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 togive 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 façade 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 matterto 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 todecide, 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.
