Though Sarah was also surprised that he would expect their help, she didn’t share Nikolas’s shock at the request. She knew what the hunters might do to Heather if Heather refused to give them information.
“She is surrounded by witches waiting for some fool to step in to pick her up,” Kaleo said. “I’m not about to be the only fool there. As for why you should help, if Heather hadn’t distracted the hunters, they would have taken Nissa instead. And finally, I was in the same place you were: not in SingleEarth, where I am very much not welcome, and not policing my people in a place where they are supposed to be safe from exactly this kind of assault. Since when has that rule changed?”
Both brothers answered the question by looking to Sarah for explanation. “Sarah?” Kristopher asked.
“SingleEarth’s autonomy is a high law among all witch-kin—”
“Which is why I was a little surprised they seem to be ignoring it,” Kaleo interjected.
Sarah stepped back. It didn’t make any sense … but Caryn had acted like it did. My mother says if I cross them, it could endanger everyone at SingleEarth. “Oh, goddess,” Sarah whispered as the answer struck her like lightning. Her stomach plummeted. Her chest constricted.
“Sarah?”
She wasn’t sure who had spoken. She felt blind. But she remembered the ancient words she had spent many hours studying as a child. A Vida was only given a true blade, crafted by the witches of old and imbued with generations of power, after she had recited and then sworn to all the laws of their line. She could have said the words in her sleep, but the only law applicable in that moment was so ancient she would never have thought anyone would invoke it.
When witch-kin is slain, there shall be no safe haven, no higher law to protect the guilty. Every hunter shall turn her blade to the task, and there shall be no rest until those responsible have been slain.
The Rights of Kin hadn’t been called upon since the death of Smoke Madder, thousands of years earlier. The conflict had led to the schism that split the witches into separate lines for the first time, with some obeying the Rights and some swearing a vow of nonviolence and giving up the title of hunter for themselves and all their descendants.
Hunters’ deaths were avenged when they could be, but most of the time it was simply accepted that hunters eventually lost their lives, usually to their prey. No one had called on the Rights when the Light line had been extinguished three centuries before, and the Vida line had nearly been forced to the same fate. No one had called on the Rights when Nikolas and Kristopher had killed Elisabeth Vida in the 1850s, or when Zachary’s sister Jacqueline had been slaughtered, or when Sarah’s father had been bled and dumped on their front step.
Sarah was sitting. When had she sat down?
Kristopher was by her side. Nikolas was still standing close to Kaleo, defensive, and Christine was hovering in the doorway at the opposite side of the room. Her face was tight with fear, but she stood solid, eyes only occasionally flickering back to Kaleo from Sarah.
Sarah recognized the posture. It was loyalty that held her when terror made her want to run. It had to be hard for her to stay in the same room with Kaleo, but she did it anyway.
Sarah wanted to say to her, Just run. Loyalty isn’t worth so much sometimes.
“The Rights of Kin are ancient, ancient Vida law,” Sarah said. “Older than the other lines’ existences. Older than any living vampires, or recorded civilization, for that matter. They were passed down verbally for centuries, because humanity hadn’t yet invented written language.”
“Get to the point,” Kaleo growled.
“Back off!” Kristopher shouted. “Can’t you see she’s in shock?”
Sarah shook herself. She wasn’t in shock; a daughter of Vida didn’t have that luxury. She pushed herself to her feet.
“The Rights of Kin can be called upon by any descendant of Macht—any Vida, Smoke, Arun or Marinitch witch—when their kin is slain. The law requires any other child of Macht to set aside all allegiances and obligations to assist with hunting down the killer. The healers don’t have to fight, but they can’t offer sanctuary or assistance, either. What Caryn did,” she said, thinking out loud as her gaze went to the bag the witch had hastily passed her, “would be enough to get her disowned if anyone learned about it.”
“Focus, Vida,” Kaleo snapped. “What does this mean, right now, to us?”
