Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,107

her head.

“Keep the tux on for a little while longer. I like you in it,” she whispered. “And stay right here. I have a surprise for you.”

With that, she ran lightly down the stairs, barefoot this time, and he heard her calling out a greeting to Tommy and Mary Jo. Maybe she wanted some food?

But in only a few minutes, she raced back up the stairs, followed by the Cassidys. Mary Jo was grinning like a delighted child, but Tommy looked exhausted or ill. He was walking behind Ryan, so she didn’t see it, because Bane had no doubt that when she did, she’d slip into doctor mode and take care of Mr. C.

Like she kept taking care of him.

“I have a gift for you, Bane,” Ryan said, clasping her hands and all but dancing with glee. “But you have to close your eyes for a minute.”

“Nothing good ever started like that,” he muttered.

Bram Stoker picked that moment to gallop into the room, barking, so it took a minute to get him to calm down. Ryan leaned over and kissed the top of the dog’s silky head, and Bane realized he was feeling envious of a dog.

Mrs. C started laughing. “Oh, I can think of a few things that got started with closed eyes. When you gave us those cruise tickets, we found ourselves alone on the deck one night, and—”

“Okay, okay,” he said hastily. “I’m closing my eyes. What now?”

“Hold still,” Ryan said, brushing against him and then startling him by putting some form of hat—no, helmet, definitely helmet—on his head.

“Hold out your hand,” she demanded, and then she put a cylindrical object on his palm.

Then Bane heard whispering, giggling, and rustling noises, before Ryan finally spoke again.

“Okay. Open your eyes.”

When Bane, feeling unsure and vulnerable, opened his eyes, he took one look and shouted an unintelligible sound, and then he looked around again. “What the hell?”

Somehow, through some magic he already knew must be science, he stood, in bright noon sunlight, directly in front of Buckingham Palace.

He was back in London.

He was back in London.

He whirled around, and the images stayed with him. He was inside a movie, in the daylight, in London.

And he had Ryan to thank.

He held out the hand not holding the remote, because, of course, that’s what he held. This must be a virtual reality device; he kept up with technology, so he’d known about them.

But he hadn’t known about them.

She took his hand, and he held on as if to a lifeline while he stared in wonder at the milling crowds of tourists and the guards, standing impassively, and the cars going by, while he listened to the sound of Big Ben in the distance.

“You can go almost anywhere in London, well, anywhere that they’ve mapped,” she told him, and he could hear Mary Jo chuckling.

“Were you all in on this?”

“The doc went out on her lunch break and bought the system, and I set it up for her while you were at the party,” Tommy said quietly. “Got a chance to see where Molly lives, too. Thanks for thinking of that, Doc. Awful nice of you.”

It was beyond nice. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for him. That she would think of Tommy and Mary Jo, too, was astonishing. No, not astonishing or even unexpected.

It was pure Ryan: pure grace, and joy, and kindness.

“Try the Tower of London,” she urged him. “It’s exactly right! I even followed the path through the place where they keep the crown jewels!”

Bane discovered how to work the control, still holding tightly to her hand, and he spent the next half hour exploring London…both the London of his childhood, which was still there, albeit superimposed by a veneer of modernity, and the London of today, built on the sturdy bones of buildings created by architects long dead.

“There! There’s the church where the priest would give us food if we could perfectly recite the Lord’s Prayer.” He grimaced, remembering how many times he’d gone hungry at first, too damn stubborn to offer up his prayers for the pompous ass’s satisfaction.

“And if you didn’t?” Ryan’s voice was filled with outrage on his behalf, and yet another cracked, barren inch of his long-dead heart split open and came back to life.

“No food. Sometimes they’d beat us out in the courtyard.”

“Those bastards!” This was Mrs. C’s voice speaking. Anything to do with harming children would stir her mama wolf instincts.

“Agree,” Ryan growled. And then, softer, “Bane. If this