Mistress of the Underground

by Lisa Childs

  A pressure spiraled through her—so tight that she squirmed, then writhed. And came. He swallowed her scream, then groaned against her lips as he joined her in release, pumping hot and fast inside her.

  He didn’t release her—or separate from her—until he’d carried her into his private bathroom. While she cleaned up, he looked away—a muscle twitching along his jaw as if he’d had no release at all, as if something still gripped him.

  Then she realized it was guilt. “I don’t hate you,” she told him again. “You must know that….”

  After straightening his clothes, he walked back into his office and pushed his hand through his hair. “There’s so much you don’t know…so much you deserve to know.”

  “Are you finally going to tell me your secrets, Ben?” she asked.

  “They’re not my secrets to tell.”

  “I actually used to worry that there was another woman,” she admitted.

  He flinched as if she’d struck him. “I would never cheat on you. There’s no one else.”

  “No one?”

  “Not another woman.” He lifted his hand to her face, brushing his fingertips across her cheek. “There’s only you.”

  The ringing of her cell phone interrupted whatever else he’d been about to say. She reached for her purse, which had dropped from her shoulder onto the floor next to the desk, but Ben caught her hand. “Don’t answer it. Let it go to voice mail.”

  “No, I need to get it. It could be…” Someone who would save her from facing any more pain, either from her past or from the future she couldn’t have. “Kate. Maybe she knows who the stalker is.”

  She glanced at the caller ID window before opening the phone. “It’s not Kate. It’s Renae. Maybe she’s looking for you. You left her your pager.”

  He sighed. “Answer it.”

  “Hello?”

  “Paige?” The voice was thick with emotion and fear and barely recognizable. “I—I answered one of Ben’s pages. I—I need to talk to him….”

  Renae. But the trauma surgeon had never sounded so rattled before. “What? What’s going on?”

  “It’s Sebastian. It’s bad! I need Ben….”

  “Oh, my God!” She pressed a hand against her heart. “Has he been in an accident?”

  “Paige, I need Ben. Only he knows what to do—”

  His face tense with concern, Ben took the phone from her shaking hand. “Renae, tell me everything.” He listened for a couple of seconds, then clicked off the phone.

  “Ben!” She stared up at him, trying to read his face, but he wore the mask of someone uninvolved, unemotional. He’d looked like that the day he’d carried her bags out to her car and watched her drive away. “Ben?”

  “I have to leave.”

  “He’s here—in the hospital, right?” she asked. “He’s hurt. It’s bad—” From the look on his face, it was worse than she could imagine.

  “He’s not here. He’s at the club.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “You’re risking your life, Paige,” he warned her.

  She wanted to ask how and a million other questions. But she didn’t want to keep him from Sebastian. It was his life that she was concerned about—not her own. “I don’t care. I’m going with you!”

  He stared at her—his eyes dark with so many emotions. He nodded, but then warned her, “I may not be able to save you both.”

  Chapter 15

  Blood gushed from the stake pounded into Sebastian’s chest. It squirted across the front of Renae’s scrubs and sprayed her face. Despite being an experienced trauma surgeon, her hands trembled as she held the scalpel over her patient’s bare chest.

  “I’ve got it,” Ben said as he assessed the situation, after rushing into the room. “Get cleaned up and get the hell out of here.”

  Her mouth fell open in shock. “But you need help.”

  He glanced around for Ingrid, but thank God his usual assistant wasn’t around. Yet. She couldn’t see a human inside the secret room.

  “I’ve got it,” he repeated. “You need to forget what happened. You need to forget that you were ever here.”

  “But—”

  “Go,” he shouted at her—so harshly that her eyes widened and the color drained from her face. Satisfied that she would now heed his warning, he turned back to Sebastian and concentrated on saving his friend. Again.

  Please, God, let me save him again.

