The Den of Shadows Quartet

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Christopher shook his head. “I didn’t see it. All I know is that another vampire insulted Nikolas, and Marguerite took a swing at him. She nearly got herself killed before someone dragged the two of them apart.”

  So Nikolas wasn’t the one who hurt her, Sarah thought, almost disappointed. If Nikolas had caused this, Sarah could probably have gotten some information from the girl, but if she had attacked a vampire in defense of Nikolas, then Marguerite was not likely to tell much of anything to a hunter.

  “You know Nikolas, then?” she asked aloud.

  “Don’t, Sarah.” Christopher’s voice was sure, and made it very clear that he had no intention of telling her anything.

  “Were you at the bash?”

  “Do you think I’m the one who hit her?” Christopher asked, his voice quiet, but taut with anger.

  No, she did not think Christopher would ever hurt a human. But if he was hanging out around Nikolas and other killers, then she would have to start wondering if her impressions were correct. “Did you?”

  “I didn’t hurt her,” he said, turning away. “I wasn’t at the bash. I don’t follow that circuit.” He sounded hurt.

  “I had to ask.” But that was a lie. She could read his aura, and more than that, she knew Christopher. He wasn’t a killer.

  Sarah had nothing more to say to him. Dominique or Adianna would have had a knife to his throat immediately demanding information on Nikolas and his group. Had he been speaking to any Daughter of Vida but Sarah, Christopher would not have lived through the next five minutes.

  The tense silence lasted for several moments, until Caryn called for Christopher to take the girl home. Marguerite needed rest, but she would be fine.

  Sarah didn’t know what bothered her more — that Christopher had been so frosty, or that she was watching two people who could have given her information on Nikolas drive away from her.

  CHAPTER 12

  CHRISTOPHER WAS NOT IN CLASS on Monday. The seat next to Sarah in history was painfully empty. No new poems showed up in her locker or in her backpack.

  In sculpture class, she avoided Nissa. She knew that if she allowed herself to maintain even a casual in-school relationship with the vampires, she would never be able to keep the necessary distance that Vida law demanded.

  By lunch she was surprised to realize she already missed them fiercely. She didn’t even go into the cafeteria, but brought her sandwich out to the courtyard and ate on the grass, alone.

  In calculus, she began to worry about Christopher. Again he wasn’t in class. Vampires did not get sick, and it took a lot to even injure them. While it was possible that Christopher had just decided to avoid school — and her — she hoped that wasn’t the case. He had been genuinely enjoying playing human; she didn’t want to think that she had chased him away from it.

  Of course, if he hadn’t planned to be absent, then she didn’t like to think about why he wasn’t here. While human myth often ascribed to vampires the title “immortal,” Sarah well knew they could be killed.

  Sarah’s resolve not to talk to Nissa might have held, had she not run into the girl in the parking lot after school. She was hurrying to meet up with Caryn to have her cast removed when she nearly collided with Nissa.

  Jumping back, she asked, “Is Christopher okay?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think them through.

  Nissa hesitated, apparently surprised. “I think so. He … was upset after the dance, and went to visit his brother. He came home and crashed a little after sunrise this morning.”

  “His brother?” Sarah parroted, her stomach plummeting. She leaned back against a nearby car, running her hands through her hair. They had made it clear earlier that Christopher’s twin had not decided to follow the same peaceful route as his siblings. “Look, Nissa —”

  “Excuse me.” The voice was dry, and decidedly unhappy. Sarah turned to see Robert, standing sulkily a few feet back. “That’s my car you’re leaning against.”

  Nissa grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her away from the car. Robert went around to the driver’s side and popped the trunk.

  “I don’t know what to make of Robert,” Nissa said under her breath, softly so the human would not overhear. “Christopher stumbled across him last night at the bash when he went to help Marguerite.”

  After that, Sarah stopped paying attention, because quite suddenly she realized where she had seen Robert before she had joined this school. Her barely healed arm was a testament to the night.

  “Excuse me, Nissa.” No matter what happened, she was a hunter first. Robert had been at the bash where Sarah had run into one of Nikolas’s victims, as well as at the bash where Marguerite had been. If he was part of that circuit, then she had a chance to get back to it.

  She turned her back on Nissa and hurried to Robert’s car, where he was just opening the driver-side door.

  “Robert!” She closed the door with one flat palm, and the human jumped, moving his fingers in just enough time to avoid having them slammed in the door.

  He tried to ignore her, reaching for the door handle, but he had not accounted for her strength. She wasn’t as strong as a vampire, but she could easily outmuscle a pureblood human.

  “What do you want?” he finally asked.

  Sarah glanced back to where Nissa had been, but the girl had disappeared. With no one to overhear, she answered Robert’s question honestly. “I want to know what you were doing at a bash on Halloween night.”

  “I was invited,” Robert snapped.

  “By who?”

  “Can’t you just read my mind or something?” He shouldered her aside, and the mixture of his words and the movement forced her off balance enough that she let him.

  He thought she was a vampire. Oh, that was rich. Nearly laughing, she caught the door before he had a chance to get in the car.

