Sarah nodded, but she realized she could barely hear the words Christine was saying. The sound rising above all others in her ears was the whoosh-whoosh of blood racing through a hundred thousand miles of arteries, veins and capillaries. She realized that if she looked closely enough, she could see the beat not just at the pulse points, but across the surface of Christine’s skin. It flickered like a fluorescent light.
And now there was fear in the air.
“Sarah?” Christine asked nervously.
The word—a name, so powerful that many ancient peoples had kept theirs forever secret from all but those closest to them—was just enough to let Sarah pull back a little and realize the tone her thoughts had taken.
Even once she was aware of it, she couldn’t stop looking. She fought the instinct to move closer. She forced herself to take a step backward instead, but hellishly, contrary to any common sense, Christine responded by moving closer and reaching out as if she intended to touch Sarah, possibly to offer comfort but … insanity!
She had to get out of there.
She had been so confident about her self-control, so arrogant, she had forgotten something she had learned every day of her life: how “good” a person a vampire was, or tried to be, ceased to matter when the vampiric blood took over. There was a monster inside, and it would use the body it inhabited to do what it wanted. Sarah might think she was in control at that moment, but the blood inside her now would be with her the rest of her existence, just waiting for her to slip up.
Eventually, inevitably, she would. A moment would come when she was too weak to stop herself, and when that moment was done, she would be left with an innocent corpse in her arms.
She pulled away from Christine. She had to get somewhere safe … where she was safe … no, where she would be made safe. Her self-control would only get worse from here on out.
She had to do this while she still could, before she did something terrible.
She went home.
CHAPTER 7
SATURDAY, 7:05 A.M.
ZACHARY WOKE SHAKING, sweating and scared. He didn’t remember the dreams that had forced him from sleep with his heart pounding and the sharp tang of adrenaline on his tongue, and for that he was grateful. Sometimes he did remember, and those mornings were never easy.
He didn’t get up immediately, didn’t even open his eyes. Instead, he lay perfectly still, barely breathing, until the flush of fight-or-flight passed. He realized his jaw was clenched, as if he had been bracing against pain and struggling not to scream.
He tossed onto his stomach, curling his arms under his head until his right hand found the hilt of his knife sheathed on his left wrist, like a child grasping a teddy bear for comfort. He wished he could sleep for another hour. Maybe he would have a good dream.
Or maybe another nightmare.
What dragged him up was not fear of sleeping demons, but the knowledge that Dominique wouldn’t approve of his oversleeping when there was work to do.
By the time he opened his eyes, he was perfectly composed, enough that even Dominique wouldn’t have recognized the terror that had filled him only a minute before.
He glanced at the clock; he had slept for twenty-four minutes, just enough to revive him and get rid of the headache.
He ducked briefly into the kitchen, where he found Michael, Jay and Robert. Michael was bent over a SingleEarth-published book about shapeshifter physiology. Jay was looking through the window with a pair of small binoculars, probably bird-watching. Robert was staring at Heather, who was either sleeping or unconscious. Maybe someone had finally gotten fed up with her.
Jay replied to what Zachary was about to ask before Zachary could say anything out loud. “We’re fine here. Dominique just called. She’ll be back in a minute, probably in a foul mood, since she says her informant stood her up, but you should have some time to clean up first.”
Robert looked confused when Jay first spoke, and then startled to find another hunter standing over his shoulder. Michael glanced up and then returned to his book without uttering a word.
“I’ll do that, then,” Zachary said. He had forgotten to shield his thoughts when approaching the kitchen. He wouldn’t make that mistake again. He would, however, take Jay’s advice. The shirt he was wearing still had blood on it from Heather’s X-Acto attack.
He had only a couple of outfits in this house—Dominique had asked him to stay here while they tracked Sarah, and he hadn’t brought many of his belongings—but that was fine, because to Zachary Vida, dressed could mean any clothing plus two things: a weapon and a woven silver chain with a white-gold pendant in the figure-eight symbol for eternity. The chain was his only remaining memento of his mother. The pendant had been a gift from another woman.
Dominique didn’t know either one existed, as both were always hidden by his undershirt, which was under the harness that held his primary knife at the small of his back.
Once fully dressed, he returned to the kitchen; he walked in just in time to see Dominique backhand Heather. Robert grabbed the witch’s arm and dragged her away from the bloodbond, earning a cold warning expression that made even the foolhardy human take a step back.
“This isn’t going to help anything,” Robert protested. “She already hates us. Beating her up isn’t going to make her like us more.”
“And you claim to be the good guys,” Heather snapped.
The expression on Dominique’s face was enough to make Zachary hesitate in the doorway. Though few other people would have noticed, Zachary could see the tension at the edges of her eyes and lips.
He would never ask about it, but he did wonder: Was there part of Dominique that was weakened by the loss of her daughter? Was there anywhere in her heart where she blamed herself? Could Dominique Vida feel regret, or was she just frustrated by the delay in catching her current prey?
Zachary understood impatience. When he had been eight, he had spent as many hours walking the colicky Sarah as he had training. He had warmed bottles at three in the morning and sung her to sleep when her father wasn’t home to do so. He had held her hands as she’d learned to walk, and grinned in a very un-Vida fashion as she’d learned her first fighting forms. Now every minute that passed was a minute when he failed her and let her dead body be violated.
