The Den of Shadows Quartet

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  The only possibility she could think of was that Robert was somehow bonded to the vampires. Sarah would have sensed a blood bond, but maybe … the thought trailed off with disgust. There were humans who were addicted to vampires. They didn’t need to be blood bonded to one monster; they gave their blood willingly to any who would take it. Enough contact with the leeches, and he could have formed the same kind of instinctual aversion to witches that most humans had for strong vampires.

  “Sarah?” Christopher’s voice pulled her back to the real world. In her mind she played back the conversation she had missed.

  “Yeah, sure.” Then, “Wait, no. I can’t.”

  They had asked if she was going to go to the dance the school was hosting on Saturday — the Halloween dance, which, according to Nissa, was the only school dance worth going to until the senior prom in the spring.

  “Why not?” Christopher asked, obviously disappointed.

  Nissa added, “If you’re worried about getting a costume, I’m sure we could find something for you, and they sell the tickets at the door.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just … I’ve got family coming over that weekend, and my mother would never let me go out.”

  “Shame,” Christopher sighed, slightly wistful. “Nice family or wish-you-could-lose-them family?”

  Actually, the “family” included many of the local witches — the rest of the Vida line, some of Caryn Smoke’s kin, and a few young men from the Marinitch line. Even human Wiccans celebrated Samhain, and for Sarah’s kind, it was one of the few holidays still left that they could celebrate without unnerving the human world. Dominique Vida hosted a circle on October 31 every year, open to every descendant of Macht — the immortal mother of Sarah’s kind.

  “Some nice, some barely tolerable,” Sarah answered, thinking of the Smoke witches in the second group. The peaceful healers had a tendency to preach about peace and unity — an idea that would have been tolerable, had it not included vampires. Luckily, Caryn herself, along with many of the most offensive give-peace-a-chance callers, would celebrate at SingleEarth instead of spending the holiday with hunters.

  Yet even as she thought with contempt of Caryn’s association with vampires, here she was speaking with two leeches who might or might not belong to the painfully overgrown SingleEarth.

  She had to end this. Some tolerant association is necessary to preserve human safety and forbearance, but friendship and love with such creatures as you hunt is impossible, dangerous, abhorrent, and as such, forbidden. She could quote the Vida laws back to front, and that line stood out in bold in her memory. Going beyond the bonds of what was necessary to keep her cover in school could at best stain her reputation; other hunters would not trust someone who had befriended the monsters. At worst, Dominique could call her to trial, and that would be a disaster.

  “I’ve got to go,” Sarah said abruptly.

  The two vampires seemed startled, but they did not try to stop her. “See you later,” Christopher said amiably.

  “Yeah … maybe.” She hoped not.

  She ducked out of the cafeteria and swung into the girls’ bathroom, shuddering as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. What had she thought she was doing? She had dropped her guard around them. Already she thought about the pair with some affection — they were Christopher and Nissa, not two leeches she might one day have to kill.

  That was dangerous. Knowing your prey can cause hesitation, and when one is a vampire hunter, hesitation ends in death.

  Sarah managed to avoid them for the rest of the day. She had calculus with Christopher, but the only free seat was across the room from him, and for that she was grateful. She needed some time to decide on how she would deal with them before she had another chance to talk to them.

  CHAPTER 5

  SARAH SLEPT POORLY that night. With her broken arm, she felt like a caged leopard with too much energy and nothing to use it on. It was nearly three o’clock when she finally drifted into sleep, and even then she was restless, plagued by nightmares.

  By the time she got to school, she felt less like a leopard and more like a slug. It was a pity that human drugs were neutralized by her system upon absorption, because she could have used some serious caffeine.

  It took her two tries to get the combination to her locker right, and as she tossed in her coat, she managed to knock something down from the top shelf.

  The vase shattered upon impact with the dirty school floor, scattering water, glass, and three white roses. The sound of breaking glass drove a shiver up Sarah’s spine, bringing back all too vividly her dream from the night before.

  Memories of her father’s death often haunted her sleep. Though she had tried to forget that day, to perfect her control the way Dominique and Adianna had, she wasn’t strong enough, and she never had been.

  At seven years old, she had stumbled across her father’s body on the front step of the house. The vampires had caught the hunter and kept him for weeks, bleeding him a little each day. Bloody kisses marked his arms where the leeches had cut into his skin so they could lick the blood away.

  Adianna had dealt with the news calmly, as had Dominique. Every hunter knew how dangerous his life was, and was prepared for death. But Sarah had been so young, and when she had stumbled over the cold body of her father, when his blood had coated her hand, she had lost control.

  She had hit a window, demolishing it pane by pane until Dominique had dragged her away, horrified not by her husband’s death, but by her daughter’s reaction.

  The death had become a lesson. Dominique had bound Sarah’s powers for a week afterward, both as a punishment and to teach her how to deal with pain. She had healed as slowly as a human, from three broken fingers and numerous lacerations on her hand and arm. In the meantime Dominique had her train with the older hunters, fighting until her hand throbbed and every muscle ached. Though binding her magic could not take away the years of training, her reflexes, or even most of her strength, the loss had left her shaken and her abilities meaningless. That weakness had terrified her ever since.

