fucking the delicious Dr. St. Cloud until she screamed his name.
Blood drunk. He was blood drunk, and Hunter was dying.
Or already dead.
He arrowed down to the floor, viciously biting his wrist as he flew, and then he immediately put the open wound over Hunter’s mouth. The man was gasping out his last breath, his body shaking in his final death throes, and Bane had been wallowing in the hedonistic joy of having consumed nearly a gallon of fresh blood.
He was a monster. A monster, he realized, who’d killed the human he’d wanted to Turn.
Because Hunter wasn’t drinking.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll let you die because of me,” Bane growled, and he pushed a command into the dying human’s brain.
Drink, damn you. Drink!
Suddenly, shockingly, Hunter’s throat moved as he convulsively swallowed, first once, and then again, and then again and again and again. Ten, then twenty, and then thirty long seconds went by, and then Hunter found the strength to raise his hands and grab Bane’s arm, clutching it to him as if afraid the blood might be taken away.
Mrs. Cassidy fluttered around them, not knowing what to do or how to do it. She’d only seen the process once, and she’d fainted that time, but only for a few minutes. She and her husband were made of sterner stuff than to run away at the sight of a little blood, she’d declared when she’d roused, and then she’d immediately gone off to make soup.
Soup was his housekeeper’s secret weapon, her cure-all for every situation. Love was flavored with chicken and homemade noodles in this house.
“That’s it, my friend. Drink now and survive to fight another day.” Bane sank down into a chair someone had placed near the table and only then realized that there was a fire blazing in the stone hearth and space heaters were glowing hot at every electrical outlet in the room.
“Thank you, Mrs. C.”
She nodded, biting her lip, and then she burst into tears. “Oh, you know I wouldn’t have shot you, don’t you? I’d never hurt one of you boys, or Meara, either. I just—I just didn’t know what to do, and you weren’t hearing me, and I…I…”
He forced himself to smile, although the blood draining out of him was beginning to have an effect. “Don’t worry about it. You probably saved Hunter’s life by snapping me out of my delirium. But you know what we could really use? Some hot soup. Do you think—”
She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and gave him a shaky smile. “You know it, sir. I’ll go do that right now. Tommy should be home soon, and I’ll send him to the store, and I’ll need chicken and…” She headed for the door, still verbally composing her shopping list, and then she turned and ran back to him.
“You be careful. With him and with yourself,” she said. Then she leaned down and kissed his forehead, blushed a rosy pink, and ran back out of the room.
A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he realized that Hunter had taken too much blood, and so far, there was nobody back to help replenish Bane’s.
So be it.
If he had to die, what better reason? He’d ruined so many lives, caused so many deaths—would it deliver an ounce of redemption to a blackened soul to save a single life at the end of his miserable existence?
Worse, did he even care?
Blackness encroached on his vision, and then he heard a voice which sure as hell wasn’t one of Hunter’s scantily clad angels welcoming him to Heaven.
“You’d better not die on me, you fool.”
Meara was back.
Chapter Six
“Well, when a mommy demon and a daddy warlock love each other very much…”
Constantin Durance let the sarcasm in his voice finish the sentence for him.
The Minor demon he had by the neck choked and hissed but knew better than to try to fight back.
“The little creep knows how baby Minor demons are made, Con,” Sylvie said mildly, her narrowed eyes giving the lie to her calm voice. She circled the human corpse on the floor of the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Savannah, tapping her chin thoughtfully. She nudged the side of the dead woman’s head with one high-heeled boot. “Still dead. Hmm. And that’s not what I was asking, as you very well know. ‘How were you made’ is human vernacular for how were you caught?”
The demon, its tail now drooping between its legs, tried to talk but could only make