He tried to strike the thoughts from his mind. That way lay the same kind of madness of grief that had gripped his mother after Jacqueline was taken, and a kind of shame he had no desire to share with the Marinitch next to him.
Perhaps too abruptly, he asked, “Jay, isn’t this what you’re here for?”
As frail as Heather looked, Zachary did not doubt that she would be willing to kill every one of them if given a chance. And she had certainly experienced worse abuse at Kaleo’s hands than Dominique was unleashing now—which meant Robert was right: this was a useless way of getting her to talk. Why wasn’t the damned telepath doing his job?
Jay turned in his seat to answer the question, naked gratitude on his face as he looked away from Dominique. “This one has been around vampires for a couple centuries, I’d guess. She knows how to obscure her thoughts. Anything you could do to her that is severe enough to disrupt her concentration would cause too much distress for me to read her past it.”
Dominique turned from the bond, just slowly enough to reveal that she was not satisfied with the single blow.
At that moment, however, Heather tossed her head. “You want me to talk? I could tell you things to give you nightmares. Worse, maybe I could give you happy dreams. Would you like to know what it’s like when one of them takes you? When you’re in their arms and they bare your throat and drink?”
Zachary stood very still and fought to keep his mind blank. Blank. Not filled with the images the bloodbond’s words evoked. Yet she continued.
“I’ve been told that Kendra’s line is the best at it, though naturally I’ve never experienced anything else. All I know is that nothing you can do to me here matters for more than a moment. I’v
e had three hundred years, and even if you kill me today, I will always have something you will never have: peace. You call me a victim, but I think maybe I am the only one in this room who isn’t. Look in my head if you want to,” she said, challenging Jay. “I have seen hundreds of humans pass through, willing to die, willing to give up everything, just to experience that bliss. And not just humans. The Vida line isn’t immune, is it?”
Zachary had been staring, hypnotized, so it took him by surprise when Dominique hit the bloodbond again, this time hard enough to rock her head back and unfocus her eyes.
Heather spat blood onto the floor before saying, “Sarah liked it enough to die for it.”
Michael was apparently the only sensible person left in the room. He tore off another strip of duct tape and slapped it over Heather’s bruised mouth.
“I’m going out,” Dominique announced.
No one questioned her as she left. Dominique’s self-control and composure might be perfect, but even she had to be disturbed by such an accusation regarding one of her blood. Of course she would want to get away.
“Sarah’s dead?” Robert asked in the silence that followed. No one had told him why he had been called to Dominique’s house. And apparently, no one was in the mood to answer him now.
Zachary looked around, trying to focus on his surroundings and not on his thoughts. He found Jay sitting in the corner, not quite out of the room but as far from Heather as he could get without truly fleeing. Whatever he had seen in Heather’s mind in those moments had shut him down.
“We should just get rid of her,” Michael said. “As long as we are guarding her, we are not out hunting Nikolas and Kristopher, and any secure locations she knows about will be empty long before we pry the information out of her.”
“I thought this was a trap for Kaleo,” Robert said weakly. “Sarah can’t be dead. Heather was messing with us, wasn’t she?”
“This being a trap assumes the mass-murdering sadist cares enough about this particular human to risk his hide,” Michael said, ignoring the human, as they all were. “We have more important prey to track.”
“She absolutely believes that he will come,” Jay said softly as he pushed himself to his feet. “Whether or not she is right, I do not know.”
“Like it or not, she’s one of our only leads,” Zachary said. “I do believe Kaleo will come for her, and even if he doesn’t lead us to our targets, removing him will make hunting them easier. We also need her in case Adia’s trip to the bookstore doesn’t pan out. After she gets home, she can decide what we do with this one.”
“ ‘This one’?” Jay echoed. “You’re trying so hard to distance yourself from her mentally, you can’t even stand to see her as human, can you?”
“She barely is human,” Michael replied. “After a couple hundred years, a bloodbond gets to be a lot more like a vampire. They get strong, and fast, and some of them even feel the bloodlust. If we give her a chance, she will kill us all.”
“Not all bloodbonds—”
“Shut up, Robert,” Zachary snapped.
“Did Nikolas kill Sarah?” Robert asked, gaze level and nearly empty.
Zachary nodded.
“He’s got my sister,” Robert said. “I thought … I thought she was safe with him.”
“The situation isn’t quite as clear-cut as it seems,” Jay said.
“Shut up, Marinitch,” Michael advised. “We don’t need you playing shrink with us.”
“I’m just trying to—”
Michael stood abruptly, his chair clattering to the floor behind him as he grabbed Jay by the shirtfront and shoved him back against the wall. “Trying to what?” the Arun said, challenging him. “Make us realize how hard this is? Trust me, we’ve got that covered. Zachary and I have known Sarah all her life. We trained with her and fought with her. We have watched each other’s backs in fights none of us would have survived on our own. You and Sarah have barely even been introduced. You think this is hard? You have no idea.”
