vampires in america 7 - Aden by D.B. Reynolds Read Free Book Online Page B

his eyes. “You think our source was playing both sides?”
    “Maybe. But it’s too late now. This changes nothing, except that now we know they’re waiting for us. Stupid of them. They should have left a guard on the door. Ready, gentlemen?”
    His question was met by vicious grins and nods all around. “Let’s do this.”
    Travis yanked the door open on his signal.
    They were outnumbered four to one. No, Aden corrected, five to one. And Silas was nowhere to be found. Typical. First, the coward sent a team of incompetents to ambush him outside the hotel, and now this. Silas couldn’t dredge up enough courage to face Aden one-on-one, but wanted to be the next Lord of the Midwest.
    Not gonna happen, but that showdown would come later. Right now, Aden had to deal with the current threat, had to keep his own people alive. Because Silas or not, there were plenty of enemies here, all trying to kill him and his.
    Aden waded into the crowd of hostile vampires, his power lashing left and right, thundering off the walls of the small room. There was a small bar against one wall, and the stench of alcohol permeated the air quickly as bottle after bottle shattered. Glasses rattled and fell from shelves, while the industrial lights overhead swayed alarmingly on their unadorned cables. Gradually, the air filled with a fine gray dust as vampire after vampire fell before the combined might of Aden and his cadre.
    From the depths of Aden’s power, a dark force lifted its head and scented death, demanding to be set free. Drawing on two centuries of discipline, Aden flexed his will and forced it down, unwilling to permit Silas’s spies to carry word of his true abilities back to their master. But a taste of that dark cruelty must have shown in his gaze, in the midnight glow of his eyes, because Silas’s followers took one look at Aden standing there covered in blood and saw their deaths. They broke for the exit, but Bastien and the others got there first. No mercy, Aden had told his people, and they granted none.
    Finally, Aden stood in the middle of the room, smelling the dust and blood that were the inevitable remains of a vampire’s battlefield, searching for an enemy among the shattered remains of tables and chairs, the pile of glass and wood that had once been an antique bar front. No one rose from the rubble to challenge him. No heart beat within the twenty-by-twenty confines of the private room, but for those four who were under Aden’s care. And Aden himself.
    He knew what he looked like. Knew the cold glow of his eyes, the curl of his fingers into claws, and the gleam of his fangs dripping blood. Even his own children hesitated to approach him with echoes of his power still bouncing off the walls. Only Sebastien knew what the night’s work had cost him, the effort it took to contain the unique and gruesome ability that had come to him with his vampire blood. But he’d learned the necessity of rigid control as a child, a never-forgotten lesson that had stood him in good stead since he’d become Vampire. When he finally ran Silas to ground and forced a fight between them, he would hold nothing back, but the lesser vampires she’d left to die tonight had been more of her sacrificial lambs.
    Silence slowly filled the room. The dust settled, and the last shattered bottle drained its contents onto the debris.
    “Sire.” It was Bastien, of course. Of all of them, it was his eldest who had the least fear of him, no matter the circumstances.
    “Any humans?” Aden growled, barely able to form the word from the depths of his anger.
    “There were none in this room, my lord. A small grace, but Silas must have cleared them out in anticipation of your arrival.”
    Aden clenched his jaw against the incontrovertible conclusion from that bit of information. Silas had known he was coming. But how?
    “I’ll want to speak directly to your source tomorrow, Bastien. Someone warned Silas we were coming, and I want to know who it