Chapter 41
They left the tower and sped straight to Cedric’s town house.
Raul was behind the wheel of his truck, LaToria riding shotgun and Everett in the back.
They were each armed with a stake. Raul wore his tucked into a holster at the small of his back.
Two vehicles carrying Raul’s guards raced behind them.
At the speed Raul was driving, they reached Cedric’s gated community in no time.
When he drove up to the security entrance, Raul didn’t bother to stop.
He wasn’t going to ask for permission to enter and he didn’t give a fuck about damaging property.
He stomped his foot down on the gas and barreled through the gates, the hood of his truck smashing into them and sending them flying to crash land on either side of the drive.
Raul parked in front of Cedric’s town house and got out his truck.
The sound of multiple car doors opening and closing echoed around him as his people followed suit.
He’d verified the building number and that Cedric was home before leaving.
Now he went directly to town house number eight, giving his guards orders as he walked.
“Martha, Tony, Charles, stay out here and keep watch. No one comes in after us. Juan and Petra, you’re inside with me. Hang back from the fight unless I signal you to join.”
Yes, sir, his team answered.
Adrenaline was pumping through Raul’s veins by the time he reached Cedric’s front door.
Again, he didn’t ask for permission to enter.
He ran forward and rammed his shoulder into the door like a battering ram.
It burst open, the locks no match for his furious strength.
The splintered wood panel was left sagging half off its hinges.
Raul ripped the door the rest of the way free and tossed it aside.
A vampire in an all-white butler’s uniform stood in the foyer.
He gaped at Raul—his eyes wide with fright—before he turned and ran the other way.
LaToria snorted a laugh. “Smart man.”
“Cedric!” Raul bellowed as he walked into the townhouse. “You can either come out or I can break down every fucking door in this place until I find you. Your choice.”
Long moments of silence followed his ultimatum. Raul stood there waiting, fists clenching and unclenching with impatience. The slightly elevated heartbeats of Everett and LaToria matched his own. They were ready for the upcoming fight.
Finally, a door opened across the wide expanse of the living room. Several huge guards—all of them vampires—stepped out. Cedric followed them, brave enough to smirk from behind his wall of protection.
“What are you doing in my house?” he asked in faux outrage. “Do you want more hot, sexy photos of sweet Ji-Su? Sorry. I’m fresh out.”
Raul didn’t let Cedric’s taunt get to him and he didn’t mince words when he stated his intention. “I’m here to kill you.”
Cedric put his hands on two of the guards’ shoulders. He pushed them apart just enough for him to lean past them and show off a smug smile.
“You can try.”
A growl rumbled in Raul’s chest. Cedric didn’t know who he was dealing with.
Raul flicked a glance at the guards. There were seven total—six lined up in front of Cedric and one standing at his side.
But Raul wasn’t worried. Not with Everett, LaToria and his guards there to have his back.
The human barricade wouldn’t stop him from getting to Cedric.
It might slow him down, but that would only piss him off more.
One of the guards on the end, a muscular, bald, barrel-chested vampire strolled forward, getting disrespectfully close into LaToria’s personal space.
“You bring a woman, in a pretty little dress and heels, to a fight? What’s she going to do with those soft, weak hands? Pull my hair?” He started laughing as if he’d told the funniest joke in the world.
LaToria laughed along with him—the hands the guard had mentioned demurely clasped together at her waist. But her laughter only lasted a few seconds.
In the next, all humor dropped from her face.
And before anyone could so much as blink, she backhanded the guard so hard he went flying several feet to crash into a wall on the other side of the room.
The impact created a huge man-sized crater in the drywall before he dropped to the floor.
LaToria tossed her hair back over her shoulder and sneered at the felled guard.
“Bitch, I was strong when I was human. Don’t test me now that I’m a vampire.”
The guard struggled to his feet, his face mottled purple with rage. He sped across the room to attack LaToria. With a powerful leap, she met him halfway.
The moment they crashed together, another piece of Cedric’s wall of protection peeled off to attack Everett. That left five guards before Raul could get to Cedric.
