have, that wasn’t even in the top hundred.
“Definitely not.” Then he turned, sensing a familiar presence, as Luke raced over to them and skidded to a stop a good ten feet away from the still-glowing doctor.
“What the hell is going on now?”
The epiphany slammed into Bane with the force of a speeding truck. “Oh no.”
Ryan pointed at him with one glimmering finger. “Don’t you ‘oh no’ me. The last thing I need to hear right now is ‘oh no.’”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t…this is…Oh, hell.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Or, should I say, the opposite of Hell.”
Luke and Ryan both stared at him.
“What?” she shouted.
“When every other solution is impossible, what remains is… Oh, fuck it. You’re Nephilim.”
Luke started swearing and backed another two steps away from Ryan.
“I’m what?”
“Your daddy was an angel,” Luke told her. “A freaking angel. We’re fucked.”
Ryan, the glow finally beginning to fade, wrapped her arms around herself and bit her lip. “I don’t… No. You’re wrong. My father was a financial consultant.”
Bane shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no,” he said gently. “The light, your ability to deflect blood magic, the glowing skin, even the taste of your blood…you’re Nephilim. Which means your father—your biological father—was an angel.”
Ryan blinked but said nothing. Then she blinked again and swayed where she stood. Bane tried to get to her, but the light smashed him back again.
Luke just stood and stared at her for a long minute and then started laughing. “You know, I can’t imagine Daddy is going to be happy about his little girl hooking up with a vampire.”
Ryan took a stumbling step toward Bane, the glow finally diminishing. “An angel?”
He clasped her hand with only a minor electric charge this time and then pulled her into his arms. “We’ll figure this out, I promise. We’ll—”
But she was suddenly boneless in his arms. She’d fainted. Or maybe the Nephilim power appearing had drained her. He wasn’t sure.
The only things he was sure of were that she was Nephilim, the necromancer would probably figure that out any minute, and a pissed-off papa angel might be on his way to tear Bane into multiple tiny pieces.
The world was suddenly a more complicated place.
“Fuck that. I’ll never let you go,” he whispered into her hair. And then he stepped into the Between and took her home.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Meara and Edge crowded into Bane’s room, barraging him with questions.
“Quiet,” he growled, carefully putting Ryan down on the new bed that had magically appeared in his room while he was out. He made a mental note to give Tommy a raise for installing a new bed and removing the remnants of the old one so quickly.
“Do you think we should take her to her hospital?” He pulled a blanket up over her still form but couldn’t force himself to move away from her.
“What would we tell them? ‘Hey, doctors, our human actually turned out to be Nephilim, and she burned out using her magic angel powers, please fix her?’”
Meara’s sarcasm made Bane want to punch something, but she was right.
Human medicine had no solution to this.
“I won’t give her up.” He turned to glare defiance at his sister and Edge. “I don’t care who her father is. She’s mine.”
“She might have something to say about that now that she knows what she is,” Edge pointed out before backing away, hands held up placatingly, when he saw the expression on Bane’s face.
Meara gave one of her elegant, very French, shrugs. “We shall see. You know the history, right?”
Bane shook his head. “No, I never paid attention when you were telling me about the conversations you had with those monks in France. What history?”
She sighed. “I knew it. Anyway, you know, of course, that the original vampires were the progeny of demons mating with humans, right?”
“Of course,” Bane said.
“What the fuck?” Edge’s silver eyes widened. “Nobody thought to tell me they were Turning me into a demon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Meara said impatiently. “We’re a separate race now.”
“Oh, fine. I just have a demon great-great-grandmother.”
Bane slanted a look at Edge, who sighed but shut up and made a go-ahead motion with one hand.
“So, as you also know, Nephilim are the progeny of angels mating with humans. But it doesn’t descend in genetics. The only Nephilim are those with an angel father. That’s why we thought there weren’t any being, ah, made anymore.”
“Apparently Ryan’s father was a naughty angel,” Bane said. “But how could she never know until now? Wouldn’t her powers