All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [19]
He nodded solemnly. After Dominique left, he went into the nursery. She had taught him how to hold and feed and change a baby when he had visited before with his mother, but right then Adianna was sleeping, so he just sat next to the crib and listened to her breathe. He would protect her until everyone came home.
CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY, 6:38 A.M.
“SARAH—”
Sarah knew what Nikolas was going to say, and interrupted with “I won’t kill my own family.”
“And if it comes down to a choice between them and us?” he asked.
Kristopher tensed, his arms protective around Sarah. “We don’t have to discuss this now. Much as I hate to say it, Kaleo is right. We need to talk to our people.”
“Can I call Robert?” Christine’s soft voice cut through the vampires’ anxiety.
“I sent Robert to my mother for training, when I first learned he had been hunting,” Sarah said with a wince. “She’ll be watching him.”
“We have some disposable cell phones,” Kristopher said. “You can help Christine figure out what she can safely say.”
Sarah was about to reject the idea again, but then she hesitated. Facing Kaleo the way Christine had was incredibly brave, considering her previous experiences with him. The seemingly frail human had been ripped from her own life as surely as Sarah had been, and this was the one comfort she asked.
Sarah realized, suddenly, that part of the sympathy she was feeling wasn’t hers. She was picking up on Kristopher’s thoughts again. She had forgotten to shield against him, and he had no ability to mask his mind.
She made an effort to block him out, but the damage—if that was what it was—had already been done. She could not be as cold and practical toward Christine as she wished to be.
She nodded. “We’ll just have to be careful.”
“Good,” Nikolas said. “Meanwhile, Kristopher and I should go and speak to our people. They need to know the situation.”
Sarah nodded, wondering with frustration, When can we kill Kaleo?
There. That was her cold practicality coming back to the surface. She wanted him gone, and making vampires gone was a task she knew how to handle. The ancient Roman had come to them this time looking for help to save one of his people, but that didn’t negate his history of destroying anything and anyone who got in his way.
She must have projected the thought, because the brothers responded to it. Kristopher nodded to Nikolas, who waited with Christine while Kristopher pulled Sarah into the next room. In the past Sarah had been able, with effort, to communicate silently with Adianna, because they were close and they had often mingled powers for a hunt, but full-blown vampiric telepathy was a talent she would need some time to get used to.
“Killing him would kill Christine,” Kristopher reminded Sarah, his voice every bit as bitter as she felt. Killing a bloodbond’s master was almost always fatal to the bond, as the vampire’s death was felt by the bonded human. The shock too often caused the body simply to shut down.
“I could protect her,” Sarah said. “It will take me a while to get the hang of using my magic again, now that it’s been changed by mixing it with vampiric powers, but I can feel it and I know it’s not just gone. I don’t know any magic that can break a bloodbond, but with effort, I should be able to block Christine’s connection to Kaleo long enough that she wouldn’t feel his death.”
Kristopher paused to consider, but finally shook his head. “Kaleo already knows what thin ice he’s on; that’s why he didn’t dispute our claim on Christine when we insisted on bringing her to stay with us. Nikolas and I would love an excuse to challenge him, but to do so now, especially when our actions have put his people in so much danger, would be seen by others of our kind as unprovoked.”
“I find myself hard-pressed to care about the opinions of other vampires,” Sarah said. “And even Nikolas said he would kill him. He said it to Christine.”
“And you’ve never said anything in a moment of anger that you couldn’t follow through with?” She didn’t know how to respond to that,