Bane's Choice

by Alyssa Day

  Meara lightly jumped back down to the floor but showed no signs of leaving. “We’re all going to the ball because the necromancer is the host.”

  Bane sat up. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me. I just happened to dig out the invitation today. Sylvie Chambers requests our presence, blah, blah, blah. Sylvie Chambers, Bane.”

  Ryan gathered the covers against her chest and sat up, too, and asked the obvious question, even though she was sure she wouldn’t like the answer. “Why is that important?”

  “Chambers.”

  “Oh. On the nose, much?” Ryan’s wonderful mood slowly drained away. “Is she taunting us? Or pulling a Gatsby to get us to attend her party?”

  Bane’s entire body went rigid. “Damn them. Fine. Now get out so we can get dressed. But Ryan is not going anywhere near the place.”

  Ryan sighed. “Not again. Look—”

  “They’ve probably figured it out by now, Meara. And you know what necromancers would love to have? The blood of a Nephilim. She’s staying here.”

  “My blood?” Ryan narrowed her eyes. “You need to explain—”

  Meara spoke over her. As usual. “You’d leave her alone, at a time like this?”

  “I am right here,” Ryan shouted.

  The two of them glanced at her and then exchanged a glare that seemed to carry an entire conversation within it, and then Bane nodded. “Right. So. Ryan. How would you like to attend a ball with me?”

  “Why not? I already have a dress.”

  …

  As it turned out, she also had a makeup artist, a hair stylist, and the shoes, jewels, and even underwear that went with the dress. Meara had insisted on a blood-red silk gown with a fitted, plunging bodice—to “show off the girls!”—and Ryan had to admit it was the most beautiful, flattering garment she’d ever worn in her life. There was a discreet slit in the front of the voluminous skirt, and the delicate shoes had three-inch heels that Ryan hoped she’d be able to walk in, let alone dance.

  Unfortunately, her mind spent more time churning over the revelation that Sylvie and God only knew how many other warlocks and necromancers would be at the party than it did on appreciating her party dress.

  By the time the various professionals were done with her, though, she was awestruck and even secretly thought that she might look almost as good as Meara, and though half her brain was consumed over worry about Sylvie and her necromancer pals, the rest of her brain was distracted by the most movie-perfect makeover of all time. When they steered her over to the full-length mirror in Meara’s salon-sized dressing room, she took one look and almost fell out of her fashionable new shoes.

  “That’s…that’s me?” It couldn’t be her. Not Reliable Ryan, who lived in scrubs at work and yoga pants at home. Who rarely wore makeup, except on the occasional evening out with Annie. Who had never, not once, been the belle of any ball—or even the center of attention in a campus pub.

  And who now, evidently, was half angel and sleeping with a vampire.

  She pushed away thoughts of how a life could change in less than a week and focused on her reflection. Her hair was pulled back and partially up, leaving long curls to frame her face, and she had smoky eyes and shiny lips. Her skin glowed like it never had before…actually, on second thought, she’d had that glow before they applied any makeup at all.

  She had Bane to thank for that. Bane and her long-lost, apparently heavenly, father.

  Tears started to burn at the back of her eyes, but she forced them away, because she didn’t want to ruin her makeup. She whirled to face the team of helpers who’d arrived to prepare her and Meara for the ball.

  “Thank you! Thank you so much. I can’t—you’re both amazing. I’ve never looked so good in my entire life. You’re both wizards!”

  “They’re not wizards,” Meara called out from the other room. “No beards, no familiars.”

  The makeup artist, Candice, looked puzzled. “What?”

  “Oh, she likes her little jokes,” Ryan said hastily.

  “Anyway, we’re not wizards,” Jane said, putting her hair tools back in her rolling case. “You have great hair and good bone structure. You just need to play it up a bit. And, of course, Meara is so gorgeous she’s practically not human, you know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Ryan said, wondering what the women would think if they ever found out just how not human their client actually was.

  Probably some of the running and screaming Meara had mentioned when Ryan first met her.

  “How much do we owe you? I’ll go get my purse.”

  Jane waved her away. “Meara keeps us on retainer. And she includes tips, too, so you’re good. Just put in a good word for us to your fancy friends tonight, if anybody asks, okay? We working girls need all the help we can get these days.”

  “I hear you,” Ryan said, but she could tell from their discreet glances at each other that they thought she was a rich socialite or something.

  “Well, thank you again. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  They showed themselves out, and Ryan went back to admiring herself in the mirror because, damn, she was worth admiring.

  “Warrior goddess, indeed,” she murmured. “This is almost a Pretty Woman moment, except without the prostitution.”

  Meara came out of her bedroom then. “What are you talking about? You do realize you’re a very odd human, right? Or—I guess I can’t say that anymore, little Nephilim.”

  “You could lose the ‘little,’ too.” She turned around and actually gasped out loud. “Meara! You’re too beautiful to even be real!”

  The vampire wore a coppery-colored sheath that hugged her slim form and perfectly complemented her amazing golden eyes. Her hair was twisted up in a knot, she wore ridiculously high heels and simple jewelry, and the entire effect was stunning.

