The Den of Shadows Quartet - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes [90]
Sarah didn’t like doing it, but she probed his memory wound for useful information. Robert would have to deal with the pain if he wanted to help his sister. “Is that all you know?”
“Only that it gets worse every day. No doctor has been able to help her.” He shook his head. “I went to the house where the bash had been a few days after Kristin got home, but it was collapsing in flame. There was this old man watching the fire — he lived next door, and invited me in for iced tea. Said the vampires had been living beside him for years. Usually, he said, he didn’t mind unless they put the music on really loud. But when they left Kristin on his lawn, he got fed up and torched the place …” Bitterly, Robert added, “He had known all along what they were, and what was going on over there. But he hadn’t gotten angry until they trampled his garden when they left Kristin. That’s when he acted.”
Sarah found herself pulling back from the human, who was trembling with rage strong enough to make her head spin. Yet she forced herself to say, “Robert, I need to talk to Kristin.”
He gave her a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. “She doesn’t talk to anyone, not even me.”
Sarah wanted to argue further, but held back. A visit now would be wasted. She needed time to think of a way to approach Kristin so the girl would talk to her.
Robert gave her a ride home, and as they arrived Sarah took a pad of paper from her backpack. Scribbling down her phone number, she ripped out the sheet and handed it to Robert. “Give me a call sometime soon.” Hesitantly, she added, “You really should talk to my mother, too. She can train you to fight.” Sarah did not know if the human would admit he needed help, but Robert wasn’t going to live long if he wasn’t trained.
As she slid out of the car, Robert grabbed her arm. “Wait just a sec.” He paused, then seemed to make up his mind. “If you really think you have a chance at him, I have something for you.”
He tore off the bottom of the paper where she had written her number, and jotted down an address. “I was at a bash here on Halloween. I left when a fight broke out, but I was there long enough to know it’s his house. It’s about two hours away.”
Sarah smiled, glad for the first bit of truly helpful information Robert had been able to supply. Soon she would be facing one of the longest-hunted vampires in the Vida records. Not even Dominique and Adianna would be able to belittle that fight.
“Thanks.”
“Tell me how it goes?”
With a nod, she closed the car door. She was glad her cast was coming off tonight.
CHAPTER 13
SARAH SKIPPED SCHOOL the next day. Posing as her mother, she called early and excused herself.
No well-trained hunter was mad enough to stalk a vampire on his own turf at night. While real vampires were not confined to coma-like, coffin-enclosed sleeps whenever the sun was up, they were naturally nocturnal. Christopher and Nissa were prime examples that vampires could function fine in the daylight world, but the stronger a vampire grew, the more irritating sunlight became, and the less natural a diurnal schedule was.
So she was fairly sure that at ten o’clock in the morning, Nikolas would be asleep. At least he would be alone, and not hosting a bash. She wasn’t suicidal enough to approach him in a group of his kind, but she believed she could handle one vampire on her own — even the legendary Nikolas.
When she reached the address Robert had given her, she drove past it once, checking for lights and sounds. It was hard to tell over the vampiric aura that saturated the area, but she thought she sensed humans inside.
The