  Last time Ben hadn’t known he could fix a heart this damaged. He hadn’t realized he possessed the skills necessary to reverse the trauma and the inescapable fate of a vampire with a stake through his heart.

  Sebastian was supposed to die, according to the legend of the secret vampire society. A stake through the heart was the only way to kill an immortal.

  Until Ben.

  Sweat ran in his eyes as he worked, but he blinked away the moisture and focused. Thankful he’d equipped the room the same as a working O.R., he irrigated the wound. If he missed one splinter, an infection would kill Sebastian…if he survived at all.

  “Dr. Davison…”

  He speared a glance at the young trauma surgeon. “Get out of here!”

  “Dr. Davison…Ben…” She clutched at his sleeve. “It’s too late. He’s lost so much blood. There’s nothing else you can do for him.”

  “I can bring him back,” he said, stating the unequivocal fact.

  And she stared up at him like he was crazy until realization dawned. “You’ve done it before,” she said. “I noticed the old scars on his chest.”

  “I can bring him back,” he repeated as he continued to flush the wound. “I have to bring him back….”

  “I know,” she said, her breath catching. “He’s Paige’s brother. He’s her brother, right?”

  As well as the scar, she must have noticed the age of his organs. Ben remembered when he’d pieced it all together, when he’d pieced Sebastian together the first time.

  “He’s the only family she has,” Ben said. “She can’t lose him.”

  “Then let me help.”

  He glanced toward the other door, not the one open to the hall where he’d made Paige promise she would wait so she wasn’t in his way when he treated Sebastian. He glanced toward the door that opened onto the sewer the secret society used as their private passageways to the Underground.

  “You’re risking your life just being here,” he warned her, as he’d warned Paige earlier.

  “If there’s a chance of saving his…”

  There had to be more than a chance. After their talk earlier that afternoon, Ben knew that Paige wouldn’t be able to handle losing someone else she loved.

  Paige’s knees shook, but she forced herself to walk toward that room at the end of the hall, the one that was always locked. But now the door stood open. She couldn’t keep her promise to Ben; she couldn’t wait any longer for news of Sebastian’s condition.

  She fought hard against the threat of tears—even though her eyes were already swollen from crying. Over her dead daughter. Her dead marriage. Not over her brother. She had no tears left to cry over him. He could not die.

  Ben had been working on him for more than an hour already. Over an hour she’d stood out in the hall, afraid for her brother’s life and afraid to find out what had happened to him.

  Everyone she’d ever cared about always left her. Was Sebastian going to leave her, too?

  She had to find out, and so she pushed open the door the rest of way and stepped inside the secret room. She blinked in surprise at the bright lights, at the sterile environment of steel and cement. There were no rats, no sewer—only Ben and Renae working desperately on the man who lay on the metal O.R. table.

  Sebastian had lied to her and Kate. Kate…

  She should call the detective, should report…whatever the hell had happened here. Blood spattered Renae’s scrubs. Paige would like to believe that wasn’t Sebastian’s blood—that Renae had gotten that way in the ER. But she’d been with her earlie
r.

  And Renae hadn’t brought with her the blood that pooled beneath the table on which Sebastian lied. More blood pumped into him through an IV.

  “How is he?”

  Renae glanced up, her eyes wide with dread and fear. And Paige knew.

  Ben’s gaze met hers, and the determination in his dark eyes eased some of her fear. “He’s going to make it.”

  A gasp of surprise and doubt slipped through Renae’s lips.

  “He’s going to make it,” Ben vowed, holding Paige’s gaze. “I promise you. He’s going to make it.”

  His assurance didn’t ease the tight knot of anxiety in Paige’s stomach. Ben had made promises to her before that he hadn’t kept.

  “Don’t give me hope if there is none,” she warned him. Because it would only hurt that much more if she lost him…

  The metal table creaked as Sebastian’s body tensed, then convulsed.

  “He’s coming around!” Renae shrieked—with even more surprise than she’d had for Ben’s pledge. “I thought he was dead. No human could survive an injury like that….”

