Bane's Choice Read online

  “Look at me,” Bane commanded, and Hunter’s screams cut off instantly.

  Bane stared into eyes drowning with agony beyond human endurance and sent a mental push.

  You don’t feel the pain.

  Hunter’s charred and blackened face relaxed by a fraction of a degree, but his eyes remained unchanged.

  He knew he was dying.

  They always knew.

  Bane lifted a hand but then let it drop. There wasn’t an inch of unburned skin he could touch in comfort or solace.

  My friend, you’re beyond human help.

  Hunter blinked slowly.

  But I am not human, as you well know.

  A question flared in smoke-damaged, blood-red eyes, but then resignation returned. Hunter’s eyelids slowly closed. Disbelief or hopelessness, perhaps.

  Simple acceptance of his impending end.

  Well, fuck that.

  NO! Bane roared through their mental connection, rage and grief searing through him. I DO NOT ACCEPT IT.

  Hunter’s eyelids flew open, and he tried to move his mouth, but his lips were burned away, showing the skull beneath.

  Think your response. I’ll hear.

  Hunter blinked again, and then, after such a long moment Bane thought the human had given up, Hunter’s voice sounded in Bane’s mind.

  I must be fucking dead already, but if this is Heaven, I want a do-over. I expected sexy, half-naked angels at the very damn least.

  Bane blew out a breath, relief relaxing muscles he hadn’t realized were clenched. Hunter was still sane, then, which hadn’t been a given, considering the sheer agony he’d endured.

  You can argue with Luke about angels later. Now, you must decide. You know what I am. I can make you like me, and you will survive. But you will be changed. Forever.

  The hideous clanging of an alarm sounded in the hall, and running footsteps—probably of the humans who’d finally broken free of the compulsion and figured out they should be in Hunter’s room—came toward them.

  Decide. Now. Live or die.

  Shockingly, unbefuckinglievably, the edges of Hunter’s ruined mouth twitched.

  If you promise I’ll turn out to be as charming as your arrogant ass, then hey. Sure.

  Bane was nodding when the woman he hadn’t even known he’d been waiting three hundred years for ran into the room and started shouting at him.

  “Who the hell are you, and where is my staff? My God, you’re not even sterile, and 90 percent of his body is open to compromise!” She ran across the room, put herself between Hunter and Bane, and shoved Bane away from the bed, putting her entire body weight into it.

  Bane blinked and actually fell back a step, not from her ineffectual shove, but from the fact that she’d actually done it.

  Grown men feared him.

  Vampires feared him.

  Things that were far worse than even vampires feared him.

  And this small human—with a face that was all furious, ocean-blue eyes and pale, creamy, glowing skin—was still pushing him.

  And shouting in his face.

  Every predatory instinct in his body woke up, shocking his nerve endings into an almost-electric state of heightened awareness, and his mind started shouting a warning at him—threat, threat, threat.

  He looked into her eyes, and those same instincts seared a demand into his brain—mine, mine, mine.

  Who the fuck knew courage would be his aphrodisiac? And wait…glowing skin? Literally glowing? It had to be something that only a vampire’s heightened vision could pick up. Bane couldn’t imagine the people she worked with not noticing if their colleague lit up like a lantern.

  She shoved him again, disrupting that train of thought, and he narrowed his eyes. The only threat this human could pose was to his equilibrium, regardless of his bizarre reaction to her.

  “Get out of here before I have to hurt you,” she shouted at him. “Security!”

  He couldn’t help it.

  He smiled.

  She froze, her hands still on his chest, poised to push again. “Are you out of your damn mind? Get out of my patient’s room! You’re a danger to him. Security!”

  “Security is not coming,” he told her, just for the pleasure of watching her react. Every emotion she felt showed on her face, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to watch her experience them. For hours.

  Days.

  He flinched at the reaction, his shoulders tightening and his breath slowing. There was no logic in it. The sudden wanting came from a place far deeper than logic, far more primal than reason. A red haze of instinct started screaming at him to take her.

  Keep her.

  His mind was telling him to back away, fast.

  She slammed her fists on his chest and leaned forward, still pushing, but all he could think was that her hair carried the scent of one of his most cherished memories: masses of wildflowers near a stream in a sun-drenched mountain glen.

  “Are you…did you just smell me? What is happening here?”

  On the bed, Hunter made a tiny sound, and Bane’s focus snapped back to his friend, whose agony was beginning to break through the hypnotic command Bane had given him. What the fuck had just happened? How had he allowed himself to be distracted by this woman when Hunter needed him? A wave of self-disgust roiled through him like acid in his gut.

  “Sleep. Now,” he commanded her, and he reached out to catch her when she fell.

  Froze in shock when she didn’t.

  “Who—”

  But he didn’t have time for her questions or for his own questions about how she could resist his command or for the soul-searing wonder that threatened to overwhelm him about how she could possibly exist.

  Instead, he reached out and touched her. “Sleep. Now.”

