Sarah’s confusion escalated. Since when did Nikolas care if his victims were innocent or not?
You were always stronger,” Nikolas finished. “I don’t have your control.”
Christopher looked anything but strong. Sarah could see the bloodlust close to the surface. She was still trapped in Nikolas’s arms, and her wounds had opened enough for blood to bead around the edges. The scent of her witch blood was in the air, laced with power and a hint of danger.
“Why did you leave me, Christopher?” Nikolas asked as he reached around Sarah to take his brother’s hands. She was trapped between the two vampires, and not sure how to react. Christopher’s control was obviously slipping — if she fought now, she would destroy it altogether. She did not want Christopher’s life to be the price of her escape.
“You remember Marguerite,” Nikolas said. “She picked us. She knew what we were and what she wanted —”
“She said she wanted to die,” Christopher whispered. The memory was so strong in his voice that Sarah could almost imagine the scene, and the vision caused her to pull at Nikolas’s grip for a moment before she forced herself to stop.
Christopher’s control was so thin. If he could contain the bloodlust long enough to get his brother to let her go, she would be grateful. If he lost it, she would fight.
It no longer mattered who was speaking as they continued the tale, both lost in memory. “Two of us, like a mirror. We both fed on her, you on the left, and me on the right. You marked her first, putting your signature forever on her skin, and then I followed.”
“And when she woke she was afraid, but there was passion there too. She was given the finest wines and the softest silks to wear, rich foods, chocolates —”
“We approached her again, both of us taking her blood, but this time we only took a taste —”
“And then we both cut ourselves, here, just below our throats, and she leaned forward to drink.”
Disgust flashed in Sarah’s mind, as she weighed the brothers’ every word for a hint of what their next action would be. So the girl had wanted to die. Instead they had blood bonded her, given her all but immortality.
Nikolas drew his brother forward, and then placed Christopher’s hand over the uncut skin on Sarah’s left wrist.
“Why is there nothing here, Christopher?”
Both of the brothers seemed entranced by their pasts. Finally, Sarah spoke.
“You said you haven’t hunted since Marguerite, Christopher,” she said, loudly, in an attempt to break the spell. “Why?”
Christopher blinked and looked at Sarah as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“Nissa took him away from me,” Nikolas answered sullenly.
“Nissa needed me,” Christopher answered tiredly. “You saw how she was, Nikolas. She hadn’t fed in a week. If I hadn’t —”
Nikolas’s voice was quiet as he interrupted. “Don’t you know how lonely it is hunting without you?”
“No,” Christopher answered, still looking at his brother. “I don’t. I’ve never hunted alone.”
Nikolas once again drew his brother forward, this time placing Christopher’s hand just above the pulse on Sarah’s throat. She checked her reaction to jerk back, knowing that an attempt to flee would only bring out the predatory instincts that Christopher was fighting.
“Can’t you feel the life there, Christopher?” Nikolas pressed. “Don’t you want it?”
Christopher closed his eyes, turning his head away.
“Christopher —”
“Sarah, don’t talk,” Christopher said quickly, sounding pained. He jerked his hand out of Nikolas’s grasp and stepped back.
“Christopher, don’t leave me again,” Nikolas pleaded, childlike in his fear of loneliness. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. Nissa needed you then, but I need you now.”
“Let Sarah go.” Christopher’s voice wavered.
“She hurt you,” Nikolas argued. “I saw you after she turned you away. You wouldn’t even talk to me. I can’t stand to see you in pain, Christopher. In the old days we would have hunted her down together.”
“I don’t want to kill her,” Christopher said. He finally gathered the strength to meet his brother’s gaze again. “And I won’t let you.”
“I won’t kill her if you don’t want me to — if I was willing to do that she would have been dead the instant she entered my home. But you know I can’t just turn her loose. She hunted me down once. Do you really think she would stay away if I let her go? Do you really think her family wouldn’t track down you and Nissa if they couldn’t find me?” Nikolas’s voice was cold, but filled with pain.
