Читать книгу Dark Nights: Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair - Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 15

Ben expelled a breath but hesitated before drawing in another. He hated the smell of this place. The stench of the blood, the death, the sewer…

Sebastian shuddered. “Why’d we have to talk here?”

“Paige can’t see us together,” Ben said.

And she was out there, just beyond the steel door, down the hall in her office. The club had closed for the night; all the patrons had left but she had yet to go home. God, she was stubborn.

“Why not?” Sebastian asked. “I can’t talk to my ex-brother-in-law?”

Ben shook his head. “Not now. She’ll know what we’re talking about.”

“What are we talking about?” Sebastian asked.

“Her,” Ben replied. “You have to stick close to her. She won’t let me.”

Because she wanted nothing to do with him anymore. She wouldn’t take his calls or return his messages except to leave one of her own. I don’t want to see you. Or talk to you anymore. Please leave me alone….

He’d erased the message, but he would never forget the words—or the conviction in her voice. She’d been hurt and confused when she’d served him with divorce papers. She wasn’t confused anymore; she was certain she didn’t want him in her life.

“She won’t let me protect her, either,” Sebastian admitted with a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter if she sees us together or not. She keeps accusing me of hovering. She insists she’s not in any danger.”

“We both know better.”

Sebastian sighed again. “And so does everyone else. After Owen’s murder, I can’t convince anyone else to help me keep an eye on her.”

Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t trust anyone else. You have to protect her.”

“But I don’t know—”

“This is your mess. You brought me into this,” Ben reminded him, frustration gripping him as he remembered the first time he’d seen this room. With the young man he’d believed his brother-in-law bleeding to death on the table, a stake protruding from his heart. “You brought her into this—you brought her into the world.”

And he had broken the law of the secret society when he had. Vampires were not supposed to procreate with mortals; they weren’t supposed to mate with them, either. But that was a law too many of the undead had broken for it ever to be steadfastly enforced.

Sebastian’s eyes glistened with regret and love. “She can never know that….”

“That you’re her dad instead of her younger half brother?” A claim she had too readily accepted as fact when Sebastian had showed up at their door ten years ago. “Yeah, that would kind of blow the damn secret out of the water.”

“And if she learns it…”

“If…” Ben snorted. “Does it matter? She doesn’t know it now, but she’s already in danger.”

“Is she?” the other man asked. “It’s been over a week and nothing else has happened.”

“Someone is threatening her,” Ben reminded him.

Maybe it was time he threatened back. He’d already lost Paige once because of the damn secret. He didn’t intend to lose her completely.

But then a scream penetrated the metal door, the voice shrill with terror. And terrifyingly familiar. Paige.

Was it already too late?

Paige pressed a trembling hand against her throat, where blood oozed between her fingers. With her other hand she fumbled for the light switch in her dark office. Before she could find it, the lamp flickered on her desk, and the faint glow of the bulb penetrated the shattered green shade and illuminated the trashed room.

She lurched to her feet and stumbled over the legs of the chair she’d thrown. Keeping that hand pressed against her wound, she tossed aside files and books as she looked for her purse and cell phone. Like the chair, the purse was upended—its contents spilled. She needed to get a purse with a damn zipper. Spying the glint of metal beneath the desk, she reached for the phone just as strong hands closed around her shoulders.

Thrusting her elbow back, she writhed and fought to free herself again from her assailant. “Let me go!”

“Paige, shh…it’s me,” a familiar deep voice assured her as he turned her to face him.

“Ben!” She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. She’d never been so happy that he hadn’t listened to her and stayed away.

His hands trembling on her shoulders, he pulled her back. His dark eyes widened, and all the color drained from his handsome face. “You’re hurt! You’re bleeding….” His fingertips gently probed the wound.

“It’s just a scratch,” she assured him, feeling as if he needed more comfort than she did now.

His breath shuddered out. “It’s not deep, but I should take you to—”

“The hospital,” Sebastian interjected as he dropped onto his knees beside them. “You should take her to the hospital…if she needs stitches.”

She shook her head as she pushed aside Ben’s fingers and touched the wound. “It’s not bleeding much now.”

