All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [55]
She found herself a moment later in some kind of club. The music wasn’t too loud, but the dim lights and the crowd made everything seem more overwhelming. The sudden, overpowering scent of humanity—their sweat and blood as the people mingled—didn’t help. She had to shut her eyes for a moment to block out the tapping of a hundred pulses against her brain.
“Where are we?” she asked once she had stabilized herself against the unanticipated smells and sounds of life around her.
“Phaethon. It’s a semi-exclusive Manhattan establishment catering to independent musicians,” he replied. “These are normally Kendra’s hunting grounds, but she won’t mind my bringing you here.”
Hunting grounds. She wondered how old the business was; she had never heard of it before, though as a Vida, she had of course made a point to keep track of such places. “You brought me out to hunt?”
“To feed,” he replied. “This is the kind of place where it is easy to find a willing donor. They know this establishment is Kendra’s, and that members of my line come here, and therefore know to seek us out here. I have trouble imagining your hunting down an innocent on the street, but somehow I suspect you will also have trouble asking those you already know, such as Christine, to bare their throats to you.”
Sarah had tensed, looking around her in an entirely new way. “Nikolas, I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“I don’t think you have a choice,” he answered. “Christine told me what happened, though she did not fully understand how much danger she was in. I know that your fear of hurting her is what nearly drove you onto a hunter’s knife. It is my responsibility to make sure you are not a danger to my people. Kristopher isn’t hard enough to push you into this, but you do not have a choice. You need to learn to feed.”
“I won’t kill.”
There, she said it, and in saying it she acknowledged their major difference: Nikolas, for all his black and white charm and talk about being a protector, was a killer. He had been in jail for murder when Nissa had changed him to save his life, and then Kendra had taken him for his first hunt and taught him to kill as a vampire. He was known in the human world as a serial killer, and long before, he and Kristopher had killed Sarah’s ancestor, Elisabeth Vida.
Now he nodded. “I wouldn’t have taken you here if I thought you would kill,” he said. “You know Kristopher and I will never judge you if you pick up such habits, but you do want to be cautious about it. Before you ever feed, you should be aware of whose territory you are in. You must know that the mortal whose throat you bare is yours to take. Humans in this place are under Kendra’s protection.”
Sarah nodded warily. “We’re still left with me needing to pick up a complete stranger to assault.”
Nikolas shook his head. “No, we are left with you needing to be charming long enough to make the acquaintance of one of the many humans in this place who would be honored beyond belief to be chosen.”
That’s disgusting, she thought. She managed not to say it out loud, but knew that Nikolas could hear her thoughts, so it certainly wasn’t his sensibilities she was protecting.
“Better or worse than choosing an innocent, like a lion pulling down a gazelle?”
She glared at him, because his being right didn’t make this any easier. “I saw your expression earlier, when you talked about that girl in the photo. Even you thought it was pathetic. What makes these humans any different?”
“These humans,” Nikolas said, looking around, “have lives, and passions. Those that choose to bleed have their own reasons, ranging from the feeling of power they get from knowing we need them in order to survive, to the fact that the sensation itself is pleasant. The ones I pity are those who have given up everything else. They bleed because it’s the only way they can see to get through the day.”
Sarah shuddered. “And what causes that need?”
“If one of our kind takes a human without much to live for and rolls their