Page 77 of Don't Bite the Director
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?”
Chapter forty-six
Cora
Guess I really do care about him,Cora thought as she gripped her seat tight enough to dent the metal. If she thought flying commercial was bad, nothing could have prepared her for flying in a Cessna 172. She felt everything in the tiny four-seater. Every bit of turbulence, every little burp and growl the engine made. She hadn’t been this nervous since she was eighteen, terrified that she and Jinx wouldn’t get into film school.
Cora clenched her eyes shut as they passed over a mountain range that really shouldn’t be so close to them.
“Not a fan of flying, little vamp?” Derrick asked over the headset, and she had to stop herself from cussing him out. The quippy Casanova had been poking her buttons ever since they first reached the airfield in Fall River Mills and she had seen the plane that turned her whiter than an emaciated movie vampire.
“It could be worse,” he offered. “We could have taken the Gulfstream G650. Those have a much higher crash rate.”
Don’t do it, she told herself.Do. Not. Do. It.If she and Saiden were going to have a chance, she couldn’t start their relationship off bymurdering his cousin.
The plane hit a patch of turbulence that dropped her stomach off the highest part of a rollercoaster, and Derrick let out a gleeful whoop of joy.
On the other hand, Saiden might understand. Anybody who spent five minutes with this jackass would understand.
“Derrick,” Tressa’s calming voice came over the headset. “You do realize that if you traumatize his mate, Saiden will turn your head into a birdhouse and hang it outside his room.”
