Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
Saiden
He took on nests of rogue vampires without hesitation. He put himself into the most dangerous of situations on a near daily basis, and not once did he feel the slightest whisper of fear.
Because he’d never had anything to lose before.
Saiden crept stealthily through the halls, keeping his threat awareness on high alert.
Three to four seconds was all the warning he normally got, but for a vampire it was more than enough time to avoid most attacks.
With his ears straining for the slightest sound, he searched for anything to indicate the presence of his family or the intruders.
Nothing. Which meant either the house was empty, or everyone inside was already unconscious.
Or dead.
Saiden shook his head. He couldn’t think like that. He could only focus on the facts at hand, and the facts were that he didn’t smell any blood.
He sped down the hall to Baylin’s room, hoping for a clue as to what occurred.
He wasn’t surprised to find it empty, but he was surprised to see the overturned Rockstar slowly dripping the last of its liquid onto the floor.
What happened here happened fast and not long ago.
Baylin would never abandon an energy drink voluntarily.
Beyond that, the room held no clues as to what could have caused a hasty departure.
A sharp icy feeling rolled over Saiden’s head, and he went preternaturally still, recognizing the ghost-like tingle that alerted him to danger.
Spinning on his heels, he sank into a half crouch, left arm rising to block the incoming attack he’d sensed.
Nothing happened, though. No blow landed. No foe was even present. Only heavy silence filled the manor.
What the hell?
His ability never failed him before. Never gave a single false signal in three hundred years. But if there was no danger around him then…
His heart jackhammered in his chest, and an overwhelming urge to go check on Cora swept through him. He needed to see that she was safe first. Then he would worry about his malfunctioning gift.
He turned to leave the room when a sound finally reached his ears. It was just a faint thud. Could have been anything really. But there was no mistaking the soft, pained grunt that accompanied it.
Lilith, no.
His ability had been trying to warn him about Cora. About his mate who was still out in the car.
He dashed at top speed back toward the front door. Bursting out into the night, he skidded to a stop on the marble steps when he saw what awaited him.
Cora hung limply from the arms of a female vampire. More worrisome was the fact that it was a vampire he’d never seen before.
Everything about the girl screamed innocence.
From the blonde curly hair, to the pink sundress, to the chubby cheeked face that made her appear barely eighteen.
She looked like she should be asking a boy to the Sadie Hawkins dance, not holding his mate with one arm while the other hand gently caressed Cora’s neck.
“Hello, Saiden,” she greeted, her voice filled with so much cotton candy sweetness that it made his teeth ache.
His body itched to race forward, to grab Cora and get her to safety. Then, and only then, would he come back and destroy whoever the hell this bitch was.
The only thing stopping him was the long, sharp nails dancing along Cora’s pulsing jugular. Nails sharp enough to rip out his mate’s throat faster than he could dive forward to stop it.
So he stood there, frozen in fear, and doing his best to let none of the turmoil shredding his insides show on his face.
“Who are you, and what are you doing with my dinner?” he asked, feigning indifference in the hope of bluffing his way to an advantage.
If he thought the girl’s voice was syrupy, then her laugh might induce diabetes. It filled the air and floated on the breeze, a tinkling melody that nestled into your ears and forced the widest and happiest of grins to your face.
Wasn’t that interesting. Saiden had thought Cora looked like a siren earlier, but this vamp really was one. It gripped him, that laughter, begging him to dance and play with her.
Luckily, he’d spent centuries learning to suppress Eliana’s pull, so this Mary Sue wasn’t sinking her psychic claws into him anytime soon.
“Nice trick. That normally work for you?” he asked, taking a slow step down the stairs.
He stopped advancing when the blonde’s grin turned wicked, and she pricked Cora’s throat.
It destroyed Saiden to stand there and watch as a thin rivulet of his mate’s blood slowly dribbled down to bloom across the collar of her t-shirt.
“It does, yes,” the girl replied. “Especially with the younger ones, and normally those are the only ones I care about. Or ‘cared’ I guess, since you came along and murdered them.”
