Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection: 1/6 (109 page)

“It’s okay. You deserve your rest. Besides, I think I know where to start looking.” I’d thought about this constantly over the last week. If Dimitri was where I believed he was, I had a lot of work ahead of me. Mason’s help would have been nice, but I didn’t want to keep bothering him. It seemed like he had enough to deal with.

“Goodbye,” I told him. “Thanks for your help. . . . I . . . I’ll miss you.”

His form grew fainter and fainter, and just before it went altogether, I saw the hint of a smile, that laughing and mischievous smile I’d loved so much. For the first time since his death, thinking about Mason no longer devastated me. I was sad and I really would miss him, but I knew he’d moved on to something good—something really good. I no longer felt guilty.

Turning away, I stared at the long road winding off ahead of me. I sighed. This trip might take awhile.

“Then start walking, Rose,” I muttered to myself.

I set off, off to kill the man I loved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Blood Promise

RAZORBILL

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
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Copyright © 2009 Richelle Mead

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mead, Richelle.
Blood promise : a Vampire Academy novel / Richelle Mead.
p. cm.
Summary: Just days before graduating from St. Vladimir’s Academy, guardian-in-training
Rose travels to Siberia to drive a stake into the heart of the boy she loves, the monstrous
vampire Dimitri.

eISBN : 978-1-101-13894-6

[1. Vampires Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. High schools Fiction. 4. Schools—
Fiction. 5. Siberia (Russia) Fiction. 6. Russia (Federation) Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M478897Bl 2009
[Fic] dc22
2009009254

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author s rights is appreciated.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

O
NCE WHEN I WAS IN ninth grade, I had to write a paper on a poem. One of the lines was, “If your eyes weren’t open, you wouldn’t know the difference between dreaming and waking.” It hadn’t meant much to me at the time. After all, there’d been a guy in the class that I liked, so how could I be expected to pay attention to literary analysis? Now, three years later, I understood the poem perfectly.

Because lately, my life really did seem like it was on the precipice of being a dream. There were days I thought I’d wake up and discover that recent events in my life hadn’t actually happened. Surely I must be a princess in an enchanted sleep. Any day now, this dream—no, nightmare—would end, and I’d get my prince and happy ending.

But there was no happy ending to be found, at least not in the foreseeable future. And my prince? Well, that was a long story. My prince had been turned into a vampire—a Strigoi, to be specific. In my world, there are two kinds of vampires who exist in secrecy from humans. The Moroi are living vampires, good vampires who wield elemental magic and don’t kill when seeking the blood they need to survive. Strigoi are undead vampires, immortal and twisted, who kill when they feed. Moroi are born. Strigoi are
made
—forcibly or by choice—through evil means.

And Dimitri, the guy I loved, had been made a Strigoi against his will. He’d been turned during a battle, an epic rescue mission that I’d been part of as well. Strigoi had kidnapped Moroi and dhampirs from the school I attended, and we’d set out with others to save them. Dhampirs are half-vampire and half-human—gifted with human strength and hardiness, and Moroi reflexes and senses. Dhampirs train to become guardians, the elite bodyguards who protect Moroi. That’s what I am. That’s what Dimitri had been.

After his conversion, the rest of the Moroi world had considered him dead. And to a certain extent, he was. Those who were turned Strigoi lost all sense of the goodness and life they’d had before. Even if they hadn’t turned by choice, it didn’t matter. They would still become evil and cruel, just like all Strigoi. The person they’d been was gone, and honestly, it was easier to imagine them moving on to heaven or the next life than to picture them out stalking the night and taking victims. But I hadn’t been able to forget Dimitri, or accept that he was essentially dead. He was the man I loved, the man with whom I’d been so perfectly in sync that it was hard to know where I ended and he began. My heart refused to let him go—even if he was technically a monster, he was still out there somewhere. I also hadn’t forgotten a conversation he and I had once had. We’d both agreed that we’d rather be dead—truly dead—than walk the world as Strigoi.