  “Robert, you have no idea what you’re talking about —”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m not a vampire.” Her mind was working quickly. He had seen her at the bash, and had made the obvious assumption. What she couldn’t figure out was why if he thought she was a vampire, he had hated her almost on sight. Though there were always plenty of humans who were invited to a bash purely as entrees, most repeat guests attended because they liked being fed on. Robert obviously wasn’t part of the first group, but his aversion to her proved that he wasn’t part of the second, either.

  The only other humans who attended bashes were blood bonded, or thought themselves hunters. Sarah would have sensed a blood bond.

  “Then what are you?” Robert pressed. “You sure as hell aren’t human.”

  “I’m a witch.”

  Robert snorted. “And pigs fly.”

  He had just begun to slide into the seat when she added, “And I’m a vampire hunter.”

  Finally the human paused, and again she sensed him sizing her up.

  Technically Sarah should have asked Dominique’s permission before telling any human she was a witch. Depending on how Robert handled her revelation, Sarah would either have to wipe his mind to make him forget she had said anything — something that was difficult, but possible — or she might be able to enlist his help.

  Robert glanced around the parking lot, where other students were gathering in the postschool flurry of activity. “Get in the car,” he finally said. “Tell me what you know.”

  He pulled out of the parking lot before Sarah could think how to begin. Her silence seemed to make him uneasy, so he spoke instead. “Look. Just because I’m listening to you doesn’t necessarily mean I believe you. But maybe if you tell me what you were doing at the bash …”

  “You must have left early if you don’t know the answer to that one,” Sarah said, thinking of the disaster that night had turned into.

  “About ten,” Robert answered, with a nod. “I couldn’t find the person I was looking for, so it made sense to ditch.”

  “Who were you looking for?”

  Rob
ert had been driving aimlessly, apparently, but now he stopped at the side of the road. Voice cool and level despite the suspicion, he asked, “Why do you care?”

  Sarah could see he wasn’t going to give away information for free, and unlike the vampires, she did not have the ability to reach into his mind and find what she needed to know. She had to tell him something. “I want someone dead, and you might be able to help me,” she explained.

  Robert hesitated for only a fraction of a heartbeat. “You’re after Nikolas.” When Sarah nodded, he looked at her with absolute skepticism, sizing up her slender figure. “You really think you could get that … creature?”

  “I’m going to try,” she snapped before she could catch herself. His implication had struck a chord, but Robert didn’t know what he was talking about; getting mad at him wouldn’t help things. She forced herself to control her tone the next time she spoke. “I’m not planning to arm wrestle him, Robert, and I’m not as helpless as you think. I’m not human; I’m stronger than your kind, and I have more power. And I’ve been trained to kill vampires my entire life. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Well, good luck,” Robert answered sarcastically “I’ve killed my share of vampires, but I’ve still been after this bastard for months.”

  She had to restrain herself from snickering at his bravado as she noticed Robert hadn’t elaborated on the exact number of leeches he had put a knife through. She wasn’t surprised. He was only human, after all, and though she hadn’t seen him fight, his ignorance of her kind told Sarah that he was probably relatively new at wielding a knife. He was lucky he had not run into Nikolas yet, or his little extracurricular activity would have gotten him killed already.

  “How long have you been hunting?” she asked.

  “Since Nikolas.” His response was short, but clear.

  “What did he do to you?”

  Robert took a deep breath, his gaze somewhere past Sarah’s left shoulder. “Not to me … my sister.” He spoke slowly, considering his words carefully before they emerged. “Her name was Christine.”

  “Was?” Sarah would be far from surprised to learn the leech had slaughtered the poor girl.

  “We call her Kristin, now. She doesn’t respond to her real name.” He paused. The silence was so long that Sarah began to wonder if he was finished, but finally he continued, “One of her friends, Heather, brought her to a party … I didn’t know then, but it was one of Nikolas’s bashes. She didn’t come home that night, or the next morning. My mother called the police, and they must have checked the hospitals.” Again he took a deep breath as if to brace himself, and she could see the vision forming in his eyes. “She had lost a lot of blood. He had carved his name into her arms, then left her nearly dead on some stranger’s front lawn.”

  As he spoke, emotions surged across Robert’s aura — fury, frustration, hatred. He forced his lungs to take in a deep breath of air to calm himself, but it did no good. At first she was just scared and skittish when she got home. She wouldn’t let us call her Christine anymore, and she stayed in her room all the time. If you asked her, she would talk about Nikolas, about how … handsome and gentle he was.” The last words were spat like a curse. “She always described him as black and white, and after a while she made herself that way too. She shudders away from anything colorful, and she screams when she sees anything red.”

  Sarah didn’t like doing it, but she probed his memory wound for useful information. Robert would have to deal with the pain if he wanted to help his sister. “Is that all you know?”

  “Only that it gets worse every day. No doctor has been able to help her.” He shook his head. “I went to the house where the bash had been a few days after Kristin got home, but it was collapsing in flame. There was this old man watching the fire — he lived next door, and invited me in for iced tea. Said the vampires had been living beside him for years. Usually, he said, he didn’t mind unless they put the music on really loud. But when they left Kristin on his lawn, he got fed up and torched the place …” Bitterly, Robert added, “He had known all along what they were, and what was going on over there. But he hadn’t gotten angry until they trampled his garden when they left Kristin. That’s when he acted.”

