Worth Dying For

by Luxie Ryder

  “Humans are not the only warm blooded creatures.” Bane couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. The only visible emotion on her face was disgust.

  “But you did once? Hunt humans I mean?”

  Bane nodded. “I’m not proud of it, Amber, but I didn’t know I had a choice for the longest time.” A thought occurred to him and he felt compelled to make sure she knew what she faced. “I am a rarity, though. Many of my kind don’t want to change their ways. They are happy to find their food the way they always have.”

  Amber didn’t reply but Bane noticed her shudder. Of course she would be appalled by the thought. He remembered how he’d felt when his innocence about the sanctity of life had been shattered.

  “So, are you ever going to tell me why all this is happening to me and why you brought me here?”

  Relieved that, so far, she’d kept an admirable grip on her emotions, Bane didn’t keep her waiting any longer. She deserved the truth. He told her everything—about causing the rock fall then saving her life, and about David’s actions. Explaining the other danger he’d put her in was harder and her fear escalated as he explained what they were up against.

  “How many like you are there?”

  “Thousands.”

  She sagged at his reply. “Then what was the point of all this? You can’t fight thousands of…of them.” Her unwillingness to say what they were didn’t escape him. “I’m going to die anyway. You should have let me perish in the landslide. At least that way, David wouldn’t have suffered a horrific death and you wouldn’t be forced to fight your own kind.”

  “I couldn’t let you die because of something I had done. I’d hoped to be able to help you and then disappear again, but I couldn’t know your spineless friend would desert you like that.”

  “Why did you save me Bane? I’m nobody to you and it’s not as if you can’t handle watching someone die. I know because I’ve seen you in action.” When he searched her face, he found curiosity rather than censure. “So why are you fighting so hard to protect me now?”

  He dropped her gaze. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” Amber jumped to her feet and began to pace.

  Bane would never understand women for as long as he lived. This was the part she had trouble taking in?

  She stopped in front of him and threw up her palms. “I’ve lost everything I ever knew—my job, my home, my friends—possibly my life, and you don’t know why?”

  Bane got up, forgetting to measure his movements so as not to frighten her, and Amber panicked. She lost her footing and stumbled backwards, her feet scrambling for purchase on the rock floor as she fought to put some distance between them.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” He offered her his hand but pulled it back when she just recoiled further. He sat down, unsure how to make her feel safe again. Amber began to cry.

  “I saved you because of Mary.”

  Amber looked at him again for the first time in minutes. She sniffed away the last of her tears and half-turned towards him. “What?”

  Bane almost smiled, grateful that she was nothing if not a typical woman. Curiosity always got the better of them and won out over almost every other emotion. “Mary was my wife.”

  “Was? What happened to her?”

  He heard the accusation in her tone and saw the suspicion in her eyes. She thought he had killed her. The loathing for what he’d become crawled over his flesh one more time. Why wouldn’t Amber think him capable of such a hideous thing?

  “Another vampire killed her—the same one who changed me.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you too?”

  “She, not he. Katerina is the one who condemned me to this life. She’s also the reason you are in so much danger.”

  “I don’t even know her. Why would she want me dead?”

  “Because of me. Katerina heard about what I did and she is using an archaic law as a reason to punish me by killing you. She wants me back and, since the day I got my freedom, she has hated me for leaving her. Katerina doesn’t like to lose.”

  “You were lovers?”

  Bane grunted at her words. “I was one of her possessions.”

  Amber got to her feet and joined him on the sofa again, interested enough in his tale to forget she had cowered from him in terror only moments earlier. Bane didn’t want to relive his past but what else did they have to do? And maybe he could make Amber see how he made the choice to turn her life upside down.

  Bane started at the beginning, hoping she would simply sit quietly and listen, allowing him to tell it in his own time and without the need to dwell on painful memories. Casting a look at her inquisitive face, Bane steeled himself. Amber would definitely want to know more than he wanted to tell her.

  He’d only managed to explain that he was approximately two hundred years old and had been a plantation owner in Georgia at the turn of the eighteenth century before she interrupted. Bane raised a hand to silence her.

  “This is hard for me, Amber, and your questions will only make it take longer. Can you just listen?” She nodded, and made a motion like zipping her mouth shut. Her eyes were still wide but with anticipation now rather than fear.

  Bane told her the story of how he came to be, starting at the point when they had found some slaves missing and assumed they had run away. “We set up night patrols to catch them trying to escape. You have to remember it was a different time and we saw nothing wrong with slavery. Ironic, considering what I would go through myself.

  “But rather than discovering people escaping, I spied a white man and woman coming out of the bushes and heading for the slave quarters. I didn’t know then why the dogs hadn’t alerted us to their presence but we hadn’t heard them coming. They wore such finery, grander than any I’d ever seen, and it seemed strange that they would be on my land, in the black of night. Curiosity got the better of me and I made the two men working with me wait and see what they would do. The couple entered one of the cabins and the men and I rushed to the windows to watch. What we saw caused my old trustee John to gasp aloud and—”

  “What did he see?”

  He sighed at her and Amber shrugged. “Okay but if you want me to stay quiet, don’t spare the details.”