And once I’d had my mourning time for the goodness he’d lost, I’d decided I had to honor his wishes. Even if he no longer believed in them. I had to find him. I had to kill him and free his soul from that dark, unnatural state. I knew it was what the Dimitri I had loved would have wanted. Killing Strigoi isn’t easy, though. They’re insanely fast and strong. They have no mercy. I’d killed a number of them already—pretty crazy for someone who was freshly eighteen. And I knew taking on Dimitri would be my greatest challenge, both physically and emotionally.

In fact, the emotional consequences had kicked in as soon as I made my decision. Going after Dimitri had meant doing a few life-altering things (and that wasn’t even counting the fact that fighting him could very likely result in the loss of my life). I was still in school, only a handful of months away from graduating and becoming a full-fledged guardian. Every day I stuck around at St. Vladimir’s Academy—a remote, protected school for Moroi and dhampirs—meant one more day was going by in which Dimitri was still out there, living in the state he’d never wanted. I loved him too much to allow that. So I’d had to leave school early and go out among humans, abandoning the world I’d lived in nearly my entire life.

Leaving had also meant abandoning one other thing—or rather, a person: my best friend, Lissa, also known as Vasilisa Dragomir. Lissa was Moroi, the last in a royal line. I’d been slated to be her guardian when we graduated, and my decision to hunt Dimitri had pretty much destroyed that future with her. I’d had no choice but to leave her.

Aside from our friendship, Lissa and I had a unique connection. Each Moroi specializes in a type of elemental magic—earth, air, water, or fire. Until recently, we’d believed there were only those four elements. Then we’d discovered a fifth: spirit.

That was Lissa’s element, and with so few spirit users in the world, we hardly knew anything about it. For the most part, it seemed to be tied to psychic powers. Lissa wielded amazing compulsion—the ability to exert her will on almost anyone. She could also heal, and that’s where things got a little strange between us. You see, I technically died in the car accident that killed her family. Lissa had brought me back from the world of the dead without realizing it, creating a psychic bond between us. Ever since then, I was always aware of her presence and thoughts. I could tell what she was thinking and feel when she was in trouble. We had also recently discovered I could see ghosts and spirits who hadn’t yet left this world, something I found disconcerting and struggled to block out. The whole phenomenon was called being shadow-kissed.

Our shadow-kissed bond made me the ideal choice to protect Lissa, since I would instantly know if she was in trouble. I’d promised to protect her my whole life, but then Dimitri—tall, gorgeous, fierce Dimitri—had changed it all. I’d been faced with that horrible choice: continue to protect Lissa or free Dimitri’s soul. Choosing between them had broken my heart, leaving an ache in my chest and tears in my eyes. My parting with Lissa had been agonizing. We’d been best friends since kindergarten, and my departure was a shock for both of us. To be fair, she’d never seen it coming. I’d kept my romance with Dimitri a secret. He was my instructor, seven years older than me, and had been assigned to be her guardian as well. As such, he and I had tried hard to fight our attraction, knowing we had to focus on Lissa more than anything else and that we’d also get in a fair amount of trouble for our student-teacher relationship.

But being kept from Dimitri—even though I’d agreed to it—had caused me to build up a lot of unspoken resentment toward Lissa. I probably should have talked to her about it and explained my frustration over having my entire life planned out. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that while Lissa was free to live and love however she wanted, I would always have to sacrifice my own happiness to ensure that she was protected. She was my best friend, though, and I couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting her. Lissa was particularly vulnerable because using spirit had the nasty side effect of driving people insane. So I’d sat on my feelings until they finally exploded, and I left the Academy—and her—behind for good.

One of the ghosts I’d seen—Mason, a friend who had been killed by Strigoi—had told me Dimitri had returned to his homeland: Siberia. Mason’s soul had found peace and left this world shortly thereafter, without giving me any other clues about
where
in Siberia Dimitri might have gone. So I’d had to set out there blindly, braving a world of humans and a language I didn’t know in order to fulfill the promise I’d made to myself.