Chapter 45
Chapter forty-five
Saiden
Sunrise was just starting to peek over the horizon when Saiden pulled the Porsche up to the curb a few blocks away from his destination.
Reaching below his seat, he tapped a hidden switch, and an all too familiar click sounded from the trunk.
Conditioned by hundreds of missions, a cold kind of confidence washed through his chest. Neither soothing nor calming, it was the guarantee of violence, and as sure as the moon rises each night, death would soon follow.
Exiting the Porsche, Saiden went to the trunk, knocked a few skeins of yarn aside, and removed the unlocked false bottom to reveal rows of weapons that glinted in the morning light.
Saiden slipped on a tactical vest with the kind of smooth grace only attained with years of repetition, then began loading the pockets with his assortment of throwing daggers, mace, and flash-bang grenades, snatching up each new item before the previous had finished settling into place.
There was nothing Bianca could throw at him that he wasn’t prepared for.
Lastly, he pulled out one final surprise that he nestled into the elastic webbing across his chest then yanked on his leather jacket.
Saiden eased the lid of the trunk shut and took in the dingy warehouse district around him.
The golden light of the new day cast the city in a sepia tone that didn’t feel right for what he was about to do.
Revenge was something best saved for the dark of night when the shadows ruled and you could hide all your dirty deeds.
But he didn’t exactly have the luxury of time to wait for nightfall.
If by some miracle he survived, then he needed to be back at the compound when the Coalition arrived in just over twenty-four hours.
They would tag him as a rogue if he didn’t show up, and his family would be punished for harboring him.
Nobody else was going to suffer because of him.
Nobody except Bianca.
He would just have to take the unhinged vampire out in the light of early morning. And fast, before any commuters started filling the streets and ended up as collateral damage.
Saiden approached on foot from the west, slipping past the rows of boxy brown warehouses that filled the streets in this part of town.
He paused occasionally, ducking behind semi-trucks or vans to focus his hearing.
Mixed amongst wrapped pallets, trucks, and shipping equipment, multiple sets of booted feet moved with the smooth care and gentle step of someone sneaking through the dark on the hunt for hidden prey.
Well, those wearing the boots thought they were stealthy. Against Saiden’s hearing they may as well have been running around in honking clown shoes. These had to be freshly made rogues or possibly human thralls under Bianca’s spell.
He took a deep inhale to scent the wind for further intel.
Buried under Bianca’s sickeningly sweet smell that made him want to gag, he confirmed three humans among the standard odors of the warehouse district.
Oil and manufacturing chemicals mostly. A faint whiff of something fruity and familiar danced by on the breeze, but it was gone before he could identify it.
Bianca was considerably younger than Saiden, but a century or two made little difference after a certain point.
If he made the slightest sound, she would hear him coming.
His only option was to silently neutralize the human thralls before they could raise an alarm.
A minor challenge for someone like Saiden.
He wasn’t the West Coast enforcer because he had the stealth of a hippo. No one saw or heard him coming.
Saiden forced himself to hold still while he analyzed the movements of the thralls.
One was headed closer to his position, so he blurred forward and dropped into a baseball slide beneath a parked semi-trailer.
Emerging on the other side, his extended foot slammed into the back of the human’s ankle.
Saiden caught the falling man and rolled to muffle the impact while he snaked an arm around their throat.
Thirty seconds later they were unconscious, hands zip-tied and mouth gagged with their own sock, and Saiden tucked them deep into the shadows under the semi.
Leaping straight up, his feet gently alighted on the roof of the trailer.
Three quick skipping jumps took him from semi, to forklift, to stack of wooden pallets, then finally dropping down atop his next target.
Saiden winced at the soft cracking of bone as he unintentionally snapped the human’s clavicle, but it wasn’t anything six weeks of rest and PT couldn’t fix.
Though Saiden quickly clamped a hand over the thrall’s mouth when they fell, his knockout shot to the temple didn’t land before a muffled cry of pain escaped out into the once silent morning.
Shit! Sloppy, Saiden. Sloppy as hell.
He trussed up the second thrall while he cursed his lack of control. I’m better than this, he thought, gently lowering the man into a nearby dumpster.
A dozen tingling daggers of ice suddenly plunged into his lower back.
In a flash, Saiden leapt up, kicking off the lip of the dumpster to flip backward through the air. His hands snapped out as he tumbled end over end, snatching a Mossberg pump action shotgun from the hands of the shocked human who had the weapon poised to fire.
Gripping the barrel with one hand, Saiden slammed the butt of the gun into the base of the man’s skull and grabbed their collar with his free hand, quickly easing them to the ground.
The three pawns were off the board which meant Saiden could hunt the queen bitch next.
If he was smart, he wouldn’t even confront Bianca.
He’d take her out from a distance before she even had a chance to run.
But this wasn’t a cold, calculated execution.
This was personal. Bianca stole his mate’s mortal life and sentenced him to death.
He was going to look her in the eyes when he killed her, and if that meant he burned too, then so be it.
Climbing atop a two-trailer semi, Saiden leapt from the massive truck onto the roof of the Hydra Warehouse. With all the agility of a ninja-trained jungle cat, he landed in a soundless crouch.
Holding his position, he switched his focus and allowed the noises inside the warehouse to filter up from below.
Well, shit.
Bianca wasn’t even trying to be quiet. In fact, she was singing.
Saiden felt the enchantment in her song reaching for him, whispering sweet promises, but he slapped the side of his face, and the siren call slid right off him.
He knew then just how easily she could have gotten to Donna.
Bianca’s voice was so powerful that most vampires aside from the oldest would fall at her feet, slaves to her bidding.
