Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,38
and the rumors are flying fast and furious.”
Bane’s vision skewed to a brilliant scarlet. “We need to find this Constantin. Fast. Any progress?”
“Not yet, but we will. Edge is on the job with the computers, and I’ve got word out to all the usual sources.” Luke scowled. “This necromancer worries me, I have to admit. I wanted to talk about it when you came back, but you were busy with your human.”
His human. He listened, focusing in on tracking the sound of her voice, and was relieved to hear that she was in the kitchen with Mrs. C, undoubtedly still pelting the housekeeper with questions.
My human. Luke said she was my human. Could it be possible?
Even as his mind toyed with the idea, bleak pragmatism told him it was ridiculous. Ryan St. Cloud was a healer who lived her life in the bright light of day—he was a predator confined to the night.
She could never be his human.
His woman.
His anything.
“Let’s move Hunter. And then I hear there are pancakes.”
Luke grinned. “Who doesn’t love pancakes?
They bent to lift Hunter together, although either of them could easily have carried the man to the reinforced room behind the tapestry on one wall of the ballroom’s alcove. It was symbolic—they were a team. A family. And now, they were bringing another member into the fold, so they’d do it together.
As they crossed the floor, a random thought occurred.
“Luke.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s your favorite movie?”
Luke missed a step, almost dropping Hunter’s legs. “What?”
Bane snorted out a laugh. “Never mind. Just something the doctor and Meara were talking about.”
Luke nodded and thought about it for a minute, and then, after they carefully put the firefighter on a bed, closed and locked the door from the outside, and Bane re-activated the magical wards that would keep Hunter safely locked inside, he finally answered.
“Cleopatra. With Elizabeth Taylor.”
Bane hadn’t expected that. “Really?”
Luke grinned. “Yeah. Liz Taylor was hot.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“What about you?”
Bane shook his head. “I have no idea. Let’s go have pancakes.”
“You’re not planning on having the delicious doctor for breakfast?” Luke dodged out of the way when Bane’s fist shot out, and he held up his hands in laughing surrender. “Just kidding. I promise to behave.”
With that, he headed toward the stairs. Bane followed more slowly behind him, his twisting emotions so tangled that he had no idea what he’d do if the primal side of his nature perceived any threat to Ryan.
Which was laughable, in any case, because the biggest threat to Ryan St. Cloud in this house—anywhere in Savannah—was absolutely clear. Not Luke, not Hunter.
The biggest threat to Ryan is me—and I still haven’t decided if I can let her live.
Chapter Seventeen
Ryan stared at everything. The enormous kitchen, built on the same scale as the rest of the mansion, wasn’t the least bit historically accurate. Instead, everything in it was state-of-the-art, like Bane’s bathroom. Where the bathroom had been marble and glass, this room was gleaming subway tile, shining quartz countertops, massive appliances, and a hanging rack of copper pots, with plenty of fresh herbs in pots lined up on the windowsills and potted plants of the decorative variety on other surfaces.
On the windowsills…
“How can you have windows? Do they, um, the vampires, not come in here?”
Mrs. Cassidy smiled. “It’s a special glass Edge developed. It doesn’t let in any of the harmful rays that might be a danger to them.”
“Edge?”
The housekeeper’s cheerful expression faltered. “He…you’ll meet him later.”
And then she turned quite deliberately to her pots and pans, signaling that she didn’t want to discuss the missing Edge any longer, so Ryan continued her survey of her surroundings. In spite of being a showpiece of a kitchen, it was clearly well used, quite possibly the center of the house. A discarded copy of the Savannah Morning News lay folded on one end of a massive wooden table that bore the scars and scratches of decades of use. A pair of glasses exactly like the ones Mrs. Cassidy wore sat on an open cookbook on the counter. Heaps of pancakes, bacon, potatoes, and fluffy scrambled eggs already sat steaming on platters on the table, but no plates or silverware were out yet.
“Can I set the table?”
Mrs. Cassidy glanced at her, startled. “Oh. Well, that would be lovely, but you certainly don’t need to do that. I mean, you’re a doctor.”
Ryan smiled. The elderly housekeeper, all white curls and comfortable roundness, had said doctor with tones of reverent awe that Ryan certainly didn’t associate with herself or