  “I know,” Meara said, preening, but then she whistled. “Why, Dr. St. Cloud. You’re an absolute beauty. My brother is not going to know what hit him.”

  “Neither will Computer Guy,” Ryan said, grinning.

  Meara looked away, a faint blush staining her perfect cheekbones. “Not that I care.”

  “Of course not,” Ryan agreed, tongue firmly in cheek.

  Meara narrowed her eyes but didn’t rise to the bait. “Shall we go, then?”

  “We shall. But the hardest part of tonight might be negotiating the stairs in these heels.” Ryan laughed. “I’m not exactly good at this. I wear sensible shoes at work.”

  “Sensible shoes.” Meara shuddered. “We need to get you a new job.”

  “Speaking of that,” Ryan began, thinking of the clinic and her new abilities. Her new plans.

  “Later. Now, we go dance.”

  …

  Bane paced back and forth at the bottom of the stairs, from the kitchen to the salon, changing his mind at least a hundred times about allowing Ryan to attend this damn ball with him.

  Not that she’d let him get away with the idea of “allowing” her to do anything.

  But if Constantin and Sylvie had an army backing them up, he didn’t want Ryan anywhere near the place.

  And yet, he didn’t want her to be alone, where he couldn’t protect her, if the necromancers were coordinating an attack on him.

  “Damn them,” he snarled.

  Edge shot him an impatient look from his perch on a chair in the parlor. “Damn who, exactly? The Chamber? The warlocks? The shifters? Meara and Ryan, who have been making us wait here, dressed up like penguins, for more than an hour?”

  Bane stopped pacing and grinned at the scientist. “Hey. You may be a penguin, but I make this tuxedo look good.”

  Edge rolled his eyes. He’d definitely been hanging out with Meara too much.

  A slight noise alerted him to Ryan finally arriving at the top
of the stairs, and he walked out to the hallway to wait for her.

  And then, for the second time that day, the bottom fell out of his world.

  It wasn’t the clothes.

  It wasn’t the paint on her face.

  Or the way her hair was done, or the fancy shoes.

  It was the sheer joy—the confidence and delight—in her expression when she looked down at him that punched him right in the gut. She was his, this woman, this fascinating, infuriating, warrior goddess; he knew it utterly and completely in that moment, and his heart expanded in his chest until he thought it must burst free of skin and bone and fill the room.

  Mine.

  “What do you think?” She held her skirt up and showed him her shoes. “Pretty much a Cinderella moment, right?”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, but that has nothing to do with the dress,” he told her, his sincerity ringing in his voice.

  Her answering smile lit up the world.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Bane stared up at the front of the historic mansion and remembered when the home had been built, back in the early 1900s, along with so many of the homes that were now registered in Savannah’s National Historic Landmark District.

  Maybe that made him a national historic landmark, too.

  Ryan took a tighter hold on his arm and sighed after Tommy, departing in the limo. “I vote we go watch movies and order pizza. This is not my kind of place. Too fancy.”

  Meara, standing very carefully not too close to Edge, snorted. “Our house is both bigger and fancier than this one, and you’re very comfortable there, considering what you were doing just before I came to get you.”

  “Enough, already,” Edge growled. “Can we just go in and get this over with?” The scientist had been unable to take his eyes off Meara ever since she’d appeared at the top of the stairs in that dress, and he’d strongly and repeatedly made his objections to the plan known on the drive over. “And we took the damn limo, like a bunch of fools,” he continued. “How exactly do we make a fast getaway in a limo?”

  “Luke is bringing your car now. It will be parked just across from Forsyth Park, there,” Bane said, pointing. “Surely the Ferrari is fast enough to qualify as a getaway car?”

  They believed that Bane could carry Ryan off through the Between, if need be, because he hadn’t wanted to burden them with the knowledge that Sylvie had been able to block his access to the Shadows.

  This might not even be anything to do with Constantin and Sylvie, though. As Edge had pointed out more than once, there were roughly thirty-two people named Chambers for every hundred thousand Americans, according to the census data.

  When he’d said census data, Meara had started swearing in French. From the way Ryan had flinched, she had a fairly good grasp on the language, too, at least when it came to pig-brained ass of a diseased rodent and other colorful expressions. Edge, however, had just looked baffled, as he so often did around Meara.

  “Now, we join them and go inside,” Meara said, nodding at the stream of Savannah’s elite who were streaming into the mansion. “And we see what’s what, because this is clearly no census data Chambers.”

  Bane nodded. “I smell it.”

  Ryan glanced up at him, puzzled. “Smell what?”

  “Rot,” Edge snapped, and then he offered Meara his arm. “Shall we?”

  Now absolutely convinced that this was a terrible idea, but having none better come to mind, Bane led them into what was almost certainly a trap.

  “We should at least dance before the shouting and the killing starts. After all, when am I going to look this good again?”

  He glanced down in disbelief, only to realize that Ryan was attempting a joke, a fake smile pasted on her gorgeous face. Damn, but she was brave. He impulsively bent to kiss her cheek and lingered to whisper in her ear.