“Nikolas —”
Nikolas removed his knife from his pocket and opened it.
Nikolas, what are you doing?” Christopher demanded, but his brother did not answer as he caught Sarah’s right wrist in a grip she could not break, and skimmed the blade across the back of her hand, drawing a thin line of new blood.
“Damn it, Nikolas!” Christopher shouted, spinning sharply away so the blood was not in his sight. “Don’t do this to me!”
“Just once, Brother, be the Kristopher I know.”
Christopher was trembling as he fought the blood-lust.
“Please, Brother. For me, kill the pain.” Holding Sarah by the throat with one hand, Nikolas reached out and turned his brother around with the other. Christopher’s eyes immediately fell on the blood that was dripping from Sarah’s hand.
“Christopher, no —”
“Shut up, Sarah!” Christopher shouted when she tried to argue, his voice strained. He turned to his brother. “We’re both damned. You know that, don’t you?”
And then Christopher took Sarah’s hand, lifted the wound to his lips, and licked the blood away.
“Christopher, I’m your friend —”
“No, Nikolas.” Roughly, Christopher shoved himself away from her, sending Sarah stumbling back into Nikolas. She could see him shaking from the effort it took him to break away.
“Kristopher, have you forgotten everything?” Nikolas pleaded, the hurt clear in his voice.
“Please, Nikolas, let her go.”
“Why?” Nikolas’s voice was childlike, hurt. “You were the first one,” he reminded his brother, “to pick up a knife.”
Sarah felt Nikolas’s hold on her wrists lessen as he focused on his brother; if he continued to be distracted, she stood a chance of getting out. She had lost hope that Christopher would help her — he wasn’t strong enough to ignore his bloodlust.
“Please, Kristopher,” Nikolas implored.
“Not Sarah.”
That last, painful argument almost caused her to hesitate, but even as she yanked her arms out of Nikolas’s grip she had made her decision. Survival. She threw herself forward, and before either vampire could react, she had pinned Christopher to the floor, a hand over his throat.
“Sarah —”
He didn’t have another chance to speak before she violently dragged at Christopher’s power with her own. He gasped, unable to fight back, and she winced at the pain she knew her magic caused him.
There were nine energy centers in the body, called chakras, that witches could use to manipulate the energies of another, usually in order to heal. Her line had learned another way to use them, one no witch would ever use on another mortal creature: to inflict pain, and to kill.
It was a desperate move. Any vampire strong enough to control his own power could reach along the line she had opened and attack her, and she would have no defenses.
But Christopher had not fed on humans for too long. He was powerless against the deadliest of her attacks.
Nikolas froze when he heard his brother scream. Sarah saw him hesitate as he tried to figure out what she had done.
“Let me go, Nikolas,” Sarah demanded. “Call that girl back down and tell her to get my knives now, or I will drain every drop of power from your brother’s body.”
“You wouldn’t,” Nikolas
answered softly, a small amount of fear in his voice.
“He just licked blood off my hand,” she growled. “That gives me the motivation to cause some exceptional pain if you do not give me back what is mine and let me out of here.” She didn’t want to kill Christopher. She didn’t even want to hurt him. But the choice was between letting him go and having Nikolas kill her, and hurting him and living through this night.
Nikolas stepped forward and she once again reached into Christopher’s power and twisted what she found there.
He shouted out in pain and Nikolas winced, stopping.
“I can kill him in less than a second if you make another move toward me,” she warned, and it was true. As entrenched in Christopher’s power as she was, she could tear, tangle, or destroy with a thought.
“Marguerite, get the knives,” Nikolas whispered, and the human who had been watching from the doorway ran upstairs. Sarah had seen the fear on the girl’s face — fear for Christopher’s life, for the vampire who had fed on her years ago when she wanted to die, and then given her this life in exchange for the one she had abandoned.
