“Jake.” He greeted the young man with a smile. “You aren’t performing tonight, are you?”
Jake’s face immediately took on a glow when Nikolas recognized him and addressed him by name. “Not tonight,” he answered.
Nikolas explained for Sarah. “Jake performs here a couple nights a month. He’s a student at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music and one of the local artists that Kendra sponsors. He has a singing voice that can break your heart.”
Jake ducked his head modestly but did not deny the praise.
Nikolas continued with his usual assertive honesty. “Jake, my friend Sarah is very new to our world, and she had a less than glowing impression of what that world is like until recently.”
Jake’s eyes widened with surprise, and he blurted out, “You’re the hunter?” He immediately blushed and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve heard of you. Most of us have heard of you.”
Probably not in flattering ways, Sarah thought, given her recent occupation. Yet he was being nice to her. She didn’t understand. Was he that desperate?
He seemed to have grasped her concerns. He said to Sarah, “Kendra made it clear to me when I first met her that I don’t owe anything to anyone. She pays a lot of my bills, but she asks for music in return and nothing else. Anything else I give, it’s because I choose it, because I want to.”
“Why?” Sarah finally managed to ask.
So many of the bleeders she had met didn’t care if they lived or died, just as long as they could bleed. They gave up everything else, betrayed other humans to the vampires, sacrificed their dignities and their souls for the feeling that came when there were fangs in their throats.
Was Jake one of those?
Jake shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “It doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t injure me. I don’t donate on performance days, but other times, I don’t mind. Look …” He stood up, hesitated just a moment and then sat by Sarah’s side. “I’m offering,” he said. “I know you won’t hurt me. Nikolas won’t let you, even if your self-control isn’t perfect yet.”
He sat close to her, as if he would kiss her. He reached out to touch her cheek and then closed his eyes, turning his head to the side to bare the long line of his throat.
Nikolas set his hands on Sarah’s shoulders and said, too quietly for Jake to hear, “You’ve had that Vida control clamped down so tightly, you’re not even letting yourself acknowledge him with your senses.”
I don’t want to do this! she thought, glaring at Nikolas with a spike of frustration. How long before had she almost ripped out her cousin’s throat? Nikolas gave her an even look in return, waiting, trusting she would pull herself together.
She drew a deep breath and focused on Jake. She was trying to steady herself, but instead the inhalation brought to her the scent of his skin and the blood beneath. She had to drop her control inch by painful inch, consciously acknowledging the senses she had learned as a hunter to respond to or ignore as survival made necessary.
As if he sensed the right moment, Jake pulled her forward. The rhythm of his heart and blood and breath made a symphony, and she let herself drown in it.
That was his metaphor, not her own, she realized as her fangs pierced his flesh ever so gently. The embrace was intimate as his thoughts wrapped around hers, sharing what he felt: peace, joy, music. His entire world was music, rising and falling in people’s voices, in the tremble of lights and colors. He heard music even in silence and was constantly composing it from the sounds of the world. And his greatest art came from this sensation of oneness and sharing and being with eternity.
She felt Nikolas’s hands on her shoulders squeeze a warning, but she didn’t need it. Instincts compelled her to draw back before she went too far, and she knew she would never risk harming this beautiful, perfect instrument.
She let him go, and he leaned back in his chair, dazed but unharmed.
Sarah blinked and realized there were tears in her eyes.
“Now you know why Kendra chose him,” Nikolas said.
Sarah nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered to the artist before her.
His eyes fluttered open just long enough to focus on her. “Come back and see a show sometime,” he said.
“I will,” she answered, and she meant it.
Once again, Nikolas waved to one of the passing waitresses. He gestured to Jake, and the woman nodded in return.
“They’ll take care of him,” Nikolas said. “We should move on.”
Sarah nodded again, mutely, and followed as Nikolas led her away. She felt like she was still sorting through the crescendo of thoughts she had encountered. Was this how Kristopher experienced the world? If so, she could understand why he had thought that even with the Rights of Kin hanging over her head, she would want to see a show or visit a museum.
“Don’t fight it,” Nikolas advised. “When they’re willing, and unafraid, they share so much of themselves with us. Let it stay with you awhile.”
“When you talked about Kristopher going to live with Nissa, and about your trying to learn to hunt without killing, you acted like it was hard to survive that way,” Sarah said, speaking carefully, hoping not to offend him but desperate for the answer. “Even before you pulled me away, I was going to stop. It seemed like it would have been a tragedy to harm him.”
“If you feed regularly,” Nikolas replied, equally exactingly, “on willing donors who have a firm sense of self, you will rarely be tempted to harm them. Over time, the instinct will arise, and it will take either death or stronger blood to sate your hunger. If you are careful from the start, there are options that do not involve death, but fledglings taught to kill early have fewer choices.”
He was standing tensely, but he had not looked away, as if he knew she needed these answers. The encounter with Jake had made her reevaluate everything she had ever thought about the humans who willingly shared their lifeblood with vampires, and everything she had ever thought about the creatures who accepted that gift, but she still needed to know: what would she become, and was it something she could abide?
