Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,11
“Join this century. Flaming iPhones, maybe.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “iPhones, my ass. We’re talking flamethrowers, at a minimum. Bane, unless you need—”
“Go,” Bane told him, carefully lowering Hunter’s unconscious body to the center of a two or three-hundred-year-old teak table. The mansion and some of its furnishings were almost as old as he was. “There was a doctor…no. Just go.”
Luke went.
Edge rolled up his sleeves and shoved his long, white hair out of his face. The scientist’s hair had been black before his own government had imprisoned and tortured him and—far worse—tortured his brother to gain enough leverage to make Edge talk. If he hadn’t killed six of them—Edge had been lethal even as a human—and escaped with his dying brother then raced straight to Bane, he might have ended up like the man on the table.
Or worse.
“What do you need?”
“I’m going to Turn him,” Bane said, ready for a fight. Edge wasn’t always happy to be a vampire; maybe he’d try to stop Bane from Turning another human. He’d nearly gone insane when he’d woken up and learned that his brother was now a vampire, too.
Even though it had been Edge’s dying request that Bane Turn them both.
Death wishes and reality seldom meshed.
But something—some memory of humanity, an echo of a feeling from centuries ago—was pushing him to save this honorable man, who stood for others in a selfish world.
Edge’s silver eyes gleamed hot, and he slowly raised his gaze to meet Bane’s. “Did you give him a choice?”
“I did. He made it. Now, either help me or get out of the room. Where’s Meara?”
“She’s hunting,” Mrs. Cassidy, their housekeeper, said disapprovingly, bustling into the room.
Meara liked to hunt the kind of human criminal who wandered around Savannah, preying on the weak. Meara taught them about weakness before she drank from them. Bane wasn’t crazy about his sister’s nocturnal habits, although they echoed his own, but he’d learned decades ago to shut the fuck up about it.
When Mrs. C caught sight of the man on the table, she caught her breath in an audible gasp. “Oh, the poor love. What…is he…oh, Bane. Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”
“He’s beyond hospitals. I need blankets and heat. Start the fire, bring space heaters, crank up the furnace, whatever it takes. It needs to be at least ninety degrees in this room for every minute of the next three days,” Bane ordered.
When Mrs. Cassidy turned to race out of the room, not bothering to waste time on a reply, he turned to Edge. “You’re still here, so you’re helping?”
“I’m helping.” Edge yanked the hospital blanket off Hunter’s blackened body and muttered a curse. “This is bad. This is fucking awful. Is it—is it even possible, when his body is this damaged?”
Bane spared him a glance. “You were worse.”
Edge hissed, lips pulling back from his teeth, fangs descending. “I still owe some payback for that,” he snarled, his silver eyes shading to red.
“Later,” Bane said, scanning Hunter for a spot undamaged enough to use.
“Here.” Edge pointed. “Brachial artery. The inside of his upper right arm. He must have held the child with that arm, protecting her from the fire. There’s a patch of unburned skin here.” His jaw tightened. “Do you want me to do it?”
Bane appreciated the courage it must have taken for Edge to offer. The process of Turning could kill both participants. He shook his head, though.
“No. This is on me. Help Mrs. C get the heat going and find Meara. When Lucas gets back, I need him. I’ll need all three of you to help me get through this.”
“Do you want me to bring in extra…provisions? There’s surely someone in Savannah who deserves to die tonight.”
“No. Maybe later, if we must. Now, go. We need that heat. He’s running out of time.”
Edge nodded and raced out of the room, almost too fast for even Bane’s eyes to see, and Bane looked down at Hunter.
“Say good-bye to your old life.”
He stared at the dying man for a single moment, and then he lifted Hunter’s arm and plunged his fangs into the artery.
It took less than five minutes to drain him dry.
…
“Bane! Bane!” Mrs. Cassidy shouted. “Bane, you get your behind down from there, or I’ll…I’ll…I’ll get Tommy’s shotgun and shoot you!”
The red haze of Bane’s vision slowly cleared, and he realized he was floating up against the ceiling of the room, spinning in lazy circles, his arms and legs thrown wide, in the throes of a very vivid daydream about