SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (42 page)

“I know I can, remember?”

Yeah, he remembered all right. She'd beaten him more than once during their workouts, but he'd been training hard and this time, he planned on coming out on top. Literally.

“Prove it,” he challenged and put his hands up in a fighting stance.

She arched a brow and her demeanor grew a tad too serious for his taste. “Are you sure?”

“If you're meaning to ask if I'm up to it – ”

“Are you?” she asked, but raised her hands and braced her legs slightly apart, ready for battle.

Her words stung more than any punch she could have landed. “Don't patronize me, darlin'. I'm fit enough to protect you and Charlie.”

* * *

Diana lowered her fists and examined her husband's features. The depths of his gaze revealed the onslaught of emotions with which he was struggling. Fear. Pride. Anger. They were a dangerous cocktail of emotions that could make him act rashly.

“I never said I didn't trust you to protect us, Ryder.” If anything, her fear was that he'd do anything, including sacrificing himself, to keep them safe.

He likewise eased out of fight mode and stood there, arms dangling loosely at his sides. His shoulders slightly slumped, as if in defeat. “You don't need to say it, darlin'. I can see it in your eyes. The worry. The doubt.”

She shook her head and slashed her hands through the air. “Not because I doubt that you can keep us safe, but because I worry that you'd fight to the death to do it. We've traveled down too long a road to have our journey end here, Ryder. To have it end with you dead because you let all those emotions churning in your gut drown out common sense.”

He recoiled as if slapped and she instantly regretted her words. But better they be out there and discussed than festering between them.

“Is that what you think? That I'm being irrational? Thoughtless?” he almost shouted and held his hands out as if pleading for her understanding.

She grasped his hands in hers and twined her fingers with his. “I think that something really bad happened to you and it's tough to deal with that. I know. I've been dealing with something like that almost all of my life. You helped me understand what I was feeling about my father's death. I want to help you deal with this, Ryder.”

For a moment she thought she might have reached him, but then he withdrew, both physically and emotionally.

“I've got to go. I promised Benjamin I'd meet him to talk over some information he gathered.”

“Do you want me to go with? I can get Melissa – ”

“No,” he said and wagged his head forcefully, wincing slightly as he did so. “This is something I've got to do on my own. Please try to understand that.”

“Okay. I'll be waiting for you,” she said, biting back her concern at what he might do with the slayer turned vampire.

“I may be late. Don’t wait up. You need your rest.” He leaned close, brushed a quick kiss across her cheek, and bolted in a blast of vampire speed from their gym.

Be safe
, she called out mentally and waited, but if he'd heard, he was intent on ignoring her.

So not good
, she thought, and headed to the body bag in one corner of the space.

Beating the crap out of it was a sure way to battle the frustration she was feeling.

But the little voice of the demon inside her said beating the crap out of him would have been much more satisfying.

Vampire Reborn
: Chapter Five

Ryder hadn't expected Richard to be much different than the rest of the slayers on the Council.

Like the others, he refused to meet them in his super-secret slayer residence. Instead, they had to meet in one of the areas beneath the stage in the theater at Lincoln Center.

The ballet company had just finished a series of performances and was now getting ready for the annual holiday run for the
Nutcracker
. Most of the company, stage hands, and assorted musicians had already left for the night, but the sounds of activity on the stage above them filtered down to where they stood to warn them others were still present.

“You're asking a great deal of me, Benjamin,” Richard said. He wore a white lab jacket from a nearby hospital, but he had removed any name tags or badges which might have revealed his human identity. He eyeballed Ryder directly, scrutinizing him the way he might some kind of specimen, and brushed back his leonine mane of salt and pepper hair.

“I'm asking that you help prove a belief that some slayers have had for millennia: that the source of our power and that of the vampires comes from one place.”

And could return someone to that same place. A very human place
, Ryder thought. Not that he was eager to go there. If anything, he needed to remain a vampire in order to safeguard his family.

Richard wagged his head emphatically. “I don't think I can do that.”

