Naughty Temptations

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

The battle raged outside all night long. Serena sat frozen and tortured through every bit of it. The grunts and the snarls. The reverberating howls of pain from countless, thunderous blows assailed her ears. Every few seconds heavy bodies smashed into the structure of Caden’s home at high speed, shaking it to its foundation. Yet nothing broke through this protective fortress Caden had had the foresight to build.

She hunkered down on the floor of the large foyer, her knees drawn up to her chest, and listened to the war battling outside. She refused to leave the foyer. As soon as Caden knocked on the front door she would damn well be right there to open it. Meantime, the violent sounds beyond the front door haunted her. She could only guess which grunts, snarls, and howls were Caden’s.

At any moment she feared Garoul and his fang gang would tear off the roof and drop Caden’s torn head into her lap. She had never felt so helpless in her life. If only Caden had given her the Blood Change before facing Garoul’s thugs, he wouldn’t be alone out there now.

As the hours ticked by until dawn, she covered her ears to stop the violent cacophony outside from leaking into her them, to no avail. Just when she thought she’d go insane, gradually the thumping, and shrieks, and cursing grew less until they finally quieted altogether outside. In fact, it was too silent outside.

Serena raised her tear-stained face to the dark window in the alcove of the foyer, her heart hammering against her ribcage. Was it over? Had Caden survived?

A dark form flew past the window. It slammed into the transparent material, shaking the frame. She started and let out a scream. But the window held, obviously made out of some kind of super strong stuff at Chase Industries, Inc.

A hard face drenched in rage appeared in the window. The face was handsome, were it not stamped by cruelty. Narrowed eyes brimming with hatred spotted her crouched in the shadows. She recognized Drake Garoul from the one time she’d met him.

His lips twisted into a rude semblance of a smile. “Well, hello, little cousin. You sure smell nice from here.” He slowly tapped the glass with one, pointed nail. It sounded like talons being dragged across a chalkboard. “Let me in, treasure.”

She cringed away from the window. “Go to hell!”

Garoul shook his head slowly. “He stole from me. Now I’m going to take from him. An eye for an eye. A fang for a fang. A Blood Mate for a Blood Mate. After I shatter him,” he said, full of more venom than a diamond back rattlesnake. “I’ll claim you as mine and take your body whenever I feel like it and drink my fill of you. Both will be often. You’ll take your disloyal cousin’s place. I’ll use you for whatever purpose I choose. I’ll enjoy defiling and debasing you. I’ll take pleasure in knowing your mind will know what I’m doing to you but you won’t be able to resist doing whatever dirty thing I command. If you displease me, treasure I’ll share you with my crew. Trust me, baby, they aren’t as couth as I am.”

As he ended his diatribe, he lifted Caden’s slumped body into view, his shoulder pinched hard in Garoul’s merciless grasp. Caden’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t struggling.

The monster continued, “You care for him. I heard your touching little farewell scene from out here. Open up. Or I’ll kill him. Slowly. And make you watch.”

The vicious vampire pressed the side of Caden’s face hard against the glass so Serena could see the cuts, the blood, and the bruises on his battered his countenance.

“No!” Despair clogged her throat. Without a second thought she ran to the window and pressed her hand against the inch thick glass that separated her from Caden’s bashed face.

Garoul’s dark voice echoed eerily through the pane that separated them. “Little darling, you don’t know how bad this can get. It’s over. I’ve won. Let me in. And I’ll let him live. Just long enough to watch me use his Blood Mate like a w***e and then drain her dry before twisting his head off like bottle cap.”

She stopped listening to the horror of his words. She couldn’t take her gaze off Caden’s unconscious profile pushed against the window. Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Open. The. Door.” With every word, Garoul slammed Caden’s head brutally against the window to recapture her attention. The transparent material finally fractured upon the last impact. A small spider web fissure appeared right in the area covering Caden’s parted lips that Garoul kept pressed against the glass.

