Sarah would have.
And just like that, the excitement came crashing down.
“You take the resident halls,” she said softly. “I’ll check the common rooms.”
Vampires had the irritating ability to disappear and travel any distance in the blink of an eye. A well-trained witch of their line could disrupt that power, but to do so required touch, which meant it was normally hard to catch someone who wasn’t arrogant enough to come out and fight. They would have only one chance at this, before their target learned that the Rights of Kin were in play, so it would be best to cover as much ground as quickly as possible. This early in the morning, most of SingleEarth’s vampires were still awake and social. Adia would have been happy to wait until they were curled up asleep in bed, which most would be within the next couple of hours, but she did not want to risk waiting and having word reach their targets.
After they split up, Adia was the one who got lucky. She found Nissa in one of the art rooms, receiving instruction on stone carving from a girl who reeked of a vampiric taint. She was not a vampire, but a bloodbond to someone old, and powerful.
“Nissa?”
The vampire lifted black eyes as Adia said her name. A sad smile crossed her face, but she walked fearlessly toward Adia.
“Adianna, right?” she asked. “You’re Sarah’s sister.”
Adia nodded tightly. Unfortunately, Nissa wasn’t dumb. Adia doubted she would say anything helpful without coercion.
“And you’re … Kristopher’s sister,” Adia said. At least for a little while recently, Kristopher had pretended to be human. To be something other than evil. His little game had started this whole disaster.
“Are younger sisters as much trouble as brothers?” Nissa asked, shaking her head. “If you were hoping to get in touch with Sarah, I can pass a message on for you.”
Adia winced. She couldn’t help it.
Nissa stepped forward and put a comforting hand on Adia’s shoulder. Adia resisted the instinct to pull back, instead letting her power seep subtly over Nissa’s, tangling it enough to hold her in place when she decided the wise course of action was to flee.
“I know what you’re going through,” Nissa said. “I’m sure your whole world has been turned upside down. But it gets better. I don’t approve of a lot of the choices Nikolas and Kristopher make, but they’re still my brothers, you know?”
Adia couldn’t handle too much more of this. “Do you know where I would find Sarah?”
“She and Christine are—” Nissa stopped and frowned, her body going tense. Her eyes searched Adia’s face. “Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?”
Adia let herself look offended and innocent, eyes wide. “I just want to see her,” she said. It didn’t hurt to try, right?
Nissa looked ambivalent. “I can pass on a message, and see if she would be willing to meet you here,” she suggested.
Adia considered it. If Sarah didn’t know that the Rights were in play, she might show up, believing herself safe. On the other hand, she was smart and knew Vida law as well as Adia did. If she received such an invitation, she would wonder why Adia was extending it, and might deduce what was going on, at which point Adia would have lost her best lead.
Adia didn’t need Nissa to tell her anything, really. The twins protected their kin.
“I need you to come with me,” Adia said.
Nissa looked shocked. “You’re hunting her,” she said. “You’re really … You would really kill your own sister?”
Adia was sure she could take Nissa down in a fight, but with Zachary’s help, she could take Nissa alive. The twins would undoubtedly come to avenge her, but the hunters had more leverage if she was alive. Adia sent out a thread of power to Zachary, prompting him to come back to her, and answered Nissa’s question as a stall tactic.
“In a heartbeat,” she said, “before I let her kill anyone else.”
She was glad her voice was steady. She did believe her words but was still pleased that her voice didn’t betray that her heartbeat was rapid with fear of the moment when she would have to follow through with the promise.
“Not all of us are killers,” Nissa snapped. She wasn’t running yet only because she didn’t know she needed to. She probably thought she could convince Adia to change her mind.
“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 bal
ls, 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.
“You have to leave,” Caryn said. “I’m sorry, but you do. Now. SingleEarth can’t give you anything. You have to get out of here, before they come back and look for you.”
“What?” Sarah had never liked SingleEarth, but they had welcomed some of the vilest creatures in history, provided they had agreed to reform. How could they turn her away?
Caryn shoved a duffel bag at Sarah. “Here’s what I could swipe while they were arguing. I know it isn’t much, but it’s all I could do.” Caryn was pale, and now she balled one hand in her black hair. “I’m sorry I can’t help more, but my mother says if I cross them, it could endanger everyone at SingleEarth. You and I weren’t close, but I know you can take care of yourself. You’ve got strong friends now. You’ll be okay, if you just go.”
