Free Blood Price by Kit Tunstall

insurmountable. She must accept that. He wouldn’t aid her in returning to Minsk and she couldn’t return to Corsova without trying to free herself from Illiana. Her decision to wait for Atar and go meekly without protest had been prompted by terror at losing control of Illiana. After her confrontation with her mother and having a chance to think, she was more determined than ever to seek out her grandmother’s people. If they couldn’t help her, she might be lost forever but she couldn’t give up without a fight.
    The most immediate and difficult task facing her was to elude Atar again. He would be expecting her to try to flee and with his damnable ability to track her telepathically, he would find her easily. In fact, he knew right where she planned to go now, so he wouldn’t even need to hone in on her until arriving in Belarus.
    With a frown, Nikia studied him as she preceded him through the glass doors, emerging onto the street, where FIX cars lined the curb. She was mulling over her options, discarding most, when Atar took her wrist, breaking her chain of thought. “What?”
    “This.” With efficient movements, he clicked one side of the handcuffs around her wrist before attaching the other to his.
    A breath caught in her throat. Had he read her thoughts by some means he had kept concealed until now?
    “I can feel you humming with energy,” he commented with an apparent lack of interest as he tugged lightly on her wrist to get her moving. They approached a FIX car and he said, “I’m assuming you’re gearing up to run again. Don’t waste your time.” With that, he opened the car door and slid into the backseat.
    She had no choice but to accompany him. The shackle on her wrist ensured that. With a disgruntled look in his direction, she settled against the seat. Closing her eyes in a ruse of sleep, she let her mind wander, hoping to hit on a way to escape her captor.
    The hairs on her neck stood up and a tingling sensation moved down her spine. Cold dread swept over Nikia and she sensed danger. She tried to focus, searching for the source but ran into a block. Illiana was deliberately distracting her. She sensed the maniacal glee in her mother and opened her eyes. “Atar…” She trailed off at his bored look. What could she say? If she tried to explain her sense of unease, he would question why she couldn’t get a clear picture, with her vampiric abilities. Would he believe her normal mental powers were dulled by the constant struggle and wearying presence of Illiana? Of course not, since he didn’t believe Illiana was inside her, fighting for dominance.
    He arched a brow but didn’t speak. Eventually, he looked away from her.
    She let the silence settle. It was almost comforting, despite the tense set of her body as it reacted instinctively to a danger she couldn’t clarify. In the quiet, she could pretend Atar didn’t mistrust her. It could be the contentment of afterglow, as they lay in each other’s arms after making love.
    “What brings you to Prague?” the driver asked in thickly accented English, breaking the silence as effectively as a gunshot. He had spent considerable time arranging each strand of his dark hair into a precise style before slicking it to his skull with some type of gel. He wore a white shirt and dark tie. Looking more like a businessperson, he presented an incongruous picture of a FIX car driver.
    She jumped at his voice and her tension increased tenfold when she met his dark eyes in the mirror. His tone was friendly but the gaze directed at them was calculating. Panic cut through her and she hovered on the edge of reading the man’s thoughts.
    No, not yet.
    She flinched when Illiana’s voice echoed through her head. It alarmed her further but for a different reason. Previously, she hadn’t been able to directly communicate with her mother unless she was in a weakened state. After her rest on the flight, she should have been refreshed enough to hold Illiana at bay,