“Can't or
won't
?” Ben pressed.

With a negligent shrug, Richard said, “What difference does it make?”

Something snapped inside him. He surged forward and jabbed a finger into the slayer's chest in emphasis. “It makes a difference to me and mine, and to Benjamin. If something is happening in our bodies, we need to know. The Slayer Council needs to know if we can be human or slayer again.”

Richard shoved Ryder away with a blast of power so shocking, Ryder's knees weakened. The charge of slayer strength sizzled through his body, stinging like a jellyfish's revenge.

“Feel that, vampire? You'll never be human again,” Richard said, an ugly sneer on his face.

Fuck diplomacy
, Ryder thought and launched himself at the slayer, transforming into his vamp self in mid-air.

He hammered the slayer with his body, sending them both tumbling into a pile of wires and cables. The tangle of wires ensnared the slayer as Ryder pinned him to the ground, straddled the other man, and rained a shower of blows into the other man’s face before the slayer could mount any defense.

He was about to land another punishing punch when Benjamin snared his hand and with a violent pull, jerked him away from Richard.

Ryder whirled to battle him and found that Ben had morphed into vamp mode also. His cerulean blue gaze now bore the bright neon-green of the vampire and his fangs, shorter than Ryder’s thanks to his newly turned state, were visible past the edge of his upper lip.

“This is not the way,” Ben said, the warning growl of the vampire alive in his voice.

The slither and clank of metal against cement drew their attention to Richard, who was liberating himself from the mess that had trapped him. Ugly bruises marred one cheek and his jaw, and blood leaked profusely from the corner of his mouth.

“I was willing to accept that the Council needed a new way to work with the vampires and dhampirs, but now I ask myself, 'Why?'” Richard said and wiped away the blood with an angry swipe of his hand.

“Why? Because you're dying out, slayer. You kill your own, but call us monsters,” Ryder said. He laid a hand on his chest to make a point. “Inside there's a heart that knows how to love. That wants to protect his family.”

Richard scoffed. “Family? Your dhampir wife and child? You should have let them die, Ryder. All you've done is condemn them to a life of isolation and pain.”

The man's words hurt more than his blast of slayer power, maybe because in his gut, Ryder recognized the truth of them. Whether dhampir or vampire, they had to live their lives apart from others.
Alone as I had been for so long
, he thought, but then reeled himself back from that thought.

He was no longer alone. He hadn't been alone in a long time.

Pulling his shoulders back and raising his chin at a stubborn angle, he glared at Richard. “I'm not alone.
We're
not alone,” he said and gestured between him and Ben.

Richard laughed and shook his head. “Wanna-bes. When push comes to shove, you'll show your true nature, like you did just seconds ago. Inside you’re foul and full of malevolence. In time that evil will win out and it won't be pretty when it happens.”

Ryder glanced at Ben whose tight features revealed his anger. “It's time to go, Ben. If this is the most reasonable elder on the Slayer Council, I pity them.”

With a nod, Ben sadly said, “I do, too.”

The two men hurried from the area, leaving Richard to go his own way, probably back to the hospital to finish his shift.

They morphed back into human mode as they hit the street outside the theater. Ryder sucked in a deep breath of the winter air to tame the heat of the vampire and the lingering bite of the slayer's charge along his nerve endings.

“That went well. Not,” Ben said from beside him and jerked up the collar of his jacket against the chill air.

Ryder shook his head. “No, it didn't, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper, but his arrogance was too much too handle. You slayers obviously get a healthy dose of that during your training.”

“Yeah, we do,” the younger man said with a chuckle and a shake of his head of shaggy sandy-colored hair. But his tone turned serious as he said, “Death sucks it out of you, though, you know.”

Yeah, he did know. He had thought himself all brave and noble until he lay dying on a Civil War battlefield, the victim of a vicious vampire attack. At that moment, he'd have made a bargain with the devil for just another second of life and yet when he'd gotten his wish, he hadn't felt relief at first, only anger.

