The Den of Shadows Quartet (36 page)

A true Vida would have fallen on the knife the moment she had become a vampire, but Sarah did not want to die. She had made friends with Nissa, and with Christopher, and they had taught her that the vampire blood did not turn a person into a monster.

W
HEN SHE GAVE NO RESPONSE
, Kristopher took a breath. After a hesitation that told her he was bracing himself for her answer, he said, “Sarah, I don’t give a damn about your past — I love you. If you want to, you’re welcome to stay with us.”

She saw Nikolas’s surprise when he heard the “us,” but the vampire didn’t argue. The idea gave Sarah pause, however.

If the “us” had meant Christopher and Nissa, she would have said yes immediately But she knew how Nikolas lived, how he hunted. He killed, and whether his prey was willing or not didn’t matter to Sarah. She couldn’t live that way.

Before she could voice her refusal, Nikolas spoke.

“Sarah …” He paused and looked to Kristopher for a moment before he continued, as if for approval. “I’m not expecting your instant forgiveness. I’m not even asking for it.” He started to take a step in her direction, but then seemed to think better of it and stopped. “But
if nothing else, trust me when I say I won’t ever hurt my brother, or let him be hurt if I can stop it.” Again he glanced at his brother, but this time only for a moment, as if he already knew how Kristopher would react. “We don’t own you. Whatever you choose today … I’m no threat to you. But don’t blame Kristopher for what I’ve done, and don’t leave just because I’m here.”

Sarah opened her mouth to disagree, but then closed it as Nikolas’s words sank in. Her instinct was to argue with anything he said, but right now what he said made sense.

She couldn’t stay, but it wasn’t because of Nikolas. Quite abruptly she realized that her hatred for him seemed to have faded. Her brush with Kristopher’s mind had caused some of that; it was nearly impossible to completely hate Nikolas once she had felt the intense love and loyalty Kristopher held for his brother.

Yes, he had hurt her physically but pain was only fleeting. Honestly, the most brutal thing Nikolas had done to her had been to open her eyes and force her to see reality — the shades of gray that existed in the world, beyond the world of stark black and white, of evil and good, that Dominique had taught her long ago.

She took a breath, but her mind was made up. “I can’t stay” she said finally, and she saw — and felt — Kristopher flinch. “You know I can’t survive — and hunt — the same way you do. Even if I could, I don’t like to be dependent. Give me some time to find my own way to live.” She lifted her gaze and met Kristopher’s. His fear, which was still ringing clear in her mind, prompted her to add, “I don’t hate you, Kristopher. I don’t hate you or your brother.” On a
burst of impulsiveness that would have made Dominique cringe, she stepped forward and hugged him. “I’ll miss you, Kristopher, but I can’t stay here. For now at least.”

“We have forever. I’ll see you again,” he answered with certainty. “But before you go —”

Kristopher tilted her face up and kissed her.

It occurred to Sarah then that she had never been kissed, really kissed, before.

However, as first kisses went …

Like all of Kristopher’s art, his kisses were expertly done.

Kristopher was the one who broke the kiss, though he kept his arms around her and did not pull back far. “I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for” — he shrugged — “too long.”

“That is a moment you never need to apologize for.”

He smiled, and in the expression Sarah saw the true Christopher, whom she had come to know and trust.

“There are a million other moments, both past and future, that I should apologize to you for,” he said lightly “I might as well start earning credit.”

A million moments, both past and future. Thousands of years of hatred, between both their kinds, could hardly be undone quickly. Even in the eternity that she potentially had ahead of her, she didn’t think she was up to a job as a peacemaker. But if she had been …

SingleEarth would take her in if she asked. Nissa could teach her how to survive without killing. There were pockets of peace in the world, and if she could just find one of them, she could make a life there. As Kristopher had pointed out, she had forever.

S
OME PEOPLE USE THINGS
; they destroy. You’re a creator, a builder
. The words came unbidden to her mind, completely inappropriate at the moment.

Distracted by the memory Turquoise missed a block. She hissed in pain as the knife cut deep into the meaty underside of her arm. She caught her attacker’s wrist and twisted, sending the young woman attached sprawling to the ground, as her father’s words faded from her mind. Once, they might have been right, but now, they could not have been further from the truth.

The woman Turquoise was fighting wasn’t clumsy for long. In a near-blur of burgundy hair and black leather, Ravyn Aniketos sprang to her feet.

Turquoise rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the kinks in them, and blinked quickly to clear her tired eyes. This match had been going on for too long. She was bleeding from where Ravyn’s knife had sliced through her arm, and she could feel the warm, sticky drip of blood down her back from a second wound on
her left shoulder. Ravyn’s black leather pants had been slit open in the thigh, and she had a shallow wound low on her jaw, which would probably heal without scarring.

Earlier, there had been other combatants; most slunk out the back door, defeated, within the first few minutes.

