All Just Glass

“Everyone doubts at some point. If we’re lucky, we learn better. If we’re not, it gets us or someone else killed. If you want to second-guess this situation, do it in your own head. We need a hunter, not a shrink.”

She had checked on him. Now, as she returned to Adianna, Michael and Zachary, who were gathered in the living room, she said, “Jay will be right down. Adianna, let me give you the safe house address. I won’t be traveling or staying with you.”

She had put Adianna in charge but didn’t expect her to question the statement, and was not disappointed. This was Adianna’s hunt, and Dominique’s presence would only undermine her. More important, this was a crucial lesson for Adianna to learn—one Dominique had already studied once before, and felt no need to review.

She had turned to go before she heard Adianna say, “If you’re not coming with us, then you’re in charge of keeping an eye on Robert. He’s conflicted about the vampires, and he and his sister are both young and naive. He might try to join her or he might try to rescue her, but either way, he could potentially lead us right to our targets.”

Dominique nodded. “I know a pair of local shapeshifters—birds—who wouldn’t be much use in a hunt but do good surveillance work.” If they weren’t being called upon to risk their pinfeathers, they would probably even return her call. “I’ll see if they can help.”

“Good,” Adianna said. “You tail the human. Michael, you and Sarah used to hunt in New York City. That area tends to be popular with Kendra’s line. Do you think Sarah might go back, if she’s looking for familiar territory to feed in?”

“She might go to feed, or she might go to get help from old contacts,” Michael answered. “A couple of the hunters we knew in the city were in it more for sport and money than ethics. Sarah might figure they could be allies.”

“Will they be?” Jay asked.

Michael shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust them at my back in a fight against her, which is why I haven’t called them to work with us already. But I can check in. If nothing else, I’m sure I can find someone to confirm whether or not we took down one of the brothers. But I’m going to need some rest and food before I’m fit to go anywhere.” He rolled his head and shoulders, obviously stiff from the fight. “I have to admit, I’m still trying to figure out how we’re still alive.”

“You said you think you took one of the brothers down,” Adianna replied. “They may have panicked, then cut their losses and run.”

“If so, they didn’t panic until after one of them had me down and had taken a pint,” Michael grumbled in reply. “Once a vamp has his teeth in your throat, he doesn’t tend to let go without good reason.”

“They may be playing with us,” Zachary suggested. “Catch and release.”

“Sarah wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that,” Michael replied. “She knows the only reason they did so well today was because we were surprised.”

“Sarah,” Zachary said, the emphasis suggesting a convenient label as opposed to the name of the original individual, “wouldn’t have stopped if the two others hadn’t pulled her off me.”

“Nikolas has been known to play with his prey,” Dominique said, refusing to acknowledge Zachary’s comment on how his fight with Sarah had ended. He knew she was disturbed by it. He wouldn’t let it happen again. “He marked Sarah and let her go once before he lured her out to kill her. He may be doing the same with us, in which case it sounds like you all have the vampire to thank for your lives.”

The words brought the appropriate looks of shame to Michael’s and Zachary’s faces.

“What matters most right now is that we are alive,” Adianna said, “and most of our prey will need to rest for the day, which gives us a chance to do the same, and recover. We’re not beaten, people. We have a plan. Now, let’s get out of here before Kaleo comes down the chimney like some kind of evil Santa, okay?”

Leaving them with that last grim image, Adianna lifted her bags, pulled her keys from her pocket and led the way out the front door.

Dominique followed, the position unnatural to her. It wasn’t that she had never followed anyone else—but the last time she had, her guide had been unwisely chosen. That path had ended with a knife in her hand and the body of a fellow hunter in her arms.

As she watched the next generation file out, Adianna in the lead, she wondered if perhaps, just perhaps, it was her fault that her daughters seemed to be treading that same dark road.

CHAPTER 12

SATURDAY, 8:21 A.M.

NIKOLAS WAS IN a towering rage. It should have frightened Sarah—his fury, after all, had directly led to her death—but she could barely focus on it. He was pacing and kept grabbing her arm and occasionally shaking her and shouting, but it was like that only added colored lights to the kaleidoscope of her thoughts.

She couldn’t hold on to any single image long; they all slid into each other—one, then the next. Someone was crying across the room, with quick little breaths that made the air quiver. Then there was Nikolas, who was black and white and red.… She giggled, reminded of that stupid joke about the newspaper, and he stared at her, but then his features blurred again.

Her skin was buzzing, and her ears ringing. The world was too vivid, all light and sound and sensation.

“You have to focus now!” Nikolas’s anger was tainted by terror, and seemed to make the world roll. “Sarah, please!” he begged. “I know what you’re feeling right now. It wasn’t just your first feed on live blood, but it was witch blood. It’s intoxicating. Kristopher and I have both been there before.…”

The words disappeared from her attention. He was still talking; she just wasn’t hearing. Nikolas’s voice had ceased to have meaning and had blended into patterns of rising and falling noise.

He grabbed her shoulder and shook her yet again.

“Sarah!” She managed to focus on him for a moment, only to have him throw her across the room. “Is there anything you can do?” he demanded.

She landed on … Oh, goddess. She shrieked, because for an instant, in her state, she was on her father’s corpse again. There was blood on her hands. Was it his blood? Then the reality came clear, and it was Kristopher lying still and silent on the ground, a ragged wound from Michael’s knife in his chest. It hadn’t been a heart blow, and the Arun magic wasn’t quite as poisonous as a Vida’s, but it was killing him slowly nevertheless.

She had to draw out the magic. She could do that. Her powers didn’t work the same now as they used to, but they weren’t entirely gone. She …

She glanced up and found herself staring into wide, frightened eyes. Sarah’s heart wasn’t beating, but someone else’s heart was racing, pounding, matched by her ragged breaths and the trembling that rippled across the surface of her skin. Nikolas shouted something, and the girl stood and bolted out of the room. Sarah started to rise to follow.

Nikolas grabbed her by the arm and hit her, the blow hard enough that it might have broken her neck if she had been human. Now it was barely enough to get her attention. He snapped, “I swear, if you let my brother die here—” He broke off and shook his head sharply before saying, apparently to himself, “You’re going to hate me for this.”

What did he—

She couldn’t complete the thought. He grabbed her, and then his fangs were in her throat.

And it hurt. The buzzing across her flesh turned to wildfire, and her blood turned to lava. The white noise of the world turned to screaming, and the voice behind the screams was hers, until Nikolas threw her away again.

He staggered under the power he had just stolen from her, but he had more practice. He had ripped apart her giddy drunkenness, and now she existed in a cold reality where all she could see was Kristopher’s form.

She put a hand over the wound and tried to reach for her magic. Vampiric power wouldn’t help her with this. She needed a witch’s power, but her Vida magic had fled deep inside, hiding from the new blood.