Raul went for the big, blond guard in the center—the one closest to Cedric.
He looked strong as an ox and the punch he landed to Raul’s gut confirmed it.
They fought, trading blow after blow. The skin on Raul’s knuckles split from the punches he landed on the vampire’s brick-hard jaw while his own jaw ached from the punches he took.
But soon enough, Raul got the upper hand.
He delivered a punch that cracked the other vampire’s orbital bone and immediately followed it with a kick to the knee that sent him crashing to the ground.
The blond struck the back of his head on the floor and lay there in a daze.
“Don’t make me kill you,” Raul warned. “Stay down.”
The only death he wanted tonight was Cedric’s. But he would kill these unfortunate bastards if they wouldn’t yield when beaten.
The blond looked as if was about to concede the fight. But then he flicked a glance at Cedric. And Cedric persuaded him to continue fighting.
“I’ll double the payout I promised in a bounty for each one of these Sanguis Syndicate fuckers you kill.”
Greed was apparently this man’s weakness. At the promise of more money, he shook off his daze and determinedly rose to his feet.
Raul sighed. So be it. He took the stake from the small of his back. It wasn’t easy to kill a vampire. Outside of a severed head or destroyed heart, vampires could recover from damn near anything. Using a weapon would make the task easier.
“This is your choice,” he said as he gripped the stake.
The blond snarled and came at him. This time the fight was even more vicious—they were both fighting to kill.
Raul ducked the fist that came at his head.
He stepped slightly past the guard and swung out with a brutal chop to the back of his neck.
The blow would have instantly paralyzed a human.
It only weakened the vampire, but that was enough for Raul.
He grabbed him in a rear choke hold to keep him in place as he raised the stake high in the air.
Realizing what was coming, the guard beat at Raul’s arms with weak, ineffectual punches.
Without hesitation, Raul brought the stake down in a swift strike and stabbed him straight through the heart.
He sagged in Raul’s hold as blood flowed from his chest. When Raul let him go, his lifeless body crumpled to the ground.
“Shoot him!” Cedric screamed.
Another guard pulled out a gun and fired at Raul. He dodged the bullet. But a second later, he heard a grunt of pain. Everett had been hit. He’d taken off his jacket and vest in the truck. Now, his powder blue dress shirt was stained with blood from the fresh bullet wound on his side.
“I’m fine,” Everett said before Raul could ask. To prove it, he grabbed his opponent’s arms and yanked, twisting until he ripped their forearms loose from the tendons that connected them to their elbows.
The guard stumbled away from Everett, screaming as their arms dangled uselessly at their sides.
“Shut the fuck up,” Everett snarled before he delivered an uppercut that knocked the screaming vampire out cold.
Raul whistled sharply and Juan and Petra jumped into action.
They attacked the shooter together. Cedric’s man tried to fight them off, wildly firing his gun but hitting nothing but the wall, the floor, and a lamp before he ran out of bullets.
Juan and Petra wrapped around him like a two-headed octopus.
They bit down on his neck at the same time, delivering a double shot of vampire paralysis venom. Then they let him go and stepped back.
Within seconds, the gunman’s body went slack and he dropped to his knees. He gave a slow blink before he slumped to the floor face first. He lay there unable to move, mouth open and drooling on the carpet. It would be a while before he had control of his body again.
One of the four guards left standing looked around at the dead and broken bodies littering the living room. Shaking her head, she stepped out of position.
“Get back in line!” Cedric shouted.
“Hell no. You ain’t paying me enough for this shit.” She abandoned Cedric, running across the room to the window. It was closed, but she dove through it anyway, breaking the glass in her determination to avoid maiming or death.
Three to go.
On the other side of the room, LaToria was clearly toying with her opponent, her expression bored as she gracefully spun away from the punches Baldy threw with his ham-sized fists. The man’s eyes glowed halogen bright with rage and his face was as dark as an eggplant.
“Stand still, you bitch.”
At that LaToria did go still.
“I hate when men call me that.”
The next punch he threw, LaToria caught.
