Bane's Choice (Vampire Motorcycle Club #1) - Alyssa Day Page 0,6

door.

“Did. You. Do. It,” he snarled, every atom in his body straining to kill, rend, destroy. “Did you kill him?”

Never mind that Luke was one of a very few that Bane allowed near him.

That Bane had brought Luke over into this new life.

That Luke had proven himself over and over again.

And Luke was suffocating to death in Bane’s grasp. He loosened his grip.

“Did you—”

“No! No, damn you, no, I would never do anything—” Luke stopped, choking and wheezing, bleak memory stark in his eyes. No doubt remembering the times that he’d nearly burned innocents to death when he first Turned.

First came into his fire-starter powers. Bane and Meara had been shocked when it happened. All vampires gained some small forms of magic when they Turned; it came with the gig. But they’d never heard of any vampire who could start fires with his mind.

It was a fucked-up power to have, for a creature who was even more vulnerable to fire than a human, that was for sure. But there you go: Luke’s life had been a disaster when he was a human. Why would Bane have imagined it would be any different when he became a vampire?

Remembering the ones he had killed, before Bane had been able to stop him.

More innocent deaths on Bane’s blackened soul.

Bane released Luke and flew back and away from the man before he killed him.

“He’s not dead,” Luke gasped. “Not yet. He saved a little girl—I happened to see the fire, but I was a mile away at a bar. By the time I got there, he’d already gone into the house. He wasn’t on duty, just happened to be passing by. Her bedroom was on the second floor, and he was holding her out the window for a couple of neighbors who were trying to find a ladder.” A coughing fit took him, and then he cleared this throat. “I got them both out. The kid’s going to be okay—he reached her in time, but—”

He stopped. Shook his head. “I cleared memories at the scene, don’t worry, but you need to get to Savannah General. Fast, if you want to see him before…before…”

By the second before, Luke was talking to an empty room. Bane pulled Shadows around himself and stepped into the Between.

Seconds later, he was on the roof of the hospital.

The two women standing at the edge of the roof, smoking and talking in the spring moonlight, never saw him. There could have been fifty humans on the roof—hundreds—and they never would have seen him.

He followed the smell of burned flesh to the room where what was left of Hunter Evans lay hooked up to wires and tubes and machines. The human’s skin—what was left of his skin—was charred through to bone.

And he was screaming.

Burns—burns were always the worst. Bane had seen far too many fires and far too many victims of fire in his lifetime, especially back in the days when buildings were built of wood. He had to clench his teeth against the urge to retch at the rich, greasy stink of burned flesh; had to clench his fists against the urge to look away from the ruin of his friend’s burned body.

The medical personnel in the room were moving with speed and purpose, but Bane needed none of them. Had no time for them. He knew the Reaper, and she was present in the room, already whispering her seductive call into Hunter’s ear.

Bane was almost out of time.

“Leave,” Bane told the humans, forcing so much compulsion into his words that they all scrambled to obey, not knowing why. One of them even thought as she passed him that she would go home immediately, lock her doors, and hide in her closet.

Even humans could sense the threat of an apex predator.

The Reaper, her outline only a faint shadow in the brilliant light of the hospital room, raised her head to pin her shining gaze on Bane.

“He’s not for you,” he ground out. “Not yet.”

She stared at him for a long moment and then acquiesced, fading to a mere shimmer and then disappearing, until a faintly whispered, “Soon,” was all that remained.

The room smelled of antiseptic and Hunter’s seared body, and Bane was at the bed before the firefighter—his friend—could draw another shallow, faltering breath.

“Look at me,” Bane commanded, and Hunter’s screams cut off instantly.

Bane stared into eyes drowning with agony beyond human endurance and sent a mental push.

You don’t feel the pain.

Hunter’s charred and blackened face relaxed by a fraction of