Promises to Keep

nothing about it, most likely. SingleEarth paid pretty much all his expenses. He was obligated to help them out occasionally.

“Well …” The bloodbond hesitated. She probably wasn’t supposed to let him know precisely where the house was.

“I would really hate to disappoint Nikolas,” Jay added. “He asked me to come.” Invoking her master’s name was dirty, underhanded manipulation. Jay was cool with that.

“I guess I could give you directions?”

“Great! I have a pen right here.” Jay knew to accept the offer quickly, and swiped a souvenir pen and a handful of receipts to write on.

Kendra’s annual Heathen Holiday was infamous—and extremely exclusive. The celebration lasted from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day and was as much an art exhibition as a social gathering. Kendra’s line was primarily made of artists—emotionally unstable, frequently violent artist vampires, specifically. No witch and certainly no hunter had ever been invited. All the most powerful and influential bloodsuckers would be gathered in one place.

Jay changed into a tux featuring a black silk jacket and a green and gold vest. The cashier at the rental shop had assured him that the color complimented his hazel-green eyes and auburn hair, which he brushed and pulled back into a ponytail.

Want to come to a party? he asked Lynx.

The cat merely yawned.

Lynx would be able to make his way home when he wanted to. Jay double-checked to ensure that his knife was accessible but not visible, then got into his car and eased it onto the snowy road.

He hoped he would get there in time. It would be so disappointing if all the good vamps were gone.

CHAPTER 2

JAY HAD BARELY stepped through the front door of Kendra’s mansion, when he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the larger-than-life sculpture that dominated the front hall.

The artist had captured in blown glass the very instant when a proud huntress launched a falcon from her wrist. Her expression held despair, and hope, and pain, and power, all at once. The falcon seemed like her soul, freed of its earthly bonds. Could she fly with it, or was she forever earthbound, cursed to only dream of the skies?

He saw that his hand had risen, and grabbed his own wrist to stop himself from touching the sculpture. Instead, he reached up as if to casually rub the back of his neck, and let the back of his hand brush the silver hilt of his knife.

A hand like iron closed over his wrist, and another twined in his hair as a melodious voice observed, “You smell of dead blood and adrenaline, witch.”

The voice startled him—a sensation he didn’t often have, since his power gave him an awareness of others that tended to make it impossible for anyone to sneak up on him. Staring, transfixed, at the statue had been stupid, but how could he have avoided it? Likewise, the mind that flowed over his at that moment made his knees weak. It had to belong to Kendra.

“It’s remarkable,” he said, struggling to focus on the danger and not the power of her. “As are you.”

He didn’t mean to say the last bit aloud, but he couldn’t help himself. Her mind was like a supernova, full of brilliant colors, swirling fire, and enough gravity to pull entire planets in her wake. What made her thoughts burn with such intensity? Was it always like this, standing in the presence of a mind more than two thousand years old? Or had she always been this way, even before the change?

Kendra mentally responded to both compliments while maintaining a razor-sharp focus on his movements. If Jay struggled, she would snap his neck before he could try for a knife or focus his magic to fight.

“It was his last work,” she replied, “and it may be the last thing you see, unless you explain what brings such a pedigreed hunter to our holiday.”

He should probably have started with that explanation.

“Nikolas invited me,” Jay answered. “He hoped he could convince my cousin, Sarah, to come if she knew someone else here.”

Though he had been assured of Kendra’s fondness for Nikolas, the emotions Jay sensed from her in response to his name spoke of possession more than affection. Sarah’s name barely elicited a blip of recognition.

“I have not seen Sarah. Nikolas left a few minutes ago. And you still smell of blood.”

Honesty was a gamble, but Jay wasn’t good at bluffing. “That is why I am late.”

With her skin touching his, Kendra’s thoughts were as clear as fine crystal as she considered what to do with him. Given the importance of her holiday, anyone of any consequence in the vampiric world was currently in this house. That meant Jay couldn’t have killed anyone terribly important tonight.

She could kill him just on principle, but Nikolas probably had invited him, which meant the laws of hospitality applied.

“Well,” she said, slowly releasing first his hair and then his wrist, before taking a step back, “I suppose every cherry tree needs its branches pruned now and again to produce the best fruit.”

It took him a moment to realize that she had just given approval to his killing her kind.

Moving his hand away from his knife, Jay turned, and found that the woman standing before him was every bit as regal and elegant as the huntress in the statue. Her lush blond hair and generous figure were showcased in a gown where silver and scarlet dragons cavorted on silk damask.

Of course she wears dragons. No lesser creature could do her justice, Jay thought as he tried to untangle his tongue, focus despite the pure power assaulting his metaphysical senses, and say something intelligent.

“My lady,” he managed.

Amused, Kendra held out her hand, which Jay nervously accepted. He kissed the back, feeling slightly foolish but afraid to do anything less.

Meanwhile, she sized him up critically. An hour before, he had thought he looked good. Now he was acutely aware that while the tux fit, it was not a handmade one-of-a-kind item, as Kendra’s gown no doubt was.

“Your patron has already left for the evening,” she pointed out. “I assume you intend to do the same.”

He spoke quickly, words prompted as much by the disdain he could sense from her as by his own intentions. “My invitation might have been for Sarah’s benefit, but I was still honored to receive it. Your holiday is famous for its art. I would hate to leave without a chance to take it all in.”

She was skeptical, but she was also two thousand years old, and confident in her own immortality. She wasn’t afraid of him, or for her guests.

“Enjoy yourself, Jay Marinitch,” she said at last. “Mind your manners.”

She swept away and left him alone in the front hall, and only then did Jay become aware of the thundering of his own nervous pulse. As his family and other vampire hunters often reminded him, Jay had never been a paragon of common sense. They would have told him he had to be suicidal to have accepted Nikolas’s invitation in the first place, and that it was beyond insane to stay once he’d learned Nikolas was already gone. But in the moments when Kendra’s attention had been on him, Jay had been submerged in the most extraordinary aura he had ever experienced. He couldn’t stand to go back out in the cold. Not yet.

Instead, he read the plaque at the base of the statue.

LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER FIST

LORD DARYL DI’BIRGETTA

The vampire known as Lord Daryl had been killed two summers ago, an event shocking enough that news had traveled swiftly.

Hunters frequently took down the young and the sloppy, vampires who had been changed by whim instead of thoughtful intent, who had relatively few connections to others of their kind, and who tended to surround