  “Maybe later, we can dance naked, and you’ll look even better.”

  She blushed, and her smile deepened and turned into something real, just in time for them to walk past the first of what was sure to be several levels of security: two large men dressed in dark, police-like uniforms.

  SHIFTER, Meara sent telepathically, and he nodded.

  But the shifters, who should have known what they were, said nothing and barely even looked at them as they walked past.

  BLOOD-THRALLED, he sent to Edge and Meara, who nodded.

  Ryan elbowed him in the side.

  “What was that for?”

  She smiled brightly, as if she were telling him something delightful. “Stop doing that. The secret vampire telepathy. I want to know what’s going on, too,” she said very quietly.

  Fair enough. If he’d been a human walking into this, he’d also have wanted all the information he could get. Hell, he was a powerful vampire with magic in his own right, and he wanted all the information. Or, at least, more than he had now.

  He put an arm around her waist and pulled her closer then bent to kiss the top of her head. “The security guards are shifters, but they seem to be thralled. No sign of any warlocks yet, in spite of the smell of necromancer.”

  She laughed, as if he’d told her something funny, and he realized she was good at this—at going undercover, as she’d called it in the car. In fact, she fit into his world far better than any human ever had before.

  He wasn’t sure what to do with that, but now certainly wasn’t the time to analyze it.

  Now was the time to beware.

  …

  The inside of the mansion was far more showplace than home, and Ryan gasped when she saw it. Decorated for the party with flowers and tiny, twinkling lights wherever she looked, the house was like a dowager lady displaying her wealth to her best advantage, and the rich, glittering people mingling inside were the jewels in the old girl’s tiara.

  She wondered how many parties this house had seen. How many love affairs had begun or ended right here in this ballroom or out on the terrace, beneath the bright, indifferent gaze of the stars. Probably more than she could count.

  “It would be interesting to read about the history of this house,” she told Bane, who shrugged. He was so extraordinarily beautiful in his tuxedo that she could barely tear her gaze from him. She wanted to stare at him and touch him and shout at anybody else who even looked at him.

  And there were a lot of people looking at him, damn them. But…there were a lot of people looking at her, too.

  “Why read about it?” Bane asked, and she had to think back to what they were talking about. “Humans built it, lived in it, and died in it, much like any other house. They just spent more money while doing so.”

  She sighed. “I can tell you’re going to be too much of a sappy romantic for me, Bane. It’s all hearts and flowers, all the time.”

  He tightened his grip on her waist. “If you want romance, I can throw that man who keeps staring at your breasts out the window,” he said darkly.

  She followed his gaze. “Bane, violence is not romance. Anyway, that window is closed.”

  “I know.”

  She grinned. “Come on, let’s look around. It’s the normal, human thing to do when you get invited to a place like this, so it won’t even look suspicious that we’re wandering about, unlike Meara, who is stalking around the place like she’s a general on patrol.”

  Edge was doing his best to keep up with her, but Meara was moving at a pace that was too fast and too graceful to be fully human. Ryan just hoped nobody noticed until they found what—or who—they were searching for.

  “I have a better idea.” He pulled her along with him to another enormous room, maybe another ballroom or grand salon. A string quartet was playing, and some people were dancing.

  “May I have this dance?” He bowed, just as if he truly had been the European prince she’d first imagined him to be, and she put her hand in
his and followed him onto the dance floor.

  When he put his other hand on her waist and began to move, she snapped out of the romantic haze that the entire situation had put her in and admitted the horrible truth. “I don’t really know how to dance like this, Bane,” she whispered urgently, sure she’d trip and make a fool of herself at any second, since not only was she now dancing—was it a waltz?—but she was dancing backward and in high heels. “Or, you know, at all.”

  “Trust me,” he murmured, and she did; somehow, she did, and somehow, she was dancing, following his lead. And so the stable boy who grew up to become a vampire led the lonely little girl who grew up to be a doctor in a dance, in one of the most opulent homes in all of Savannah.

  And—for several precious minutes—it was magical.

  She stared into Bane’s eyes and imagined she could see forever. She’d promised never to leave him. That didn’t sound like temporary. Didn’t feel like disposable.

  Forever, or at least as long as she wanted, until she grew old and faded away, as humans did, and Bane lived on without her. She flinched from the thought of that, tried to push it out of her mind, but then wondered, for the very first time: how long did Nephilim live?

  No. Too much to think about now, when danger might be all around them.

  Later. Later, she’d look for answers to all of this. For now, she’d enjoy this dance.

  “I love this,” she told him. “Dancing. I wish I could give you a gift as wonderful as the gift of this dance.”

  He pulled her into a twirl, and her incredible dress swirled around her, and then he bent his head and kissed her, right there on the dance floor, never missing a step, making sure that she never missed one, either. “The only gift I need, Ryan, is you.”

  When the music ended, at least the music in the room—the music in her heart still sang its wordless melody of hope and light and…love? —Bane nodded toward the stairs.

  “If there are warlocks here, they’ll be up there somewhere, keeping an eye on everything. We should go look around. Remember, at the slightest sign of trouble, you run. Got it?”