“I need to clean and dress it,” Ben said, his jaw taut. “Let’s get you to the E.R.”

She glanced back to her cell phone. “I need to call the police first.”

“What happened, Paige?” Sebastian asked.

She shivered. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. One minute I was doing paperwork. The next it was dark and someone grabbed me.”

“You fought,” Ben said, his voice gruff with satisfaction and surprise.

He had every reason to be surprised. Until a week ago in her condo, she had never really fought with him. Or for him.

She nodded and wished she had fought before.

“Did you see who attacked you?” he asked, his hands tightening on her shoulders.

“No.” She trembled now, but with anger, not fear, over the way she’d been ambushed in the dark. “I couldn’t see anything.”

But she’d heard the voice, this time outside her head, in a whisper so raspy she’d been unable to tell if it was feminine or masculine. She shuddered now as she remembered the warmth of the breath against her neck as she’d been told again, “You don’t belong here….”

Bracing her hands on Ben’s shoulders, she levered herself to her feet. But as soon as she stood, she swayed. Dizziness lightened her head and dimmed her vision. She drew in a steadying breath, but before she could regain her balance, Ben swung her up in his arms.

“I’m fine,” she said, even though she couldn’t stop trembling now that she’d started.

“No, you’re not,” Ben said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“I need to call the police,” she insisted.

“You can call your friend from the hospital,” he said as he carried her down the hall.

“Where did you come from?” she asked. “You and Sebastian?”

“We were out here, at the bar,” her brother answered. “We were having a drink.”

She glanced toward the bar, but no glasses sat atop the shiny granite surface. Would they have washed them before responding to her screams? She doubted it. “If you were out here, in the light, you would have seen who it was,” she pointed out. “Who attacked me?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw as Ben shook his head. “We didn’t see anything, Paige. We only heard your screams.”

“I’ll bring your car around,” Sebastian offered, running out the door ahead of them.

When he was gone, Paige focused on her ex-husband. “Where were you, Ben?” she asked. The question was one she had wanted to ask him so many times before. But she’d been afraid of the answer—afraid that he might have been cheating on her.

“I told you I’d be here for you,” he reminded her.

Like so many times before, over the years, he hadn’t really answered her question. And he hadn’t kept her safe.

Ben stared at the undead who had responded to his summons and gathered at Club Underground just hours after the attack. Instead of seeing them, he saw Paige’s face—her skin pale but for the blood streaking from the wound on her throat. He recognized the mark, but fortunately only one fang had broken her skin. But if it had nicked an artery…

She wouldn’t have been able to fight off her attacker. There would have been no screams for him and Sebastian to hear. No warning of her impending death.

He forced that image from his mind, unwilling to contemplate the horror of it. Instead, he focused on the horror before him. They didn’t look like monsters; they looked like movie stars: beautiful, sexy and eternally young. But he’d seen some of the things they had done to one another and to mortals. He, more than anyone else, knew what they were capable of.

“So what’s up, Doc?” Cooper West asked with a grin. He was like Sebastian—not a monster but a playboy. Still, he’d made mistakes…like Ben was beginning to believe this meeting had been a mistake. “Why’d you call us all here?”

Now it was time they learned what he was capable of—to what extremes he’d go in order to protect the woman he loved.

“Things have been happening around here,” he began. “The new owner of Club Underground has been receiving threats.”

“Because she doesn’t belong here,” a feminine voice murmured.

He glanced to Ingrid, but she sat silently, staring up at him with those dark, crazy eyes. “She owns this club now.”

“But she’ll never be the mistress of the Underground,” another voice murmured.

“Sebastian never should have let her buy the club,” Cooper said with regret.

“Well, if anyone harms Paige—again—I’m out!” Ben said as resentment fueled his rage.

“What do you mean?” someone asked.

“You can’t!” A chorus of variations of the protest rang out.

Cooper shook his blond head. “You’re the only one who can provide us medical treatment now.”

They’d had another doctor once, but he’d proved unworthy of the trust they’d put in him.

“Of course, Sebastian has broken more hearts than you’ve mended, Doc,” Cooper observed with a chuckle. Happily settled now, his playboy past behind him, Cooper was just amused and a little mocking that his friend still lived his old lifestyle. “Where is he?”