Nikolas took a step back, but Sarah could see pure hatred smoldering in his eyes as he did so.
Marguerite returned and held Sarah’s knives out to her. Keeping her right hand over Christopher’s throat, she returned all the knives to their rightful places with her left. Still holding Christopher by the throat, she stood.
“I am going to let him go, and you are going to leave me alone. Do we have a deal, Nikolas?”
“I’m going to kill you the first chance I get,” he growled back, and Christopher once again shouted out in pain.
“Do we have a deal, Nikolas?”
“For tonight, I will let you leave safely,” he answered.
“Agreed,” she said, as she relaxed her hold on Christopher, who collapsed to the floor. “He’s going to die if he doesn’t feed soon, Nikolas,” she warned before he had a chance to make a move.
Without hesitation Nikolas drew Christopher to his own throat.
CHAPTER 21
“WHAT IN THE WORLD did you think you were doing?” Adianna demanded the instant Sarah entered the house.
Sarah pushed past her sister without answering. She was too tired to deal with questions tonight.
Adianna followed in silence, waiting to speak until they were almost in Sarah’s room. “You aren’t invincible, Sarah, and you well know it. Yet you’re always throwing yourself into these situations, going alone where no hunter in her right mind would —”
“I couldn’t bring you,” Sarah interrupted tiredly. “I can’t explain, but it wasn’t just because I like doing things alone.”
You don’t have to protect me,” Adianna stated.
“This time I did. This is something between Nikolas and me.”
“No, it’s not,” Adianna argued. “You are a Daughter of Vida, Sarah. A witch. A hunter. He marked you, and for that you are seeking vengeance. But that is not what you are here for. You are here to protect the humans who cannot protect themselves. Not to get yourself killed for a personal insult.”
“I’ve heard the lecture before,” Sarah snapped, her frayed nerves ruining the last of her patience. “Now, please, leave me alone.”
“You’re acting suicidal, Sarah.”
“Good night, Adianna.” Sarah slipped into her room and closed the door on her sister. Adianna knocked a couple of times, but finally gave up and let Sarah alone.
Nissa was the one she was worried about. The girl didn’t take human blood meals, but if the other hunters learned Nikolas was her relation, she would never be able to rest safely. The last thing Sarah wanted was for hunters to push Nissa into killing to defend herself.
Christopher … what was she going to do about Christopher? She might have just helped Nikolas convince his brother to start killing again, but it was what she had needed to do to survive.
It wasn’t her fault. She had never asked for any of this. She had never asked for anything more complex than the simple definitions of good and evil she had been raised on.
All she could think was that she was marked, that Nikolas had signed his name on her skin as if she were some kind of object, and now he was hunting her. All to defend his brother. Wouldn’t she have done the same — worse, actually — to someone who had hurt Adianna?
She shook her head violently, trying to let go of these dangerous thoughts, and threw herself down on the bed, hoping for a sleep that eluded her.
She would kill him.
If she could.
If she could turn her heart into stone and make her knife her only morals, if she could stand to kill Christopher and Nissa when they came to avenge Nikolas’s death, if she could stand living after killing her friends, then she would kill Nikolas.
CHAPTER 22
SARAH INTERCEPTED ROBERT by his car at the end of the next school day.
“What’s up?”
She was aware that she looked very different than when they had last spoken. Her black jeans and white shirt were plain, not exactly her style, but she wore them because she planned on visiting someone who wasn’t fond of colors. Her leather jacket covered her arms. She had not bothered to replace the bandages after last night. Her blond hair was down, slightly wild, stirred up by her running to the parking lot. Her eyes smoldered with intensity and purpose.
“I need to talk to your sister.”
“Not likely I told you already, Kristin doesn’t talk to anyone. She barely even sees anyone anymore.”
Sarah leaned back against his car door, and repeated herself. “I need to talk to Kristin, and I’m pretty sure she’ll talk to me.”
