The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [84]
“Sarah, Mother is throwing a fit. She asked me to find you. What are you doing here?” Adianna winced at the obvious answer when the door opened again and Christopher followed them out.
Christopher froze, no doubt sensing danger but not fully understanding it.
“Please, Adia, let me handle this,” Sarah asked softly, catching Adianna’s wrist before the other hunter could move.
Sarah — Adianna said, reaching out with her mind.
Responding the same way Sarah interrupted, I’m going to tell him the truth, and then I’ll come home. I care about him, and about his sister. I don’t want either of them hurt. Just let me say good-bye my own way. And don’t tell Dominique.
Adianna could read Christopher’s aura almost as well as Sarah could, and knew the vampire was not a threat physically She nodded. If Sarah was going to tell him who she was, and end the friendship, then Adianna would let her do it.
Adianna backed away, keeping her gaze on the vampire until she slipped around the corner to the front of the building.
CHAPTER 10
WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?” Christopher asked, bewildered.
“Adianna … doesn’t like you.” It was the most she could think to say. “Come here — away from the door. I need to talk to you, and I don’t want someone wandering into our conversation.” She led him to the back of the building.
“What did I do?” Christopher asked when she hesitated to explain.
“You” — are a blood-sucking leech — “didn’t do anything wrong,” Sarah answered. She took a breath to brace herself for her next words, because they would hopefully end the closest thing she had ever had to a true friendship. “But I need you to leave me alone.” Only seventeen years as Dominique Vidas daughter kept her own pain from her voice. She couldn’t continue this double life, and Christopher would be safer knowing nothing. “I want you to stay away from me,” she continued, driving the knife home. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t come near me. Don’t even look at me.”
“If that’s how you feel,” he answered, his voice cooler than a moment ago, though she could still hear his hurt in it. She had hidden enough of her own emotions in her life to recognize that he was trying to do the same.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be — you aren’t the first to turn me down, and you probably won’t be the last.”
“I don’t want you getting hurt, Christopher.” He shrugged, turning away, as if it didn’t matter.
“It’s harder to do than one might think,” he answered bitterly.
The words gave her a moment of pain. “Christopher, turn around.” She couldn’t leave him like this, without understanding. She was trying to protect him; she did not want to hurt him.
“I’m leaving. I won’t bother you.”
“Christopher, look at me!”
He turned around, his face completely neutral except for a hint of anger behind his eyes.
“What?” His voice was cold, controlled — very different from the Christopher that Sarah had come to know. She wondered when in his life he had needed to learn how to show nothing of his thoughts, nothing of his feelings.
“It isn’t you,” she said quietly. She couldn’t stand to let him leave without telling him her reasons. “It isn’t who you are … and it isn’t even what you are. Well, in a way it is, but …” She sounded like a bumbling idiot, she knew, but the necessary words did not come easily to her. “It’s not just what you are. It’s what I am.”
Christopher started to ask a question, then paused.
“Christopher, I’m a witch. A Daughter of Macht,” she elaborated. Unlike the modern Wiccans, her kind was not human, had never been human.
“I don’t care if you’re Dominique Vida herself,” Christopher declared brazenly.
Christopher’s words caused a hysterical giggle to catch in Sarah’s throat. Her mother was the most famous — or in vampire circles, infamous — vampire hunter born in hundreds of years.
In answer, she drew the knife from her back; the moon glinted off its silver hilt. Christopher swore under his breath, and she smiled wryly “Christopher, Dominique is my mother.”
Now he looked at her with a small amount of skepticism, which was the last thing she expected. Most vampires were far