Kristopher looked ready to murder him, but the sharp words brought Sarah back to herself. They reminded her of the many times she had reported to Dominique, ignoring fatigue or agony after a particularly grueling fight. She had to be practical and keep her mind on what needed to be done. She couldn’t dwell on the lump in her stomach when she wondered why now, of all times, Dominique had called upon this ancient law.
“It means that all witches who hunt will turn their full attention on the ones Dominique considers responsible for my murder. They will call on their allies. They will track down anyone they have ever known to have a connection to the killers, without worrying about messy treaties with SingleEarth or other normally respected neutral havens.”
“I don’t suppose they care that you are not, in fact, dead,” Nikolas said.
Sarah shook her head. “In their eyes, I am.”
“And we’re your killers,” Kristopher added. “That means we need to warn our people. Everyone who wears our marks, or is normally allied with us.”
“Is Nissa safe?” Kaleo asked.
“She already had her run-in with the hunters—”
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” the Roman interrupted. “I assume she came to you after. Is she safe?”
“Yes,” Nikolas replied. “We’re not stupid. We didn’t know about the Rights, but the hunters threatened to kill her. It wasn’t subtle. She’s gone to ground.”
Kaleo nodded and then looked back at Sarah. “What will these hunters do to a bloodbond who might have information?”
“Normally, most hunters won’t hurt humans, even bloodbonds, but all bets are off now. They’ll want information, and they won’t show a lot of mercy getting it. Thank goddess Nissa got away.”
“I, too, am relieved that Nissa is safe,” Kaleo said, “but Nissa got away because Heather threw herself at the hunters, probably assuming they wouldn’t bother with a bloodbond, and certainly knowing that I would expect her to protect Nissa in any way she could. If she is now in danger, it is your fault, and I expect your help to retrieve her.”
Sarah closed her eyes and let herself go completely still, visualizing calm and centered attention.
By the time she opened her eyes again, she had come to a decision. There was one difference between this and all the deaths before. As Nikolas had pointed out, even if Sarah was dead by Vida standards, she wasn’t dead. Her family would be horrified at the notion of a vampire—a monster—walking around in the skin of someone who had once been one of them. Vidas didn’t believe that vampires could ever be good. They would be thinking not about if Sarah went bad, but when, and would consider it a mark of respect for who she had been to destroy what she now was.
“It isn’t right of me to put you all in this much danger. Dominique called on the Rights, but what she really wants is me.” There was a feeling that was almost one of freedom, of relief, as she said, “If I turn myself in—”
Shouting from the two brothers interrupted her chilled determination, but Kaleo’s words were what cut through to her: “Don’t be absurd.”
“Once they have me, they’ll release Heather.”
“So?”
She had expected anything other than blunt indifference from Kaleo. He had seemed to want to rescue his bloodbond, but Sarah realized she had misjudged him.
“I’m sorry if you can’t understand this,” she snapped, “but even if her life doesn’t matter to you, it matters to me. I won’t let her be hurt, possibly even killed, on my behalf.”
“On the contrary, Heather means a great deal to me,” Kaleo argued, “and I have no intention of
letting her be killed. But neither do I intend to let them have you.”
“Why do you care?” Christine interrupted, fury in her voice. “Or is it just that you don’t share your victims?”
Kaleo looked at her with a long, considering gaze before saying, “I think Sarah would object to being thought of as a victim.”
“And her opinion matters so much to you,” the human spat.
“Do you think, little girl, that the fact that she has been my enemy negates the fact that she has my blood?”
“Doesn’t it?” Christine said challengingly, but more softly now.
The reminder that Sarah was in any way related to Kaleo was not welcome to her. Yes, he had changed Nissa, who had changed Nikolas, who had changed Kristopher, and so it was—distantly—his blood that now made Sarah a vampire. But she wasn’t going to call him family.
Sarah was about to protest Kaleo’s claiming her as anything, but he turned from her to Nikolas to say, “And speaking of blood, Sarah needs to feed.”
