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knife clattered to the floor.
    Kicking the weapon away, Zachary heaved the bloodbond into a fireman’s carry. Adia looked around and hastily found some duct tape and cotton balls, which she used to create amakeshift bandage for the gash across Zachary’s arm. He let her do so without putting Heather down.
    The slight delay gave Hasana Smoke time to emerge. Adia wondered what had taken her so long.
    “You’re not taking that girl out of here,” Hasana protested.
    “I don’t see why not,” Zachary replied. He swayed a little and shifted to lean on the doorway as if bored, disguising his weakness as apathy. Adia was pretty sure she was the only one who would be able to tell the difference.
    “Much as I hate it, I know the Rights give you the authority to storm in here and threaten harmless people like Nissa,” Hasana said. “But they don’t give you permission to kidnap anyone you feel like.”
    “First,” Adia said, “the Rights of Kin give us the authority to follow any path to our targets we must. This one jumped into the fray to protect Nissa. Ergo, she has a connection to that group. Second, she attacked us. She violated SingleEarth’s commandments and is therefore not protected by its haven. Zachary, let’s go.”
    She led the way. Zachary followed. She wondered how much power he had just burned, and what it had cost him. Knocking a human unconscious without killing or doing permanent damage required a kind of precision that Adia found difficult. Sarah had always been pretty good at that kind of thing, but doing it instantly to a bloodbond with Heather’s level of strength required an incredible amount of power.
    Sure enough, the moment they returned to Zachary’s car, he dumped Heather into the backseat, handed Adia the keys and collapsed into the passenger seat.
    “Are you all right?” Adia asked.
    He nodded. “I’ll be fine.” He closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “It would be more comfortable if you took a crowbar to my head, but the headache will pass, eventually.”
    “What will we do with Heather?” Adia asked, checking around the car as she started it, in case any more crazed SingleEarth members were planning to attack them. For now, it seemed like the rest were giving them a wide berth.
    Zachary shrugged. “We can get information from her. And even if we can’t, Kaleo will probably come for her; he’s had her too long to abandon her without it looking like weakness. Even if he’s not
directly
part of our current target, I wouldn’t mind having a shot at that sadist.”
    Adia was occasionally worried that Zachary, so far as she could tell, wouldn’t mind “having a shot at” a bunny if it were sufficiently connected to vampires. She didn’t speak the thought out loud, though; about Kaleo, they were in agreement.
    Zachary was the perfect Vida: a cool, controlled hunter who never let himself be distracted in a fight and never let emotion get in the way. Dominique should have put him in charge of hunting down Sarah—Sarah’s killers. But Adia suspected that Dominique hadn’t chosen her for her skills, but to clearly determine her loyalty. No one would ever doubt Zachary that way.
    Adia resisted the urge to floor the accelerator as she merged onto the highway. Zachary couldn’t know she was torn inside. He couldn’t know that Adianna Vida, oldest and now only daughter of Dominique Vida, wasn’t what she appeared.
    He couldn’t know she was scared—no, terrified.
    You would really kill your own sister?
    Nissa’s accusation echoed through her thoughts.
    Failure in this hunt would likely mean the end of their line. The notion of putting a blade between Sarah’s ribs made Adia’s stomach twist, but Dominique was right that they couldn’t continue this way. The Vida line had survived since the dawn of the human species, despite eras of famine, Inquisition and war. If their generation was going to be the last, so be it. She wouldn’t shame thirty thousand years of