arms around her again. “I can’t bear it.”
She sighed. “And here we are back at this, again. You can’t keep me prisoner, Bane. We can’t be…friends, if you treat me this way.”
“Of course, I can keep you prisoner. And I want to be very much more than your friend.”
Her lips flattened. “Remember trust?”
“I don’t know how to trust.” His body was shaking—actually shaking—as if he were caught in a tempest.
What the fuck is happening to me?
He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be this person with zero control.
Couldn’t let her see the power she had over him.
He forced himself to release the grip he had on her arms and stepped back. “So. You brought wine? You think you’ll need to drink to put up with us?” His voice was a hoarse rasp, but Ryan gracefully pretended not to notice.
Her smile was shaky, but she gamely held up the tote. “Yes. Well, I didn’t know if you’d have wine around, and it might be helpful. I brought some sedatives, too, and some gear to draw blood, so we can start investigating and see what we can find out. Also, how does Meara feel about An American Werewolf in London?”
He laughed in spite of the turmoil in his mind, collected the bags she’d dropped, and started up the stairs to where Hunter hopefully still slept but stopped when he realized she wasn’t following him. He glanced back and saw her watching him with an expression of almost unbearable sadness on her face.
“Bane. I promise you can trust my word. Please believe that.”
A lump the size of a boulder was somehow in his throat. “I’ll try, Ryan. I’ll try.”
And he would. If he could just figure out how.
…
Luke was stretched out on a couch he’d dragged across the room, reading one of his beloved thrillers.
“What’s A Girl doing this time?” Bane asked him. “Riding on a train, looking out a window, being dead, being frozen, or being gone?”
Luke closed the book and yawned, stretching. “Solving her own murder, I think. Not very far into it yet.”
Ryan entered the room and nodded to Luke. “Hello again. How’s Hunter?”
“Entirely quiet for the past hour. Are you going to check in on him?”
“I’d like to, if that’s okay.”
Luke rolled off the couch and shrugged. “Not my call. You can hang out here with me while Bane checks on him, if you want, though.”
Bane glared at him. “Find your own woman. This one is mine.”
Ryan sighed. “And now we’re back to the shoe peeing.”
Luke glanced between the two of them, puzzled, but Bane started laughing. He couldn’t help it. His emotions—the same emotions he’d thought had died long ago, rusted by their complete lack of use, or perhaps even incinerated by the knowledge of terrible deeds—raced up and down between delight and despair like a child trapped on a roller coaster…in Hell.
He might not survive knowing Dr. Ryan St. Cloud, but it was certainly going to be fascinating to try.
He walked past Luke, who was staring at him, openmouthed, and listened at the door before opening it.
Silence.
Hunter was either asleep or preparing an ambush. Vampires were especially cunning just after the Turn. Bane cautiously opened the door, first making sure Ryan was still behind it, and looked in, to find Hunter, lying still as stone, on the mattress where Bane had left him earlier.
He listened for a moment, in case a speeding heartbeat disguised ill intent, but the man’s heart beat exactly as slowly as it should for one in the midst of the Turn. Was it possible the process was finally proceeding as it should?
“He looks a little better.”
He shot a hand out to block Ryan from walking into the room. “Let me check on him first.”
Every fiber of his being told him to keep her away, but he had agreed, as she was sure to remind him, and he was afraid that she’d take refusal now as another sign of his lack of trust.
Hunter was completely out cold, though. Literally cold—his body temperature had dropped considerably. Once the Turn was over, he’d warm up to a not-quite-human temperature, but for now his body was conserving energy for the process of becoming vampire.
“Is this what it’s supposed to be? This comatose state?”
“Yes. Maybe now he’ll finally progress as he should,” Bane said, but his unease was growing. Nothing about this Turn was going according to plan. Had it been the burns? Edge had been tortured nearly to death, but with blood and skin loss, not burns. Did it make a difference?
How could he ever know?
“Can I draw your blood now? There’s no point to try a sedative on Mr. Evans, it looks like, but I could experiment with their effects on you, if you’d be willing to take a bit of a nap.”
No.
Not if it means seeing you die again.
