The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [112]
She realized that she had hesitated only when Christopher’s hand clamped over her wrist, stopping the knife from completing the killing blow. He tightened his grip until she dropped the weapon, and Nikolas tossed her knife away while Christopher dragged her away from his brother.
Most vampires were solitary hunters. Sarah had been trained to take down enemies one by one, but Nikolas and Christopher fought like one entity. When one was in danger, the other reacted.
Self-preservation replaced all loyalty to her friend as Sarah slammed an elbow into Christopher’s gut, forcing him to release her, in the same moment that Nikolas knocked her legs from beneath her.
She rolled away from both vampires, drawing her last knife. Breathing heavily, she paused, waiting for one of the vampires to move.
Nikolas edged toward her slowly, and she found her feet, her eyes never straying from him. Her right hand was still bleeding, and she saw his gaze fall to it, and the knife she was holding.
She was watching Nikolas, but it was Christopher who caught her wrist, Christopher who was suddenly restraining her. She had fallen for the same mistake he had, only moments before — she had assumed he would not hurt her unless she attacked him, and so had not been paying attention when he had disappeared from in front of her.
Christopher had lost his reasons for refusing, and all three of them knew it. Sarah’s blood was in the air, along with the tension from the fight. Christopher’s control was already weak, and now the predator had taken control.
Nikolas reached around Sarah and held her wrists, as Kristopher wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her still.
Sarah gasped as twin sets of fangs pierced her skin, Kristopher on the right and Nikolas on the left. Without her magic she had no further defense, and she collapsed beneath the combined pressure of their minds. With Nikolas and Kristopher still at her throat, she sank to her knees.
Both brothers pulled away after a few moments, and their gazes met for barely a second.
Nikolas turned away first, bent to retrieve Kristopher’s knife from where it had fallen, and handed it to his brother.
Kristopher took the knife as if he were in a trance and made a cut just below his own throat.
Sarah turned her head away, but Kristopher forced her to look at him — and at the line of blood that beaded on his skin. They had barely taken any of her blood, but even so she could feel the thirst that always fell on a vampire’s prey and she could not look away.
“No.” Her voice was soft, almost frightened.
Kristopher touched his fingers to his own blood and painted her lips with it, forcing her mouth open. She tasted the blood of the damned, and she could not resist.
Leaning her head forward to the cut on his chest, she drank. The blood was sweet and thick and magical, and she wanted it so much —
He pushed her away after a moment, and Nikolas turned her to himself, drawing his blade across his own skin, a mirror wound to Kristopher’s.
Once again she drank.
Then Nikolas pushed her away too, and she felt her mind spin downward as the blood entered her system. Blackness finally swallowed her, and she fell into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 28
ADIANNA HAD HER KNIFE in her hand as she shouldered open the front door, but she already knew there were no vampires within a mile of her. Her senses were stretched so far she could feel the heartbeats of the human inside and those of most of the humans on this block. Worse, she could feel Sarah, her aura muted from Dominique’s binding of her powers, and her heart beating frantically.
All this she knew before she even stepped into the front hall of the house. Her eyes took in, but her mind ignored, the artwork, the roses on the table, and the open box of chocolates on the mantel.
More vividly she saw the droplets of deep red blood, not yet dried, but scattered as if from a minor wound on a fighting person.
She should have guessed what Sarah would