Sarah disappeared without even the sense to demand an explanation. She wasn’t sure where she was going; instant transportation was a vampiric trick she used by instinct instead of intent, and the extra effort of bringing the bag with her made her head spin. She nearly fell as she reappeared, before she was caught and pulled into an embrace.
“Sarah, thank god.”
She could feel the wash of emotion that accompanied the words, and knew as she leaned on him that this was Kristopher. When she had first woken as a vampire, he had given her his blood so she would not need to hunt and kill an innocent human. Doing so had opened his mind to her.
She closed her eyes and let him hold her for a moment, while simultaneously trying to shield her mind from his thoughts.
Kristopher had flirted with her before he had known she was a witch; she had allowed it because she could sense in his aura that it had been a long time since he had killed, and because she had assumed he was allied with SingleEarth … and because it had been nice to have a friend. She didn’t know what might have happened between them if she hadn’t been a Vida, and if his brother hadn’t reacted violently to what he saw as a threat to Kristopher. As it was, they had never even managed a successful first date before their romance had gone the way of Romeo and Juliet’s—except that Romeo and Juliet didn’t wake up the next day, leave the crypt and say, “Now what?”
Sarah had chosen to go to SingleEarth because she needed distance, so she could learn how to live this new life before she had to figure out what she wanted to do about the relationship she had never intended to die for. Now she could barely hear her own thoughts through his anxiety.
“Nissa told us there were hunters at SingleEarth.” That piece of information came from another voice, similar to the first but indefinably different. “We were concerned.”
Sarah pulled back, fighting the gentle insistence of Kristopher’s arms that encouraged her to stay close, when she heard Nikolas’s voice. Looking up, she saw that Christine had also joined them.
She had to get herself under control, not just because she still instinctively wanted to be strong in front of Nikolas, her recent enemy, but because Christine had gone through enough lately. She didn’t need to see Sarah panicked.
And maybe she could admit, if just to herself, that having someone else to be strong for helped. As a Vida, she had always existed for others. She had lived and died to fulfill vows written by ancestors thousands of years earlier. She had never hesitated to risk her life to protect the innocent. Her friendship with Nissa and Kristopher had been the first thing she had ever sought for herself.
Look where that had brought her.
“Hunters at SingleEarth?” she echoed. “They’re powerless there.” Might Adia have been looking for her? One reason Sarah had gone to SingleEarth was that it was owned by the Smoke witches, and they had treaties so even the Vida line was not obligated to hunt vampires within its walls. She hadn’t expected her family to want to see her, but she had wanted to give them an option that would free them from being bound by law to kill her.
Kristopher shook his head, his gaze now as dark as his brother’s. ??
?They tried to take Nissa. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t cooperate.”
Sarah shook her head, horrified and amazed. What was going on?
All four of them tensed when another figure appeared in the room. Christine recoiled, her face going pale, and as Sarah moved to comfort her, Nikolas and Kristopher stepped protectively between the newcomer and Sarah and Christine. Did they think she needed to be protected, defended, coddled, as if she were helpless? Or was the position accidental, a result of her moving closer to Christine?
That didn’t matter right then. What mattered was that Kaleo Sonyar, the vampire who had just appeared among them, looked pissed. The oldest living direct fledgling of Kendra, Kaleo was an apt representation of his line: beautiful, an artist, absolutely mad and capable of undeniable cruelty. He had features like a Roman sculpture—quite literally, since rumors claimed he had modeled for some of those works—and golden blond hair that gave him an angelic cast. The looks were misleading, however. By killing Nissa’s father and threatening Nikolas, Kaleo had convinced Nissa to let him change her. More recently, he had bloodbonded Christine and tortured her for months, mainly to spite Nikolas.
Seeing the anger stark on his aristocratic features now gave Sarah the chills.
“What is going on?” Kaleo demanded.
“I think that’s our question for you,” Kristopher said. “What are you doing in our home?”
Kaleo spun to face Sarah, which made both boys take a protective step forward. “Your ‘family’ was in SingleEarth.”
“I know. They—”
He shook his head, silencing her explanation. “They took Heather. I demand you three get her back.”
“You demand?” Nikolas repeated incredulously. “Why would we possibly help you rescue one of your bonds? What exactly were you doing while she was fighting hunters, anyway?”