And Sid watched.
His gaze fixed on Pinto where he lay on the floor, twitching, Aden lifted his hand, palm up, almost like an invitation. But then his fingers closed slowly, and suddenly Pinto wasn’t only twitching anymore. His eyes flashed open, and he squealed like a pig as he tried to shove himself up from the floor, tried to roll onto his belly and crawl toward the open door, bent on escape. Aden’s fingers clenched into a tight fist, and Pinto’s back bowed as he screamed in agony, begging, sobbing, before collapsing like a rag doll, his cries becoming high-pitched and mindless, all semblance of rationality gone.
It took a few minutes, while Sid stared in mingled horror and satisfaction, but Pinto finally, finally, died, becoming nothing more than a pile of dust on the cracked linoleum floor.
Aden’s arms came around her, pulling her away from the mess that had been Pinto, hustling her through the destroyed living room. “The women will be taken care of,” he assured her, seeming to understand that their welfare would be her first concern. “But I’m getting you out of here.”
Sid nodded, sensing he was riding the sharp edge of violence, that as much as he wanted to see her safe, he needed it even more. For all his tough guy, female-hating image, Aden had a protective streak a mile wide. He needed to protect the people he cared about. He cared about those women, because he hated slavery of any kind. He cared about his vampire children. Sid had seen the way he looked at them, heard the respect in his voice when he spoke to them. And he cared about her. She’d seen the relief on his face when he’d realized she was alive and more or less unharmed, the pride when he’d offered her the honor of killing Pinto. He cared, and he needed to see her safe.
So she let him hustle her out the door and down the sidewalk. They were moving fast, with Bastien a few steps ahead of them. The others had stayed behind, presumably to take care of the captive women and clean up any evidence that they’d been there. She’d gotten the impression that vamps were very big on cleanup, leaving no footprints for anyone to follow. No wonder so few people knew anything about them.
It reminded her of the nightmare at Aden’s office.
“Is everyone dead?” she asked, nearly stumbling to a stop as the thought hit her.
Aden didn’t even slow down, just looped an arm around her waist and kept going. “Is who dead?” he asked absently, and Sid noticed for the first time that he’d grown more tense, not less, since they left the house, that he was scanning the street, as if expecting trouble.
“Is someone—” she started, but she never finished her sentence, because he suddenly wrapped both of his arms around her and spun away from the SUV.
“Bastien, down!” he roared, the end of his words lost as all three of the SUVs they were heading for suddenly blew up in a maelstrom of fire and debris. Sid screamed as the explosion rocked the night, blowing them off their feet and sending them sailing through the air. They hit the ground hard, Aden’s arms still around her, cushioning her fall, as pieces of burning metal and molten glass rained down around them.
“SIDONIE, STOP,” Aden growled. Realizing she couldn’t hear him over her own screams, he put a gentle hand over her mouth. Her eyes were huge and terrified as they finally focused on him, but she nodded convulsively and sucked in the last of her cries with a gulping breath when he lifted his hand.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
More frantic nodding, her fingers digging into his arm.
Aden held her tightly. She was trembling. She’d survived Carl Pinto, had nearly taken the damn vampire out herself, and this was her reward. They couldn’t even walk down the street without some asshole trying to blow them up.
Aden stood, taking Sidonie with him. They couldn’t stay here in the open. Instinct already had him searching the night, his power reaching out to find his latest would-be assassin. He would be nearby. He’d have wanted to witness Aden’s demise for himself, either to claim the kill in the challenge, or to report to whatever coward he worked for.
Aden heard Sidonie whimper, realized he was squeezing her too tightly, and consciously relaxed his grip. He was beyond furious.
“God damn it,” he muttered viciously. He looked up and found all four of his vampires surrounding him, the three he’d left in the house having rushed out at the sound of the explosion.
“Bastien!” he called. His lieutenant limped over to his side, and Aden glanced down to see blood soaking his pant leg.
“It’s minor, my lord,” Bastien assured him. “What can I do?”
“Take care of her,” Aden said, transferring Sidonie into his care.
Sidonie rebelled briefly, twisting to look up at him. “Aden?”
He cupped her cheek, the gentleness an effort in the midst of his anger. “I’ll be right back,” he assured her. “You stay here with Bastien.” He forced himself to speak softly, to let none of the rage that was boiling his blood leak into his words. It didn’t fool Bastien, of course.
“Sire?”
He met Bastien’s gaze over Sidonie’s head. “Enough is enough,” he said grimly. And with that, he reached out with his power and tunneled through the shadows like a serpent until he found the assassin. Human, he was hugging the wall of an empty house, shivering in the face of his failure, too terrified of discovery to run, too stupid to realize he couldn’t hide from a vampire as powerful as Aden.
Aden dragged the coward into the light of the burning SUV, using his power like a hook dug into the man’s chest, making it as painful as possible.
“I know you,” he growled, recognizing the human Balderas. He’d been Silas’s daytime security chief, but he was also the one who’d tried to abduct Sidonie in the train station.
“Fuck you, vampire,” the human managed to gasp, pawing at his chest as if the hook digging into him was something physical he could remove. When he looked up, his eyes were filled with tears, but not with pain, or rather not that kind of pain. “You killed her!” he screamed accusingly.
“That’s what this is about?” Aden questioned in disbelief. “You want revenge for that stupid bitch Silas?”
“Don’t you—” Balderas’s words cut off, replaced by a guttural scream of agony as Aden twisted the hook of his power down into the man’s gut.
“This is how the game is played, human,” Aden hissed, reeling his power in, dragging Balderas with it until he was within arm’s reach.
“I loved her,” the human whimpered.
“Then you can join her.”
The hook became a poker as Aden rammed it up behind the man’s rib cage and into his heart, burning white-hot while the human shrieked in pain, until he had no air left with which to scream, until his heart was nothing but a piece of shriveled meat.
Aden let the body fall to the street. But he wasn’t finished yet. His head swung slowly from side to side, brow lowered, eyelids heavy over his searching gaze. But he wasn’t seeing the neighborhood he stood in, with its neglected homes and old cars, the cracked sidewalks and dried lawns. His gaze went far beyond that. Pure, raw power was driving this search, spreading out into the city, seeking out and finding every damn vampire in the greater Chicago area, moving beyond even that to the thousands of vampires in the Midwest, their lives gleaming in his sight, some bright, some bare pinpricks of light.
“This ends now,” he snarled. Gathering every ounce of power he possessed, sucking power from every vampire life he encountered, he sent out a raging tidal wave of command, claiming the Midwest as his own and daring any vampire to challenge him here and now, to wrest the power from him if they could, and to submit or die if they could not.
Throwing back his head, eyes closed, Aden stood with outstretched arms, hands open and palms up as he drew in the lives of the territory, one after another, first a trickle and then a flood. His power thundered as vampires surrendered, falling to their knees, to their faces, recognizing the new Lord of the Midwest.