All Just Glass - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [58]
She drew a deep breath and focused on Jake. She was trying to steady herself, but instead the inhalation brought to her the scent of his skin and the blood beneath. She had to drop her control inch by painful inch, consciously acknowledging the senses she had learned as a hunter to respond to or ignore as survival made necessary.
As if he sensed the right moment, Jake pulled her forward. The rhythm of his heart and blood and breath made a symphony, and she let herself drown in it.
That was his metaphor, not her own, she realized as her fangs pierced his flesh ever so gently. The embrace was intimate as his thoughts wrapped around hers, sharing what he felt: peace, joy, music. His entire world was music, rising and falling in people’s voices, in the tremble of lights and colors. He heard music even in silence and was constantly composing it from the sounds of the world. And his greatest art came from this sensation of oneness and sharing and being with eternity.
She felt Nikolas’s hands on her shoulders squeeze a warning, but she didn’t need it. Instincts compelled her to draw back before she went too far, and she knew she would never risk harming this beautiful, perfect instrument.
She let him go, and he leaned back in his chair, dazed but unharmed.
Sarah blinked and realized there were tears in her eyes.
“Now you know why Kendra chose him,” Nikolas said.
Sarah nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered to the artist before her.
His eyes fluttered open just long enough to focus on her. “Come back and see a show sometime,” he said.
“I will,” she answered, and she meant it.
Once again, Nikolas waved to one of the passing waitresses. He gestured to Jake, and the woman nodded in return.
“They’ll take care of him,” Nikolas said. “We should move on.”
Sarah nodded again, mutely, and followed as Nikolas led her away. She felt like she was still sorting through the crescendo of thoughts she had encountered. Was this how Kristopher experienced the world? If so, she could understand why he had thought that even with the Rights of Kin hanging over her head, she would want to see a show or visit a museum.
“Don’t fight it,” Nikolas advised. “When they’re willing, and unafraid, they share so much of themselves with us. Let it stay with you awhile.”
“When you talked about Kristopher going to live with Nissa, and about your trying to learn to hunt without killing, you acted like it was hard to survive that way,” Sarah said, speaking carefully, hoping not to offend him but desperate for the answer. “Even before you pulled me away, I was going to stop. It seemed like it would have been a tragedy to harm him.”
“If you feed regularly,” Nikolas replied, equally exactingly, “on willing donors who have a firm sense of self, you will rarely be tempted to harm them. Over time, the instinct will arise, and it will take either death or stronger blood to sate your hunger. If you are careful from the start, there are options that do not involve death, but fledglings taught to kill early have fewer choices.”
He was standing tensely, but he had not looked away, as if he knew she needed these answers. The encounter with Jake had made her reevaluate everything she had ever thought about the humans who willingly shared their lifeblood with vampires, and everything she had ever thought about the creatures who accepted that gift, but she still needed to know: what would she become, and was it something she could abide?
Nikolas continued, “I believe the shape of the power itself changes from the moment of the first hunt. There are those among us who say fledglings should kill the first time they feed, and that those who do not permanently limit their power. Perhaps it is true. What I have seen in the past century, and heard from others of my kind, is that those who kill in their first nights among us are driven more often to kill in the nights after.”
“You didn’t think it would be good to tell me this before I fed?