  “An injury like what?” But as Paige asked it, she arrived at the answer herself as she noticed the bloody stake on Ben’s instrument tray.

  A human would not have been able to survive a stake through the heart. But neither should a vampire.

  Ben injected something into Sebastian’s IV, something that stopped the convulsions. “Paige, you and Renae need to get out of here. Now!”

  “But you need help,” Renae insisted.

  “I’ve got it now,” Ben said as he continued to work on Sebastian’s open chest. “You two need to leave this room before dark. No one can know you’ve been back here—that you know.”

  Paige wished she didn’t know—that she hadn’t put it all together. Even though everything suddenly made sense, it was so incredible—so surreal.

  “I can’t leave him.”

  “You have to,” Ben insisted. “He wouldn’t want you here. He wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “But how?”

  “It’s a secret no human can learn.”

  “But you know….” And he’d obviously known for a while but hadn’t shared it with her.

  “Because they need me, they let me live….”

  Renae shuddered, drawing their attention.

  “Get your friend out of here,” Ben told Paige. “She has nothing to do with any of this. You don’t want her getting hurt, too.”

  Her hand trembling, she grabbed Renae’s arm and tugged her from the room. With one last glance at the man she’d believed to be her younger brother, she closed the door behind herself. He’ll be all right, she assured herself, but…nothing would ever be the same.

  As he closed the wound in Sebastian’s chest, Ben breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re going to be fine, my friend,” he said. This was one promise to Paige that Ben could keep.

  Sebastian shifted against the metal table again—not in convulsions but as if he were awakening. From the last time he’d treated the vampire, Ben knew that anesthesia didn’t work with him. It didn’t keep him unconscious. Nor did it dull the pain. The vampire felt everything.

  “I wish I could do more for you.”

  Sebastian’s fingers flexed, reaching out. Ben took his hand. “Take your time. Rest.”

  Giving orders to Sebastian was an exercise in futility.

  “Gotta tell you…” Sebastian murmured, his voice a hoarse rasp. He licked his lips. “Gotta…”

  “You recover quickly,” Ben reminded him with awe in the speed with which vampires recuperated—no matter the severity of their injuries. “When you get stronger, you’ll tell me what the hell happened.”

  Metal creaked, and he glanced toward the door. It remained closed and locked; he’d locked it behind Paige and the young trauma surgeon. He lifted his gaze toward the security monitor and confirmed that the hall was empty. But the metal creaked louder and he whirled around to the other door.

  “I’m too late,” Ingrid observed as she stepped into the secret room from the Underground passageways.

  “For what?” Ben asked as he assessed Sebastian’s vitals, which were rapidly improving. He would keep his promise to Paige; he had to.

  “I’m too late to help you save him.” She walked around the room, studying the blood and the discarded instruments. “Who helped you?”

  “No one,” Ben lied.

  The dark-haired vampiress gestured toward his patient. “You didn’t do this alone.”

  “Yeah, I did,” he insisted. “It wasn’t that bad.”

  Her hand steady, when even the young trauma surgeon’s had trembled, she picked up the blood-soaked wooden stake. “It was bad.”

  “He’s tough.” Ben was counting on it—was counting on Sebastian recovering as quickly and completely as he had last time someone had driven a stake through his heart.

  “That’s not the adjective that comes to mind when I think of Sebastian,” Ingrid said, her fingers tightening around the stake. “‘Reckless’ is. And he’s so reckless that he puts us all at risk.”

  “He’s the one who’s hurt,” Ben pointed out. “He’s the one fighting for his life.”

  Ingrid shook her head. “No. He’s not.”

  Ben leaned closer to his patient, whose lashes fluttered as his eyes opened. “He’s doing better,” he said, allowing himself a satisfied grin.

  But Sebastian’s eyes—the same bright blue as his daughter’s—widened with panic and fear.