The fight was a competition of stealth and hunting ability. In near darkness, the competitors found and marked one another — a quick knife slice, just enough to draw blood. If a hunter was marked three times, he or she was out of the running. Turquoise was pleased to have lasted so long, but only victory would satisfy her pride. Ravyn likely felt the same. The next one of them to land a blow would win, becoming the leader of Crimson, the most elite unit of the Bruja guilds.

Somewhere in the building, a clock struck, once, twice …

Turquoise lost track of the clock’s tones as she struck again. Ravyn cursed as the blade narrowly missed her stomach, and Turquoise barely managed to evade an answering strike to her cheek.

They were both getting tired, and tired quickly became clumsy. Only the fact that they had both been fighting for hours kept them evenly matched.

The clock finished its song, and left the room in eerie silence, broken only by the ragged, heavy breathing as the two fought.

“Ravyn. Turquoise.”

Turquoise slid a fraction of her attention to the voice but did not allow her gaze to leave Ravyn.

“Sheathe your weapons,” Brujas leader, Sarta,
instructed. Someone flipped the switch and both fighters blinked against the sudden light. “I have a feeling that this competition could go on for days if I let it,” she announced, “but Bruja law does call for a limit.”

Ravyn licked the blade of her knife clean, her cranberry-colored gaze resting on Turquoise all the while, as if daring her to react. Ravyn had no fetish for blood, and she professed to hate vampires, but she did love to give a show.

“Well, Sarta, if you’re going to call a halt to our fun, do you also plan to name a winner?” Ravyn was still panting slightly but not enough to affect the smooth drawl in her voice.

Turquoise wiped her own blade on the leg of her ruined jeans. She didn’t speak yet, preferring to catch her breath. If it was ten now, then she and Ravyn had been sparring for almost five hours. This fight had begun at sunrise.

Five hours, and they were left in a draw. Turquoise’s muscles ached with fatigue, but she would rather have finished this than stopped now. She wanted the title.

Crimson. It was the most elite of the three Bruja guilds. Cold-blooded as snakes and vicious as hyenas, members of Bruja were the best predators in existence. To be recognized as the guild’s leader would fulfill the promise Turquoise had once made. She had sworn that no one would ever mistake her for prey again. If that meant abandoning a few of the social mores of the daylight world, as Bruja members so frequently did, so be it.

The leader of Crimson was second only to Sarta, the leader of all three Bruja guilds. Turquoise had trained
and fought and competed for the position. She knew she was the best Crimson had. She could out-stalk and out-fight any vampire and had, many times. She would win this title, whatever it took.

“Rematch,” Sarta said simply. “Onyx and Frost still need to compete today. You two are obviously matched evenly with daggers, but a Bruja member needs to be able to use any weapon at his or her command.” She paused for dramatic effect. “A tie is decided in a private duel, one month after Challenge, witnessed only by the other leaders. The weapon is decided by the member who has been in the guild the longest — in this case, Ravyn — and the bout goes to third blood.”

Ravyn sighed, looking at Turquoise past burgundy lashes. “In one month, and I choose the weapon. In that case …” She walked around the room, examining the walls, which were decorated with weapons of all sizes, all shapes, and all designs.

She paused to run a finger down the blade of a broadsword, but then shook her head and moved on. She glanced at the crossbows, but they were the traditional weapon of Crimson’s sister guild, Onyx — not appropriate for a Crimson duel. She passed foils, epées, and sabers, and did not even pause to glance at the thick wooden staves.

Finally, she pulled down two leather whips, and cracked one expertly. “I choose these.”

Ravyn tossed one of them to Turquoise with a sly grin, and Turquoise almost let it fall to the ground before reflex made her catch the handle. Of the entire selection of weapons in the Bruja hall, the whip was the
only one she hated. Ravyn could not have made a better choice.

“Turquoise, do you accept the challenge?” Sarta asked.

“I accept.” She was grateful that her voice stayed even. She hated whips. She could use one if she needed to, but not with any precision.

“Then get out of here,” Sarta ordered. “Come back the day of the next full moon. The match will begin at sunrise.”

Turquoise nodded, then turned her back to Sarta and Ravyn, and stalked as gracefully as she could from the fighting floor.

She paused next to the cork assignment board, collecting herself before she left the halls.

Ravyn had come up behind her to look at the board. Turquoise’s instincts told her to leave. Ravyn, like all Bruja members, was not someone Turquoise trusted at her back. So of course she forced herself to stay and read the notices.

Turquoise ignored most of the posts. She was a mercenary, but she had standards, and she preferred vampires as her prey. There were numbers up on a couple of shape-shifters, but none sounded interesting. Besides, Turquoise was still a little wary of putting a knife in something that breathed and bled like a human, even if it did grow fur, scales, or feathers occasionally.

The rest of the posts she tried to avoid reading. She liked to think no amount of money was worth stalking human targets, but she knew most Bruja members disagreed. Some argued that cowardice kept her from
hunting her own kind. When Turquoise had first joined Bruja, the older members had taken bets on how long it would take her to make her first human kill.