Christopher shrugged. “My brother asked me to come.”
He looked much the same physically as he had the last time she had seen him, but there was an energy about him that was different.
Christopher had fed. Though she could read his aura easily enough to know he had not killed, he had obviously taken human blood, probably just after their fight, when his bloodlust had been so overwhelming.
Sarah examined his face for a sign of whether he was going to help her or hurt her, but though his expression showed no anger, it showed no compassion either.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Nikolas offered, and Sarah laughed.
Sure,she thought sarcastically, wondering what vampires served to drink.A Bloody Mary—shaken, not sliced.
“What are you up to, Nikolas?” she asked instead.
“I invited you to my home. I can at least be a gracious host before you try to kill me.”
He was going to wait for her to move? That could make this a very long evening indeed, because she had been planning to wait for his attack. If she killed Nikolas now, unprovoked, she had no illusions that she would not need to kill Christopher, too.
“I’ll have something.”
Sarah turned to see a girl no older than sixteen. She was wearing a white cotton dress with silver embroidery, and her skin was fair, but not ghostly. Her hair was dark brown.
“Christine?” Sarah whispered, hardly able to believe it. Could this girl be the same wraith Sarah had seen earlier that day, huddled in a corner? She had obviously been cleaned up, dressed, fed . . . the change was so amazing, it seemed impossible.
“Yes,” the girl said lightly. “I never caught your name, though.”
“Sarah,” she answered. She shook Christine’s hand as if this were a normal situation, though it was absurd to be introducing herself to this girl now, in the midst of a den of monsters.
She views her world through the eyes of others./Black and white; there are no colors,/As she looks down upon a shattered youth./A shattered mirror shows a shattered truth.
Sarah had never doubted herself before, but this nymph in white caused her hatred of Nikolas to fade a bit. Christine stood on tiptoe to open a tin that was sitting on the mantel above the fireplace.
“Chocolate?” she offered, but Sarah shook her head.
“No, thank you.”
Christine glided out of the room again and Sarah watched her go, entranced.
“Nikolas, what do you want?” Christopher finally asked once Christine was out of sight. He sounded drained, tired. “Why am I here?”
“I wanted to give you a chance, Brother,” Nikolas said. He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and tossed it to Christopher.
For a moment Sarah thought the knife was Nikolas’s, but as Christopher snapped it open she realized the handle was black with white inlay, the reverse of Nikolas’s—Kristopher’s, Sarah assumed, left over from the time when the two brothers still hunted together.
Christopher closed the knife. “A chance to do what?”
“To share this one with me,” Nikolas answered, and Sarah realized it might be time to start fighting.
But she didn’t move.
“You’re going to blood bond her to yourself,” Christopher said, knowing how his brother’s mind worked. “That’s why you didn’t kill her when you marked her.”
“For you, Brother. You wanted her, but she turned you down, Christopher,” Nikolas answered. “Now’s your chance to make her yours. To make her ours.”
“Like Marguerite,” Christopher whispered, understanding. “Nikolas, no. Marguerite wanted it. Sarah doesn’t.”
“She hurt you, Christopher,” Nikolas said, pleading. “I heard you scream. You told me not to kill her—fine, I won’t kill her, but there are very few choices left. I can let her go, in which case her own family is going to kill her, or I can blood bond her to myself.”
“I’m not going to help you with this, Nikolas—”
“Fine,” he answered, his voice childlike and resigned at the same time.
Sarah stepped back out of Nikolas’s line of sight, and saw him turn to keep her in his view.
She went for her knife, and an instant later Nikolas was behind her, with his hand around her throat. She drew the knife from her thigh and flipped it in her hand, driving it into his side.
Nikolas cursed, throwing her away from him, and Sarah landed awkwardly on her knife, slicing open her right palm. A moment later a knife blade was at her throat.
Christopher’s.
Christopher had Sarah pinned on the floor, with the blade of his knife against her skin.
“Slice me open, Christopher,” she hissed. “If you’re really willing, then do it.”
Though Christopher didn’t let the knife cut her, he pressed the blade harder against her skin. If she moved, she would slit her own throat.
Nikolas recovered and knelt by his brother’s side, then reached toward the knife on Sarah’s back so he could disarm her. His brother caught his wrist, stopping him, and Nikolas nodded.
Christopher moved his knife away and pulled her to her feet, and then he let her go.
Nikolas followed Sarah with his gaze. “Christopher—”
“I’m not going to kill her for defending herself,” Christopher interrupted.
“The Kristopher I used to know—my brother—would have killed her as soon as he found out she was a Vida. You’ve tasted her blood. How can you not want it?”
“I want it,” Christopher said softly. “I want it as much as humans want to breathe, but I have control.”
Sarah backed away, and noticed that, though Nikolas kept a hawk’s gaze on her, Christopher was only watching his brother. When she realized how easy it would be to kill him, bile rose in her throat.
“Come back to me, Kristopher. Hunt with me,” Nikolas pleaded. He stepped toward his brother, moving closer to Sarah at the same time—he obviously did not trust her at his brother’s back. “Why do you let the bloodlust burn you every night and every day? We need to feed to survive. Would a starving man on the verge of death turn down a dinner because it was chicken and he was a vegetarian? Or would he eat it anyway, because it was all he had that could stop the pain?”