  To assure all of them, Ben added, “He’s going to be just fine.”

  But his friend’s gaze left his to fixate on a point over Ben’s shoulder.

  “I wasn’t talking about Sebastian,” Ingrid clarified for him.

  Then something sharp but too thin for a stake or a fang, pierced the skin on Ben’s neck. Wincing against the sting, he started to lift his hand to check the wound, but his muscles trembled, then numbed. And he dropped to the floor.

  “You’re the one who needs to fight for his life, Dr. Davison,” Ingrid advised in her creepy, husky voice.

  But Ben couldn’t fight. She’d given him an injection of the paralyzing drug. At least he would feel no pain….

  And he didn’t when she attacked. He felt no physical pain, but emotionally he ached for Paige. Just as she’d accused him, he always left her.

  This time he worried that he wouldn’t be able to come back to her. This time he feared was the last time he would ever leave Paige.

  Chapter 16

  Paige tried the handle for the door at the end of the hall, but the knob didn’t turn. When Ben had convinced her and Renae to leave a few hours ago, she had only shut it; she hadn’t locked it behind herself. Ben must have locked her out of his life again.

  She should have been used to his pushing her away, but pain and anger gripped her. Willing to fight now, she fisted her hands and banged on the door. “Let me in! Damn it—let me in!”

  Had he broken another promise? Had Ben lost Sebastian?

  Tears stung her eyes, and she pounded harder. She had a right to know everything. “Let me in!”

  If Sebastian had died…

  The knob turned and metal hinges creaked as finally the door opened. And Sebastian stood before her, his chest swaddled with bandages.

  “H-how…?” Was it possible that he was already up and on his feet when just hours ago he’d been impaled with a stake through his heart? “Are you okay?”

  He pushed his hand through his tangled, sweat-dampened hair. “Yeah, yeah…”

  Doubting him—as she should have when he’d first showed back up in her life—she glanced behind him, looking for his doctor to confirm or deny her broth—Sebastian’s claim. “Where’s Ben?”

  “Gone,” he replied, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

  “He left you alone?” She shouldn’t have been surprised. “He shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, and as if to prove the point, he joined her in the hall and closed
the door behind himself, hiding all the blood and medical paraphernalia from her sight.

  “You’re not fine,” she said as she steered him toward the office, where he dropped onto the leather sofa. “I saw what happened to you. I can’t believe you’re alive.”

  “I’m sorry, Paige,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked, opening her eyes to meet his gaze. “For lying to me or for scaring me half to death?”

  “You know who I am?”

  Biting her lip, she nodded.

  “Then you know what I am,” he said with a ragged sigh. “That’s why I couldn’t stick around. I couldn’t risk anyone figuring it out.”

  “Because no human can know and live,” she said, repeating what Ben had told her. “But I was just a little girl. I wouldn’t have figured it out.”

  “Your mother would have,” he pointed out. “And you needed her.”

  “I needed you.”

  Mom had done her best, but the woman had never had the most prudent judgment.

  “I was around, Paige. You just didn’t see me….”

  She shivered, remembering those times she’d awakened, feeling as though someone had been watching her sleep. “The money…”

  He nodded.

  The envelopes of cash had shown up when she’d needed them most—for food, for rent, for school…. “I thought it was you—that it had to be you.”

  He sighed. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “No,” she agreed. “So why did you come back to me? I was older, taking care of myself. I didn’t need you then.”

  He nodded. “You did. You just didn’t know it.”

  She shook her head, her anger returning. “Or did you need something I had? You needed Ben.”

  “I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know that Ben would be able to reverse a legacy.” He pushed his hand through his hair again, and this time his fingers trembled. “I just knew that someone had made a threat…about you.”

  “No.” She shook her head again. “I’ve never had anyone bother me until I bought this place.” She shuddered, knowing now what all her patrons were. Not just beautiful and not actually young…