  “As I said, we looked in the windows and found them leaning over the broken bodies of two of my strongest young slaves. When John muttered a curse and fell backwards, the couple’s attention turned to us. I could smell the blood inside the cabin but I didn’t know then what they had done—not until the door opened wide when they stepped into the yard and we got a look inside. Both men had huge gaping holes at the side of their necks and were obviously dead. I could not understand how such a fate could befall them so swiftly and for none of us to hear even a sound.

  “Things began to happen quickly then. The vampire male—I know now that’s what he was—swung a huge arm at John and knocked him across the yard. The blow was so fast and violent that he flew back about ten feet before his body hit the side of a building and I heard his spine snap. I think he was dead before he hit the ground. I turned around and found the other of my men on the floor at the vampire’s feet. He made towards me, approaching so fast I had no time to protect myself. He grabbed my throat and lifted me from the ground, his hand crushing the life from me as I could do no more than kick at him without effect. The woman, Katerina, told him to leave me alone and head back to the others. She wanted to take me herself.

  “Her accomplice threw me to the ground like a rag doll, and Katerina lifted her skirts to sit across me and pin me down. Unable to move, I fought to make the words leave my bruised throat as I asked what she wanted from me. She ignored me and leant down to look into my eyes. Then…then my body reacted in a way I could never have thought possible. Despite my injuries and my fear, I wanted her, more than I had ever wanted anyone, even my wife.”

  Bane cast a look at Amber, wondering if he’d said too much. She grabbed the opportunity to ask a question. “So that part is t
rue—about vampires being sexually attractive?”

  Her slight blush told him she knew the answer as well as he did, but he pretended not to notice. “It’s one of the few true things spoken about our kind. Sex and death are very closely linked.”

  The colour already on her cheeks deepened a shade darker and for the first time in his life, Bane wished he could read minds. Deciding on how to continue made him think of what came next and chased any thoughts of Amber’s reaction away.

  “She had her way with me and I knew for sure she would kill me but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what she was then. Katerina bit me and at first, the sensation was excruciating but then it changed and aroused me even more and I stopped fighting her—until I thought I was dying. At that instant, I knew I would never see my wife again or our unborn child and I called out to God, asking him to watch over Mary.”

  Bane stopped, cursing the moment he had ever been fool enough to call on God for help. Had he kept his silence, Katerina would simply have left after feeding on him or just killed him. Or maybe she would have taken him with her…but she wouldn’t have gone looking.

  “She’d claimed me you see,” he explained after his silence prompted Amber to urge him to continue. “My ability to even think of another woman as she was seducing me hurt her pride and caused an irrational jealousy. Sexual attraction is not the only emotion our kind feels strongly. Katerina is a spoilt brat at heart and the centre of her father’s universe.”

  Amber pounced on the revelation. “Father?”

  “Enough!” Bane warned, the stress of reliving the trauma leaving him with little patience for her constant interruptions.

  “Sorry.”

  He nodded in thanks, satisfied that his terse command had not frightened her. It had been too long since he’d conversed with a human he wasn’t trying to kill. Amber began to fidget as she waited for Bane to finish the story.

  “She left me bleeding in the dirt and ran off towards the house. I could hardly breathe and my body felt weak but I tried to follow her and yelled for her to leave them alone…to come back and kill me instead. I dragged myself along the ground the best I could, my heart near beating from my chest every second of the way because I knew I had to help Mary and it was taking me too long to get to her.

  “I heard a terrifying scream and knew I’d failed her. My wife was dying mere feet from me and I could do nothing to stop it. I collapsed, distraught and exhausted from my efforts. I heard Mary’s laugh before I blacked out and for the briefest moment, I hoped I had only dreamt the horrific events that had taken place. But then I realised it had been Katerina I’d heard. The sound told me that my wife and child, my very reasons for living, were gone.”

  Bane fought the darkness that clouded his mind whenever he thought of that time and he resolved to finish the story quickly.

  “I woke the next day to find my strength had returned enough to go look for the body of my wife.” He tried to blot out the memory of her broken, bloodied corpse. Bane’s eyes searched out Amber’s, desperate to replace the image in his mind with something living and vital, but he would not share this memory with her.

  “I intended to stay alive only until I was strong enough to bury her and then take my own life, but Katerina returned before I could do it and fed on me again. Night after night she came, making my very existence a living hell, leaving me too weak to do anything but wait for her to return.

  “She took care of me, in her way, forcing me to eat when she visited and bathing me like a lap dog, to keep me clean enough for her precious hands. Of course, she didn’t always feed from me—she needed to allow me time for my blood to replenish its stores, but she always made physical demands on my body.”

  He looked at Amber, intending for his next point to be fully understood. “Sex with a vampire can kill the human involved, unless one is very is careful. Katerina was always just careful enough.”

  Again Amber blushed and averted her gaze. Bane swallowed an oath. The warning had indeed been necessary—for him as much as her. His traitorous flesh reacted to her, despite his vow to leave her untouched as well as unharmed.

