Bane's Choice

by Alyssa Day

  Bane chuckled. “She was very beautiful and very wild. Her mama died when Meara was very young, and her papa spoiled his only child’s every whim. Almost any other child would have become hateful and arrogant, but Meara merely saw it as her due and continued to treat everyone with the same level of kindness and interest.”

  “And you worked for her father?”

  He shrugged. “Not as official as that. My family died of the plague when I was eight—my parents and my older brother. My sister had been gone for a while by then, as I told you. I spent the next couple of years scrapping and stealing on the streets of London, trying to stay alive. Sleeping on rooftops, near chimneys when I could get a place, because they stayed warm even on cold nights.”

  She wanted to cry, thinking of an eight-year-old boy, homeless and starving, trying to stay alive in eighteenth-century London, but he was telling the story in such a matter-of-fact, calm way that she didn’t want to derail the conversation. She was so hungry, though, to learn more about this man who’d become the center of her world in such an impossibly brief span of time.

  “When the count traveled to London on business, he brought Meara with her. I first saw her when she was riding in a carriage, throwing pennies out the window to the little ones who scrabbled in the street. I’d never seen any girl so clean and beautiful.” He laughed. “I thought she must be an angel. That was before the first time she gave me the rough side of her tongue, believe me. Meara in a temper can strip a man’s hide from his body with a few well-chosen words. Or an entire stream of them.”

  “She is forceful, I’ll give you that,” Ryan said, remembering that a ball gown in her size would be delivered to the mansion by noon, in spite of her protests.

  “Anyway, one of his stable lads fell sick and died, and I managed to be in the right place at the right time. They took me with them when they continued their travels, and—for the first time in years—I had a warm place to sleep that I didn’t have to fight for, in the stables, and more than enough food to eat every single day.”

  “Is that why family meals at your house are such a feast?” Ryan thought back to how she’d splurged on groceries when she finally escaped her father’s house and could eat whatever she wanted without having to listen to his blistering diatribes on her weight. She also knew that children who grew up in food-insecure households often developed eating disorders when they could afford to buy and binge on all the food they wanted.

  Bane’s grip on her hand tightened and then relaxed. “Perhaps. Oddly enough, I’ve never thought of it in those terms, but it is true that having a fully stocked larder has always been a requirement in my homes. You never forget the feeling of a belly so empty that it burns or the ache of the constant fear that you won’t survive another night.”

  “What…what was your name? The name your family gave you?”

  He stilled. “You know, I’m not sure I even remember it.”

  Ryan stopped and put her arms around him and just stood there, holding him, for a very long time. When she stepped back, she tried not to let him see that her cheeks were wet, but he touched her face with one finger, his face softer than she’d ever seen it.

  “You honor me with your tears, Ryan, but that was a very long time ago.”

  She nodded and managed to swallow the lump in her throat, and they walked on, in companionable silence, toward the entrance. Several minutes later, as they approached the main gate, Ryan looked up at him, struck by a thought. “When did you come to Savannah?”

  “In the early 1700s. And how we came to travel here—that’s a long story, and one I’ll share with you another time.”

  “Have you ever been back?”

  “No. I can never see England in the sunlight again, so it seems not worth the bother of trying to travel there.”

  “You have money. You could charter a plane.”

  “Yes, but it’s probably better to stay on this side of the ocean and defend what’s mine. Also, there are…other reasons why vampires can’t easily travel to other geographic locations, but that’s also—”

  “A story for another time. Okay, I get it.” She yawned unexpectedly, her face all but cracking with the force of it. “I think I’m ready to go back to your house or my house, somewhere I can get a shower and some sleep. Is it—should we walk?”

  He shook his head. “I asked Luke to send Mr. C. He should be pulling up outside the gate by now.”

  “How…when did you do that? Do you even have a phone?” She hadn’t seen him make a call.

  He bent his head to hers and pressed a brief, gentle kiss to her lips. “It’s more super-secret vampire stuff, as you like to call it. I reached out, mind to mind.”

  She blinked. “Well. That’s just creepy.”

  From behind her, a woman started laughing. “Oh, honey. You have no idea.”

  Bane spun around and thrust Ryan behind him. “You must be Sylvie. You stink of grave rot. I’ll give you one warning. Get the fuck out of Savannah. This is my territory.”

  The necromancer—because who else could it be?—smiled. “Yes, I must be Sylvie. And here, vampire, you are in my territory.”

  With that, she slowly raised her arms and started to chant.

  And the dead of Bonaventure Cemetery started to rise.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “This is not good,” Bane said calmly while considering his options.

  “You think?” There was an edge of wild hilarity in Ryan’s voice, understandable under the circumstances. She’d just survived one attack, only to be faced with another.

  After just learning that vampires existed.

  And werewolves.

  And warlocks.

  And the Fae.

  She was doing pretty damn well not to be curled up in a corner sucking her thumb, which was what most humans would do when confronted with necromancy on top of everything else he’d thrown at her.

  All around them, the dead were rising. At least a dozen of them, he noticed with the corner of his mind not preoccupied with watching Sylvie. So, this necromancer’s reach wasn’t all that powerful.

