Worth Dying For (14 page)

“How long did she keep you like that?”

“I don’t know. Months I think. Maybe even a year but I can never be sure. My life turned into endless night and I lost all track of time. I slept during the day, when she left me alone, too weak to do anything else. I spent the hours of darkness either suffering her attentions or fearing her return.”

“Why did she let you go?”

“She didn’t. Her father found out what she was up to. Katerina was betrothed to another and resisted her father’s will by staying in America with me. As the head of The Fratia de Sange, he could not allow her to embarrass him in this way.

“It means Brotherhood of Blood,” he added, anticipating her next question. “They are an ancient society, rule by her father Ulrich.

“Eventually he sent word for her to come home or suffer the consequences and she took me along. I imagine she wanted to keep me as some kind of pet or as a distraction from the man she was being forced to marry. Her father had no idea I was there. She went ahead with the marriage and kept me in a separate wing of the house, chained to a wall much of the time.”

 
“She kept you chained?” The urge to cry caught her unawares. Imagining this impressive man suffering such abject humiliation turned her stomach. Bane dropped her gaze but not before she has seen the terrible effect the brutality had wrought on him through the expression in his eyes.

“Katerina knew I wanted to die. I’d begged her for death many times. She knew if she set me free, either another of her household would kill me on sight or I would beg them to.”

“But she changed you eventually?”

“She had to. Her father found out about me and ordered her to bring me to him. Katerina expected him to kill me and she didn’t want that—she did love me in her own twisted way. So she changed me to keep me with her.”

A brittle smile split Bane’s sombre face but didn’t reach his eyes.

“Things didn’t work out quite as she had planned. When I awoke, strong and burning with hatred for her, I tried to kill her.” Harsh laughter erupted from him and he shook his head as if stunned by his own stupidity. “I didn’t know then how futile it was. There are very few ways to kill our kind.”

 
“But didn’t her father punish you for trying to kill her?”

“He didn’t know I’d made an attempt on her life. Katerina only told him that she had changed me and begged him to let her keep me. Ulrich rarely refused his daughter—as long as she kept up appearances and didn’t embarrass him in front of his peers. So she had me right where she wanted—newly made, scared and ravenous for something I couldn’t put a name to. The first time she showed me how to quell the almost unbearable pain in my throat, I realised I needed her.”

“But I thought you wanted to die?”

Bane looked at his hands, as if remembering something he had done with them. “I had become no more than an animal, and like every other creature, survival became my priority. Katerina represented my only chance at the beginning.”

The story didn’t make sense. Nothing he’d said so far explained why the woman hated him so much. “So she got what she wanted? You stayed with her.”

“Yes, but only until I found out I had a choice. I clung to her at first because, despite the fact I hated her, she was all I had. But then my confidence grew and I didn’t need her
 
anymore. I confess I treated her pretty badly at times, whenever I thought of Mary in fact, but she seemed to enjoy even that. She’d tolerate anything to be with me.”

Amber could tell Bane wasn’t very proud of how he’d behaved towards his tormenter. Her chances of getting more details out of him were slim to none. The man before her seemed too decent to have done anything really nasty—but a part of her sent him a silent high five for taking his revenge.

“Then one day, another woman turned my head. Katerina warned me to stay away. She tried to act like she didn’t care and that it was simply a matter of my being her property, but I still remember the fear in her eyes. She was terrified of losing me. Finally, I’d found a real way to make her pay for what she’d done to Mary—for what she’d done to me. So I seduced Isabella and made sure Katerina caught us.”

Bane closed his eyes and his jaw clenched, as if he didn’t want to tell her what happened next.

Amber patted his knee. “I can see this is painful for you. You don’t have to tell me any more. I can guess where this is going.”

“No,” he almost shouted, his gaze intense. “You have to know what she is capable of.” She nodded and shut up again. He took a deep breath. “Isabella survived for about a day. Katerina waited until I left Isabella’s bed.” The hands resting on his thighs tightened into fists. “By the time I returned, Isabella had been destroyed. Katerina had…well, you don’t need the details.”

Amber shuddered. She’d seen what Bane had done to Milo. “I can imagine.”

She placed a hand on his still-clenched one in a tiny gesture of sympathy. His eyes closed at the contact and for a moment he seemed to accept her touch, but then a look of disgust crawled over his face and he slid out of her grasp.

“It wasn’t your fault, Bane.”

“I didn’t have any feelings for her. I wasn’t capable of that back then. I just wanted her.” His voice got so quiet she could hardly hear him. “Isabella became another sacrifice at the altar of Katerina’s ego simply because I wanted to punish my maker…because I wanted revenge.”

“You can’t hold yourself responsible for the actions of others. Neither Mary nor Isabella died because of you. They died because of Katerina.”

Bane stared at her, as if weighing her words before deciding how to respond. “Yet you blame yourself for Tom’s death.”

Several emotions hit her like a blow to the chest. Curiosity over how he knew about Tom at all stopped anything too painful getting a hold of her. “So you were you listening to David and me?”

Bane nodded, pointing to his ears with an apologetic grimace. “Forgive me. It’s not as if I can choose what I hear.”

Still in shock and stunned by Bane’s statement, Amber couldn’t express the anger boiling in the pit of her stomach. The abuse she wanted to hurl at him churned in her mind but she couldn’t make it come out of her mouth. He reached out a hand towards her but she ignored it, struggling to regain control. She couldn’t discuss Tom—not now, not ever—and especially not with Bane. Amber didn’t want to talk about it ever again.