  The frail human fascinating him so, would not have survived if he acted on some of the impulses he had while in her company. It would do her good to know that.

  Amber couldn’t decide if she was more embarrassed or offended by Bane’s words. Had his warning been aimed at her? His arrogance pissed her off but she had no desire to squirm under his knowing gaze for any longer. Besides, who cared what he thought?

  She tried to stare him down but when the corner of his usually stern mouth lifted in a half-smile, exposing a dimple in his cheek, her heart skipped another beat and she chickened out. Scrambling for a diversion, Amber asked the first question that came into her head.

  “How long did she keep you like that?”

  “I don’t know. Months I think. Maybe even a year but I can never be sure. My life turned into endless night and I lost all track of time. I slept during the day, when she left me alone, too weak to do anything else. I spent the hours of darkness either suffering her attentions or fearing her return.”

  “Why did she let you go?”

  “She didn’t. Her father found out what she was up to. Katerina was betrothed to another and resisted her father’s will by staying in America with me. As the head of The Fratia de Sange, he could not allow her to embarrass him in this way.

  “It means Brotherhood of Blood,” he added, anticipating her next question. “They are an ancient society, rule by her father Ulrich.

  “Eventually he sent word for her to come home or suffer the consequences and she took me along. I imagine she wanted to keep me as some kind of pet or as a distraction from the man she was being forced to marry. Her father had no idea I was there. She went ahead with the marriage and kept me in a separate wing of the house, chained to a wall much of the time.”

  “She kept you chained?” The urge to cry caught her unawares. Imagining this impressive man suffering such abject humiliation turned her stomach. Bane dropped her gaze but not before she has seen the terrible effect the brutality had wrought on him through the expression in his eyes.

  “Katerina knew I wanted to die. I’d begged her for death many times. She knew if she set me free, either another of her household would kill me on sight or I would beg them to.”

  “But she changed you eventually?”

  “She had to. Her father found out about me and ordered her to bring me to him. Katerina expected him to kill me and she didn’t want that—she did love me in her own twisted way. So she changed me to keep me with her.”

  A brittle smile split Bane’s sombre face but didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Things didn’t work out quite as she had planned. When I awoke, strong and burning with hatred for her, I tried to kill her.” Harsh laughter erupted from him and he shook his head as if stunned by his own stupidity. “I didn’t know then how futile it was. There are very few ways to kill our kind.”

  “But didn’t her father punish you for trying to kill her?”

  “He didn’t know I’d made an attempt on her life. Katerina only told him that she had changed me and begged him to let her keep me. Ulrich rarely refused his daughter—as long as she kept up appearances and didn’t embarrass him in front of his peers. So she had me right where she wanted—newly made, scared and ravenous for something I couldn’t put a name to. The first time she showed me how to quell the almost unbearable pain in my throat, I realised I needed her.”

  “But I thought you wanted to die?”

  Bane looked at his hands, as if remembering something he had done with them. “I had become no more than an animal, and like every other creature, survival became my priority. Katerina represented my only chance at the beginning.”

  The story didn’t make sense. Nothing he’d said so far explained why the woman hated him so much. “So she got what she wanted? You stayed with her.”

  “Yes, but only until I found out I had a choice. I
clung to her at first because, despite the fact I hated her, she was all I had. But then my confidence grew and I didn’t need her anymore. I confess I treated her pretty badly at times, whenever I thought of Mary in fact, but she seemed to enjoy even that. She’d tolerate anything to be with me.”

  Amber could tell Bane wasn’t very proud of how he’d behaved towards his tormenter. Her chances of getting more details out of him were slim to none. The man before her seemed too decent to have done anything really nasty—but a part of her sent him a silent high five for taking his revenge.

  “Then one day, another woman turned my head. Katerina warned me to stay away. She tried to act like she didn’t care and that it was simply a matter of my being her property, but I still remember the fear in her eyes. She was terrified of losing me. Finally, I’d found a real way to make her pay for what she’d done to Mary—for what she’d done to me. So I seduced Isabella and made sure Katerina caught us.”

  Bane closed his eyes and his jaw clenched, as if he didn’t want to tell her what happened next.

  Amber patted his knee. “I can see this is painful for you. You don’t have to tell me any more. I can guess where this is going.”

  “No,” he almost shouted, his gaze intense. “You have to know what she is capable of.” She nodded and shut up again. He took a deep breath. “Isabella survived for about a day. Katerina waited until I left Isabella’s bed.” The hands resting on his thighs tightened into fists. “By the time I returned, Isabella had been destroyed. Katerina had…well, you don’t need the details.”

  Amber shuddered. She’d seen what Bane had done to Milo. “I can imagine.”

  She placed a hand on his still-clenched one in a tiny gesture of sympathy. His eyes closed at the contact and for a moment he seemed to accept her touch, but then a look of disgust crawled over his face and he slid out of her grasp.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Bane.”

  “I didn’t have any feelings for her. I wasn’t capable of that back then. I just wanted her.” His voice got so quiet she could hardly hear him. “Isabella became another sacrifice at the altar of Katerina’s ego simply because I wanted to punish my maker…because I wanted revenge.”