He schooled his features to impassivity before he turned to face her. “Yes, I’d be willing to try, given certain conditions, just not now. Today is—will be—extremely busy. And yes, you can take my blood. Let’s get out of here, first.”
“Sounds good,” she said, and he waited until she left the room to move away from Hunter, just in case. That’s when he saw the basket on the floor behind the door, filled with bags of blood.
Meara, probably. It was the kind of thing she’d think of. He should have thought of it, though. He was slipping. Missing details.
Yet another example of how this human woman is taking up far too much space in my mind.
And yet that was exactly where he wanted her to stay.
In his mind—and in his bed.
He closed and locked the door and leaned against it, a wave of weariness sweeping through him. He hadn’t slept much, except in fits and starts, since the battle with the warlocks.
“You look like shit, man,” Luke said. “You’d better get some sleep before the big meeting tonight, especially if we can find Constantin and get to kick some warlock ass.”
“What,” Ryan said, in a dangerously quiet voice, “exactly, does that mean?”
When Bane shot him a dirty look, Luke put his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, man. Hard to know which secrets you’ve told the human and which you haven’t.” With that, he strode out of the room, whistling.
I need to remember to kick his ass the next time we spar.
Ryan carefully transferred the bags containing her equipment to one hand and pointed at him with the other. “Okay, let’s have it. Which secrets are you keeping from the human this time? I know there must be hundreds, given what you are and how long we’ve known each other, but maybe we can start with the kicking some warlock ass.”
The frantic sound of toenails scrabbling up the steps interrupted whatever he’d been about to say, and Bram Stoker came joyously bounding into the room and hunched his body in the telltale sign of a dog who was getting ready to leap. And he was aimed at Ryan, who wasn’t much taller than the dog.
“STOP!” Bane commanded, and the Irish Wolfhound slid to a stop, all but falling over his own oversize feet. Then he sat there, his tongue hanging out of his mouth in a goofy smile, waiting for someone to tell him what a good boy he was or rub his belly, staring up at Ryan with a look of utter devotion.
Not a bad life, really.
“Saved by the dog?” Ryan shook her head at Bane. “Not for long. Shall I set up in your study? Come on, Bram Stoker. I have some ear scratches with your name on them.”
And then, not waiting for Bane to
answer, she marched out of the room, head held high, the dog devotedly trailing after her, and Bane caught himself smiling.
Again.
“Right there with you, buddy,” he told the dog and followed the parade down the hall to his rooms.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan set up her equipment, including the astonishingly expensive portable spectrophotometer she’d borrowed, on the long reading table in Bane’s library. She talked to the enormous dog as she worked, explaining the principles of what she planned to do, knowing that Bane was listening, but not ready to speak directly to him until he told her about this dangerous meeting he was apparently planning.
She wanted to know about the warlocks, too.
“I suspect that there is some form of iron-deficiency anemia at work here, Bram Stoker. Yes, you’re a good boy.” She petted his head, which came up almost to her shoulder. “What are you? A wolfhound crossed with a wooly mammoth?”
Bane threw himself down on the enormous leather couch and watched them, still saying nothing.
“So, I’ll do a CBC—that’s complete blood count test—to see if you have lower than normal red blood cell counts, hemoglobin or hematocrit levels, or mean corpuscular volume. If that’s the case, then I might be on track.” She glanced over at Bane, who looked far too sexy for her peace of mind, sprawled out on that couch, all long, lean muscles and gorgeousness. “Ready for me to draw your blood?”
He tilted his head and crooked his finger at her. “I’m ready to kiss you again, so I can discover if it’s really possible that the taste of your lips can set my entire body on fire, like I seem to remember happening in the car.”
She felt her face get hot and her nipples tighten but shook her head, swallowing hard. “In a minute. I want to test a sample of your blood and do some research, so I can see if I can figure out exactly what is happening with you. The magic versus science conundrum is fascinating.”
“Fine,” he drawled, rolling up a sleeve.
She took a quick blood sample, careful not to look into his eyes when she did it, in case he magically made her clothes disappear just from the heat of his gaze. Not that she didn’t want that to happen, exactly, but right now she wanted to take refuge in science while she figured out exactly what was happening to her.