  Strong mind or no, a human couldn’t resist compulsion combined with touch. She’d be out for hours. When she fell into his arms, the feel of her warmth and curves set off a tsunami of shock waves inside him—emotions he had long since lost any familiarity with: desire, protectiveness, an almost-feral need to possess—that rocked him back a step, still holding her.

  But there was no time. Hunter was failing, and more humans would be coming.

  He put her in the chair against the wall and read the name embroidered in script lettering on her white coat. “I’ll be back, Dr. St. Cloud.”

  He thought he caught a glimpse of something that absolutely should not be looking in the window and almost absently threw a blast of power at it, just in case. Then he yanked the life-saving lines out of Hunter’s body, lifted the man into his arms, and stepped into the Between.

  Before the Shadows had even fully formed around him, though, she was already opening those blue, blue eyes and leaping out of the chair, and his mouth fell open in shock.

  Not possible.

  It was utterly and completely impossible that any human could come out of such a powerful compulsion that quickly. Something was very wrong here…or else something was very wrong with her. He hadn’t sensed or smelled any hint of magic, but no ordinary human could just snap out of the compulsion like that.

  And yet, she was almost across the room.

  “I’m coming for you,” Bane repeated before the Shadows swallowed him, and not even he knew if it were a promise or a threat. He only knew that he wanted this woman with every fiber of his being—which made no sense at all. She was human, or maybe not. Whatever she was, her resistance to his magic and her glowing skin added up to a mystery. And he had no time for mysteries with the Chamber coming for him.

  Sure, she was brave. And, clearly, she was smart. But…

  Oh. Right.

  He was horny. It had been a while. He’d come back when he had time and take her, fuck her, and get her out of his system. He ignored the way his mouth dried out and his body hardened at
the mere thought of it. No.

  Dr. St. Cloud would be no problem for him.

  No problem at all.

  Her ability to resist his compulsion, however—that was a big fucking problem.

  Chapter Three

  The surplus waves of the vampire’s portal magic blasted the Watcher off the side of the building, and he barely caught a tiny decorative ledge with one hand, but it was enough to save him from splattering on the ground far below.

  He couldn’t track Bane through the Between, but he knew where the vampire called home.

  They all did.

  He scrabbled around until he was facing the ground and scuttled down the side of the hospital, and then he raced off into the night. First, he’d confirm, and then he’d report. And then, his master would reward him.

  He flinched and then picked up his speed, not even realizing he was whimpering and grimacing. Too intent on his mission.

  Hell-bent on returning to his lord.

  Maybe the Watcher would be the first to survive delivering bad news. His ears flicked up at the thought but then drooped again.

  Hope died early in Minor demons.

  If it ever really existed at all.

  Chapter Four

  Ryan leapt for the man carrying her patient—actually jumped into the air, her body stretched out, to grab for him—and got two hands full of nothing.

  Her leap had been aimed at stopping him, so when she encountered nothing, a body in motion stayed in motion, and she slammed into the wall, shoulder first.

  “Ow!”

  She put a hand up to rub her shoulder and whirled around, just in case…

  In case what? In case the magically disappearing man suddenly winked back into existence?

  In case her clearly fractured sanity duct-taped itself back together, and she was once again alone in a room with her almost-certainly dying patient, instead of watching in disbelief as the hottest yet most terrifying man she’d ever seen in her life somehow hypnotized her and stuffed her in the beige visitor’s chair?

  Sure.

  Great.

  That little detail was going to go over great with the hospital review board. She could see it now:

  “And then, sirs and ma’ams, the tall, blond hunk of muscle and sex turned invisible and disappeared. Yes, with my patient. No, I was too busy being whammied by his glowing blue eyes at the time to be able to stop him.”

  “I’m totally fucked.”

  “Would you like to be?”

  She jumped and whirled around to face the doorway, where yet another decidedly non-hospital employee leaned against the wall, hands in the pockets of his jeans, staring at her with glowing eyes.

  Glowing green eyes this time.

  What the hell? Had she hit her head, too, and not just her shoulder?

  This one was tall, dark, and definitely dangerous, with a sinful grin quirking up sensual lips. He probably had to fight off women wherever he went.

  Oddly, though, her mind flashed back to the other one. The one who’d stolen her patient. He’d scared her, but she’d been drawn to him…

  She shook her head once, sharply. What was wrong with her?

  “Usually I get a quicker yes to that question,” the jerk at the door drawled.

  Question?

  Oh. Right.

  “Look, asshole, whoever you are, get out of this room. Now.” She strode over to the wall by the bed and punched a button to call security. “I don’t have time for you.”

  “Seems like you’d be more courteous to the public,” he observed, his smile fading and something that looked like shock widening his eyes. “Also, what are you?”

  “I’m a doctor. And it seems to me that you’d have heard of the Me-Too movement and realized that leading with a question about whether I’d like to be fucked is grounds to get a punch in the face.”

  “What? Look, I know humans may not be able to see it, but your skin is decidedly luminescent. What are you?”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “I said, I’m a doctor. And I don’t have time for you now. Visiting hours are long over, anyway.”