Sarah did not wait for Christopher’s answer. Instead, she drew the knife from her wrist. The blade had barely cleared its sheath when Nikolas pounced, sending her to the ground; the breath rushed from her lungs, but she kept her grip on her weapon.
Christopher reacted instantly and grabbed his brother’s arm, dragging Nikolas to the side, ignoring Sarah as if she posed no threat. Slaughtering her sense of fair play, Sarah rolled, knocking the momentarily defenseless vampire away. Nikolas cried as her blade touched his skin, and the sound caused Sarah’s gut to clench. He looked so much like Christopher—so vulnerable.
She realized that she had hesitated only when Christopher’s hand clamped over her wrist, stopping the knife from completing the killing blow. He tightened his grip until she dropped the weapon, and Nikolas tossed her knife away while Christopher dragged her away from his brother.
Most vampires were solitary hunters. Sarah had been trained to take down enemies one by one, but Nikolas and Christopher fought like one entity. When one was in danger, the other reacted.
Self-preservation replaced all loyalty to her friend as Sarah slammed an elbow into Christopher’s gut, forcing him to release her, in the same moment that Nikolas knocked her legs from beneath her.
She rolled away from both vampires, drawing her last knife. Breathing heavily, she paused, waiting for one of the vampires to move.
Nikolas edged toward her slowly, and she found her feet, her eyes never straying from him. Her right hand was still bleeding, and she saw his gaze fall to it, and the knife she was holding.
She was watching Nikolas, but it was Christopher who caught her wrist, Christopher who was suddenly restraining her. She had fallen for the same mistake he had, only moments before—she had assumed he
would not hurt her unless she attacked him, and so had not been paying attention when he had disappeared from in front of her.
Christopher had lost his reasons for refusing, and all three of them knew it. Sarah’s blood was in the air, along with the tension from the fight. Christopher’s control was already weak, and now the predator had taken control.
Nikolas reached around Sarah and held her wrists, as Kristopher wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her still.
Sarah gasped as twin sets of fangs pierced her skin, Kristopher on the right and Nikolas on the left. Without her magic she had no further defense, and she collapsed beneath the combined pressure of their minds. With Nikolas and Kristopher still at her throat, she sank to her knees.
Both brothers pulled away after a few moments, and their gazes met for barely a second.
Nikolas turned away first, bent to retrieve Kristopher’s knife from where it had fallen, and handed it to his brother.
Kristopher took the knife as if he were in a trance and made a cut just below his own throat.
Sarah turned her head away, but Kristopher forced her to look at him—and at the line of blood that beaded on his skin. They had barely taken any of her blood, but even so she could feel the thirst that always fell on a vampire’s prey, and she could not look away.
“No.” Her voice was soft, almost frightened.
Kristopher touched his fingers to his own blood and painted her lips with it, forcing her mouth open. She tasted the blood of the damned, and she could not resist.
Leaning her head forward to the cut on his chest, she drank. The blood was sweet and thick and magical, and she wanted it so much—
He pushed her away after a moment, and Nikolas turned her to himself, drawing his blade across his own skin, a mirror wound to Kristopher’s.
Once again she drank.
Then Nikolas pushed her away too, and she felt her mind spin downward as the blood entered her system. Blackness finally swallowed her, and she fell into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 28
ADIANNA HAD HER KNIFE in her hand as she shouldered open the front door, but she already knew there were no vampires within a mile of her. Her senses were stretched so far she could feel the heartbeats of the human inside and those of most of the humans on this block. Worse, she could feel Sarah, her aura muted from Dominique’s binding of her powers, and her heart beating frantically.
All this she knew before she even stepped into the front hall of the house. Her eyes took in, but her mind ignored, the artwork, the roses on the table, and the open box of chocolates on the mantel.
More vividly she saw the droplets of deep red blood, not yet dried, but scattered as if from a minor wound on a fighting person.
She should have guessed what Sarah would do. Adianna herself would have done the same, if somehow she had ended up in the same situation. Better to die than to face the humiliation of being disowned. Better to die with your pride intact than to live without it. They had both been raised that way, but Adianna had hoped so fiercely that Sarah would choose life. It had been almost two hours later that she had sneaked back to Sarah’s room, only to find her already gone.
Sarah’s spilled blood, blond hair, and flushed skin were the only color in the room. She lay on a plush black couch, where it seemed someone had gently set her down. Adianna could see the faint mark that attested to an almost-healed wound on Sarah’s right hand, though she knew there had been no mark there earlier in the night.
The fact that the new injury, no doubt the source of the blood on the floor, was nearly closed scared Adianna more than anything had since their father had died. No witch healed that fast.
Her power flared as she knelt by her sister’s side. She was dangerously close to losing control, but she knew of nothing on earth that would make her pause to regain it.
Sarah’s skin was hot to the touch, and Adianna clamped her jaws tight as she saw the faint blush of blood on Sarah’s mouth. Reaching out with a tendril of magic, she found the poison in Sarah’s system.
