Stomping over to his chair, Cora grabbed the whiskey bottle and slammed it down behind her. The glass shattered on the floor, and she enjoyed how loud it sounded to her. She wanted to break more things. If her world was going to fall apart, then it deserved the right soundtrack.
“You could have prevented all of this,” she lashed out. “You’re the one who solved Bianca’s clue for him. You’re the one who told him where to go so he could walk right into her trap. He would still be here if it weren’t for you.”
“No, he wouldn’t be!” Baylin shouted, jumping to his feet and forcing her to take a step back. “Saiden ain’t no gobshite, Cora. He’s smart. Wicked smart. If I hadn’t given him the answer, he would have sussed it out before he reached the front gate. It wasn’t exactlycomplicated to figure out that it was the Hydra Warehouse.”
She neglected to inform him that she wouldn’t have gotten it save for Tressa filling her in. But in reality, how many people knew what Sacramento’s slogan was? Not to mention knowing that a many-headed monster was called a hydra. Cora made monster movies but not, you know,monstermovies.
“It doesn’t matter,” she gritted out. “You could have stalled him. Given him the wrong address.”
“That’s a gas,” Baylin scoffed. “Saiden’s ancient, but he still knows how to use Google Maps.”
“You could have done something!” she screamed in his face, cursing her new vamp senses when the whiskey smell wafting off him burned her nose like she just huffed straight from the bottle. “Instead you did nothing. You let him go off to die.”
“Me?” Baylin asked quietly, a low rage simmering in his eyes. “What about you? Do you know why he ran off to sacrifice himself for revenge? Because of you! He loved you, and you rejected him. It broke his heart when you said that you wanted nothing to do with him. So you can shut yer gob with that judgey shite because all of this is just as muchyour fault.”
His words slapped Cora in the face so hard they probably left a mark. What hurt worse, though, was the fact that he wasn’t wrong. The last thing she’d said to Saiden was that if he ever came near her again, she would shove a stake through her own heart.
At the time she didn’t know the whole staking thing was cliché, and that vampires could die in most ways a human could provided the wound was sufficiently lethal. Vamp healing was great, but it couldn’t save them from a well-placed bullet or a beheading. Regardless, the intent had been there. He’d seen the unfiltered hatred in her eyes and left.
Cora’s legs gave out, and she hit the floor knees first in the pile of glass.
It should have hurt. She’d fallen so many times from her muscles spasming that she was intimately familiar with pain. Slamming her joints into Baylin’s marble floorshouldhave sent a bolt of lightning through her, and yet there was barely a hint of mild discomfort.
Because she was a vampire she would never again have to feel all the aches and pains of a frail human body. Would never have her muscles betray her at the worst time. Would never be scared to have dinner in public because she might choke and cause a scene. And most importantly, she would never die a slow and painful death confined to a bed while her illness stole her life away. Saiden had done that. He had saved her from that fate.
And by way of thanks, she told him to go to hell.
It really was all her fault.
“He didn’t give me any time,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “I was just so upset at first and… he didn’t give me any time.”
“He didn’t have any to give,” Raven corrected gently, kneeling at Cora’s right side while Tressa took the left. “From the very beginning, time has never been on your side. For either of you.”
“And now he’s gone,” Baylin said, reaching in a drawer to pull out a fourth bottle of Jack. “Even if we wanted to save him, and even if there was a chance we could appeal to the Coalition, we’d never get to Sacramento before my thick brother did somethin’ stupid.”
“Damn,” came a smooth, velvety voice from the doorway. “Do I have timing, or do I have timing?”
Cora whipped around to see who felt the need to make light of a terrible situation. She didn’t recognize the handsome blond man leaning against the doorframe, grinning like a Cheshire cat, but he looked like he just walked off the set for a GQ photoshoot. Fashionwasn’t her forte, but she was pretty sure his shoes alone could have paid the rent on her apartment for at least a couple months.
“Who the hell are you?” she growled. The last thing she needed right now was some smarmy asshat inserting himself into the worst moment of her life. She’d thought nothing could beat the day of her Huntington’s diagnosis in terms of heart-wrenching agony. She’d been wrong.
“Derrick, when did you get back?” Tressa asked, rising to her feet.
“Just now,” the cover model replied. “Eliana called me yesterday and said I should cut my vacay short. Looks like I made it just in time. So,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Shall we go save our wayward cousin?”
Cora frowned. “And how exactly do you propose we do that? Saiden drives like a cracked-out Formula One racer when he’s not in a rush. I don’t care how fast your car is, we’ll never catch him.”
The son of a bitch winked at her. Fuckingwinked.
“Who said anything about a car?”
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.
