Bane, almost six and a half feet of deadly vampire, levitated in the air next to her and held his hands out, palms up, clearly using his powers to keep her from smashing to the ground.
And he wasn’t laughing.
Not even a little.
“I fail to understand why you find your own impending death so funny,” Bane said through teeth gritted so hard that his fangs might be in danger of breaking.
Ryan, still laughing, raised her own hands and flicked her fingers at Bane. Twin bolts of pure white light shot out from her hands and arrowed toward Bane, who waited until the last moment and then performed a flying somersault to avoid them. The light beams struck the topmost branches of one of the graceful old southern live oaks on the gently sloping lawn and sheared the branches clear off the tree.
Bane narrowed his eyes and moved his own fingers, and Ryan suddenly plunged toward the ground, only to catch herself with a cushion of light just before she landed, bouncing gently off it as though it were some kind of celestial trampoline.
“You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met,” Bane said, floating down to the ground. “Were you planning to slice off any of my limbs with that light?”
Ryan ran over and threw her arms around him. “Of course not. I like your limbs just where they are. The beams would have bounced off you, just like I bounced off the light, instead of smashing into the ground. Nephilim, remember? You have to quit treating me like I’m fragile.”
“You’re half human,” Meara drawled, stalking toward the pair. “You are fragile.”
“Well, compared to you, an armored tank is fragile,” Ryan said, still grinning. She was shorter than Meara, maybe five foot six, and curvier, too. Her long, dark hair, blue eyes, and ready smile combined to make her a lovely woman; her intelligence and warmth made her one of the kindest and most approachable people Hunter had ever met. She’d even put her own life at risk in order to help him when she’d thought Bane had abducted him from her care in the hospital for some evil purpose.
Then she’d found out about vampires and fallen in love with Bane, who, frankly, worshipped the ground she walked on—or, in this case, floated over.
Meara had confided in Hunter that the manor had been a dreary and often angry place to live before Ryan moved in. Only a few short weeks later, the entire atmosphere in the home had lightened.
“Love,” Meara had said, with one of her characteristically French shrugs. “It makes so many things better.”
“Hunter!” Ryan beckoned him to come closer. “How are you? I’m sorry I missed you before you went out. I had to work late at the clinic.”
Ryan, a doctor with a special gift of healing, thanks to her angel father, had resigned from Savannah General to work full-time at the Delacourt Free Clinic. She was its new director and was already making improvements, according to Meara, who funded the entire endeavor.
Bane and Meara were serious multimillionaires, the nearest Hunter could figure, which was just another surreal thing about his new life. He’d been surviving just fine on his firefighter’s salary before. Now he lived in a mansion with rich vampires and an angel.
It was like he’d died and woken up in the Twilight Zone. No wonder Alice had thought he was a ghost. The thought of her—the memory of how she’d felt in his arms—short-circuited his brain for a moment.
Alice.
He realized everybody was staring at him. Right. Ryan had asked how he was.
“I’m fine,” he told Ryan. “I was out having vampire lessons with Luke.”
She studied him with perceptive blue eyes. “And something else happened, too?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Something is different about you. You’ve been so downcast these past few days, we were worried about you.” She glanced up at Bane, who’d walked up and put his arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him.
“I wasn’t worried about you, not being a girl,” Bane said drily.
Meara exploded into movement and threw a lightning-fast kick at Bane’s head, stopping with perfect precision when her booted foot was an inch from her brother’s face. “Yes, we girls are so emotional.”
Bane calmly moved her foot aside with two fingers. “Exactly. Nice form, though.”
Meara laughed and lowered her leg and then put an arm around Hunter’s shoulders. “Come, little brother. Tell us about your night. And the woman you mentioned.”
A sharp pain in his gut reminded him of the reason he’d raced back. “Okay, sure. But I, ah—”
“Yes, of course. First, we will get you a snack. Then, we will have pie and discuss all manner of things, including why you smell like a wild animal.” Meara sniffed delicately, wrinkling her perfect nose. “This is sure to be an excellent story.”
He laughed. “Well, actually, there was this raccoon named Marigold…”
Chapter Five
Alice lifted the golden retriever into her arms, noting with dismay how little he weighed and how bad he smelled. He winced when her hand touched his shoulder, too, so there was probably an injury there. Thankfully she’d changed into old jeans and a sweatshirt before going back out to her van to retrieve the various bags and boxes she’d brought home with her. That’s when she’d seen the poor dog shivering in the chill night air next to one of her azalea bushes.
She carried him into her home and then through the corridor to the building behind her house. The shelter was a haven of warmth and soft lighting, and soothing classical music played at a low volume night and day.
She gently lifted him into a crate in the special needs room, next to the bathing station, and laid him down on a soft blanket, murmuring to him all the time, and then closed the door and fastened it. He watched her carefully with a wary intelligence in his eyes but made no move to escape or protest, only curling up in what looked like total exhaustion.
“I’ll bring you some food and water in just a moment, sweet boy,” she crooned, and his ears perked up as he watched her, almost as if he understood.
Since she knew nothing at this stage about his health except there was no blood from any wounds and she’d seen no fleas, she decided to feed him before anything else. She filled a bowl with a light supper of her special homemade creation of ground turkey, rice, and vegetables, guaranteed to be easy on a dog’s stomach, and put that and a bowl of fresh water in the crate with him. His eyes fixed instantly on the food, and he made a quiet moaning sound, but he made no move to lunge for the bowl. He waited politely for her to put the dishes down, pet the top of his head, and then refasten the crate before he reached out with one paw, pulled the food bowl close, and began to eat.