The words jolted Sarah into immediacy.
“I’m fine,” she said. She could function fine for now. Her eating habits were not the immediate issue.
“You are not fine.” While Kaleo argued with her, she could tell that Nikolas and Kristopher were examining her closely. “I can see the bloodlust in your eyes.”
“I fed a few hours ago.”
“On Kristopher, I know,” Kaleo replied dismissively. “It was enough to keep you alive, but it won’t be enough to hold you long, not when you’re this young and under stress. You need live blood to sustain you.”
Sarah knew she was in trouble when Kristopher agreed, saying, “If you don’t feed soon, willingly, then you’ll feed in a frenzy, and you’ll probably kill someone. You don’t want that.”
She wasn’t ready. There was too much else going on. She hadn’t had time to take in any of it or figure out what she wanted or needed to do. She was supposed to have been at SingleEarth, where they could teach her how vampires survived without hurting anyone, not with Nikolas and Kristopher, who for all their protectiveness were admitted killers. Kristopher hadn’t killed for the past fifty years, but he had stopped in an effort to support Nissa, not because he’d had a change of heart. Sarah doubted he would keep to his new ways now that he was back with his brother.
And she really didn’t want to have this conversation in front of Kaleo, who she still very much wanted to kill. Maybe the vampire blood didn’t make a person evil, but it obviously hadn’t made him good.
“The longer we bicker here, the more trouble we court,” Kaleo said. “Sarah, deal with your own needs. We can’t hold your hand right now. Nikolas, Kristopher, I advise you to warn your people. If Heather is a valid target, then any human who attends our circuits is probably in danger. There is no point in rescuing one while others are picked off. Once our people are safe, we can decide how to remove the threat itself.”
He disappeared, leaving them with yet another subject she wasn’t ready for. Nikolas and Kristopher turned to her, but what was she supposed to say? The threat Kaleo had referred to was Sarah’s family and oldest friends. Her mother, her sister and her cousin Zachary were the last of the Vida witches. They would be joined by hunters from other lines, like Michael, who had been Sarah’s best friend before Dominique had decided they were getting too close and put her foot down.
Sarah would have to be a monster to fight them—no, not just fight, but kill, since that was the only way to stop them.
Or was it? There had to be another way. She just didn’t know what it was.
CHAPTER 5
SATURDAY, 6:37 A.M.
ZACHARY PUT HIS head down while Adia drove. His power had been wrapped up in the vampire’s when the bloodbond had jumped at him, so it had been much harder to incapacitate the girl now in their backseat. He had done what was necessary, but was paying for it with a pounding head and a rolling stomach.
He looked up long enough to assure himself that she was completely out. Trapped in a moving vehicle with someone whose strength, speed and healing might be almost vampiric, and who probably wouldn’t hesitate to leap out a door or fight for the steering wheel at eighty miles an hour, would be a bad time to make a mistake. It had been stupid of him not to track her as a threat in the first place.
When they got home, he could tell that Adia was trying to be careful, but the jerking motion the car made upon stopping still nearly made him heave. He shoved the nausea back, though, forcing it out of his frame of awareness as he pushed open the door and stood on legs that didn’t want to hold him.
“Do you need help?” Adia asked.
“I can handle it.” His mind was buzzing with a kind of white noise. The pain had pushed all coherent thoughts away, and for the moment, that was kind of nice despite the agony. It wasn’t so intense that he couldn’t do his job, though.
He checked around to make sure no neighbors had gone out for an early-morning walk before he lifted Heather onto his shoulder again and carried her toward the house, where Dominique was standing in the front doorway. She wasn’t tapping her foot; such a display of impatience would be a shocking loss of control for the Vida matriarch. He couldn’t have said what it was about her expression that made him certain she was watching him with frustration.
He just knew she was. He had always been able to sense her moods, ever since she had taken him in. He had always been able to recognize the times when she’d looked at him and seen his mother, or his sister, and wondered why he alone had survived and when the fatal flaw that had ended each of their lives would manifest in him.