He slammed a fist into the wall only inches from Jay’s head, as if his self-control was sufficient to keep him from hitting the other witch, but not enough to keep him from needing to lash out. Jay shut his eyes as plaster shattered, and then Michael dropped him, the argument abruptly forgotten as his attention shifted. It took Zachary a moment longer, but then he, too, sensed what had silenced Michael.
The power was faint, even with the wards around the house acting like an antenna. The vampire was lingering at least a block away, not coming closer at that moment, but near enough that they could all feel her there.
Her. Not Kaleo. The power Zachary could sense was not nearly enough for the ancient Roman to be approaching.
Was it Sarah? Could things be so convenient?
It had to be a trap. He stretched his awareness, trying to find more of her kind but knowing it was pointless, since they could appear at any time with no warning. Did she think she could trick them into trusting her and letting down their guard?
Had she come to turn herself in?
He squashed the thought. The vampiric animal always sought survival. He had to brace himself, because he knew that the vampire outside would look like Sarah, and sound like Sarah. But it wouldn’t be Sarah; it would be the thing that had killed her.
Maybe, it occurred to him, Kaleo had threatened her. Zachary hadn’t considered that obvious possibility before, that the other vampires might have turned on her. The twins were very protective of their sister, and the hunters had threatened her. Kaleo was incredibly possessive of the individuals he considered his. Maybe they had sent their newest fledgling here as a sacrifice to appease the hunters.
Or it could be a trap.
CHAPTER 8
SATURDAY, 7:29 A.M.
GIVEN THE HOUR at which Heather had received her phone call, Adia was not entirely surprised to find that the Makeshift bookstore was connected to a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. The bookstore itself was closed, but the café had its own door to the street.
Adia damped down her witch aura as she stepped out of the car, and as she crossed the threshold, she mentally donned a mask. Who should she be today? A college student, probably, on the way home from an all-night study session at a friend’s house, and not quite ready to go back to her roommate. She was social and friendly, confident, but possibly a little naïve about the real world.
In theory, the Vida line was the most famous line of vampire hunters in history and should therefore be the most recognizable. In reality, especially in this generation, there were a lot of blond girls with blue eyes in the world. It meant she could be anyone she needed to be, and while she was lost in that role, she didn’t need to think about anything more than the immediate objective. The person she chose to be didn’t need to have a sister, or a grim duty to fulfill.
She knew her cheeks would be pink from having driven the last mile with the window down. She let herself shiver as she came in from the cold.
At seven-thirty in the morning on a Saturday, the atmosphere was subdued. The two young girls seated at a back-corner booth, eating sweet sticky pastries, both felt like bloodbonds, but there was also an older woman, reading the Boston Globe and sipping coffee, who probably had no idea that the man behind the counter was a vampire.
That bloodsucker smiled at Adia, his expression tired but friendly.
“I’m sorry, but if you’re looking for a place to stay, you’re out of luck.”
The way he had tossed out that information to a complete stranger suggested that enough people had been bothering him for help that he was getting fed up with it. That was only likely to be the case if individuals hiding from the Rights of Kin were coming to him, which would only happen if he was connected to Nikolas and Kristopher.
She flashed her own best long-day smile and said, “Actually, I was looking for a cup of coffee. Am I in the wrong place?”
His expression shifted as he focused his attention, seeming to draw himself together. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, of
course, coffee right away. How do you take it?”
She glanced at the menu behind the counter, trying to determine what kind of place she was in. Keeping to her pretense, she said, “I don’t care. Something sweet, with a lot of caffeine and a lot of sugar.”
“Starting the day with a kick, I see,” the vampire joked with her as he turned to the espresso machine.
“I’m normally more of a night person,” she answered. “I got up early to drive a friend to work, and have to hide from my roommate so she won’t drag me to Zumba.”
He chuckled. She could almost see the gears turning in his head. It was past dawn, the hour when decent vampires normally wanted to sleep, and she could tell he hadn’t had a chance to feed the night before. Here was a cute girl who no one expected home soon, who was willing to chat with strangers … and who, therefore, could probably be persuaded to go somewhere more private. He handed her the coffee, and the smile he turned on her was considerably warmer than the first one had been.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “My roommates have guests over at all sorts of crazy hours. Here’s your coffee, on the house. My shift’s pretty much—” He cut off, a moment after Adia sensed the aura of the bloodbond who had just walked up behind her. “Matt, it isn’t often you darken my door. Is something wrong?”
Adia turned, trying to make it look casual. She wasn’t sure whose bloodbond she was facing, but knew that the olive-skinned “young” man was decades older than he appeared. Bloodbonded humans, like vampires, didn’t age.
Matt lifted a hand to brush sandy brown hair back from his face, and the cuff of his long sleeve pulled back just enough for Adia to see the edge of a scar. Nikolas’s marks—a rose, a strand of ivy and Nikolas’s name. She was sure of it. Pure vanity made the vampire carve his symbols into the flesh of his victims. It also made them easy to identify.
Cold affected bloodbonds less than pure humans, so most of Nikolas’s bloodbonds wore their arms bare in any weather, no matter how much harassment it earned them from normal humans. Someone must have warned this one to cover up.
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