Saiden thrust his hands into his pockets, the perfect image of calm and collected. “Oh, yeah? You’ll need to be more specific. I’ve killed a lot of young vamps.” He gave her his own wicked grin. “Some old ones too.”
Oh, she did not like that, he thought as the blonde’s face contorted into rage. He could practically feel the fury rolling off her. She wasn’t fooling anybody with her loveable prom queen act.
Her voice lost all its light and laughter, instead twisting into something inhuman and feral.
“You really don’t care, do you?” she growled.
“They’re all just nameless faces. You just waltz in, murder them, then curl up in bed as if you spent the day gardening.
Is that all we are to you? Weeds to be plucked?
A blight on your refined vampire society?
You probably don’t even remember Montrose. ”
Saiden pretended to pick some dirt out from under a fingernail.
Oh, he knew Montrose. He would never forget Montrose.
It happened about five years ago and was the first and only time he had been too late to prevent a nasty situation.
Three rogue baby vamps had killed a couple humans in Montrose, Colorado, and a janitor found the bodies stuffed inside a furnace that was down for unscheduled maintenance.
The city lost its mind when the mangled corpses were discovered.
Police pulled a fingerprint off the deceased, and that was it.
By the time he arrived in town, Baylin alerted him that a SWAT team was already on the way to the vamp’s still registered address.
If his team had found the rogues sooner, he might have been able to save them.
They weren’t insane from what he could tell.
Just three young men living in the suburbs that didn’t know any better.
But the cops needed a killer to give to the press, so he did the only thing he could do with little notice.
He placed a few sticks of dynamite at the back of the house, and once the police verified there were people in the home, he lit the fuse.
Boom. No more serial killers plaguing the town.
It still ate at him some nights. How they never even knew it was coming. Never had a chance to decide they wanted to be different.
If this woman sired those vamps, then he could understand her anger. It didn’t change anything, but a hint of empathy was there.
Saiden’s senses never left Cora as he ignored the blonde’s rant and acted oblivious about Montrose.
Cora’s heartbeat started to slow, the stream of blood down her neck flowing steadily.
He estimated she had less than a couple minutes before she bled out completely which meant he needed to piss this vampire off. Needed to force her to make a mistake.
He shrugged his shoulders in an exaggerated movement. “Why would I remember a specific kill? They’re all just rogues. It’s not like they matter.”
Bullseye.
An unholy shriek ripped from the girl, and she shook Cora like a ragdoll.
It took all his energy to keep up the casual facade when he wanted nothing more than to pull his mate from the psychotic vampire’s grasp and hide her away somewhere safe where she’d never suffer so much as a papercut for the rest of her life.
Please help me, Lilith, he pleaded. Less than one second was all he needed to tear the vamps head from her shoulders, yet it might as well be an hour so long as her nails continued to dig into Cora’s flesh.
“To you!” the blonde screeched. “They don’t matter to you. But they mattered to me. They were my children, and you murdered them because we don’t want to follow your stupid rules. Why do you get to decide, huh? Maybe it’s time for someone else to be in charge.”
Saiden held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Then take it up with the Ruling Coalition, and leave me to my meal. I get cranky when people steal my food.”
“Oh, is that what this is?” she asked, digging her nails in tighter so two more thin streams of blood raced down alongside the first.
Cora wouldn’t survive the torture much longer.
Blood dripped onto the blonde’s shoes, but she didn’t seem to notice or care.
“This human is just a snack to you? That’s funny because I’ve been watching you for a while now, and you don’t do ‘snacks.’ In fact, if scent is any indication, then I’d say this lovely creature was your mate.
” She took a deep inhale. “Yes, you smell delicious together.”
The words drained every bit of blood from Saiden’s face, and he dropped his mask of indifference. If the vamp knew what Cora was to him, then there was no point in trying to hide it. It was time for intimidation.
“If you know who I am then you know exactly what I’m capable of.
The kind of torment I can inflict. If she dies, there will be no limit to my wrath.
You will beg for a death that will never come.
