All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [24]
Dominique turned from the bond, just slowly enough to reveal that she was not satisfied with the single blow.
At that moment, however, Heather tossed her head. “You want me to talk? I could tell you things to give you nightmares. Worse, maybe I could give you happy dreams. Would you like to know what it’s like when one of them takes you? When you’re in their arms and they bare your throat and drink?”
Zachary stood very still and fought to keep his mind blank. Blank. Not filled with the images the bloodbond’s words evoked. Yet she continued.
“I’ve been told that Kendra’s line is the best at it, though naturally I’ve never experienced anything else. All I know is that nothing you can do to me here matters for more than a moment. I’ve had three hundred years, and even if you kill me today, I will always have something you will never have: peace. You call me a victim, but I think maybe I am the only one in this room who isn’t. Look in my head if you want to,” she said, challenging Jay. “I have seen hundreds of humans pass through, willing to die, willing to give up everything, just to experience that bliss. And not just humans. The Vida line isn’t immune, is it?”
Zachary had been staring, hypnotized, so it took him by surprise when Dominique hit the bloodbond again, this time hard enough to rock her head back and unfocus her eyes.
Heather spat blood onto the floor before saying, “Sarah liked it enough to die for it.”
Michael was apparently the only sensible person left in the room. He tore off another strip of duct tape and slapped it over Heather’s bruised mouth.
“I’m going out,” Dominique announced.
No one questioned her as she left. Dominique’s self-control and composure might be perfect, but even she had to be disturbed by such an accusation regarding one of her blood. Of course she would want to get away.
“Sarah’s dead?” Robert asked in the silence that followed. No one had told him why he had been called to Dominique’s house. And apparently, no one was in the mood to answer him now.
Zachary looked around, trying to focus on his surroundings and not on his thoughts. He found Jay sitting in the corner, not quite out of the room but as far from Heather as he could get without truly fleeing. Whatever he had seen in Heather’s mind in those moments had shut him down.
“We should just get rid of her,” Michael said. “As long as we are guarding her, we are not out hunting Nikolas and Kristopher, and any secure locations she knows about will be empty long before we pry the information out of her.”
“I thought this was a trap for Kaleo,” Robert said weakly. “Sarah can’t be dead. Heather was messing with us, wasn’t she?”
“This being a trap assumes the mass-murdering sadist cares enough about this particular human to risk his hide,” Michael said, ignoring the human, as they all were. “We have more important prey to track.”
“She absolutely believes that he will come,” Jay said softly as he pushed himself to his feet. “Whether or not she is right, I do not know.”
“Like it or not, she’s one of our only leads,” Zachary said. “I do believe Kaleo will come for her, and even if he doesn’t lead us to our targets, removing him will make hunting them easier. We also need her in case Adia’s trip to the bookstore doesn’t pan out. After she gets home, she can decide what we do with this one.”
“ ‘This one’?” Jay echoed. “You’re trying so hard to distance yourself from her mentally, you can’t even stand to see her as human, can you?”
“She barely is human,” Michael replied. “After a couple hundred years, a bloodbond gets to be a lot more like a vampire. They get strong, and fast, and some of them even feel the bloodlust. If we give her a chance, she will kill us all.”
“Not all bloodbonds—”
“Shut up, Robert,” Zachary snapped.
“Did Nikolas kill Sarah?” Robert asked, gaze level and nearly empty.
Zachary nodded.
“He’s got my sister,” Robert said. “I thought … I thought she was safe with him.”
“The situation isn’t quite as clear-cut as it seems,” Jay said.
“Shut up, Marinitch,” Michael advised.