Nikolas continued, “I believe the shape of the power itself changes from the moment of the first hunt. There are those among us who say fledglings should kill the first time they feed, and that those who do not permanently limit their power. Perhaps it is true. What I have seen in the past century, and heard from others of my kind, is that those who kill in their first nights among us are driven more often to kill in the nights after.”
“You didn’t think it would be good to tell me this before I fed?” Sarah asked.
Nikolas shrugged, in no way defensive. “Knowing wouldn’t have changed your decision, and you would have trusted me less tonight if you suspected I might have had any motive to encourage you to kill. I will answer questions you have, but I have no reason to volunteer information that will do nothing but make you uncomfortable.”
“What about Kristopher?” Why hadn’t he told her this, when he knew how afraid she was of turning into a killer?
“In my brother’s defense, these are only thoughts I started having after he left, when I began to wonder why it was so easy for Nissa to survive without killing, and why Kristopher was able to survive with her, but it seemed impossible for me to do the same. Kristopher probably never had reason to give it any thought.”
Sarah nodded slowly. Trying to rally her courage, she said, “I think … there may be a few things your brother hasn’t had a chance to give much thought.”
She remembered his reaction to her sharing his memories of Christine. It hadn’t been feelings of love that had washed over him right then, but obligation.
She had seen the way these brothers lived, the bonds they surrounded themselves with and the way women reacted to them in general. She had accepted that Kristopher had probably flirted with hundreds or thousands of pretty girls in his lifetime, without any thought of “forever.” The only thing that made her different was that she had ended up dead when he hadn’t intended it.
The problem with hunting in Manhattan, Sarah realized suddenly, was that she used to hunt in Manhattan … or if not on the island, at least near it. Even if it had occured to her earlier, with almost twenty million people in the New York metropolitan area, Sarah would have been comfortable with the likelihood of not running into anyone she knew. Unfortunately, luck had not been working in her favor lately.
Now the familiar voice, with its cautiously friendly tone, caught her off guard. Habit told her to smile and return the greeting warmly. After all, she and the hunter who hailed her at that moment had always been close.
She turned to face the witch, with no idea what she would do next.
CHAPTER 19
SATURDAY, 5:03 P.M.
JEROME TURNED AWAY, but even though the vampire’s back was to her, Adia felt unable to move. She watched as he retrieved one of many small boxes from a closet on the other side of the room and set it down on the counter.
“Some of my favorite photos can’t go on the walls,” he said, as if making casual conversation. Given the photos that were on the walls, Adia wasn’t sure she wanted to contemplate what this vampire would find too objectionable for public display.
He opened the box and flipped through the stack of photographs therein before selecting three, which he presented to her, fanned out so she could see the images even without taking them from his hand.
She stared at his face for a moment, strangely unwilling to look down at what he was showing her. She had seen enough of the “art” he put on his walls to know he liked to immortalize his victims. Did she really want to look?
He stood there patiently for a moment and then put the photographs down on the table. “I hope you’ll leave them here when you go. I don’t have copies.” Then he disappeared, in one irritating blink of an eye.
At last, alone, Adia looked down at the three pictures he had decided to share.
The first one showed the same beautiful blond woman, in her bright indigo club dress, looking up at Jerome as he reached out a hand as if to pull her into a dance. The expression on her face was ambivalent, equal parts uncertainty and daring joy. The lights had caught a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.
Adia had never seen the girl in the photograph, but she recognized her. She knew exactly who she was.
The next image was of the same woman, now in casual clothes, stretched out on a couch, snuggling with Jerome but looking directly at the camera with a distressed, startled expression that was incongruous with the relaxed posture. Adia knew perfectly well why she hadn’t wanted her picture taken at that moment.
The last of the three photographs was of a different couple, but the tone and content were similar.
Adia gagged hard, shoving herself away from the table with the photographs as if they had a poisonous bite.
She stumbled out the door and nearly sprinted to her car. She had to … had to …
Behind the wheel, she nearly fishtailed as she U-turned out of her parallel parking space. She had to get home. No, not home; she didn’t really have a home right then, just the safe house. But she needed to get there. She needed to ask … needed someone to explain, to make things right …
How could they?
An hour before, Adia would have said she knew what betrayal felt like, what anger felt like, but she would have been wrong. She had felt nothing compared to this, which made her turn the key and walk into the safe house in a bubble of her own anguish.
Jay, who had been sitting at the kitchen counter, eating, physically recoiled from her. He started to fight that instinct and came toward her as if to comfort her, but her glare stopped him in his tracks.
“Where’s Zachary?” she asked. Her voice came out soft. She had almost expected to hear herself shout, but her lungs were too tight.
“Shower,” Jay answered as Adia became aware of the sound of running water. “He got home just a minute ago. We were going to go out to—”
“Hush,” she snapped. She stormed through the apartment and pounded on the door to the bathroom. “Zachary Vida, you have fifteen seconds to get out here or I swear by my blood I will drag you out.”
