be very much more than your friend.”
Her lips flattened. “Remember trust?”
“I don’t know how to trust.” His body was shaking—actually shaking—as if he were caught in a tempest.
What the fuck is happening to me?
He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be this person with zero control.
Couldn’t let her see the power she had over him.
He forced himself to release the grip he had on her arms and stepped back. “So. You brought wine? You think you’ll need to drink to put up with us?” His voice was a hoarse rasp, but Ryan gracefully pretended not to notice.
Her smile was shaky, but she gamely held up the tote. “Yes. Well, I didn’t know if you’d have wine around, and it might be helpful. I brought some sedatives, too, and some gear to draw blood, so we can start investigating and see what we can find out. Also, how does Meara feel about An American Werewolf in London?”
He laughed in spite of the turmoil in his mind, collected the bags she’d dropped, and started up the stairs to where Hunter hopefully still slept but stopped when he realized she wasn’t following him. He glanced back and saw her watching him with an expression of almost unbearable sadness on her face.
“Bane. I promise you can trust my word. Please believe that.”
A lump the size of a boulder was somehow in his throat. “I’ll try, Ryan. I’ll try.”
And he would. If he could just figure out how.
…
Luke was stretched out on a couch he’d dragged across the room, reading one of his beloved thrillers.
“What’s A Girl doing this time?” Bane asked him. “Riding on a train, looking out a window, being dead, being frozen, or being gone?”
Luke closed the book and yawned, stretching. “Solving her own murder, I think. Not very far into it yet.”
Ryan entered the room and nodded to Luke. “Hello again. How’s Hunter?”
“Entirely quiet for the past hour. Are you going to check in on him?”
“I’d like to, if that’s okay.”
Luke rolled off the couch and shrugged. “Not my call. You can hang out here with me while Bane checks on him, if you want, though.”
Bane glared at him. “Find your own woman. This one is mine.”
Ryan sighed. “And now we’re back to the shoe peeing.”
Luke glanced between the two of them, puzzled, but Bane started laughing. He couldn’t help it. His emotions—the same emotions he’d thought had died long ago, rusted by their complete lack of use, or perhaps even incinerated by the knowledge of terrible deeds—raced up and down between delight and despair like a child trapped on a roller coaster…in Hell.
He might not survive knowing Dr. Ryan St. Cloud, but it was certainly going to be fascinating to try.
He walked past Luke, who was staring at him, openmouthed, and listened at the door before opening it.
Silence.
Hunter was either asleep or preparing an ambush. Vampires were especially cunning just after the Turn. Bane cautiously opened the door, first making sure Ryan was still behind it, and looked in, to find Hunter, lying still as stone, on the mattress where Bane had left him earlier.
He listened for a moment, in case a speeding heartbeat disguised ill intent, but the man’s heart beat exactly as slowly as it should for one in the midst of the Turn. Was it possible the process was finally proceeding as it should?
“He looks a little better.”
He shot a hand out to block Ryan from walking into the room. “Let me check on him first.”
Every fiber of his being told him to keep her away, but he had agreed, as she was sure to remind him, and he was afraid that she’d take refusal now as another sign of his lack of trust.
Hunter was completely out cold, though. Literally cold—his body temperature had dropped considerably. Once the Turn was over, he’d warm up to a not-quite-human temperature, but for now his body was conserving energy for the process of becoming vampire.
“Is this what it’s supposed to be? This comatose state?”
“Yes. Maybe now he’ll finally progress as he should,” Bane said, but his unease was growing. Nothing about this Turn was going according to plan. Had it been the burns? Edge had been tortured nearly to death, but with blood and skin loss, not burns. Did it make a difference?
How could he ever know?
“Can I draw your blood now? There’s no point to try a sedative on Mr. Evans, it looks like, but I could experiment with their effects on you, if you’d be willing to take a bit