All Just Glass

All Just Glass Den of Shadows 7 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

All Just Glassis dedicated to mothers and families trying their best. They say we don’t choose our families, but I am one of the few who could never have chosen better than I received. I know how lucky I am.

Along that line, I need to thank my sister Rachel for helping me revise the first chapter samples ofAll Just Glass(as well asToken of DarknessandPoison Tree). Rachel, you were my very first reader and editor, since I was in sixth grade and gave youRed Moon.Your honest support has always encouraged me to tackle new challenges and to be better than I ever would have been without you.

Thank you as well and as always to my writing group, who took so much abuse as part of the revision process ofAll Just Glass.Bri, Sha, Mop, Zim and Mace … you put up with so much from me. I never could have broughtAJGto this point without you.

Finally, once more I must thank the Office of Letters and Light for bringing us NaNoWriMo. I spent about ten years trying to writeAll Just Glass.I finally put aside everything I had written and, without referring to any notes or prose from the past decade, went for 50k/30 days in November of 2008. I have never been happier with the results of slightly bending the rules.

I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH

I have a rendezvous with Death

At some disputed barricade,

When Spring comes back with rustling shade

And apple-blossoms fill the air—

I have a rendezvous with Death

When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand

And lead me into his dark land

And close my eyes and quench my breath—

It may be I shall pass him still.

I have a rendezvous with Death

On some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year

And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear …

But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger

CHAPTER 1

SATURDAY, 5:52 A.M.

THE RINGING IN her ears surely was the sound of the world shattering. It was louder than the November air whistling outside as it tore leaves the color of fire and blood from the trees, and louder than the hum of the Chevy’s engine as Adianna Vida pressed the gas pedal down further, accelerating past sixty … seventy …

Pushing eighty miles per hour, she twisted the dial on her satellite radio, turning the music up in the hope that it would drown out every other sound and thought. She wasn’t even sure what she was listening to. It didn’t matter.

She wondered if this was why Sarah had always been drawn to fast, flashy cars. Adia went for vehicles that drew no particular attention, cars she could get on short lease terms and trade in frequently, and she had always thought it was a little silly when Sarah picked out something that turned heads whenever she drove up.

But that was the way Sarah was.

Adia glanced at her instrument panel and realized the needle had just passed ninety. Where were the cops who were supposed to be patrolling this highway, anyway? Wasn’t there anyone out here still serving and protecting?

She flexed her left hand, clenching her jaw to control a wince as she did so. Two of the fingers were broken. They wouldn’t wrap around the steering wheel. The arm was still sore from a minor fracture she had received half a week earlier. She would have double-checked that the hastily tied bandage on her arm was still in place, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to take her one good hand off the wheel, even to make sure she wasn’t bleeding again.

At least the other guy looked worse … though that would have been more comforting if the “other guy” hadn’t been a large bay window and some kind of ugly garden statue she had hit on her way down.

But it wasn’t a complete loss. She had learned what she had needed to learn.

She had learned the last thing she had wanted to learn.

Adianna Vida, now the only child of Dominique Vida, matriarch of the ancient line of witches, wished she were still ignorant. It had taken a hell of a fight, but she had finally, unfortunately, throttled the information out of someone.

“Looks like she’s decided to live, witch,” a bloodbond had told her, the last word like a curse. “She’s staying with Nikolas and Kristopher. Not that you’ll find them. They’ve been hunted for more than a century. They know how to take care of themselves.”

Sarah was still alive.

No, not Sarah. The creature who existed now looked like Adia’s little sister, but she wasn’t a witch anymore; she was a vampire. She had woken at sundown and had hunted. No one had been able to tell Adia who the victim had been, but Sarah’s change had been traumatic, which meant the first hunt would have been fierce. She had probably killed.

And then she had decided to live as a vampire.

To continue as a vampire, at least.

Which proved it really wasn’t Sarah, right? A daughter of Vida waking to find herself a monster should have ended it at that moment. She should have known that stopping herself then, before the vampiric power twisted her too badly, was the only way she could protect the helpless victims she would inevitably end up hurting in the future. But she hadn’t.

Before Adia could learn any more, another bloodbond had leapt forward and sent them both through the window. Adia had wanted to fight at that point but had already found the information she needed, and knew that Dominique would disapprove of her lingering.

Realizing she was approaching her exit, she slowed—probably more abruptly than she should have, but who cared? It was six in the morning on a Saturday, and she hadn’t seen another car in nearly half an hour. She was almost home, and when she pulled into the driveway, she would have to be fully under control.