The water turned off instantly. She heard the rustle of clothing, and the door opened with seconds to spare, Zachary not completely dry, wearing only his pants, a towel over his shoulder and a necklace she had never seen before. Eternity. How ironic.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, eyes wide. “What happened?”
For a few seconds, she stared at him, trying to convince herself it wasn’t true.
“Adia!” he snapped. “Take a breath. Get a hold of yourself.”
She managed to choke out the words: “Did you know they took a picture?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Zachary—”
They both spun on the Marinitch witch when he tried to interject, Zachary silently, and Adia saying, “This is not the time, Jay!”
“There never is a time!” Jay snarled back.
“Shut up!” Adia had felt like her world had been shattering for days, but now it was as if it was gone. Everything had fallen down, and she was standing in the middle of emptiness, and every guide she had ever known had failed her. “Zachary, how could you?”
“What—” He stopped arguing long enough to examine her expression. He didn’t protest his ignorance again. Instead, he paled. “I didn’t—” He looked toward Jay, who apparently wasn’t going anywhere. In another mood, Adia might have cared, but she couldn’t stand to put off this confrontation, and at that moment she wasn’t experiencing a lot of pity, either. “Adia, do we have to …” Finally, he whirled away, his fist impacting the door hard enough to make it shudder. “It isn’t like that!” he shouted.
“Why don’t you tell us what ‘it,’ whatever you two are going on about, was like?” Jay suggested, the tension in his voice an echo of their own, though he obviously had himself more under control. That was new, the Vidas losing their minds while their kin stayed calm.
Zachary stood next to the couch, his fingers digging into the back as if he needed the support to hold himself up, as he answered in sharp, biting words, “I had a fight go south, a while back. I lost. I lost bad. At the end of it, three of them were pinning me. I was too run down to use power to throw them off. They stripped my weapons. And they offered me a choice. They could turn me over to the others, who would kill me, probably slowly—and that side of the offer was described in great detail by some of the vamps who were there watching—or I could agree to let them bleed me a little, and then they would let me go.”
He hung his head, making his decision clear.
Vida law forbade making deals with the vampires, even to save one’s life, but that law was designed to keep witches from betraying each other or sacrificing their beliefs as part of a deal with a creature who could not be considered trustworthy. Zachary had made a mistake, but it wasn’t an unforgivable one, in Adia’s eyes.
“That’s it?” she asked. She had seen only one photograph of Zachary. It was possible it hadn’t been like the other ones, that it really had been just one fight gone bad. Jerome could have been messing with her. He would have known she would assume the worst, given the other images.
But Zachary shook his head. “After that, it ate at me. I got sloppy. I think part of me was trying to lose fights, so they would kill me and I wouldn’t have to admit to the rest of you … or to myself …” He dared to look up a minute, but whatever he saw in Adia’s face made him look away again.
Jay said, “You lost a fight, Zachary. That’s not worth losing yourself over.”
“You don’t understand,” Zachary replied, his tone utterly flat.
Adia shook her head. “Zachary—”
“No,” he interrupted. “Just … no. You know perfectly well I couldn’t tell you. I certainly couldn’t tell Do
minique. I couldn’t tell anyone except—” He swallowed thickly.
Adia saw Jay’s eyes widen as if he knew something Adia didn’t know and had just made the connection.
“Believe it or not,” Zachary said slowly, “vampires will pick out their favorite hunters. And other vampires know about it. My ‘patron,’ as she puts it, made it clear to me that she wouldn’t reveal me to others of her kind, but that if I got in trouble, I could say her name and she or one of her associates would come get me. I swore up and down I’d never use it, and I never have, but she and her friends frequent a lot of the rougher circuits, so sometimes I don’t need to. I’ll be in a fight, and then suddenly it’ll be over and …”
When it became clear that he wasn’t going to say more, Jay asked, “The guy who helped Nikolas pull Sarah off you was one of your friend’s friends?”
“What guy?” Adia asked, startled … and yet not. Jerome had said he had warned the twins, and that had been when they had found the first photograph, which she realized now hadn’t been left accidentally. It had been a message, though not to her.
“I didn’t see him, since I was locked in the closet at the time with a broken arm,” Jay answered. “I just heard his voice.”
“Jerome,” Adia said.
Zachary flinched and nodded. “I’m sorry, Adia.”
“Why didn’t you ever talk to me?” she asked. “I’m not Dominique, Zachary. You could have told me what was going on, and we could have worked it out. We could have gone after them together, or just—”
“Because you needed to be better than I was!” he shouted. “Adia, I know I’m weak. My entire side of the line is. My mother went mad after my sister’s death. She went out, and never came back. My little brother followed her, and we never saw him again. The only reason I’ve survived is because Dominique looked out for me, and you know what kind of perfection she demands. I couldn’t spread my weakness to you and Sarah.”
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