Prologue

Adianna was in a mood to be irritable. It seemed like she'd been having a lot of those days lately—days that she expressed herself through increasingly vicious attacks on her marks. It also meant she'd come home with a lot more blood on her clothes—most of it someone else's. Adianna sighed, running her hand through tangled locks. She knew the reason why she'd been so on edge lately, and the reason's name was Sarah. Or it used to be. Before Sarah befriended a vamp, before his brother tried to bond her. Before she died and lived again. Before she became a vampire.

The memory was silver sharp in Adianna's mind, its edges as bright and painful as the blades in her sheaths. (insert quote)

In any other family, the Turning would have been a tragedy, but in this family, the Vida line born and bred on magic and hatred for the undead, it was treachery. Perhaps it would have been acceptable had Sarah killed herself upon awaking as a vamp, but Sarah had chosen life—or its facsimile—and it had shaken the Family to the core.

Sarah Tigress Vida was a witch born of one of the oldest lines of magic wielders in the world, and her death was grounds for blood bath against the vampires that turned her. She was also the daughter of the head of that line, and perhaps the greatest and most obsessive vampire hunters in the world Dominique Vida.

Tales of the coldness of Dominique Vida were already the stuff of legends, but Adianna knew that it was no coincidence that her mother declared war between the two preternatural parties mere nights after Sarah's death. For Dominique, her youngest daughter was dead. That Sarah had chosen the life of a leech over honorable death ground at Dominique like nothing else in the world could, and if such a life didn't kill her first, Dominique certainly would.

But for Adianna, the loss of Sarah, her baby sister, her reckless, irrational, stubborn, wonderful little sister was worse than any wound sustained in battle. Dominique hardly seemed human sometimes, so focused on the extermination of vampires, that the bright spontaneity and simple humanity of her sister was like a warm bath. It always felt like there was a fire crackling when Sarah was around—she always burned the air around her with her emotions. It wasn't the best thing for a fighter to possess, but it was wonderful to be around.

It had been three months since Adianna had felt that fire, and now she burned with her own frustration, but it wasn't a fire that warmed her. On the outside, Adianna was better than ever—more in shape, more alert; she followed every protocol, every procedure to a t, but inside she was raging. She'd been cut and if she didn't find something to fill the gap soon, she'd bleed out, like a deer for the slaughter.

Sarah. She closed her eyes against the wash of pain, feeling its ripples shudder through her. It saved her life, for with her eyes closed, she almost didn't detect the vampires until too late.

They hit hard and fast, but Adianna was faster. Wielding her magic like a whip, she sliced through the consciousness of her attackers. Her blades were out (one from her back sheath, another from her waist, a third flew up from her boot as she lashed out at one of the leeches) and slicing through air and flesh before she had fully registered their presence. Two fell, but there were plenty to take their place. One, two, three, four…two more in the corner and at least four coming up to join them, which made at least ten. Ten vamps? How had they snuck up on her without her noticing? She should've noticed a third of their number within a mile of her, never mind ten within a few feet. One of her attacker's blades sliced her shoulder, and she cursed. She'd have to figure that mystery out later.

Her blades flashed again, and another fell, but there was a limit to what steel and magic could do. She was badly outnumbered, and the best she could hope for was that there would be other witches patrolling. Surely they would hear the commotion, even if they couldn't sense it. Adianna used her magic to disarm one of her assailants just before his blade reached her, but he continued his leap towards her unarmed. Entangled in his preternaturally strong limbs, she couldn't avoid the thrust to her ribcage. Two more blades thrust home to her kidneys and through a rib. Adianna felt the pop of her lung as the blade broke through the bone and into the now unprotected tissue. They were on her now, using teeth and blade alike as she fell. Her own blades hung limply in her hands now, but she pulled at every ounce of magic in her for one last punch. She didn't aim so much as explode, the air around her suddenly cleared of vampires as they scuttled off. Her blood spread slowly around her on the ground, dimly she felt it soak into her clothes, her hair. Damn, she thought, that's gonna be a bitch to get out. It didn't occur to her, as her blood pooled beneath her on the asphalt, that she might not live long enough to wash it out.