Bane let her off the hook when he gave up waiting for her to tell him more and finished his story. “Katerina hates me because she thought I would come back to her once she removed my ‘distraction’, as she called it. But I walked away from her then and have refused her advances ever since.”

Grateful to be back on a topic she could handle, Amber grasped at the chance to keep his mind on his own story and off hers. “So how long ago was this?”

“About a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“And she’s still pissed?” Amber laughed at the thought. She’d met some bitter women in her time but surely nobody could stay angry for so long, not even an immortal.

Bane didn’t seem to find the humour. “She hasn’t allowed me to have a meaningful relationship since that day. I travelled the world trying to escape her clutches but wherever I went, she would know what I was doing and who I was with, and within a very short time the woman would be dead.”

“Fuck,” she said, taking a perverse pleasure in the disapproving glare she got every time she swore. “If she’s still that bitter and angry, why hasn’t she had you killed?”

“Because she still loves me and hopes I will return one day. It doesn’t matter to her how long it takes. She has nothing but time.”

Nothing but time
.

Amber tried to imagine what it would be like if someone had the power to make her so lonely and afraid of loving anybody else until the day she died. But it wasn’t too hard. She knew exactly how it felt. Wasn’t it what Tom had done to her?

Bane disturbed her train of thought by getting to his feet and stretching his massive arms above his head. Her gaze wandered over him. She was too amazed by the sheer size of the man to worry that he might think she was checking him out. But when her attention slid down to his groin, she caught herself wondering if everything on him was larger than normal. He turned away and she busied herself with picking some imaginary lint off her jeans rather than meet his gaze. Had he caught her looking?

His wry laugh shattered the heavy silence between them. “The sun is about to come up and I need to sleep.”

“You sleep?”

He ignored her, pointing to the entertainment centre and the huge array of books adorning the wall of the cave. “There’s plenty here to keep you occupied.”

“But what if someone comes?”

He walked away, peeling his T-shirt over his shoulders. “Amber, I’ll hear them long before you. Don’t worry. I won’t sleep for long.”

She watched the play of muscles across his back until he disappeared from view. So what? The guy was attractive. That didn’t mean she wanted him or had forgiven him for what he’d done—no matter how good his intentions.

She stayed on the sofa for an hour or so after his departure, thinking over what he had said. Amber stifled the giggles threatening to erupt from her every few minutes, putting them down to hysteria. Jesus, who wouldn’t be hysterical after the weekend she’d had? The silence buzzed loud in her ears, making the sound of her heart beat the only thing she could hear in the vast, empty cavern.

But he’s a fucking vampire!

The thought raced across her mind again and this time she couldn’t stop the laughter. Muffling her mouth with her arm, Amber laughed…until she cried. Hot tears coursed down her cheeks and she let them flow freely, her sobs echoing through the emptiness.

The next emotion to assault her was anger. Amber scrubbed away her tears with a clenched fist. The urge to storm in to where he slept and scream at him almost overwhelmed her. She wanted to beat the crap out of him. She hadn’t asked for his help and now her life was a total fucking mess because he hadn’t wanted people on his shitty little island. Who the fuck did he think he was? And what was with him complaining about her swearing all the time? He could fuck off—and she would tell him so as soon as he woke.

Her fury gave way to a sense of defeat. Even if she survived the nightmare that her life had become, there was every chance she would be charged with David’s murder. And she still didn’t know what Bane’s wife had to do with her and his reason for saving her.

Amber’s head started to throb from turning the events of the last few days over and over in her mind, and the need for a distraction sent her to the bookcase. Every classic she had ever heard of sat on the shelves. All of the books were well worn and looked to have been read many times. Some were even first editions. Amber whistled under her breath as she took a rough guess at how much a collection like this one would be worth—certainly enough for her to never have to work again.

She craned her neck, trying to see the upper shelves. A set of steps would have been useful but obviously Bane had no need of them and, in his defence, he probably wasn’t expecting company.

A large book on the lower shelf caught her eye and she pulled it away from the others. The huge bound volume took both hands to lift and she struggled over to the sofa with it, getting settled with her knees bent and her feet up on the seat before propping the book on her legs. Amber smoothed a hand over the cover, enjoying a moment of anticipation, unsure what she would find beyond the intriguing leather binding. Inside, the first page contained a beautiful and intricate drawing of the Bane family tree. The timeline came to an abrupt halt with Malachi and Mary Bane. He had been an only child and fathered no children. Neither of their deaths was recorded. She wondered at how he came to have the book. Had he returned to his family home?

She scanned through the pages, finding records of the births, deaths or marriages in the Bane family history, dating back as far as the Mayflower.

 
“They were rich,” she whispered, impressed by page after page of entries recording the family’s assets and details of the cost of building their ancestral home in England. The final records were of the purchase of the land and plantation his father had named Eden.

She closed the book and rested her head on the back of the chair, shutting her eyes—just for a moment—and considered what Bane had lost.

Why hadn’t he gone back to Georgia to live—and had he ever managed to bury his poor wife?

Chapter Eight

Bane leapt from the bed, ripped from his slumber by a sudden scream. Had he missed the sound of someone approaching? Reaching the living area before Amber had time to call out again, he found her safe and well but rigid with terror.

“What the hell was that?”

She stared at him without answering and he reached to give her shoulder a gentle shake, relieved when she didn’t instinctively pull away from him.

“Amber,” he said, trying to bring her back from the nightmare she appeared to be stuck in. She blinked twice then looked up at him, awake at last.

“What’s wrong?” she asked with a tremble in her voice, as if confused and afraid to find him standing over her. Her gaze flicked down to his torso and he was glad he had the foresight to sleep in his jeans—or he would have been naked before her.