  Shuddering from the memory, Sarah dragged herself back to the present. Ignoring the glass, she carefully picked up the roses and the card that had been tied to the vase with a white ribbon.

  The white blooms were beautiful, perfect, with the sweet scent that so many long-stemmed roses lacked. A picture done in professional charcoal accompanied them — a pair of eyes framed with the pale lashes Sarah saw every time she looked into a mirror.

  She read the poem at least ten times before she even reached class, and finally resolved to speak to Christopher.

  Blue like sapphire beneath a morning sun,

  Burning with fire of a crystalline soul

  A laughter that never quite reaches inside,

  Where secrets weather like untouched gold.

  The words were beautiful — and truer than Christopher realized. If he had known even the slightest of Sarah’s secrets, he would never have spoken to her in the first place.

  She had steeled herself to talk to him by the time she reached her history class, only to have Mr. Smith immediately divide them into groups for a project. Her group included two humans she had not met before, and the mysterious Robert, who was not hiding his hostility any better today.

  “What’s eating you?” one of their other group members demanded after he shot down yet another of their ideas. “If you don’t want to help, then just keep your mouth shut. Don’t make your bad day mine.”

  By the time the class was over Sarah was glad to get away from Robert — the human had been putting out waves of contempt and distrust strong enough that they were making her stomach churn. She would need to speak to him sometime soon, but not here, not in front of other humans.

  She had calmed down slightly by sculpture, where she continued to work on the sickly dog Nissa had named Splotch. Nissa finished her figure. Under her expert hands, the violinist gained clear Roman features, sympathetic eyes, and wicked, sensual
lips.

  “Someone you know?” Sarah asked. The face was so vivid, so alive, she felt like she should recognize it.

  Nissa nodded, pausing in her work. “Yeah.” Her voice was soft, sad.

  “Who is he?”

  “A …” She trailed off, as if none of the words she had been thinking of would work. “Someone I used to love. His name is Kaleo.”

  Sarah’s heart skipped as she heard the name. Kaleo had a reputation for ruining lives on a whim, and changing young women into vampires whom he fancied himself in love with.

  If Nissa was one of Kaleo’s fledglings, Sarah had to pity the girl.

  “Anyway, it’s over,” Nissa stated. “I miss him sometimes, but … it’s over.”

  “Then why are you sculpting him?” The question was sharper than Sarah meant it to be.

  “He is beautiful,” the girl said wistfully Then she jumped as the bell rang for lunch.

  They did not speak as they cleaned up their stations, and Nissa stayed behind to talk to the teacher while Sarah swung by her locker. Inside she found another present from Christopher — a picture of her left hand, which she had been writing with since she had broken her right arm.

  Her nails were cut short so they wouldn’t hinder her grip on her knife; there was a small scar on the back from the glass window she had punched the day her father had been killed. It looked like a pale teardrop.

  On the back of the drawing was another poem.

  Skin like ivory, perfect; A goddess, she must be.

  Slender fingers, unadorned; beautiful simplicity.

  A single teardrop; when did it fall?

  Could this goddess be mortal, after all?

  If only he knew, Sarah thought dryly. That scar was left over from the least perfect moment of her life.

  Yet somehow Christopher had made the flaw beautiful, no longer a badge of her dishonor, but a mystery for an artist to unravel.

  CHAPTER 6

  “CHRISTOPHER … are these from you?” she asked at lunch, careful to make her tone light as she placed the two picture-poems on the table. Christopher’s eyes fell to them, and he smiled.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t ask if she liked them, and he didn’t seem embarrassed.

  Sarah was flattered, and somewhat surprised by Christopher’s easy confidence. Even so, her natural suspicion surfaced. “Why?”

  “Because,” he answered seriously, “you make a good subject. Your hair, for one, is like a shimmering waterfall. It’s so fair that it catches the light. It makes you seem like you have a halo about you. And your eyes — they’re such a pure color, not washed out at all, deep as the ocean. And your expression … intense and yet somehow detached, as if you see more of the world than the rest of us.”

  Flustered, she could think of no way to respond. Did he just say this stuff from the top of his head? Only her strict Vida control kept her from blushing.

  Meanwhile Nissa entered the cafeteria. She started to sit, then glanced from the pictures, to Christopher, to Sarah. “Should I go somewhere else?”

  Christopher nodded to a chair, answering easily “Sit down. We aren’t exchanging dark secrets — yet.”

  Nissa flashed a teasing look to her brother as she took a seat. “As his sister, I feel the need to inform you, Sarah, that Christopher has been talking about you incessantly.”

  Christopher smiled, unembarrassed. “I suppose I might have been.”

  “Especially your eyes — he never shuts up about your eyes,” Nissa confided, and this time Christopher shrugged.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said casually. “Beauty should be looked at, not ignored. I try to capture it on paper, but that’s really impossible with eyes, because they have a life no still portrait can capture.”

  Sarah’s voice was tied up so tightly she thought she might be able to speak again sometime next year. No one had ever talked about her — or to her — with such admiration.

  Luckily Nissa changed the subject. “Christopher is an incredible artist, but he refuses to take classes.”