It didn’t forgive anything Donna had done, though. The bitterness he’d heard in the older woman was all her own. Bianca just took advantage of it.
He let his ears focus on the words of the gentle lullaby she was currently crooning. The lyrics sent a chill down his spine.
He clearly hadn’t been as stealthy as he had hoped. Bianca knew he was there.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat,
How I wonder where you’re at.
Up above the roof so high,
Like a demon in the sky.
Saiden let the song fade from his focus while he revised his next steps. He’d been aiming for the element of surprise, but that plan went out the window along with his patience. If Bianca wanted to get this over with, fine by him.
Saiden checked the small failsafe that was secured to his chest, then zipped up the leather jacket.
All pretense of stealth was abandoned when he strolled over to the nearest skylight and shattered it with one well-placed kick.
As the glass rained down into the open warehouse below, Saiden tossed in a flash grenade along with it, allowing the falling shards to mask the incoming explosion.
Crouching on the roof, hands clamped tight to the side of his head, he braced himself for the deafening sound.
As soon as the ringing in his ears faded enough for his heightened senses to return, Saiden dropped into the warehouse.
Landing on the concrete floor, the broken bits of glass fanned out around him.
His eyes swept the darkened space but registered no movement.
The place was completely vacant save for an office door at the back, rows of empty shelves, and a dust-covered conveyor belt.
Nowhere for him to hide, but nowhere for Bianca to hide either.
He maintained his position, assessing any tactical advantage to making a move. She was here somewhere. In his current position, she would have to reveal herself to attack.
“Come out, come out, and play,” he whispered, hoping to appeal to her unhinged side that saw all this as a fun little game.
He closed his eyes, directing his energy to searching the silence for any hint of her location.
It was so tiny, that little sound, and he wondered if she even knew one of her nails had scratched against metal.
He let out a low chuckle. “Really, Bianca? This is so cliché that I’m almost embarrassed for you.” Then he looked up, straight into the eyes of the blonde vamp hanging from the ceiling like the bat she’d just accused him of being.
Bianca hissed at him like something out of a Bram Stoker novel and dropped to the floor, her yellow sundress floating around her like a curtain of sunflowers as she fell.
She landed gracefully on black slippers with only a slight bend of the knees to absorb the impact.
He watched her plump her curls and smooth her dress since she obviously believed that appearances mattered in a fight to the death.
“You know, Saiden, despite the pain in my ears I’m still glad to see you made it,” she cooed.
Her voice held no sway for him and she knew it, but it was like she couldn’t turn it off.
Like years of enthralling everyone around her had warped her sense of reality until all she saw were puppets just waiting for their strings to be pulled.
“Yeah, I got your invitation. Really classy, by the way, compelling a bunch of humans. But I guess if that’s the only way you could beat me…” He let his words linger for a second then added, “No wonder you couldn’t protect your children.”
He saw the moment his verbal arrow hit its mark. Bianca bared her teeth, and a low growl slipped out.
“I’m sorry,” he mocked. “Is that a sensitive subject? How I murdered your progeny? How others like me have done the same for over a century?” He watched Bianca’s face grow more and more red.
Her actions might be unpredictable, but her emotions could be played like a fiddle.
“You’re a disease, Bianca. A virus. And you keep spreading corruption to innocent people. ”
Her eyes narrowed on him. “I’m a disease? Try again, Saiden. You and your bullshit Coalition have murdered their own kind for centuries. You have carte blanche to kill anyone who disagrees with you, but I’m the problem here?”
He hated the way she reduced his job to little more than butchery, but unlike her he could keep his emotions in check.
He let his eyes appear to wander over the desolate space, as if she wasn’t even worth his attention.
“I keep our kind safe. Secret,” he remarked casually.
“You would have us killing humans in the streets like animals. Practically begging them to seek out and destroy us all.”
Bianca let out a melodic laugh that was equal parts adorable child and insane hellspawn. “Is that what you believe I want? Oh, Saiden. You really don’t even know how to think for yourself, do you? You’re just the Coalition’s rabid dog. Do you even know why I started growing my family?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. You murdered your sire and lost your marbles. It’s not my job to help you find them.”
Bianca prowled around the edge of the glass shards as if they formed some kind of invisible barrier, when in reality she probably didn’t want to ruin her cute little shoes.
“Witty, witty, Saiden,” she purred. “I wonder what clever retort you will have after I rip out the throat of your freshly turned mate?”
And now he was done entertaining this bitch.
“You’ll never get the chance,” Saiden threatened, unzipping his jacket to reveal his ace in the hole.
His guarantee that no threat Bianca made would ever come to pass.
The off-white brick of putty strapped to his chest looked like nothing of consequence, but it was more than enough to accomplish his goal.
If he couldn’t kill Bianca in a fair fight, then he would take her out with a cheap low blow. Any means necessary to keep Cora safe.
Bianca assessed the slab of C-4 for a second then laughed. “Come now, Saiden. We’re vampires, not humans. I’m insulted here. We don’t fight with guns or bombs.”
Saiden let out a mirthless laugh. “And that’s why you’ll lose.
Why you’ll die here, Bianca. You think we’re still living in the 1800’s where you could get away with killing as you pleased.
Things don’t work that way anymore, and sooner or later you’ll expose us all.
You’re a liability, and I can’t let you leave this warehouse. ”
“Is that so?” she mused, picking at a bit of dirt under her dagger-sharp nail. “I don’t know, Saiden. Things didn’t work out so well for you last time we were in a standoff, or have you already forgotten?”
A growl rumbled through Saiden’s chest at the reminder. “You don’t have Cora as leverage this time.”
Bianca grinned. An evil, sadistic grin that made his blood run cold.
“Don’t I?”