  Or else she thought it would only take twelve of them. If so, she was vastly underestimating him. Or would be, if he’d been alone. Now, his only priority was removing Ryan from danger.

  “Time to get you the hell out of here,” he told her, grabbing her hand and calling to the Shadows…which failed to respond.

  Sylvie laughed. “I can feel you trying to call to your dark powers, Nightwalker. But my magic reigns here.”

  “So that makes you the queen of dead things, Necromancer? Your mother must be so proud.”

  Ryan’s hand tightened on his. “Maybe don’t taunt the scary, evil witch until after we find a way out of this?”

  Sylvie stopped chanting and snarled. “How dare you call me a witch, human? A demon bred with my human ancestors to create my line. I’m no pathetic, nature-magic-wielding human witch.”

  “Sorry,” Ryan shot back. “My magical references come from Harry Potter. Now, why don’t you put the nice dead people back so we can talk this out?”

  The necromancer aimed a wide-eyed look at Bane. “She’s very annoying. Why haven’t you killed her already?”

  “Why don’t I kill you already?” He yanked Ryan close to him and shot up into the air. He’d fly her to safety and come back to deal with this trash.

  “I don’t think so,” Sylvie said, and a bolt of foul magic slammed into him, knocking him out of the air and back to the ground. He turned over in midair, so his body struck the ground first, cushioning Ryan, but it was a jolt.

  “Are you okay?” He jumped up, not willing to be caught on the ground when a necromancer and her new army were on the march, pulling Ryan with him.

  “I’m fine,” she gasped. “Behind you!”

  Bane spun around to find that three more reanima
ted corpses, two of them not much more than skeletons, were shambling up on them from behind. He grabbed a skull in each hand and crushed them together, pulverizing the bone.

  “Two down,” he called out, and then he ripped the head off the final body and hurled it into the air with so much force it went sailing over the nearby trees.

  “Bane, three. Zombies, zero,” Ryan said, crouched in a defensive posture and whipping her head from side to side to scan for more attackers.

  “You can give up now,” the necromancer sang out gleefully. “I’ll send these after you, and then more, and more, and more. We have all night, after all. And if I keep you here until after sunrise…well. Then I’ll get to play with your human.”

  “The human is not down with that plan,” Ryan said, defiance in every line of her body. “Why don’t you go back to the hole you crawled out of?”

  Sylvie turned her attention to Ryan, just as six more corpses surrounded Bane to attack. “What did you say to me, blood bag?”

  “You heard me. Also, where do you buy your clothes? At the Halloween rejects store?”

  “I thought we weren’t taunting the necromancer,” Bane said, lashing out to pummel the nearest corpse, which collapsed onto the ground, its spine still in Bane’s hand.

  “Reanimate that, bitch,” Ryan shouted, pointing at the fallen, spineless, body. Then she whirled to face Bane, her back to the necromancer. “I’ll distract her. You take care of the zombies.”

  “That’s an awful plan.” He launched a spinning kick into the air and smashed a zombie into the one behind it, taking them both down.

  “It’s a great plan. Trust me, I’m a doctor,” she said, making no sense at all, but—with five more newly animated bodies heading for him, he didn’t have time to talk about it anymore.

  Sylvie, he noticed, kept a careful distance away from him, which meant, luckily, that Ryan was also a careful distance from Sylvie. Until Ryan decided to pick that moment to step closer to the necromancer.

  “Stay away from her,” he shouted, just before three corpses rushed him, and he found himself covered with dead bodies that were pummeling him all at once, with inhuman strength.

  “Oh, no, please, little human,” Sylvie purred. “Come to me, and let’s play.”

  “Play with this, bitch,” Ryan shouted, and then she ran straight at the necromancer, holding that useless scalpel in her hand.

  “No!” He desperately fought his way free, gathering up his magic to strike out—if he could at least knock Sylvie out, if not kill her, her power over the dead would be interrupted.

  But he was too late.

  The warlock sliced the air with one hand, and a burst of powerful magic sizzled through the air, aimed directly at Ryan.

  And, helpless to get there in time, Bane had to watch as every ounce of that foul power smashed into the woman he’d just now realized he loved.

  “No,” he howled, destroying the final corpse that lurched in front of him, blocking his view.

  But then a fountain of silvery white light cascaded up from the area where Ryan had just been struck down, and Bane had to shield his eyes against it, even as he raced toward her. The light shimmered and then coalesced around Ryan, who wasn’t dead.

  She wasn’t even down.

  She was standing in the middle of a swirling tube of pure light, holding her arms out, a look of total astonishment on her face.

  Behind her, Sylvie was on the ground, cringing away from the light.

  Bane recovered from his shock for long enough to check behind himself for more zombies, but they were all down. The foul power that had reanimated them had disappeared, and—right in front of his eyes—they sank back down into the ground beneath where they lay.

  “Bane?” Ryan’s voice was shaky but clear. “Would you like to explain exactly what is happening to me?”

  “I’d like to know that, too,” Sylvie said, so quietly that Bane could barely hear her. And then she made a circling motion with one hand and disappeared.