She squeezed his fist, crushing the bones in his hand.
He was mid scream when LaToria used her hold on his broken hand to flip him over her head to the ground.
As he lay there flat on his back, LaToria raised her foot and stomped on his groin with her stiletto heel.
Under her foot, the bald vampire’s pants grew soaked with piss and blood.
Too in pain to speak, he vomited on himself before he passed out.
“Rude little prick,” LaToria said as she wiped the bottom of her shoe on a dry spot on his pants leg.
Two left.
Cedric’s smug attitude was gone and fear had taken its place.
He gripped the shirt of the guard at his side to tug him around to stand in front of him as a shield.
The other guard left was the tallest, biggest vampire in the room.
A true giant. He smiled, revealing a monstrously large set of fangs to match his massive body.
LaToria and Everett walked up to stand on either side of Raul while Juan and Petra stood behind him.
“We’ve got this one,” Everett said.
Quicker than Raul could blink, they shot past him and punched the giant on both temples, caving in his skull from the force of their twin blows.
The big man grunted a surprised ungh. He stood there swaying on his feet, his head now shaped like a bottle gourd.
Raul snatched him up by the front of his shirt and heaved him out of the way.
One guard remained.
“A million dollars! I’ll give you a million dollars cash if you get me out of here,” Cedric desperately offered his final guard as he cowered behind his back.
The last guard’s eyes lit up with excitement at the offer. He was built like a linebacker but young. Probably no more than forty years turned.
Raul shook his head to discourage him from doing something foolish. “I don’t like your odds.” Unfortunately, with a million dollars on the line, the young vampire wasn’t going to give up.
“Fair fight. Me and you. You win and I step aside. I win and we walk.”
Raul was fine with that. “Stand down,” he ordered his people.
Everett and LaToria stepped back to join Juan and Petra.
To his surprise, the young vampire brought his fists up and set his feet in an experienced boxer’s stance.
“Yeah. Bet you didn’t know I was a Golden Glove champion before I was turned,” he taunted with a cocky grin. “I’m going to knock you clean out and beat your—.”
He never finished his sentence.
While he was busy trash talking, Raul leaped forward, grabbed him by the head and twisted, snapping his neck. He didn’t sever the spine so the former Golden Glove champ wasn’t dead. But he wouldn’t be boxing anybody for a long time.
Cedric was left standing alone. He stared at Raul in terror before he spun around and tried to run. Raul was on him in an instant, grabbing him by the throat and dragging him back.
“I’m sorry! If you let me go, I’ll never bother Ji-Su again,” Cedric pleaded. “I’ll leave town. Leave the fucking continent! Please—.”
Raul backhanded him across the face. “Shut up. I should have fucking killed you when your sorry ass showed up to my ranch. Instead, I paid you off. I even gave you multiple warnings to leave Ji-Su alone but you...” He squeezed Cedric’s neck until he was red in the face and gasping for air.
“You wanted to hurt him so damn bad you couldn’t let it go.
So, no more pay offs. No more warnings. I’m not even going to give you another beat down. It’s over. You’re over.”
He picked Cedric up by the hold he had on his throat and slammed him to the ground.
“Aaah!” Cedric yelled when his back hit the floor.
He tried scrambling away on his elbows but Raul simply followed him. And with the path to the door blocked by Raul’s guards, there was nowhere for him to go.
“You can’t kill me!” he shouted with bloody lips, eyes cracked open wide in panic now that he realized his death was near. “I’m a LaMonte!”
“Were a LaMonte,” Raul said with icy calm. “Now you’re just a dead vampire.”
He jumped high in the air and came down hard on Cedric’s chest with both feet. He did it again. Then a third and final time, completely caving in Cedric’s chest.
Cedric’s end was noisy. Rib cage bones snapped with a loud crack. Air punched out of his punctured lungs like a popped balloon. Then came a tearing of muscle and squelch of blood when Raul smashed Cedric’s heart under his boot heel. And last, a death rattle in his throat.
Then there was silence. Cedric was dead.