Livia Reasoner - Dark Nights - Mistress of the Underground / The Vampire Affair

“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?