They had given her their blood. Whether they had intended to blood bond her or to end her life did not matter. Sarah was a Daughter of Vida; her witch blood would destroy the invading vampiric blood, and probably destroy the body it was inside in the process.
A healer might have been able to do something, but any healer would have consulted Dominique before treating Sarah, and Dominique would have told them to let her die. Adianna would have to try on her own.
She knew what the consequences could be. This had not been attempted since Jade Arun had tried to heal her young daughter thousands of years ago. Since then every witch in the A run line had been born with vampire blood. But if that was the price, Adianna would pay it.
She placed her hand over Sarah’s feverish brow, closed her eyes, and tried to sever the bonds the vampiric blood had already made on Sarah’s flesh.
She knew from the start it was a lost cause. The infection was too deep, and it had leached onto Sarah’s blood too firmly.
“Damn it, Sarah!” Adianna’s own shriek startled her back to the real world. “Don’t you dare die on me. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare.” The last words were whispered, as she threw her mind and magic headlong into the swift tide that was Sarah’s power.
The effect was similar to jumping into freezing river rapids headfirst, bogged down by pockets full of stones, with salt in her eyes, and every inch of skin raw to the bone. First she severed the ties Dominique’s magic had fastened over Sarah’s, and then steeled herself for her next move.
Sarah’s magic was killing her as it killed the vampire blood. If Adianna could not pull out the vampiric toxin, then the only thing she could do was cut away the magic that was fighting it.
She was in Sarah’s mind as well as in her magic, and even though she did not want to hear, she knew the truth. She could save Sarah’s life by destroying her magic, but she knew quite clearly that her sister would rather die.
She held Sarah’s life and magic between two fingertips. She could snap each with a thought.
Instead, trembling, she withdrew, breath dragging through her lungs with difficulty. The sun had completely risen while she had been drowning in Sarah’s power, and she knew that the faint, cool sensation of someone’s aura brushing over her was not new. He must have been there for hours, kneeling silently, slightly behind her and to her left.
She turned slowly, drawing the knife from her wrist as she did so, and he did not move to stop her.
“How is she?” Christopher asked, his voice soft.
Her voice cut as sharply as could her blade. “How did you think she would be after you gave her your blood? She is going to die.”
Christopher’s carefully neutral expression crumbled. The vampire leaned back against the wall and his eyes closed for a moment.
“I didn’t think,” Christopher answered quietly, raising his black gaze to meet the hunter’s. “I lost control.”
Adianna was Dominique Vida’s older daughter. She had always been the strong sister, the one who honored the line, the one who made Dominique proud. She, more than anyone, knew exactly how much could be destroyed by losing control even for a few moments. She could also see how painful the confession was to the vampire.
Perhaps seeing Adianna’s reluctant understanding, Christopher added, “I love her, and I never meant to hurt her. And I will not let her die because I screwed up.” Though he spoke softly, Christopher’s voice was rich with self-directed anger.
He stepped toward Sarah, and without thinking, Adianna moved between the vampire and her sister. “Get away from her.”
“You’re Sarah’s sister,” Christopher said, his voice tight. “Do you really want her to die?”
Adianna flinched at the accusation; her nails bit crescents into her left palm as she clenched her hand into a fist. “How do you intend to help her?” she asked, but she knew the answer.
“I took her blood, and possibly her life,” Christopher said. �
�It’s only right if I give her mine.” The meaning was clear. He meant to change her, to make her into one of the creatures that Sarah had spent her whole life hunting. Christopher must have seen some sign of revulsion in Adianna’s face because he added, “She would be alive.”
“She would be a . . .”
“Yes, she would be a vampire,” Christopher snapped. “But she would be alive.Isn’t that all that matters? I would prefer to change her and risk having her hate me even more for it than to let her die without giving her a choice.”
Adianna could not agree. To allow her own sister to be turned into one of their kind would be worse than letting her die.
Before Adianna could raise the protest, Christopher calmed his voice and added, “If she wakes up and doesn’t want it, Sarah is strong enough to fall on the knife. At least this way shewill wake up.”
Adianna choked on her own argument, and turned away from Christopher and Sarah. “Do what you have to do.” Her voice broke on the words.
She stepped aside, but could not force her gaze away. Her resolve almost broke as the leech bared Sarah’s throat; she leaned back against the wall and sank to the floor.
Get out of here, hunter. You don’t want to watch this.The vampire’s voice in her mind was loud, strengthened by the witch blood he had in him. Adianna felt the bile rise in her throat.
She stood, and turned her back on the pair. One step, two. She was almost at the door when, like Orpheus, she had to take one last glance—just in time to see Christopher draw his knife across his own skin, and to see Sarah latch on to the new wound like a suckling child.
Adianna lost control, and sprinted the rest of the way to her car. Twenty minutes later she convinced herself to slow down when she found herself pushing ninety-five on the highway; no matter how far or how fast she traveled, Adianna knew she would never outrun that last image.
From this night on, whether she chose to live as a vampire or kill herself, Sarah was as good as dead. Adianna prayed she would never see her sister again.
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