He had hoped she would be sleeping, as she had said to Adia, but perhaps like the rest of them she was too restless. She must have stayed up to see what they would discover at SingleEarth.
“What’s this?” Dominique asked as they approached.
“Kaleo’s favorite bloodbond, I believe,” Zachary answered. His voice was too loud, but he held himself from flinching or whispering. “Heather. We found Nissa, but then this one attacked us, and the vampire got away.” Dominique’s expression shifted; there was just the barest tightening between her brows. Zachary added, “She should be able to tell us a good deal. Kaleo is a major player in Nikolas’s and Kristopher’s circuit, and she will also probably be easier to persuade than a full-blooded vampire would be.”
Reluctantly, Dominique nodded, as if his defensive babbling had in any way been new information to her.
“Bring her in. We should bind her before she wakes.”
Fortunately, Dominique turned around too early to see him stumble on the steps. Adia caught his arm, steadying him.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
He nodded, regretting the sharpness of the motion the instant he made it.
“Who else is here?” Adia asked as they followed Dominique to the kitchen. Zachary wondered at the question for a moment until Adia added, “I don’t know all the cars in the driveway.”
Zachary hadn’t even looked. His senses were so dull at that moment he could probably have been run over by a truck without noticing.
“Jay Marinitch arrived a few minutes ago,” Dominique answered. “Robert is also here.”
Jay. Oh, joy. Zachary had known he would have to work with that hunter once the Rights were called, but he had hoped Jay’s flighty tendencies would keep him from showing up so promptly.
And then there was Robert Richards, the human would-be hunter. He lacked any recognizable discipline and had no formal training and was only of interest to Dominique because of his sister’s connection to Nikolas. Christine Richards had been abducted by Nikolas the day before.
Neither Jay nor Robert would be much help in this hunt, and either could prove a hindrance. Robert’s loyalties were downright questionable; Nikolas had apparently told him that Kaleo had tortured his sister and driven her mad, and had claimed he was taking Christine with him for her own good. Robert was just gullible enough to believe it.
“Zachary Vida goes
out looking for a vampire, and comes back with a date.”
The clear, almost musical voice belonged to Jay. His wit had never been to Zachary’s taste, and now was no exception. Jay had the sense not to bait Michael, because he knew that the Arun witch would swing a punch at him, but Zachary didn’t have that freedom.
Zachary set Heather down in one of the sturdy armchairs. Dominique had already gone to get rope and duct tape to bind her. Alone, the rope and tape together could not hold a bloodbond with Heather’s strength, but they could be used as a base for magic that could dampen Heather’s natural power and make the bonds more effective.
“Look here,” Adia said, slipping something out of Heather’s pocket as she helped arrange the bloodbond in the chair. “Cell phone!” She flipped open the phone and started hitting buttons. “Nothing in the address book … and it looks like she had the sense to clear incoming and outgoing calls before she attacked us … but there’s one missed call.”
“Anything familiar?” Zachary asked, though he didn’t hold out much hope. There was a chance they could figure out the billing address for the cell phone if it was on a contract, but creatures who had been smart enough to survive being hunted for centuries tended not to be so easily caught.
“Looks like a local number,” Adia answered. She turned and flipped open her laptop, which had been sitting on the kitchen counter, humming softly.
Robert, who had been staring at Heather since Zachary had brought her in, asked suddenly, “What is going on? Dominique called, and I showed up at six a.m. on a Saturday without asking a lot of questions. But if we’re tying up random girls, I think I deserve to know why.”
Zachary bit back a sharp retort. The human wasn’t worth it. Past Robert, Dominique frowned, and only then did Zachary realize he had lifted a hand to rub his temple again.
“She’s Kaleo’s oldest, and by all indications favorite, bloodbond,” he said, responding only to the last of Robert’s demands. If Dominique had chosen to leave him in the dark about recent events, that was her call to make.