Worth Dying For (21 page)

“Not even a nibble?” Solomon laughed when Bane took a step forwards, growling deep in his chest. He put his hands up in a mock gesture, as if to hold him off. “I’m kidding. Jesus, where has your sense of humour gone?”

Bane grimaced. “It died somewhere around the time that I realised I had to spend the rest of Amber’s life with Katerina.”

Solomon slapped him on the back. “But what are fifty or sixty years to a vampire? It’ll be over in no time.”

Bane left him on the hillside with strict instructions not to move and went to find Amber. As soon as he dropped through the cave’s entrance, he knew she had gone. Her scent, while still all over everything within range, was cold.

He checked the tunnel anyway, taking only seconds to get there. Her bag of supplies lay discarded on the floor of the empty space. Bane roared and ran back to the exit, hoping that Solomon didn’t find Amber stumbling around in the dark forest before he did.

Amber ran, struggling against the wild sage and moss that tangled around her ankles. The vegetation felt like strong fingers trying to hold her back and she suppressed a scream each time it touched her.

He had told her to wait—to sit and do nothing as death came for one of them. But she couldn’t. If death wanted her, then it would have to take her kicking and screaming, not cowering in fear. A prayer to St. Michael came to mind and she struggled to remember the right words when asking for protection and deliverance. Amber mumbled what she could recall between ragged breaths, finding little solace in it.

What could have been either a flash of light or a sudden movement caught her eye and she knew someone was upon her. Her muscles reacted to the danger and spurred her on as she let her throat open and a scream of rage and fear split the night.

“Amber, don’t run!”

She realised two things in a moment of terrifying clarity. First, that she had heard Bane’s voice behind her—and second, that it couldn’t be him who had just sped past her.

Amber slammed into something so hard that she rebounded off it, landing on her back in the leafy mulch, the wind knocked from her. She’d been running towards the danger, not away from it. She scratched backwards on her hands and feet, clawing at the earth for traction, unable to see anything in front of her but a large black shape, silhouetted by the moonlight.

“Don’t move,” she heard Bane say from somewhere a little closer than before but she couldn’t obey. Her legs hit a solid patch of earth and she launched herself upwards, lurching away.

Her feet caught on every tree stump and weed as she ran but she kept moving, rolling and falling until she could scramble back onto her legs again. Amber had no idea if minutes or even seconds had passed when she heard the bushes rustling behind her. Someone was following her, their pounding feet shaking the ground as they came for her.

She screamed. “Bane!”

A dark chuckle sounded close to her ear moments before an arm wrapped around her waist, jerking her backwards. Amber heaved at the violent pressure against her stomach, her arms and legs flapping uselessly when they continued forwards as her body stopped in mid-air. A growl unlike anything she’d ever heard from Bane rumbled through her captor. She struggled against the iron grip around her torso, her fingers pulling at the fabric covering the arm. Any doubt the thing holding her was male disappeared as she felt the hard ridge of an erection pressing into her. She screamed in outrage and fought harder.

“Yes, do more of that. The friction is delicious.”

The silky voice seemed at odds with the brute strength being used to hold her prisoner. The man had to be as big as Bane and equally as strong.

“Solomon, you have two seconds to put her down.”

“Bane.” Amber whimpered his name when she heard his voice and realised he was close by.

“No need to fear, my love. Solomon is going to get his filthy hands off you—right now.” The end of his sentence contained a very clear warning. Amber felt an answering snarl go through the man holding her but his grip loosened and she found her feet touching the earth again.

As soon as she could, she ripped from his arms and ran into Bane’s, screaming from the terror she had been unable to vocalise while Solomon held her so tight. Bane scooped her up and ran down the hillside, shouting over his shoulder for the other man to wait where he was. Amber sobbed into his neck, not lifting her head again until he stopped running. When she looked around, they were on the beach, next to a small boat. Bane had sat them down in the sand, still cradling her in his arms. Her small bag of supplies lay on the ground next to them.

“I don’t like him.”

Bane smiled at her, smoothing her frown away with his thumb as the warm night breeze dried the tears on her cheeks. “He scared you.”

“He scared the crap out of me,” she corrected. “I…I thought he was here to kill me. Why didn’t he?”

“Things have changed.” He stiffened and looked away.

“Well it can’t be for the better judging by your reaction.”

He smiled again without as much warmth. “They are much better. I’m going to need you to be brave for a little bit longer.”

“Katerina doesn’t want me dead anymore?”

“That issue has been resolved. We’ve come to an arrangement, shall we say.”

Amber struggled out of his arms. “No, Bane. I won’t allow you to die instead of me.”

He got to his feet. “She doesn’t want me dead, Amber. She just wants me. And if I go to her willingly, she will leave you alone.”

Her relief at the news that they had both been given a reprieve didn’t last as long as it should. She wondered when her priorities had changed so much. The thought of him being forced to endure an eternity with Katerina scared her almost as much as the prospect of dying.

“What if I refuse to let you sacrifice yourself to save me?”

“The decision is not yours to make. What’s done is done.”

She got to her feet and charged towards him, slamming both fists into his chest as hard as she could. His hands flew out and held her steady as she reeled from the impact. Amber pulled free to stare up at him, her breath coming in hard pants and she thought about attacking the big fucking jerk again. But when he reached out to stroke her face with a large hand, her anger dissipated.

“Malachi, I won’t let you do that for me. There must be some other way.”

“There is only one other way.”

Amber couldn’t see his eyes very well in the moonlight but she could guess they would hold the mixture of hope and resignation that she’d seen in them before each time he waited for her answer. He wanted to change her, and in the last few days, she’d come to realise that saving her wasn’t his only motivation. Bane wanted her to stay with him. She shook her head in reply to the question hanging between them in the charged air, not trusting her voice.

