All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [52]
Many of the photographs were of natural features, like glaciers, waterfalls, gigantic waves, slithering rivers of lava and enormous crevices in the earth. Others were candid pictures of people, sometimes sleeping, sometimes with others in friendly or intimate embraces, rarely looking at the camera.
In one, Jerome was dancing with an attractive blond woman. She was in a slinky indigo dress, and her head was tucked down against his chest. The picture wouldn’t have been unsettling, except that the one beside it showed the same indigo dress, visible only in brief glimpses around the three vampires feeding on her—Jerome at her throat, and the male and female who had just left the room, one at each wrist. All Adia had to say in favor of the shot was that the vampires had been discreet. They did not hide their own faces, but the photograph seemed specifically angled to conceal the identity of their victim.
Was she dead? Did they hide her face because her lifeless form had showed up a day later, and they knew that this way they could flaunt the crime with immunity? Then again, the main thing she knew about this vampire was that he had no shame or desire to hide his sins. He preferred to flaunt them. She wondered what he told the innocent humans he lured here when they asked about the photographs. Did he feed them some lie, or did he wait to take them here until they were already enough under his control that they wouldn’t care?
Jerome had returned to where he had been sitting when she’d first entered, and was just watching her. Waiting for what?
“Can we get this over with so I can get on with my night?” she asked.
He sighed, and nodded as if to himself. Finally, though, he began speaking.
“Can you imagine the terror I felt when I saw Kristopher Ravena lying, near death, with a hunter’s blade in his chest?” he asked. As he spoke, he approached her, as if to plead with her for sanity. “When I saw Zachary Vida with his throat nearly torn out by his own kin?”
She circled to put the coffee table between them, and Jerome backed off and leaned against the front door.
“I imagine it was terrible for you—Wait, you were there?” She interrupted her wry response as pieces fell into place.
“I hadn’t picked up on who you were, but Heather called me a few minutes after you left. I alerted the brothers.”
Adia wondered for a moment why Heather had called Jerome and not Kaleo. Then she realized that it made sense: her intention had been to warn Jerome that the hunters had found his number, and not to protect Sarah.
“You sent Kristopher and Nikolas, and yet you pretend to be concerned that Zachary was hurt?”
“I believed that the brothers would, to the best of their ability, attempt not to harm the hunters, out of respect for their newest fledgling. If I had wanted to ensure the Vidas’ slaughter, I would have called Kaleo instead.”
“And why didn’t you?” Suddenly she was remembering the scene she had returned to, and imagining once again how much worse it could have been. Zachary and Michael had both lost enough blood that they would have been dead had the vampires wished it.
“You believe me now, do you?” Jerome asked.
She shook her head but said, “I’m willing to entertain a conversation about the possibility.”
Jerome nodded. “That’s about as much as I can expect. In short, the world needs hunters. Immortals need the possibility of their own deaths. And, as I’ve said before, I am uncomfortable with the concept of wholesale slaughter. But now we have a problem. Dominique has called on the Rights of Kin. So long as that law is in play, it almost guarantees the death of your line, and every other witch line alive.”
“A little arrogant, don’t you think?” Adia said with a bravado she didn’t really feel.
“Think about it. If you slay either brother, the other will avenge it. Those two are closer than human twins. They have twined their powers together for more than a century. As a witch, you would be able to see that when you look at them. Neither survives well in separation, and I