All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [31]
The answer that slapped her with its intensity was, unequivocally, No!
She didn’t have time for anything more. Seeing her move, Zachary reacted; she barely managed to dodge the knife she should have known was coming.
They had fought countless times. They knew each other’s weaknesses. His power was more of a danger to her now that she was a vampire; her strength and speed, however, were greater than they had been when she had been a witch.
On the other hand, she had one serious handicap: she didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to incapacitate him quickly, without doing permanent damage. Even if she no longer agreed with everything she had been taught growing up, the world needed hunters—and she would never kill someone who had been her family. Zachary might have been able to sever the connections in his heart, but she didn’t think she would ever be able to do the same.
It was very hard to be careful when she had been trained all her life to kill. She didn’t dare try to reach her knife. A blade would only remind her body of deadly habits.
Behind Zachary, she saw two figures move past the doorway. She wasn’t close enough or sufficiently focused to tell if it was Nikolas or Kristopher who Michael had just dragged through her line of sight, one arm around the vampire’s neck as if in a stranglehold. It was impossible to tell from the glimpse if Michael had a knife in play, or if it had been lost, and she had no idea what Jay was doing.
In her moment of distraction, Zachary lunged. She dodged but not quite quickly enough; his knife tore a gash deep into her shoulder. The wound cut through the rose scar as if striking it out, and the poisonous magic in the blade sent agony down to her fingertips and then swirling toward her core.
She had been trained for many years to experience pain and push it out of her mind until she had the chance to deal with it. She had been taught to focus no matter what other stimuli were around.
Something went wrong.
The pain and anxiety and frustration and fear all mingled in the spot where her heart now sat silent and unused except by the parasite that gave her life, and suddenly she beheld the world through a haze. Her mind stopped tracking details and intentions, like protecting Kristopher without killing Zachary. She moved. They fought in a whirlwind. When Jay tried to join on Zachary’s side, she managed to get just enough of a grip on his arm to throw him into the wall, hard. She paid only enough attention to see someone else engage him before returning her focus to the more dangerous witch.
Zachary got past her guard. She twisted just enough for the knife to miss her heart, but it cut into her stomach and sliced upward. Her eyes widened with shock, her body frozen for the moment with the pain. For the first time, Zachary’s eyes met hers, and in them she saw regret.
“I’m sorry, Cousin,” he whispered.
He hesitated.
She didn’t.
Snarling, mindless beyond the pain and the predator screaming in her head, she grabbed his wrist and squeezed until she felt it splinter. He shuddered, but he was a Vida. He didn’t cry out.
He had what she needed. She locked her prey’s wrists together in one hand, so slight and delicate but possessing a vampire’s terrible strength, and then with the other hand she pinned him in place and leaned his head to the side.
As if sensing his defeat, he went limp. In that last second, he didn’t fight her at all.
Warmth where she had been cold. Peaceful satisfaction where there had been gnawing hunger. She wasn’t fighting anymore. She was feeding, and the predator within her purred with triumph.
The voice seemed very far away, even though she knew it was screaming: “Sarah!”
She