She wanted to scream at him, to beg him to take the decision out of her hands. Amber closed her eyes, willing him to just do it—to change her without waiting to be asked—to make her his victim. She had told him she would hate him for it but Amber knew she wouldn’t. But she couldn’t tell him. That would be the same as giving him permission and her eternal soul would be damned.

Amber could feel Bane’s breath on her face as he moved closer and she squeezed her eyes shut, afraid he would read her fear and misunderstand the reason for it. Bane pressed her body against his and she tensed, scared now of the pain. His hands moved up to her throat, cupping her head and tilting it back. Amber sucked in a breath, steeling herself against what he would do.

When his lips closed over hers, she choked back a silent sob. Tears rolled down her face at his gentle, almost reverent kiss.

“That felt like goodbye,” she said as he pulled away with a sigh.

“Almost.” He smiled and stepped away from her, turning towards the hills and calling out for his friend.

Bane took her hands, looking into her face as he explained. “Solomon will take you back. I trust him, Amber, but you can’t antagonise him the way you do me.” She wanted to protest but could sense the urgency of his words. “He will deal with the police regarding David’s death. Just stick to your story. Solomon and I are alike enough to convince them that you described him the first time around.”

Solomon came into view at the edge of the tree line, walking towards them slowly. The brute at least had the manners to allow them to talk in private, although she suspected he had heard every word.

Bane jerked on her wrists to bring her attention back to him. “I have to go.”

Another sob racked her body and she threw her arms around him. “Will I ever see you again?” When he shook his head, she balled her fists up in this clothing and pressed her face against him, sobbing her grief into his chest.”Please don’t leave like this.”

Bane leant down to whisper in her ear as Solomon got closer.”You have given me so much that I thought had been lost to me forever, and it makes me proud to be able to do this for you. I’m a better man for knowing you.”

He pressed a kiss into her hair and then lifted his head. “Solomon, take her now.”

Amber held on tighter, determined not to let go, but Bane pried her fingers from his shirt as Solomon gripped her shoulders.

“Get off me,” she screamed at Solomon, turning back to Bane and trying to grab at him again. He took a step backwards and out of her reach.

He looked over her head, speaking to the man holding her. “Take her home now. And heed me when I tell you that your very life depends on getting her there safely.”

She watched Bane turn and run into the ocean without a backward glance. Amber shrugged off the hands holding her and tried to follow Bane but jerked to a sudden halt as Solomon caught her by the collar of her shirt. He spun her around to face him, lifting her off her feet with a painful grip on her arms.

“I suggest you don’t give me any reason to ignore the wishes of that romantic fool and bleed you dry.”

Amber nodded to show she wouldn’t be any trouble, the anger in his black eyes scaring her silent and making her suppress the urge to rail at him for what he had forced Bane to do. She would grieve for Bane once she was safe again.

Chapter Twelve

Bane stayed in the water until they had gone, watching them speed away in the boat. He’d almost gone back when he heard Solomon threaten her but he resisted the urge to interfere. Bane had no choice but to trust him.

Grabbing some money and a change of clothes from the cave, he abandoned his home, rolling a large stone across the entrance to keep unwanted visitors out. Bane left the sheets that still smelt like her on the bed, hoping her essence would permeate the air and greet him if he ever returned.

The jet ski proved a useful way to travel to the mainland, enabling him to keep his clothes clean and dry when he would usually have swum.

The cargo hold of a red-eye from Augusta got him to New York before midnight and he snuck onto an overnight flight to central Europe, arriving just before dawn. The wasted hours hiding in the airport until the sun went down took a toll on Bane. By the time he climbed onto the roof of a train from Germany to Romania, he hoped for their sake nobody discovered him. The train got him to Romania—the country nearest to Ulrich’s territory—in less time than it would have taken him to run but the irony of rushing to get to a place he had no desire to be was not lost on Bane.

He passed through Romania on foot the following night, his progress made slower by the need to be extra careful in a country so familiar with his kind. The local folklore and legends regarding vampires in Transylvania and the surrounding areas irritated Ulrich immensely. A few hundred years of sloppy hunting practises and forays into Romanian villages by his unruly offspring had cemented the humans’ beliefs that vampires lived in the region. This brought many slayers and tourists to the area—but any who crossed the boundary into Vechea often didn’t know they had left Romania and never lived long enough to report on what they had found.

Vechea would have been a Principality had its rulers been human. Dark, forbidding forest sheltered the land on three sides, the forth protected by the Black Sea. Bane knew very little of the history save what Katerina had told him. Greed and the desire for power had driven first the Romans then the Saxons out across Europe and the continent had been divided into territories. The Fratia de Sange had laid claim to a small corner of the land, fighting off all invaders so effectively, Vechea didn’t appear on any map. The only humans who knew of its existence were either in Ulrich’s employ or dead minutes after they stumbled across the border.

Bane crossed into the ten mile wide stretch of land between Romania and Bulgaria sometime after midnight on the second day. He hunted first, exhausted by his travels and in desperate need of sustenance before he faced Katerina, and then made his way to the perimeter of Ulrich’s estate. The urge to stay hidden until the last possible moment battled with the need to ensure Amber’s safety. The latter desire won out when Bane remembered it was likely his approach had been watched and reported on as soon as he breached the border. He stepped out of the cover of the trees and crossed the bridge over the river surrounding the fortified town.

The tall white walls soared high above his head and he fought the panic which arose in his chest as he remembered how effective a prison it had been. He’d thrown himself from a window once, in a vain attempt to die and escape Katerina, but she had jumped too and caught him on the way down. From that day, he’d been chained whenever she was away.