I will spend every waking second of eternity ensuring you remain in a permanent state of unending agony. ”
“Hmmm…” the blonde mused, tilting her chin and staring into the dark as if considering something.
“See, the problem is that we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. You murdered three of my children, and I’ve spent years tracking you down for my revenge.
It only seems fair that I get to murder someone you love.
In fact, I’m the one with the raw end of the deal because I’m only going to kill one person.
I’m willing to call it square, though, given that this one happens to be your mate. ”
She bent down and ran her tongue down the length of Cora’s neck, lapping up the small bit of blood that pooled in the hollow at the base of Cora’s throat.
“I must say, Saiden, she tastes delicious once you get past that mortal medicine. If I were you, I’d have a hard time turning her and losing all that precious human blood. Consider this a favor from me to you. I’ll remove the temptation.”
“There is nowhere you will be able to hide if you do this,” he threatened through clenched teeth.
“Maybe that’s true,” the vamp acknowledged, idly stabbing another hole in Cora’s skin. Then another. “Maybe it’s not. Maybe I don’t care.”
He couldn’t even see Cora’s neck anymore, it was so covered in a thick sheet of bright crimson blood. She might not even survive another sixty seconds.
He had to do something. He refused to watch her die without a fight.
Coiling every muscle in his body, he slid one foot back to rest against the stair, preparing to pounce.
“Oh, you’ll care,” he purred. “You know, I think I’m going to kill you the same way I did your children.
Do you want to hear about it? How I shattered their legs and tore their arms from their shoulders.
How I poured gas over their twitching bodies and set them ablaze.
How I watched their skin slowly blister and peel while they screamed for help.
They died begging for you, thinking you might come and save them, but you never did. ”
His words, despite being completely fabricated, had the intended effect. The vamp curled her fist in anger pulling those sharp claws away from Cora’s delicate throat long enough for him to make his move.
The marble step cracked like a starter pistol as Saiden pushed off the step, flew through the air, and tackled Cora out of the vamp’s grasp.
Letting his senses guide him toward the best possible outcome, he twisted his body midair and wrapped himself around her.
He braced for impact as the force of his launch propelled them into the surrounding forest.
They crashed into a poor oak tree a dozen yards from the edge of the driveway, sending a fracture line up through its center. Saiden didn’t even feel the pain of the broken ribs or his freshly dislocated shoulder, the entirety of his focus on the bleeding human in his arms.
Her heartbeat was so weak he needed his vampire hearing to even know it was there. Seconds. His mate would be dead in seconds if he didn’t prevent it.
“Guess you have a choice to make,” the blonde called, and Saiden whipped his head up to see her standing next to the Aston Martin with its keys spinning around one manicured finger. “What’ll it be? Save the girl or get revenge. We both know that I win either way.”
Then she blew him a kiss and hopped in the car.
He barely registered the door slamming and the vehicle speeding off down the road because none of that mattered. Cora was dying. Not in a year, not in a couple years. Now.
He had the ability to change her fate, but if he did she might never forgive him. Not that he could blame her. Forcing his existence on someone who didn’t choose it wasn’t the same as signing them up for a yoga class. Her entire world would change in ways that she already stated she didn’t want.
Maybe he really was the monster Cora thought he was because at that moment Saiden simply didn’t care. She could hate him for a thousand years so long as she did it with breath in her lungs.
Sealing his lips to hers, he let his vampiric Essence flow out of him.
Saiden hadn’t been conscious when Marquin turned him, and he had never been around for a new siring before.
They were so rare that many vamps never witnessed one.
Still, every vampire innately knew what to do.
From the time they were turned, they could feel the Essence inside them, itching to be released and shared with another.
He just didn’t realize it would be so beautiful.
Keeping his eyes open and his lips on hers, he held his breath while the faint purple glow emerged from his skin, surrounding them in a cloud of pure energy.
Stunned, he watched as the last hints of Essence floated out of him and started to pour into Cora, draping her in a cocoon of pulsing violet light.
His perfect, beautiful mate.
Then she took one last shuddering breath and died in Saiden’s arms.