  Bane slowly approached Ryan, who was still glowing, but the fountain of light had diminished until it wasn’t much more than a glimmering outline of light surrounding her.

  “Are you harmed?” He reached out to touch her, but the light jolted him with a severe electrical shock and knocked him back a step.

  Ryan gasped and turned her hands over and back, staring at them in wide-eyed wonder. “This…this isn’t some residual side effect of hot vampire sex, is it?”

  He barked out a laugh. Of all the reactions he could have expected her to have, that wasn’t even in the top hundred.

  “Definitely not.” Then he turned, sensing a familiar presence, as Luke raced over to them and skidded to a stop a good ten feet away from the still-glowing doctor.

  “What the hell is going on now?”

  The epiphany slammed into Bane with the force of a speeding truck. “Oh no.”

  Ryan pointed at him with one glimmering finger. “Don’t you ‘oh no’ me. The last thing I need to hear right now is ‘oh no.’”

  “I’m sorry, but this isn’t…this is…Oh, hell.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Or, should I say, the opposite of Hell.”

  Luke and Ryan both stared at him.

  “What?” she shouted.

  “When every other solution is impossible, what remains is… Oh, fuck it. You’re Nephilim.”

  Luke started swearing and backed another two steps away from Ryan.

  “I’m what?”

  “Your daddy was an angel,” Luke told her. “A freaking angel. We’re fucked.”

  Ryan, the glow finally beginning to fade, wrapped her arms around herself and bit her lip. “I don’t… No. You’re wrong. My father was a financial consultant.”

  Bane shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no,” he said gently. “The light, your ability to deflect blood magic, the glowing skin, even the taste of your blood…you’re Nephilim. Which means your father—your biological father—was an angel.”

  Ryan blinked but said nothing. Then she blinked again and swayed where she stood. Bane tried to get to her, but the light smashed him back again.

  Luke just stood and stared at her for a long minute and then started laughing. “You know, I can’t imagine Daddy is going to be happy about his little girl hooking up with a vampire.”

  Ryan took a stumbling step toward Bane, the glow finally diminishing. “An angel?”

  He clasped her hand with only a minor electric charge this time and then pulled her into his arms. “We’ll figure this out, I promise. We’ll—”

  But she was suddenly boneless in his arms. She’d fainted. Or maybe the Nephilim power appearing had drained her. He wasn’t sure.

  The only things he was sure of were that she was Nephilim, the necromancer would probably figure that out any minute, and a pissed-off papa angel might be on his way to tear Bane into multiple tiny pieces.

  The world was suddenly a more complicated place.

  “Fuck that. I’ll never let you go,” he whispered into her hair. And then he stepped into the Between and took her home.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Meara and Edge crowded into Bane’s room, barraging him with questions.

  “Quiet,” he growled, carefully putting Ryan down on the new bed that had magically appeared in his room while he was out. He made a mental note to give Tommy a raise for installing a new bed and removing the remnants of the old one so quickly.

  “Do you think we should take her to her hospital?” He pulled a blanket up over her still form but couldn’t force himself to move away from her.

  “What would we tell them? ‘Hey, doctors, our human actually turned out to be Nephilim, and she burned out using her magic angel powers, please fix her?’”

  Meara’s sarcasm made Bane want to punch something, but she was right.

 
Human medicine had no solution to this.

  “I won’t give her up.” He turned to glare defiance at his sister and Edge. “I don’t care who her father is. She’s mine.”

  “She might have something to say about that now that she knows what she is,” Edge pointed out before backing away, hands held up placatingly, when he saw the expression on Bane’s face.

  Meara gave one of her elegant, very French, shrugs. “We shall see. You know the history, right?”

  Bane shook his head. “No, I never paid attention when you were telling me about the conversations you had with those monks in France. What history?”

  She sighed. “I knew it. Anyway, you know, of course, that the original vampires were the progeny of demons mating with humans, right?”

  “Of course,” Bane said.

  “What the fuck?” Edge’s silver eyes widened. “Nobody thought to tell me they were Turning me into a demon?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Meara said impatiently. “We’re a separate race now.”

  “Oh, fine. I just have a demon great-great-grandmother.”

  Bane slanted a look at Edge, who sighed but shut up and made a go-ahead motion with one hand.

  “So, as you also know, Nephilim are the progeny of angels mating with humans. But it doesn’t descend in genetics. The only Nephilim are those with an angel father. That’s why we thought there weren’t any being, ah, made anymore.”

  “Apparently Ryan’s father was a naughty angel,” Bane said. “But how could she never know until now? Wouldn’t her powers have manifested before?”

  “She probably didn’t have to battle a lot of necromancers or zombies in her medical training,” Meara drawled.

  “The things she’s mentioned about her father…I wonder if he knew she wasn’t his child. It would explain why he treated Ryan and her mother so badly,” Bane said slowly, staring down at Ryan’s pale face for a long moment before turning to his sister.

  “And what about us? I mean, the pairing of vampire and Nephilim?”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s easy. Never. No way, no how, forbidden, taboo. Almost as bad as the inconceivable idea of demons mating with angels to the scholars who supposedly wrote down the rules. There was some kind of treaty between angels and demons.”