  Sarah found herself pulling back from the human, who was trembling with rage strong enough to make her head spin. Yet she forced herself to say, “Robert, I need to talk to Kristin.”

  He gave her a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even me.”

  Sarah wanted to argue further, but held back. A visit now would be wasted. She needed time to think of a way to approach Kristin so the girl would talk to her.

  Robert gave her a ride home, and as they arrived Sarah took a pad of paper from her backpack. Scribbling down her phone number, she ripped out the sheet and handed it to Robert. “Give me a call sometime soon.” Hesitantly, she added, “You really should talk to my mother, too. She can train you to fight.” Sarah did not know if the human would admit he needed help, but Robert wasn’t going to live long if he wasn’t trained.

  As she slid out of the car, Robert grabbed her arm. “Wait just a sec.” He paused, then seemed to make up his mind. “If you really think you have a chance at him, I have something for you.”

  He tore off the bottom of the paper where she had written her number, and jotted down an address. “I was at a bash here on Halloween. I left when a fight broke out, but I was there long enough to know it’s his house. It’s about two hours away.”

  Sarah smiled, glad for the first bit of truly helpful information Robert had been able to supply. Soon she would be facing one of the longest-hunted vampires in the Vida records. Not even Dominique and Adianna would be able to belittle that fight.

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me how it goes?”

  With a nod, she closed the car door. She was glad her cast was coming off tonight.

  CHAPTER 13

  SARAH SKIPPED SCHOOL the next day. Posing as her mother, she called early and excused herself.

  No well-trained hunter was mad enough to stalk a vampire on his own turf at night. While real vampires were not confined to coma-like, coffin-enclosed sleeps whenever the sun was up, they were naturally nocturnal. Christopher and Nissa were prime examples that vampires could function fine in the daylight world, but the stronger a vampire grew, the more irritating sunlight became, and the less natural a diurnal schedule was.

  So she was fairly sure that at ten o’clock in the morning, Nikolas would be asleep. At least he would be alone, and not hosting a bash. She wasn’t suicidal enough to approach him in a group of his kind, but she believed she could handle one vampire on her own — even the legendary Nikolas.

  When she reached the address Robert had given her, she drove past it once, checking for lights and sounds. It was hard to tell over the vampiric aura that saturated the area, but she thought she sensed humans inside.

  The next time around the block, she parked down the street. She stopped the Jaguar at the boundary of two property lines, so if either of the houses’ owners saw her, they would each assume she was a guest of the other.

  Breaking into a house at ten o’clock in the morning was not generally a good idea, but somehow she doubted she would be welcome if she simply knocked on the door. Swathing herself in magic, she approached through the side yard. If a human glanced in her direction, he would see her movement as the rustle of leaves in a breeze. She wasn’t invisible, but humans saw a great deal that they didn’t consciously notice. She hoped her magic would keep her safe from detection of the blood bonded humans inside as well, since if any of them saw her, the vampire would shortly follow.

  The house was upper middle class, nondescript but for a string of clematis that bloomed a brilliant violet around the mailbox and wraparound porch. Trees grew heavily in this neighborhood, providing plenty of shade in which simple plants grew. Someone had devoted time to gardening.

  The image of a long-hunted vampire practicing horticulture w
as amusing enough to bring a smile to her face, although she doubted he was the gardener.

  From the yard, she sized up the house. It was three stories, four if it had a basement. The top floor had a large bay window on the northern side, but white curtains blocked Sarah’s view.

  After a quick check to make sure all her knives were in place, Sarah swung onto the porch, her sneakers barely making a sound. A quick burst of laughter alerted her just before two girls came around the corner of the house. Focusing her power, Sarah threw a burst of it at the two, the magical equivalent of a hammer to the head. Both girls collapsed, instantly unconscious. They would wake awhile later, groggy but unharmed.

  Taking a deep breath to regain her focus, Sarah stepped past the girls and slipped through the open door they had just exited.

  Instantly she felt color-blind. Black and white, Robert had said. She was in the right place.

  The carpet of the living room was plush black. The walls were white but for abstract designs that had been painted onto them in black. The furniture was a combination of black and white.

  Her head nearly spinning at the abrupt change of scenery, Sarah barely avoided knocking a vase of white roses off a black table. Their green leaves were the only bit of color in the room.

  She passed through the first floor quickly, easily satisfied that it was empty. On the second floor she passed one door behind which she sensed another human. This one was probably sleeping, but Sarah didn’t risk checking. The rest of the house was empty but for the vampire she sensed on the top floor, probably in the room with the bay window.

  Climbing another flight of stairs, she sensed him very close by. If he was sleeping, she still had a chance to surprise him. More likely he had already sensed her the same way she could sense him, and was expecting to fight.

  She opened the door that she knew must lead to Nikolas’s room, but what she found there threw her entirely off balance.

  The walls were pure art, covered with pictures drawn in careful black paint, like a sketch enlarged to become a mural.