“At the hospital…”

Gasps emanated from the group.

“…with Paige,” he continued. “Someone attacked her again tonight. There are fang marks on her throat.” He slammed his fist onto the bar. The members of the society flinched, probably not over his anger but over the damage his gesture could have inflicted on one of the instruments of his special power. “This has got to stop! Now!”

“So you think one of us is threatening her?” someone asked.

He sighed. “If not one of you personally, then one of you must know who is.”

“Besides what happened tonight, what were the other threats?” Cooper asked.

Ben chronicled everything that had happened, then added, “The stakes, the bite tonight…whoever’s doing this is risking her discovering the secret. She’s going to catch on.”

“Then you know what has to happen to her,” Ingrid said, the madness bright in her dark eyes.

“If Paige learns the secret, none of you will be harmed,” he promised. “And I will continue to provide medical treatment. Nothing will change—as long as she doesn’t get hurt.”

“So you’re the one with the threats now,” Ingrid observed. “And you’re not in a position to issue any ultimatums to us.”

The hair rose on Ben’s nape at the ominous tone of her husky voice. Ingrid, alone, wouldn’t have concerned him, but he noted the nods of agreement from other vampires.

In calling them together, he’d acted on his rage—not his common sense. Because if he’d been thinking clearly, he would have realized how dangerous it was to be the sole mortal in the secret society.

He’d seen the atrocities some of them had done—to one another and to hapless mortals. Was he about to experience it personally?

“Where’s Ben?” Paige asked as she struggled to hold up her lids. Maybe Renae had given her a sedative, or at least something that had numbed Paige from feeling the pain of the stitches that had closed the wound on her neck.

A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s cheek. “He had to leave. He had to…see a patient,” Sebastian explained. Or lied on Ben’s behalf.

“Why did he have to leave then?” she asked. “Isn’t his patient here in the hospital?” Ben didn’t keep regular office hours; as a surgeon, he primarily worked out of Zantrax Memorial Hospital. The only office he used, besides the O.R., was a private suite on one of the floors of the hospital.

Sebastian nodded. “Yeah, he’s probably around here somewhere.”

“That’s good,” Kate said from where she stood next to the gurney on which Paige lay, a curtain separating her from the other patients in the E.R. “I’ll have him paged, then, since I have some questions for him.”

“I can answer them,” Sebastian offered. “I was there with him tonight…when we heard Paige’s screams.”

She flinched, her throat burning as she relived those terrifying moments—crying out in fear and desperation. She’d thought no one would hear her.

“You both were there?” Kate asked. “He was never out of your sight?”

“No,” Sebastian claimed. “We were having a drink at the bar.”

Paige bit her lip so that she wouldn’t call her brother on his lie. While Kate was her friend now, she’d always been a detective first and foremost. It was bad enough that Detective Wever had suspicions about Ben; Sebastian didn’t need to get added to her suspect list.

“I don’t have questions just about tonight,” Kate clarified. “I want to question him about how he happened to be with Paige the last time…when the vehicle was vandalized. And wasn’t he also at the club the night the flowers were left in her office?”

Sebastian shook his head. “You’re wrong about Ben.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Kate said.

“You don’t need to interview him, Kate,” Paige finally said, struggling to clear her vision and her mind. “I know he’d never hurt me.”

“He wouldn’t?” She arched a dark brow in apparent skepticism. “He hasn’t?”

“Not intentionally,” Paige insisted.

Kate shrugged, obviously unconvinced. “I’m going to see about getting him paged.”

As soon as the detective slipped around the curtain, Sebastian leaned over the steel railing of the gurney. “You believe that, right? That Ben has never meant to hurt you.”

She nodded. “Of course. But I have been hurt….” She touched her fingers to the gauze taped to her throat, but this was not the wound Ben had inflicted. That wound was on her heart.

“He regrets that,” Sebastian claimed. “He would do anything to protect you…even risk his own life.”

“What are you telling me?” The adrenaline that pumped through her veins chased away the effects of whatever drug Renae had given her. “Is Ben in danger?”

A muscle twitched along Sebastian’s tightly clenched jaw as he nodded. “I’m afraid that he is.”