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Thiiiiiis! Someone call Nissa out! Someone call Adia out! Theyre both wrong and they deserve to be told so!!!

All Just Glass 2005 Rough Draft: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“The healer was stalling us and you know it,” Zachary said.

“Yeah.” Adianna shuddered at the vampiric aura lingering in the room. Alone, it wasn’t strong enough to bother her, but knowing that it was Sarah made it horrific. “But we would never be able to prove it.”

How had things gotten so bad, so quickly?

They never should have moved from the city. Sarah had been happy there. Dominique hadn’t exactly approved of her friends then, either, but the riffraff hunters Sarah sometimes hooked up with were worlds better than vampires.

Adianna had given Sarah to them. She had turned her back and let that leach take Sarah’s blood, and give her his. She had lost control, she had panicked, and she had let them kill her sister.

“She’s gone now,” Zachary said, as he briefly searched the room, “and it doesn’t look like she was here more than a few hours. She didn’t leave anything.”

Adia nodded, trying to keep her expression as cold and emotionless as her cousin’s.

“I doubt she would have stayed nearby, but I’m going to check the rest of the rooms just in case,” Zachary volunteered. “Why don’t you look around downstairs and see if anyone knows anything?”

His voice was calm, but there was a glint in Zachary’s eye that said he was enjoying this turnaround. Any other time, Adia would have enjoyed the chance to ransack SingleEarth just as much. A few weeks ago, Sarah would have loved the chance.

That final fact was what dimmed the joy this time.

The healer had distress naked on her gaze as Adia entered the main foyer again, this time without Zachary. After hesitating for a moment, looking at Adia as if trying to decide who was the greater threat, Caryn Smoke bypassed Adia to take the stairs, probably hoping to forestall Zachary if he got aggressive with any of SingleEarth’s tenants.

Wrong choice. The thought popped into Adia’s head as Caryn disappeared up the stairway, and someone else appeared at the door.

Nissa Ravena: dark hair, fair skin, black eyes, a pretty face, and the older sister of twin murderers. One of Kaleo’s many fledglings, she was about one hundred and fifty years old.

She was also remarkably naïve. The expression that crossed her face as she saw Adia purposefully crossing the room was not fear, but compassion. She made no attempt to run, though she could have, easily. Instead she stepped further into the room and let Adia come to her.

“You’re Sarah’s sister, right?” Nissa asked. They had only met once- though “met” might be too strong a word, since the moment had mostly involved Adia dragging Sarah away from this girl and her brother, Christopher. “Adianna?”

Nissa didn’t even begin to look nervous until Adia caught her arm and pulled her aside, and even then she went with it. Despite the shivery feeling that always came from being so near the undead, Adia kept a hand on Nissa’s wrist, using just enough of her power that she knew the vampire wouldn’t be able to disappear until this conversation was over.

“Where’s Sarah?”

“Safe,” Nissa answered. “She made it through the change and her first night all right.”

That wasn’t what Adia had wanted to hear, or even more than she already knew- or wanted to think about.

“She didn’t kill anyone,” Nissa added, which meant that Adia wasn’t hiding her distress very well. Nissa was trying to console her.

She was only making things harder.

“Where can I find her?”

“She’s-” Adia knew the exact moment that Nissa reevaluated what was going on, and realized that Adia’s questions weren’t exactly based on concern. Horrified, the vampire asked, “Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?”

At the same time, Nissa tried to pull her arm back, and realized that Adia wasn’t about to let her go.

“Nissa, I know she was your friend,” Adia said. “I know Nikolas and Kristopher are your brothers. I-” She broke off her calm words, shook her head, and instead of the manipulative lie she had been planning on, spoke the absolute truth. “Personally, I blame you for what has happened to Sarah.”

Nissa tried to jerk her arm back again, and cringed when she felt a moment of Adia’s power. She snapped, “Have you ever occurred to you that maybe it’s your family’s fault? You’re the ones who drove her away over a friendship.”

“And you’re the one who connected her to a serial killer,” Adia replied. She was on the verge of losing her temper, which wasn’t good, and so she forced herself to take a deep breath and continue with what she had been saying. “Personally, I blame you and apparently you blame me- but this isn’t personal any more. Do you understand that if you don’t tell me what you know, I am not only allowed but obligated to kill you?”

“Not here,” Nissa argued, though her voice had gone softer, a little less sure. “I’m a member of SingleEarth. Your own laws say you’re not allowed to hurt me here.”

“Normally, that would be true,” Adia agreed. “But your brothers have killed not one but two Vida witches.”

“Sarah isn’t dead!” Nissa protested. “Now let go of me.”