  Christopher laughed, shaking his head. “I draw when I see something I need to draw; I can’t draw on command. Nissa convinced me to try an art class once, and I failed it.”

  They talked casually for the rest of lunch. Sarah found herself relaxing in their company as they told jokes and teased one another good-naturedly. Visions of shattered glass faded from her mind, replaced by light banter. This was easy; these people were kind. What could be evil in their friendship?

  “Sarah?” The voice just behind her left shoulder was questioning, a bit sharp.

  “Adianna.” The muscles in Sarah’s neck clenched so tightly she felt like they would tear when she turned her head.

  “Can I talk to you?” Adianna’s tone was pleasant, so it wouldn’t make the vampires suspicious, but the expression that glittered in her eyes was dangerous.

  “I’ll be right back.” Sarah gathered her backpack, leaving the two pictures on the table so as not to draw Adianna’s attention to them, and followed the other witch into the hall.

  “What was going on there?”

  “They’re in a few of my classes,” Sarah answered, forcing herself to be calm despite the fact that she felt like she was on trial during the Spanish Inquisition. “They’re perfectly harmless.”

  “To humans maybe,” Adianna answered instantly. “Not to our kind. What if Mother found out? You honestly think she would see them as ‘harmless?”

  “She won’t find out,” Sarah snapped, softly. “Could we have this conversation outside? If they try, they’ll be able to hear us here.”

  Adianna nodded and remained silent until they reached the hill outside the school. “Sarah …” She sighed. “What are you trying to do to yourself? Mother would throw a fit if she knew you were hanging out with their kind. Even I can barely stand the thought of it.”

  “Dominique doesn’t need to know everything I do during my life —”

  “Sarah!” Adianna’s voice was sharp, but Sarah knew it was more due to surprise and worry than censure. “I don’t understand why you would even want to spend your time with them, much less break Vida law to do so. As for what Mother does and doesn’t need to know — Dominique is the one who decides what information is her business, and you well know what she would think about your having vampiric friends.”

  “Are you going to tell her?” Sarah’s voice was soft, cool. She couldn’t stop Adianna if she insisted on going to Dominique, but she made it very clear by her tone that she would not easily forgive the betrayal.

  “Sarah, I understand what you’re going through.” There was obvious effort behind Adianna’s even tone. “I’ve been there. You aren’t one of the humans. You don’t have any friends here. You just lost some of your oldest hunting partners by moving here, and faced one of the closest encounters you have ever had with death. It’s understandable that you have doubts.”

  “I have no doubts.” Sarah had to take a breath to control herself before she continued. “They don’t know what I am — they think I’m human. They aren’t a threat.” After a pause she decided to speak the truth. “Haven’t you ever once wanted someone you could talk to about something besides killing? Someone who has no idea about your power and is simply a friend? It’s really nice, Adianna. To have someone treat me like a human girl instead of like a killer is really, really nice. What’s even better is that I don’t have to worry every night whether some screwup of mine just got them killed. I don’t have to watch my back every moment —”

  “That is exactly why the law says you can’t befriend them,” Adianna interrupted. “Because you relax your guard. They are killers, Sarah. I don’t care if they don’t kill now, or even if they never touch a human and survive on animal blood. They kill by nature, and eventually that nature will destroy whatever shreds of humanity they may have left. If at that time they are still your friends,’ it will simply mean you are handy for a snack.”

  Adianna paused to collect h
erself, then added more softly, “I don’t want to lose you, Sarah. I don’t want you getting killed by these two when they turn on you — and note I say when, not if. But worse, I don’t want you getting killed for these two. Do you really care so much for them that you will risk getting yourself disowned?”

  “Adianna —”

  Adianna shook her head, looking tired. “I can’t physically stop you from talking to them, but I won’t let you get yourself killed for a leech’s friendship,” she stated clearly. “I won’t tell Mother what I’ve seen so far, but if you three get any closer, I will, while there’s still a chance that she’ll let you off with a warning.” She turned to leave, then added, “And, Sarah? If they ever get you hurt, whether they do it directly or it’s because Dominique finds out you have been talking to them, I will kill them myself.”

  Sarah wanted to respond with anger, but thought better of it. Adianna was letting her off easy, so she just nodded.

  “If you care about them like you claim to, leave your new friends alone,” Adianna suggested in a rare show of compassion. “Remember them fondly if you care to, but let go of them, or you’ll all end up dead.”

  Adianna glanced back toward the school. “I’m sorry to have to threaten you, Sarah. That wasn’t what I came here for.”

  “I figured.”

  “I came to tell you that Dominique is flying off this afternoon to train a group of amateur hunters, and I’ve just received a call to deal with some leeches up in Chicago. We should both be back in time for the holiday” Sarah took in the news without surprise. If it had not been for Adianna’s attempts to keep her little sister informed, Sarah would probably never know where her family was. “You’ll be fine here?” Though phrased like a question, the last line was a statement. Sarah had spent plenty of time home alone when Adianna and Dominique were off on their various missions.

  “Be careful,” Sarah told her sister.

  Adianna answered seriously, “You too.”