Gunfire erupted from the human guards clustered in the front room, increasing as those who’d been knocked off their feet by the original entry found their wits and their weapons and began fighting for their lives. Freddy went down under a spray of bullets from a submachine gun. Aden caught the rich scent of his blood and sent a shaft of healing energy to his vampire child, pausing to grip his shoulder as he went past. Lifting his gaze to the human who’d fired the weapon, Aden grabbed him by the throat with one hand, cupped his other hand under the man’s chin, and twisted, breaking his neck with a speed and strength no human could hope to match.
He caught movement in the hallway and turned just as one of the guards herded several terrified women ahead of him into the front room. A quick glance told him his vampires had the other guards well in hand, so he turned his attention to the coward who would use slaves as a shield for his own worthless life.
“Let me go, or I’ll kill ’em all,” the man shouted, his voice cracking with fear. He had his arm hooked beneath the jaw of a teenaged girl, the barrel of his weapon jabbed against her neck.
Aden eyed the man with the kind of hatred he saved for those who would enslave others, who abused them for money or pleasure. “Go to hell,” he growled.
The man glared back at him, his eyes too bright, his heartbeat loud in Aden’s ears. He was high as a kite, his chest puffed up with overblown arrogance. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere, asshole. Now, get the fuck out of my way, or they all die, starting with this one.” He shoved his gun into the girl’s neck, and she cried out as it sliced into her skin, drawing blood.
Aden’s gaze went hooded as he studied the man. “That bit about going to hell?” he drawled, then snapped out a hand and wrenched the weapon from the man’s grip, seizing him around the neck with the other. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”
Gun shots sounded from somewhere else in the house, and the women all screamed and ran for the front door, only to find their way blocked by Freddy’s bulk. Not realizing he was there to help them, they cowered away, backing into a corner and clinging to each other, crying. Their terror was a palpable thing to Aden, like a bad taste in his mouth. They didn’t know if they were being rescued, or if something even worse had befallen them. But Aden didn’t have time to reassure them.
Meeting the terrified gaze of the human in his grip, he said, “Hell’s too good for you.” Squeezing so tightly he could feel the pressure of his own fingers meeting through the man’s flesh, he snapped the human’s spinal cord, then reached out with a thought and exploded his heart in his chest.
He dropped the piece of empty flesh, then turned to search the faces of the trembling women, confirming what his instincts had already told him. Sidonie wasn’t among them.
He’d taken the first step down the hallway when he heard her voice behind him.
“Aden?”
He spun around. She was leaning against the open door jamb of the kitchen. And she was covered in blood.
CARL PINTO DIDN’T cry out or even groan when Sid shot him. He gave her a shocked look, shuddered so hard he shook her with the force of it, and collapsed to the kitchen floor. He would have dragged her down with him, but Sid shoved away from him at the last minute, eyeing him warily as she backed away. She stood there for a moment, staring, waiting for him to go poof the way she’d always heard vampires did when they died. But he remained stubbornly corporeal, lying there on the floor, blood soaking his shirt, twitching like a man having a really bad dream.
Sid didn’t know what that meant. Would he be dead soon? Or would he suddenly rise like some movie villain to grab her ankle just when she thought she was free of him? She only knew he was down for now, and she intended to make sure he stayed that way. Her hands were shaking so badly she was barely able to press the magazine release on her Glock, and she nearly fumbled the empty mag when it dropped out of the grip. Drawing a deep breath, she forced herself to concentrate and shoved the empty mag into the pocket on the bellyband. It took her three tries before she managed to get her fingers around the backup magazine and slammed it into place. But by the time she was working the slide to chamber a round, she was feeling more confident, the hours of practice she’d put in on the gun range finally kicking in.
She started to lower the gun, intending to empty another ten rounds into Carl Pinto, when she heard women screaming behind her. The slaves! She’d left them in the bedroom, had hoped when she heard the fighting break out that they’d stay there until it was over.
Sid hurried to the open archway in time to see one of Pinto’s henchman with a gun pressed to the neck of one of the teenagers who’d been trapped in the room with her. And facing the gunman, his back to Sidonie, was the most welcome sight she’d ever seen. Aden. Her heart swelled with such relief, such complete confidence that she was safe, that she finally understood why all of those fairy tale princesses collapsed in tears at the sight of their heroes.
And what a hero he was. She gasped as Aden used his vampire speed to grab the slaver’s gun, seizing him by the throat and freeing the captive girl. Aden waited until all of the women were huddled in the corner, then . . . Ew. Okay, that was pretty gruesome, but it did the trick. The slaver collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut and, since he was human, leaving him quite dead.
Aden was about to start down the hallway to the bedrooms when she called out to him.
“Aden.”
He spun at the sound of her voice, his eyes flaring blue with power as he took in her blood-soaked clothes, her battered condition. She lifted a hand to her face self-consciously, but before she could say anything, he was there, wrapping her in his arms, holding her against his broad chest, and whispering things she couldn’t understand in her ear.
Sid let the tears come then, let all the fear and stress of the last few hours fall away as she held on to him. She would be strong again in a few minutes, but for now she let herself be the rescued maiden and cried with relief.
Aden pulled back until he could see her face. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, cupping her face in one big hand, rubbing a careful thumb over her tear-stained cheek. “Did he—” He drew a breath, searching her eyes, and she knew what he was asking.
“He didn’t touch me,” she said quickly. “Not like that.”
“The blood—”
“It’s mostly his,” she said turning to indicate Pinto who didn’t seem to have moved, but who still wasn’t dead, damn it.
A deep growl rumbled out of Aden’s chest as he stared at the fallen vampire.
“I shot him in the heart a bunch of times,” she said in exasperation. “But he won’t die.”
Aden grinned and ran a hand over her tangled hair. “Do your parents know you’re this bloody-minded?” He laughed when she swatted his arm and added, “You’ll do nicely.”
His expression turned grim when he switched his attention back to Pinto who, Sid was startled to see, was beginning to stir.
“He’ll recover if we don’t kill him,” Aden said. “But he’s your kill. Do you want the honor?”
“No,” she said immediately, patting his broad chest. She could live without that particular honor. “I did my part. He’s all yours now.”
“Good,” he said, and there was such malice in that one word, such cutting satisfaction, that Sid shivered, even though it wasn’t aimed at her. “Watch,” Aden murmured.