“She’s dead by our standards, and no.” Out of the corner of her eye, Adia saw Zachary come back into the main room. “You really want to tell me what you know before my cousin gets over here. He won’t be as gentle as I will, or as forgiving.”

“This is forgiving?”

“You could be dead,” Adia pointed out. “Nissa, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Zachary had noticed them and was crossing the room.

Adia noticed the other vampire only in the instant that he swung at her, a punch that would have connected with her jaw if her senses weren’t already so sharpened by stress. She dodged, letting go of Nissa’s wrist in the process.

The girl was smart enough to disappear instantly, at which point the vampire who had attacked Nissa jumped back, raising his hands above his head as Zachary ran the last few yards to join them.

“I can tell you what you need to know,” the stranger said quickly, before either hunter could retaliate.

“Strange way of offering information,” Zachary said.

The vampire slowly lowered his hands. “If I had spoken to you in front of Nissa, she would have instantly run to her brothers to warn them.”

“Why are you talking to us?” Adia asked.

“I don’t like Nikolas, and even if I did, he can take care of himself. Nissa can’t. Her brothers made their own choices. She shouldn’t be the one to pay for them.”

“What do you know?”

“Nikolas is hosting a bash tomorrow night.” He turned over one of the small white cards, marked only with an address, that was traditionally the only invitation to such a gathering. “It isn’t at his primary home, so it will do no good for you to go early looking for him, but he’ll be there for the party. Kristopher probably will, too.”

“And Sarah?”

“I don’t know what she’ll do,” he answered. “She strikes me as the loyal sort, though. If you go after Nikolas and Kristopher, I bet she’ll show.”

The loyal sort. Adia wasn’t certain whether the words were meant to be a dig, or not.

“You’d really kill your own sister?” the vampire asked.

Adia was saved having to answer as Zachary looped an arm around the vampire, pressed a palm over his throat, and with a quick slice of power knocked him out. Someone in the main SingleEarth building cried out when they saw him collapse.

Zachary worked swiftly, using a skill that neither Adia nor Sarah had ever mastered as well as he wrapped the vampire’s power in his own.

Caryn was at their side instantly.

“What did he do?” the healer demanded.

“He’ll be fine,” Zachary assured her, though it obviously galled him to have to say it. “He’ll sleep for a few days and wake up hungry- but I imagine you have enough bleeders on hand to deal with it. I didn’t want him warning anyone.”

He handed the vampire over to Caryn, who staggered under the unexpected deadweight. Someone else came to her side to help her.

“Let’s get out of here,” Zachary said.

Adia nodded.

Zachary appeared fine until they reached the parking lot, at which point he tossed Adia his keys and collapsed into the passengers’ seat, massaging his temples. “Would have been easier to kill him,” he grumbled, as she started the car.

“SingleEarth wouldn’t have thanked you for it.”

“And someone there would have been offended enough to go to the leeches and warn them, I’m sure.”

Adia had personally been more worried about at what point the many vampires who belonged to SingleEarth would start fighting back. Most of them were weak and unskilled, but there were always a few so-called reformed killers who knew how to fight.

“Will you be okay?”

“Fine.” His voice was sharp. “I just burned a lot of power. I’ll want to chop my head off with an ax for a couple hours, but it will pass.”

He leaned back in the bucket seat as Adia drove them both back to Dominique’s. After greeting their line’s matriarch with perfect poise, as if he didn’t have a migraine trying to split his skull open, he respectfully asked to be excused for a few hours.

Adia explained what they had learned at SingleEarth and turned the invitation over to Dominique before she too asked to be excused.

“Go,” Dominique said. “I will start making plans for tomorrow night.”

“Thank you.”

She ascended the stairs and crossed the hall to her room in even, controlled steps. It wasn’t until she had closed her bedroom door behind herself that she started shaking.

Adianna Vida was on the verge of breakdown. Complete emotional meltdown. She knew it; everyone knew it, from Dominique and Zachary probably to Nissa and the nameless vampire who had given them the invitation.

Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?

She took a deep breath. Control. Control.

Dear goddess.

She pulled a brush through her hair as if to avenge a wrong committed against her.

You’d really kill your own sister?

Sarah wasn’t her sister any more. She was just one of them, now. One of them, and it was Adia’s fault. She’d had a chance to do the right thing. She could have killed Kristopher and let Sarah die honorably. She should have.

Panic, fear, loss. What kind of excuses were they?

She would never get out of her head the image of Sarah lying there with the blush of blood on her lips.

Track her down, Dominique had ordered. I don’t care how long it takes. Track her down, and when you find her, put a knife in her heart.

And she would, because she had received the order, and to defy it could get her disowned. Adianna and Zachary were the last pureblooded witches in their line. That line could not be allowed to die. It was as simple as that.

#backlist and chill season 2

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