Caden’s eyelids flickered weakly, the green of his irises flashing in her direction. Serena had the sudden, certain feeling she should press her hand against the crack near his mouth. The crack was small but maybe, just maybe…

Serena jammed the rigid thorns of the Vampire Bloom into the palm of her hand, slicing her skin apart, creating a bloody mess. She forced the wound against the crack’s thin, sharp edge. A little gush of blood oozed from her fingers, dribbling into the tiny chasms in the glass. Right where Caden’s slack mouth was pressed. She jammed her weeping wound into the small, jagged crack.

Caden’s eyes flashed open just as a purple streak of dawn bled into the night sky’s horizon. He bared his fangs. His tongue licked the red drops that leaked through the tiny fissure.

The sick smile melted off Garoul’s face and dripped down his chin. Then he, too, smelled the sticky liquid leaking through the glass crack and went full fang. Garoul slammed his fist through the fractured glass, trying to grab her throat. It was too late.

Caden licked the bloody smear off his lips, threw back his head and roared, rearing up with sudden power in the other vampire’s surprised grasp. In a blur, their positions were reversed. Caden’s forearm pressed inexorably across his enemy’s windpipe, pinning Garoul against the window.

Caden’s face was stone as he stared down upon his nemesis. The sun rose majestically in the east, chasing away the shadows of the long, violent night. Serena could see in the early dawn the unconscious bodies of Garoul’s fang-gang lying strewn around the grounds. They began to smoke incessantly, bursting into flames one by one when the sun’s full rays caressed them.

Slowly, the golden light moved toward the window where Caden kept Garoul pinned against the glass. He clearly meant to hold Garoul there until the sun reached them both.

“No, Caden,” she begged, flattening both of her palms against the blood-smeared glass. “You can’t.”

“He threatened you. He deserves to die for that,” Caden said in a dead voice, one she didn’t recognize. He increased the pressure on Garoul’s neck. The light was almost upon them now.

Serena shook her head. “Maybe. But you’ll die, too. I couldn’t bear that.”

His stark gaze swerved from Garoul’s face to hers. “Why?”

“Because. You’re my vampire in shining armor, remember? I want you in my world. Good times. And bad.”

At her softly spoken words, Caden’s eyes shone with a bold new light out of his beaten, bruised face. A tender smile pulled at his bloody mouth.

Garoul’s choked, evil voice leaking through the window wiped it away. “I’ll never stop until I’ve made your Blood Mate my eternal w***e. I’ll feed on her daily to keep me the strongest of all.”

Caden’s eyes turned to chips of green ice as he regarded the enemy under his arm. “You know what? No one is going to miss you, Garoul.” He increased the pressure on Garoul’s neck until the glass behind his head began to splinter.

Garoul seemed to rethink his untenable position, for he choked, “No. I demand trial by council. I demand justice.”

“Step away from the window, Serena.” Caden’s voice was calm and strong and she automatically obeyed him just as the full power of the dawn’s sun flooded through the window and washed over both of the vampires in front of it.

“I’m the head of the council, Garoul. I’ve seen all the evidence against you. And this is my verdict.”

Garoul’s body began to smoke and he struggled to get out of Caden’s iron grip. Caden released him just as the vampire’s body erupted into flames. Serena shielded her eyes from the sudden flare and when she looked again, Garoul’s charred form slid down the window and out of sight to the ground below.

Leaping toward the glass, she peered frantically out. Caden was nowhere to be seen. But there was a large pile of ash on the ground under the window.

“No! Caden, no!” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut tight against the sight.

Then she heard a familiar knock at the front door that weakly beat a distinctive tattoo.

She lifted her bowed head, her tear-streaked face turning toward the front door.

“Caden!” Serena raced to the security console and waited impatiently for the green strobe to scan her eyes and ask her to repeat her name. A second later, the door unlocked. She flung it open. The Vampire Bloom that hung loosely in her fingers burst into ash the instant the first sunbeam hit it.

Caden filled the doorway, standing unsteadily in the full sunlight, disheveled and badly beaten almost beyond recognition.

“Problem solved, honey.” He gifted her with a bloody grin and collapsed in a smoking heap at her feet.