  She took a deep breath and turned and scanned the room again, realizing the futility of it even as her brain refused to accept the truth: her patient—burned so badly he almost certainly wouldn’t survive, even with the help of every resource she had in the state-of-the-art Burn Unit—was gone.

  And she’d let it happen.

  She heard the sound of masculine throat clearing and glanced back at the doorway. To add to her fantastic evening, the pervert wasn’t leaving, either.

  She sighed and put a hand on the wall phone. “I’ll just call security, and they can help you find your way out, okay?”

  “Fine,” the man at the door snapped. “Let’s do it the hard way.”

  He stalked into the room toward her, but she was too freaked out to be afraid, even though he was well over six feet tall, only a few inches short of the first man, who’d been enormous. This one was all muscle and cheekbones, too, though. Was there a gladiator movie filming somewhere nearby missing a few actors?

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Look—”

  He stopped but then, in a movement so fast she nearly didn’t see it, he grabbed her wrist and leaned close. “You saw nothing.”

  “I saw nothing?” She was too dumbfounded to even yank her arm away from him.

  “Exactly.” This time his smile spread across his entire face. “Perfect.”

  With that, he turned and walked out the door, and she heard his footsteps as he headed down the hallway.

  Apparently, he’d taken her question as agreement.

  He’d been very, very wrong.

  She’d seen everything, and she wasn’t talking about this guy, either. She’d seen the man who’d somehow—some insane way how—stolen her patient. And she was going to find Mr. Evans if it was the last thing she did.

  …

  Three hours later, Ryan collapsed in a haze of boneless exhaustion onto the couch in the living room of her late grandmother’s ridiculously luxurious townhome on Lafayette Square, in one of Savannah’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Thirty-six hours on call, and that was all before the supernatural-patient-snatching incident. Now she’d spent three hours, first at work and then at home on the phone and computer, trying to figure out what the hell had happened.

  She’d found nothing.

  Nobody she’d talked to had admitted to seeing either one of the intruders.

  None of the staff had admitted to seeing or treating Hunter Evans.

  The paperwork had disappeared.

  If she didn’t know better, she’d believe she’d fallen into an episode of the X-Files, except the truth was damned well not out there.

  Finally, at the hospital, she’d gotten to the point where people were giving her concerned “Dr. Ryan must be overworked and possibly in danger of needing a psych consult” looks, and she’d been forced to give up.

  Maybe she was? Overworked, sure.

  Exhausted, yes.

  But having a mental breakdown?

  She put a hand to her stomach to quell the flash of nausea. Was she seeing things?

  No. Definitely not.

  She’d seen that man take Hunter, and she’d be damned if she’d doubt herself. It didn’t matter how tired she was; she hadn’t been hallucinating.

  She’d been wide awake and had only stepped out of Evans’ room for long enough to head over to the nurses’ station when the resident, medical student, and nurses who’d been in his room had all come running out like they were being chased by monsters.

  And when they hadn’t answered her questions—had in fact run right past her like she didn’t exist—she’d raced to the firefighter’s ICU room only to find the monster in question was still there.

  O
nly he hadn’t looked at all like a monster. Or sounded like one.

  No, he’d had a husky, whiskey-velvet voice to go with those dangerously sexy eyes—had they been glowing?

  She drank more wine and stared unseeingly at her grandmother’s piano.

  Sure. Glowing eyes, why not? She’d seen a beautiful, terrifying man with glowing eyes who’d kidnapped a dying burn patient and disappeared into a magic portal. Happened every day, right?

  Sure. On my Netflix queue of sci-fi movies, maybe…

  Maybe she needed to accept a harsh truth.

  Maybe it wasn’t everyone else who’d been wrong—maybe it was her.

  No. Not her. Not Rational Ryan. There was no way.

  She drained the wineglass and started to pour another but then stopped. She’d only find another headache at the bottom of the bottle, not answers.

  Not her patient.

  The patient everyone claimed didn’t exist.

  The patient that wasn’t in the hospital computers.

  She paused again and rubbed her forehead, the doubt resurfacing. Because, in fact, he hadn’t been in the computer.

  And everybody was in the computer.

  Everybody.

  The second you stepped on hospital property, your ass was logged into a computer, because the great twin gods named Insurance and Medical Bills must receive their due. There was no way that a firefighter didn’t have health insurance, and there was no way that Hunter Evans, who’d been there for at least an hour, hadn’t been logged into the system.

  If he’d existed.

  If he even…

  Firefighter.

  She caught her breath. Of course! Maybe a gas leak or something was causing memory loss in the hospital personnel, but Evans had managed to tell somebody that he was a firefighter, right?

  She grabbed her phone and did a quick search. There it was. Contact information for Savannah Fire Rescue.

  Nobody answered the phone, of course, because it was almost freaking midnight, and nobody in admin offices answered phones at midnight. So she’d call the stations. There were probably a few different…

  There were sixteen. They were called Engine companies, according to Google. Sixteen of them. She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen off her desk and started calling.