All Just Glass

The door burst open, and Zachary cringed, expecting Dominique. Instead, the eyes that swept the room, obviously taking in every detail of the wreckage and injuries, were Adia’s. Her voice was barely audible as she asked, “What happened?”

“Idiocy happened,” Jay answered. “I didn’t … up until the very end, I really didn’t think she would hurt us.”

“Don’t call it the very end,” Michael grumbled. “We’re not dead. But I second the notion of us being idiots. We should have been watching our backs. Zachary’s the only one who actually believed it was a trap. Jay and I were twiddling our thumbs like kids at a family reunion.”

“And the … the targets?” Adia asked. She looked pale, probably disgusted that they hadn’t yet reported any success in the face of such blatant mistakes.

Zachary tried to shake his head and push himself to his feet. He felt the world rush into silence; his lips tingled, cold, and black encroached on his vision. He stumbled, ending up back on the couch abruptly. Adia called his name and grabbed his arm to steady him.

“Lay back,” she said. “Put your feet up. How much blood did you lose?”

“A lot,” he snapped. Mentally chastising himself for the harsh response, he added, “Not enough to be in immediate danger.” With a sigh, he added, “I knew it had to be a trap, but I really wanted her to be here honestly. When I first sensed her, I thought maybe, just maybe, she was still Sarah enough to fall on the knife instead of inflicting another of those creatures on this world. It’s what made me hesitate. I had a perfect moment for a kill, but I thought I saw my cousin in her face.”

“Lay down, Zachary,” Michael said. “We all feel the same way, but if the brave Zachary Vida is admitting to weakness, we’re all screwed.”

The brave Zachary Vida. He worked hard to mimic the kind of hunter he wanted to be, and to present an image that was ruthlessly controlled, but it had all fallen apart recently. Had they not seen the way he had let the bloodbond get under his skin, or the way he had hesitated with Sarah—or worst, the way he had given up when he felt her fangs at his throat, and let her nearly kill him?

He had told himself and told himself what he knew was true: It’s not Sarah. It’s just a monster. But in the split second when he should have pushed the knife forward, something in him had decided to die instead.

“How many of them were there?” Adia asked. She had always been able to find reason in chaos, a trait that Zachary admired and tried with little success to emulate. He was a good fighter, but Adia could see patterns and come to conclusions faster than the rest of them, and kept her head no matter what the crisis.

“Three vampires,” Jay answered. “Nikolas, Kristopher and Sarah. One of the twins showed up first. It looked like Michael had it under control, so I went to help Zachary.” He looked at Michael as if for confirmation.

“I figured it was Sarah’s boyfriend,” Michael said, disdain heavy in his voice. “I didn’t even sense the second one until he was practically on top of me. There’s something weird about their auras. They get mixed up, so it’s hard to tell there are two of them.”

“Wait, then who …” She looked at Jay’s and Zachary’s injuries.

“Sarah,” Zachary said flatly. “I gave her an opening, and she took it.”

Jay nodded, indicating that the same had happened to him. Zachary had barely noticed when Jay had tried to join his fight with Sarah. She hadn’t even glanced away but had reached out and flung the Marinitch across the room. Zachary had heard him hit a wall but hadn’t seen more of him after that.

Adia crossed her arms but failed to suppress a visible shiver at the notion of Sarah’s being the one to inflict such damage.

“It isn’t much consolation,” Michael said, “but I think I may have taken down one of the twins. I have no idea which I managed to get a knife in, but getting rid of either one will make it exponentially easier to deal with the other. They fight as a team.”

“That’s something, at least.”

It was something they could tell Dominique so maybe she wouldn’t decide the three of them were a complete waste of space.

“Hey, what’s this?” Michael got up off the love seat to pick up something from the floor. The movement apparently was too much for him, though. He dropped his head as if dizzy and then rolled over onto his back and lay on the floor while he offered the item to Adia. “One of them must have dropped it.”

Adia looked at the item, which Zachary thought might be a photograph, and then held it at arm’s length before tossing it onto the end table next to him. “That’s sick,” she said.

Morbid curiosity forced Zachary to pick up the picture. The quality of the shot was bad, and the photograph had been scuffed, so it took a minute for his mind to make sense of the swatches of dark and light.

The stream of bright golden color turned into long blond hair. Dark shapes resolved themselves into two figures holding a blond woman gently as they both fed at her throat. Zachary couldn’t make out the details of anyone’s features.

“Sarah?” Jay asked, peering over the couch to see what Zachary held.

He shook his head numbly. “The picture’s too old for it to be Sarah,” he said. “But it could still be Nikolas and Kristopher. I guess they have a penchant for blondes.”

He dropped his head again and shut his eyes. Jay took the picture from his hand.

“It’s not a very useful shot, but should it go in the book anyway?” Jay asked, referring to the immense collection of notes and images that hunters had put together through the centuries to help them identify their prey.

They hadn’t decided before the door opened again, this time admitting the one person none of them wanted to face yet.

Dominique froze in the doorway, her cold gaze going from one hunter to the next. Disapproval was clear on her face. Zachary tried to sit up, but the dizziness warned him that standing to greet her would be a bad idea.

“I’ve already heard reports,” Adia said, preempting Dominique’s response. “It was a rough fight, but we sustained no losses, and it looks like we have eliminated one of our targets. Also, I have identified a potential contact, so we have a plan for our next move.”

Adia was the consummate liar, Zachary knew. He didn’t think he had ever seen her turn her ability to manipulate people, situations and information against her own mother, but maybe he just hadn’t ever noticed. She wouldn’t have made up the possibility of a contact entirely, but he wondered if she would stretch the truth a bit to make their successes look more impressive that day. Given that possibility, he knew that right then was not a good time to ask who the contact was or how useful he or she might be.

“And that?” Dominique asked, nodding at the photograph that Jay was still holding.

“One of the vampires dropped it,” Jay answered, handing it over.

Dominique’s reaction was like Adia’s, instant revulsion visible despite her normal reserve. Zachary, disturbed, had to avert his gaze. It wasn’t that he didn’t know perfectly well why any Vida would be disgusted by the bloodbonds and sycophants who willingly bared their throats to the vampires. He just couldn’t stand to see such a reaction from Dominique.

He rubbed at his own throat, remembering. Sarah hadn’t just fed from him. She had gripped his mind and sent him deep into the bliss that Heather had recently described. If Dominique had known any of the thoughts that had passed through his mind as the blood had flowed out, that disgust on her face would surely have been directed at him.

He wanted to hate Sarah for what she had done to him, but he kept recalling the memories she had dragged from both of their minds.

I don’t know if I can kill her, he thought as Dominique said, “Foul.” She ripped the photograph in half. “Probably left intentionally to make us think of Sarah. This isn’t how I want my daughter remembered.”

She methodically tore the photo apart. It was the most sentimental thing Zachary had ever seen her do.

He realized he was rubbing his neck again, and shuddered. Dominique glanced at him, her expression back to the calm disapproval he was used to from her, but she didn’t say anything. Under the circumstances, his shiver