Anger like that which still burned in his gut from the encounter with Richard and needed to be quenched before he returned home.

He tilted his head in the direction of downtown. “I'm going to blow off some steam. Are you game?”

Ben's bright blue gaze widened in surprise. “You want me to come with?”

He shrugged. “A pint at the Blood Bank might be helpful.”

“No, thanks. I'm still not into the drinking in public thing, but I'll head down with you. I thought I might pop in on Michaela.”

And Jesus would just love that
, Ryder thought, and just in case, he said, “You might want to give her some warning.”

With a nod, Ben whipped out his smartphone and sent a quick text. He shoved the phone back into his pocket and said, “Ready to fly?”

“Whenever you – ”

He didn't get a chance to finish as Ben disappeared in a blur of vamp speed.

Ryder whirled and chased after him, dodging past the pedestrians on the street and in and out of traffic until they were in the high twenties where the buildings weren't as tall. There they shot up to the rooftops, leaping from one to the other. Seemingly flying until they reached the end of the Flatiron District and dropped down onto Union Square.

Michaela and Jesus lived in one of the condo towers just to the south of the square. The Blood Bank was even farther downtown on the Lower East Side.

With a brotherly clasp of Ben's hand, he moved away from the other man, but tracked his journey as he sauntered over to the tall condo building, his head buried in his phone as he walked. He wondered if Michaela had texted him back and if so, what she'd said.

Jesus didn't seem like the kind of man who'd take too kindly to her former lover hanging around a lot.

But Ben kept on walking in the direction of the building, so Ryder took off for the Blood Bank.

The vampire club was located in a small alley where only braver humans dared to venture. Well, either brave or out for trouble since the vampire club was regularly the source of some kind of violence. Except that things had gotten slightly better since a reformed and decidedly kinder Foley had taken over ownership.

At the mouth of the alleyway, he paused to look at the entrance to the bar. It was early so there was no line, only the bouncer whose main job was keeping the vampires from premature snacking on the patrons waiting to get in. Not that Foley was concerned with damage to the humans. It was more about making sure that the vampires had to pay for their drinks inside rather than getting them for free.

Ryder ambled to the door and nodded at the bouncer who returned the unspoken greeting and stepped aside to let him pass.

He swept past some humans lingering by the front door. They were dressed mostly in black leather with enough piercings and tattoos to send the clear message they were not to be fucked with.

Pushing on to the bar, it was close to empty and he was glad for it. He just wanted to enjoy a nice quiet drink on his own and consider all that had happened with the slayer. A great deal of his anger had already subsided thanks to the rush through the night. There was something about expending all that energy that always helped to tame the vampire and its baser emotions.

Emotions that Richard had said would one day overwhelm, only Ryder knew control was possible contrary to what the slayer had said. He regretted that he had lost control tonight and vowed not to make that mistake again.

He plopped down onto a stool and leaned back against the wall, his gaze drifting over the patrons and sizing them up. Feeling out the other undead and the strength of their life forces. Mostly fledglings for which he was grateful, although they could be bitey if they hadn’t learned to control their blood hunger. No older vamps who might be itching for a fight over their territory.

“Well, lookie here. If it isn't my good friend, Ryder. How are you and the missus?” Foley asked as he stepped over to him, wiped down the scarred counter of the bar, and placed a cocktail napkin there.

“We're just dandy,” he replied, but the bite was evident in his tones.

Foley grasped the towel in his hands and leaned on the edge of the bar. “Not having problems, are we?”

“Wouldn't you be glad if we were, but no, we're not. Just some other stuff going on.”

“Yeah, I forget you're a big man on campus now. On the Vampire Council. Friends with the slayers,” Foley said and then reached behind him for a bottle. He waggled it in question and Ryder nodded.

With a flourish, Foley whipped a shot glass from beneath the bar and filled it with thick black-cherry colored blood from the bottle. “Drink up. It's good for whatever ails you.”