Page 62 of Don't Bite the Director
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 wassurprised 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 blondecurly 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 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.
