Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Shattered Mirror

Sarah did not wait for Christopher’s answer. Instead, she drew the knife from her wrist. The blade had barely cleared its sheath when Nikolas pounced, sending her to the ground; the breath rushed from her lungs, but she kept her grip on her weapon.

Christopher reacted instantly and grabbed his brother’s arm, dragging Nikolas to the side, ignoring Sarah as if she posed no threat. Slaughtering her sense of fair play, Sarah rolled, knocking the momentarily defenseless vampire away. Nikolas cried as her blade touched his skin, and the sound caused Sarah’s gut to clench. He looked so much like Christopher—so vulnerable.

She realized that she had hesitated only when Christopher’s hand clamped over her wrist, stopping the knife from completing the killing blow. He tightened his grip until she dropped the weapon, and Nikolas tossed her knife away while Christopher dragged her away from his brother.

Most vampires were solitary hunters. Sarah had been trained to take down enemies one by one, but Nikolas and Christopher fought like one entity. When one was in danger, the other reacted.

Self-preservation replaced all loyalty to her friend as Sarah slammed an elbow into Christopher’s gut, forcing him to release her, in the same moment that Nikolas knocked her legs from beneath her.

She rolled away from both vampires, drawing her last knife. Breathing heavily, she paused, waiting for one of the vampires to move.

Nikolas edged toward her slowly, and she found her feet, her eyes never straying from him. Her right hand was still bleeding, and she saw his gaze fall to it, and the knife she was holding.

She was watching Nikolas, but it was Christopher who caught her wrist, Christopher who was suddenly restraining her. She had fallen for the same mistake he had, only moments before—she had assumed he would not hurt her unless she attacked him, and so had not been paying attention when he had disappeared from in front of her.

Christopher had lost his reasons for refusing, and all three of them knew it. Sarah’s blood was in the air, along with the tension from the fight. Christopher’s control was already weak, and now the predator had taken control.

Nikolas reached around Sarah and held her wrists, as Kristopher wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her still.

Sarah gasped as twin sets of fangs pierced her skin, Kristopher on the right and Nikolas on the left. Without her magic she had no further defense, and she collapsed beneath the combined pressure of their minds. With Nikolas and Kristopher still at her throat, she sank to her knees.

Both brothers pulled away after a few moments, and their gazes met for barely a second.

Nikolas turned away first, bent to retrieve Kristopher’s knife from where it had fallen, and handed it to his brother.

Kristopher took the knife as if he were in a trance and made a cut just below his own throat.

Sarah turned her head away, but Kristopher forced her to look at him—and at the line of blood that beaded on his skin. They had barely taken any of her blood, but even so she could feel the thirst that always fell on a vampire’s prey, and she could not look away.

“No.” Her voice was soft, almost frightened.

Kristopher touched his fingers to his own blood and painted her lips with it, forcing her mouth open. She tasted the blood of the damned, and she could not resist.

Leaning her head forward to the cut on his chest, she drank. The blood was sweet and thick and magical, and she wanted it so much—

He pushed her away after a moment, and Nikolas turned her to himself, drawing his blade across his own skin, a mirror wound to Kristopher’s.

Once again she drank.

Then Nikolas pushed her away too, and she felt her mind spin downward as the blood entered her system. Blackness finally swallowed her, and she fell into the oblivion of unconsciousness.

ADIANNA HAD HER KNIFE in her hand as she shouldered open the front door, but she already knew there were no vampires within a mile of her. Her senses were stretched so far she could feel the heartbeats of the human inside and those of most of the humans on this block. Worse, she could feel Sarah, her aura muted from Dominique’s binding of her powers, and her heart beating frantically.

All this she knew before she even stepped into the front hall of the house. Her eyes took in, but her mind ignored, the artwork, the roses on the table, and the open box of chocolates on the mantel.

More vividly she saw the droplets of deep red blood, not yet dried, but scattered as if from a minor wound on a fighting person.

She should have guessed what Sarah would do. Adianna herself would have done the same, if somehow she had ended up in the same situation. Better to die than to face the humiliation of being disowned. Better to die with your pride intact than to live without it. They had both been raised that way, but Adianna had hoped so fiercely that Sarah would choose life. It had been almost two hours later that she had sneaked back to Sarah’s room, only to find her already gone.

Sarah’s spilled blood, blond hair, and flushed skin were the only color in the room. She lay on a plush black couch, where it seemed someone had gently set her down. Adianna could see the faint mark that attested to an almost-healed wound on Sarah’s right hand, though she knew there had been no mark there earlier in the night.

The fact that the new injury, no doubt the source of the blood on the floor, was nearly closed scared Adianna more than anything had since their father had died. No witch healed that fast.

Her power flared as she knelt by her sister’s side. She was dangerously close to losing control, but she knew of nothing on earth that would make her pause to regain it.

Sarah’s skin was hot to the touch, and Adianna clamped her jaws tight as she saw the faint blush of blood on Sarah’s mouth. Reaching out with a tendril of magic, she found the poison in Sarah’s system.

They had given her their blood. Whether they had intended to blood bond her or to end her life did not matter. Sarah was a Daughter of Vida; her witch blood would destroy the invading vampiric blood, and probably destroy the body it was inside in the process.

A healer might have been able to do something, but any healer would have consulted Dominique before treating Sarah, and Dominique would have told them to let her die. Adianna would have to try on her own.

She knew what the consequences could be. This had not been attempted since Jade Arun had tried to heal her young daughter thousands of years ago. Since then every witch in the A run line had been born with vampire blood. But if that was the price, Adianna would pay it.

She placed her hand over Sarah’s feverish brow, closed her eyes, and tried to sever the bonds the vampiric blood had already made on Sarah’s flesh.

She knew from the start it was a lost cause. The infection was too deep, and it had leached onto Sarah’s blood too firmly.

“Damn it, Sarah!” Adianna’s own shriek startled her back to the real world. “Don’t you dare die on me. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare .” The last words were whispered, as she threw her mind and magic headlong into the swift tide that was Sarah’s power.

The effect was similar to jumping into freezing river rapids headfirst, bogged down by pockets full of stones, with salt in her eyes, and every inch of skin raw to the bone. First she severed the ties Dominique’s magic had fastened over Sarah’s, and then steeled herself for her next move.

Sarah’s magic was killing her as it killed the vampire blood. If Adianna could not pull out the vampiric toxin, then the only thing she could do was cut away the magic that was fighting it.

She was in Sarah’s mind as well as in her magic, and even though she did not want to hear, she knew the truth. She could save Sarah’s life by destroying her magic, but she knew quite clearly that her sister would rather die.