All Just Glass

“Oh?” Adia answered, letting her anger into her voice. People became more involved in emotional arguments than calm ones; she wanted Nissa’s guard down. “And what about your brothers—you know, the ones Sarah is staying with? The ones teaching her how to hunt.” Anger was a double-edged sword, of course. The emotion was real as she spat the last word. As she continued, she sensed that Zachary was circling to slip in behind Nissa from the opposite door. “In fact, what about you? You’re here at SingleEarth. I can feel how weak you are. Tell me you’ve never in your century and a half taken a human life.”

Nissa hesitated, as Adia had known she would. Adia couldn’t sense death on her, but it wasn’t possible for a vampire to live so long and never kill.

“Really,” Adia added, “please do. I would love to believe it.”

Were those words honest? She didn’t know.

Nissa yelped as Zachary reached her and grabbed her wrists. He was better with raw energy than Adia was, so she relinquished her hold over the vampire’s power.

“How can you live with yourself?” Adia asked her, wondering if there was any grain of similarity between them. Nissa was the one who had changed Nikolas into a vampire. Adia did not know the circumstances of that decision, and she didn’t care. Maybe Nissa hadn’t known what Nikolas would turn into then, but how could she do nothing now?

Defiantly, Nissa snapped, “I have my brothers.”

Nissa tried to wrench her wrists out of Zachary’s grip, and he shifted, putting one hand over the power center in her throat.

“I can kill you this way,” Zachary said flatly. “Adia and I agreed that out of respect for SingleEarth, we would rather let you live, but that is assuming you do not give us trouble. We need you to come with us now.”

Nissa became very still. “You’re not allowed. Not here.”

“That was then,” Zachary answered. “This is now. We—”

A bloodbond blindsided both of them, attacking while Adia’s attention was focused on Nissa. The girl probably weighed ninety pounds, but she fought in a suicidal whirlwind of shouting and fury that made it obvious her stature was not an indication of her strength.

She made a deep slash on Zachary’s arm with an X-Acto knife. He had to let go of Nissa to defend himself. Adia made a grab at the vampire when Zachary dropped her, but she was too slow.

The bloodbond shouted, “Go!”

Nissa disappeared.

“I recognize you,” Zachary said as the bloodbond fell into a defensive crouch, the knife in one hand. The mad assault had obviously been meant to distract them from Nissa, and it had worked. Now she was waiting for them to make the next move. “Heather. You’re Kaleo’s pet.”

Adia hadn’t recognized the face, but she knew the name. She wasn’t sure how old Kaleo’s favorite bloodbond was, but clearly she was trained well enough to leap in front of hunters’ blades to protect one of Kaleo’s fledglings. Of course, bloodbonds tended to be fanatically loyal like that.

“Better a pet than a mindless tool,” Heather spat. “How dare you threaten Nissa?”

At a glance from Zachary, Adia moved forward. The action was a feint, but it was enough to draw Heather’s attention. The instant the bloodbond struck out with the knife, Zachary swept in behind her. He caught her wrist in one hand, controlling the knife, and wrapped his other hand around the front of her throat as he had with Nissa. The following ripple of power slapped Adia like a burst of frigid air, and then Heather went limp and the knife clattered to the floor.

Kicking the weapon away, Zachary heaved the bloodbond into a fireman’s carry. Adia looked around and hastily found some duct tape and cotton balls, which she used to create a makeshift bandage for the gash across Zachary’s arm. He let her do so without putting Heather down.

The slight delay gave Hasana Smoke time to emerge. Adia wondered what had taken her so long.

“You’re not taking that girl out of here,” Hasana protested.

“I don’t see why not,” Zachary replied. He swayed a little and shifted to lean on the doorway as if bored, disguising his weakness as apathy. Adia was pretty sure she was the only one who would be able to tell the difference.

“Much as I hate it, I know the Rights give you the authority to storm in here and threaten harmless people like Nissa,” Hasana said. “But they don’t give you permission to kidnap anyone you feel like.”

“First,” Adia said, “the Rights of Kin give us the authority to follow any path to our targets we must. This one jumped into the fray to protect Nissa. Ergo, she has a connection to that group. Second, she attacked us. She violated SingleEarth’s commandments and is therefore not protected by its haven. Zachary, let’s go.”

She led the way. Zachary followed. She wondered how much power he had just burned, and what it had cost him. Knocking a human unconscious without killing or doing permanent damage required a kind of precision that Adia found difficult. Sarah had always been pretty good at that kind of thing, but doing it instantly to a bloodbond with Heather’s level of strength required an incredible amount of power.

Sure enough, the moment they returned to Zachary’s car, he dumped Heather into the backseat, handed Adia the keys and collapsed into the passenger seat.

“Are you all right?” Adia asked.

He nodded. “I’ll be fine.” He closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “It would be more comfortable if you took a crowbar to my head, but the headache will pass, eventually.”

“What will we do with Heather?” Adia asked, checking around the car as she started it, in case any more crazed SingleEarth members were planning to attack them. For now, it seemed like the rest were giving them a wide berth.

Zachary shrugged. “We can get information from her. And even if we can’t, Kaleo will probably come for her; he’s had her too long to abandon her without it looking like weakness. Even if he’s not directly part of our current target, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at that sadist.”

Adia was occasionally worried that Zachary, so far as she could tell, wouldn’t mind “having a shot at” a bunny if it were sufficiently connected to vampires. She didn’t speak the thought out loud, though; about Kaleo, they were in agreement.

Zachary was the perfect Vida: a cool, controlled hunter who never let himself be distracted in a fight and never let emotion get in the way. Dominique should have put him in charge of hunting down Sarah—Sarah’s killers. But Adia suspected that Dominique hadn’t chosen her for her skills, but to clearly determine her loyalty. No one would ever doubt Zachary that way.

Adia resisted the urge to floor the accelerator as she merged onto the highway. Zachary couldn’t know she was torn inside. He couldn’t know that Adianna Vida, oldest and now only daughter of Dominique Vida, wasn’t what she appeared.

He couldn’t know she was scared—no, terrified.

You would really kill your own sister?

Nissa’s accusation echoed through her thoughts.

Failure in this hunt would likely mean the end of their line. The notion of putting a blade between Sarah’s ribs made Adia’s stomach twist, but Dominique was right that they couldn’t continue this way. The Vida line had survived since the dawn of the human species, despite eras of famine, Inquisition and war. If their generation was going to be the last, so be it. She wouldn’t shame thirty thousand years of ancestors by putting down her blade and hiding her head in the sand.

CHAPTER 4

SATURDAY, 6:13 A.M.

CARYN SMOKE, THE youngest daughter of the Smoke line, walked into the meeting room where Sarah waited. Her face was perfectly composed despite the rapid pounding of her heart, which echoed in Sarah’s ears. Sarah had never realized that the young healer had such self-control.