The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [101]
Nikolas’s voice was quiet as he interrupted. “Don’t you know how lonely it is hunting without you?”
“No,” Christopher answered, still looking at his brother. “I don’t. I’ve never hunted alone.”
Nikolas once again drew his brother forward, this time placing Christopher’s hand just above the pulse on Sarah’s throat. She checked her reaction to jerk back, knowing that an attempt to flee would only bring out the predatory instincts that Christopher was fighting.
“Can’t you feel the life there, Christopher?” Nikolas pressed. “Don’t you want it?”
Christopher closed his eyes, turning his head away.
“Christopher —”
“Sarah, don’t talk,” Christopher said quickly, sounding pained. He jerked his hand out of Nikolas’s grasp and stepped back.
“Christopher, don’t leave me again,” Nikolas pleaded, childlike in his fear of loneliness. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. Nissa needed you then, but I need you now.”
“Let Sarah go.” Christopher’s voice wavered.
“She hurt you,” Nikolas argued. “I saw you after she turned you away. You wouldn’t even talk to me. I can’t stand to see you in pain, Christopher. In the old days we would have hunted her down together.”
“I don’t want to kill her,” Christopher said. He finally gathered the strength to meet his brother’s gaze again. “And I won’t let you.”
“I won’t kill her if you don’t want me to — if I was willing to do that she would have been dead the instant she entered my home. But you know I can’t just turn her loose. She hunted me down once. Do you really think she would stay away if I let her go? Do you really think her family wouldn’t track down you and Nissa if they couldn’t find me?” Nikolas’s voice was cold, but filled with pain.
“Nikolas —”
Nikolas removed his knife from his pocket and opened it.
Nikolas, what are you doing?” Christopher demanded, but his brother did not answer as he caught Sarah’s right wrist in a grip she could not break, and skimmed the blade across the back of her hand, drawing a thin line of new blood.
“Damn it, Nikolas!” Christopher shouted, spinning sharply away so the blood was not in his sight. “Don’t do this to me!”
“Just once, Brother, be the Kristopher I know.”
Christopher was trembling as he fought the blood-lust.
“Please, Brother. For me, kill the pain.” Holding Sarah by the throat with one hand, Nikolas reached out and turned his brother around with the other. Christopher’s eyes immediately fell on the blood that was dripping from Sarah’s hand.
“Christopher, no —”
“Shut up, Sarah!” Christopher shouted when she tried to argue, his voice strained. He turned to his brother. “We’re both damned. You know that, don’t you?”
And then Christopher took Sarah’s hand, lifted the wound to his lips, and licked the blood away.
“Christopher, I’m your friend —”
“No, Nikolas.” Roughly, Christopher shoved himself away from her, sending Sarah stumbling back into Nikolas. She could see him shaking from the effort it took him to break away.
“Kristopher, have you forgotten everything?” Nikolas pleaded, the hurt clear in his voice.
“Please, Nikolas, let her go.”
“Why?” Nikolas’s voice was childlike, hurt. “You were the first one,” he reminded his brother, “to pick up a knife.”
Sarah felt Nikolas’s hold on her wrists lessen as he focused on his brother; if he continued to be distracted, she stood a chance of getting out. She had lost hope that Christopher would help her — he wasn’t strong enough to ignore his bloodlust.
“Please, Kristopher,” Nikolas implored.
“Not Sarah.”
That last, painful argument almost caused her to hesitate, but even as she yanked her arms out of Nikolas’s grip she had made her decision. Survival. She threw herself forward, and before either vampire could react, she had pinned Christopher to the floor, a hand over his throat.
“Sarah —”
He didn’t have another chance to speak before she violently dragged at Christopher’s power with her own. He gasped, unable to fight back, and she winced at the pain she knew her magic caused him.
There were nine energy centers in the body, called chakras, that witches could