vampire bullshit.”
“Ryan. Dr. St. Cloud. You need to listen to me before I take you anywhere,” Bane said, subtly moving to block her way when she tried to storm past him.
“I don’t need to listen to anything. I need to see—”
“You need to see this,” he snarled, grabbing her arms and yanking her against his chest. “You need to know. Now.”
She shoved against him, but his grip was like steel. Finally, she decided she’d go along until she could escape and call the police, so she took a long, slow breath and nodded. “Fine. I need to know. What is it I need to know?”
He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look into her eyes.
“The vampire thing. It isn’t bullshit.”
And then he opened his mouth and showed her his fangs.
Up close and personal.
Still, she might have believed they were fakes, too, except for the part where he lifted her into his arms and floated up into the air.
Levitated up in the air. Holy crap!
She clutched his shoulders and a vicious rush of vertigo swept through her. She closed her eyes and fought to keep from being sick.
Suddenly, still floating in the air, a horrible realization smashed into her terrified, alcohol-fogged brain. “You really are a vampire, aren’t you? And you killed him, didn’t you? You killed Hunter Evans, and now you’re going to kill me?”
Bane closed his eyes and bent his head to rest his forehead against hers for a moment while she tried to come to grips with her new reality and probable impending murder.
“I didn’t even get to finish watching Die Hard,” she muttered.
“I told you. I won’t kill you unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Bane growled.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” she snapped, because if she was going to die anyway, what the hell.
Bane scowled at her. “You are a very rude woman. But if it’s the only way to allay your concerns, let’s go see Hunter. He’s asleep. Well, you’d probably consider it a coma, actually. And he’ll be out for almost three days, if all goes well.”
He slowly floated them back down to the ground, and her heart quit trying quite so hard to pound its way out of her chest. It was Savannah, after all. So, there were vampires. There were also pirate ghosts, or so people claimed. She could handle this.
She could handle this, she told her weak knees.
Bane caught her hand in his and led her out of the alcove and around the corner into another huge room, which was filled with a whole lot of nothing, except for a large table in the center of the room, with a man lying on top of it, sleeping. There was also a chair next to the table, in which another man was also asleep, and a small table next to the door they’d just entered, which held a tray with bowls, spoons, a basket of bread, and a soup tureen.
A faint rumble of appetite caught Ryan off guard for a moment, but then she forgot her stomach, the food, and the fact that she was standing in what appeared to be a ballroom in her pajamas.
Because the man on the table turned his head toward her, and his eyes snapped open.
His red eyes.
And flakes of burned skin fell off his body as he fought against the ropes she only just now saw were holding him down.
“Hunter,” Bane called out, releasing her hand and racing over to the man, who—impossibly—must be Hunter Evans. “No!”
The man in the chair startled awake and then lunged up and caught Hunter’s legs, helping Bane hold him down, and then Bane…
He…
Ryan’s mind tried to shut down. Her logical, scientific, always-rational mind decided that she’d had quite enough and tried to force Ryan to turn and walk out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house.
Far, far away from a place where the man she’d been kissing, only hours before, could rip his wrist open with his fangs and hold it out to a dying burn victim, so the man could clamp his jaws onto Bane’s wrist and drink.
She felt herself being torn into two separate and opposing forces.
Ryan wanted very, very badly to run away from these people. These vampires.
But the part of her that was Dr. St. Cloud? Dr. St. Cloud wanted to stay.
Terror fought scientific curiosity.
Scientific curiosity won.
Dr. Ryan St. Cloud took a deep breath and crossed the room toward the three men.
The three vampires.
“I’m a doctor,” she told Hunter Evans. “I’m