He snorted. “I’m not bringing you to her. If she notices you at all, she’ll just freak out.”
“Robert —”
“Leave me alone, okay?” he snapped. “I get it. I’m not as … important … as you are. I’m human, yeah, fine. I talked to your mother, and she made that quite clear. Now leave me alone.”
“No,” she answered calmly. She felt a little guilty about sending this human to her mother, but he had received no colder welcome than any other hunter had. “I need to talk to Kristin, and I thought it would be more polite to ask than to break into your house.”
This time he tried to muscle past her, pushing her to the side. He was bigger than she was, but he hadn’t counted on her strength; his shove didn’t even knock her off balance.
“Robert …,” she said, trailing off. There was only one way to get his attention.
Show-and-tell. She shrugged off the leather jacket and watched Robert’s eyes widen at the sight of her fresh wounds. “I know a lot more about him than you do. I’ve fought him twice, and I know he plans to try to kill me soon. I need to know what Kristin knows, and if she knows some way to hurt him.”
Robert hesitated, then stepped back reluctantly. “Fine.” He got in his side of the car and reached over to unlock the passenger-side door. “I can’t guarantee she’ll talk to you, but if you think she can help you get that monster …” He trailed off. “Get in the car.”
CHAPTER 23
THOUGH THERE WAS COLOR in it, Robert’s house seemed bleached of life.
“Kristin’s room is upstairs,” Robert said quietly, and led Sarah up the blue-gray carpeted stairs. Just outside his sister’s door, he spoke again. “If you can help her, or get her to help you, fine. But Kristin … isn’t all there. She probably won’t even notice you. Don’t bully her — she doesn’t need any more abuse.”
Kristin was dressed in a long white nightgown with a high collar. Her hair had been dyed black, though the natural brown showed for about an inch at the roots.
The room was devoid of even gray — black paint covered every spot that might have been colored, and flaked off the handle of the hairbrush Kristin was using.
Nikolas’s house had been just as colorless, but that had been neat, artistic somehow — this was just sick.
“Kristin, I need to talk to you.” The gi
rl didn’t look up, but continued brushing her hair. “Kristin?” Still there was no reaction from the girl. “I need to talk to you about Nikolas.”
The brush paused.
“Kristin …” The girl returned to brushing her hair, and Sarah sighed.
Sarah knelt, moving the marks on her arms into Kristin’s line of sight, and finally the girl looked at her.
“He sent you?” she asked, and the hope in her eyes was strong.
There was pain in Sarah’s voice as she answered, “No. But I need to talk to you about him.”
“I … I don’t know much. It was only one party —”
“Just tell me what happened there.”
“I don’t —” She looked at her brother and shivered as her eyes fell on his washed-out blue shirt; he took it off, throwing it from the room.
“Better, Kristin?”
She nodded slowly and Robert left to get a different shirt.
“This girl Heather invited me to the party. She said the people were cool, and the music was awesome, and the guy she was going with was completely hot … which was strange, cause Heather is so cold, not really caring about anything …”
Sarah choked back her revulsion. The Heather whom Kristin was talking about was probably the one Sarah had seen at Nikolas’s bash, asking Kaleo to bite her. What kind of human invited other, defenseless humans into that kind of place?
Kristin had trailed off. “Tell me about the party” Sarah prompted, and Kristin nodded.
“The house … there was so much color in it, like walking into a kaleidoscope … one room was all red … it scared me …”
“Was Nikolas there?”
“The people … it was strange, the groups. Some of them were like me. They didn’t seem to know what was going on, really, and the house unnerved them a bit. Others were like Heather. They had connections. And others, so detached, so …” She shook her head, unable to find the description she was looking for.
“And then there was him, Nikolas …
“He was so beautiful, completely in contrast with everything else … his skin was so pale, and he was wearing all black … beautiful. He asked me my name and I told him it was Christine … he didn’t like that. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”