Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection: 1/6 (135 page)

We jumped him. Another scuffle occurred, but we eventually managed to pin him as we had the others. “Go ahead,” I told Denis. “You know what to—”

“I’m going to rip your throat out!” the Strigoi snarled.

Whoa. This one spoke English. Denis opened his mouth to begin the interrogation, but I shook my head. “I’ll take over.” Like the other Strigoi, he swore and struggled, even with the stake against his neck, making it hard for me to talk.

“Look,” I said growing impatient and tired, “just tell us what we need to know. We’re looking for a dhampir named Dimitri Belikov.”

“I know him.” The Strigoi’s voice was smug. “And he’s no dhampir.”

Without realizing it, I’d called Dimitri a dhampir. I was tired and had slipped up. No wonder this Strigoi was so pleased to talk. He assumed we didn’t know about Dimitri turning. And like any arrogant Strigoi, he was happy to tell us more, clearly in the hopes of causing us pain.

“Your friend has been awakened. He stalks the night with us now, drinking the blood of foolish girls like you.”

In a split second, a thousand thoughts raced through my head. Holy crap. I’d come to Russia thinking it would be easy to find Dimitri. I’d had those hopes dashed in his hometown, nearly causing me to give up, and I’d swung the other way, resigning myself to the near impossibility of my task. The thought that I might be close to something here was staggering.

“You’re lying,” I said. “You’ve never seen him.”

“I see him all the time. I’ve killed with him.”

My stomach twisted, and it had nothing to do with the Strigoi’s proximity.
Don’t think about Dimitri killing people. Don’t think about Dimitri killing people.
I said the words over and over in my head, forcing myself to stay calm.

“If that’s true,” I hissed back, “then I’ve got a message for you to deliver to him. Tell him Rose Hathaway is looking for him.”

“I’m not your errand boy,” he said, glowering.

My stake slashed out, drawing blood, and he grimaced in pain. “You’re anything I want you to be. Now go tell Dimitri what I told you. Rose Hathaway. Rose Hathaway is looking for him. Say it.” I pressed the point to his neck. “Say my name so I know you’ll remember.”

“I’ll remember it so I can kill you.”

The stake pressed harder, spilling blood.

“Rose Hathaway,” he said. He spit at me but missed.

Satisfied, I leaned back. Denis watched me expectantly, stake poised and ready.

“Now we kill him?”

I shook my head. “Now we let him go.”

C
ONVINCING THEM TO RELEASE A Strigoi—particularly when we had him trapped—wasn’t easy. My questioning hadn’t made sense to them either, but they’d gone along with it. Letting a Strigoi go? That was
really
crazy—even for the unpromised. They exchanged uneasy glances with one another, and I wondered if they’d disobey. In the end, my harshness and authority won out. They wanted me as their leader and put their faith in my actions—no matter how insane they seemed.

Of course, once we
did
let the Strigoi go, we had the new problem of making sure he actually went. At first, he started to attack again, and then, realizing he’d probably get overwhelmed, he finally skulked off. He gave us one last menacing look as he disappeared into the darkness. I didn’t think being taken down by a group of teenagers had done a lot for his self-esteem. He gave me in particular a look of hatred, and I shuddered at the idea of him knowing my name. There was nothing to be done about it now; I could only hope my plan had a chance of working.

Denis and the others got over me letting the Strigoi go once we made a few other kills that week. We fell into a routine, investigating clubs and dangerous parts of town, relying on my senses to tell us when danger was near. It was funny to me how much the group soon began to rely on my leadership. They claimed they wanted no part of the guardians’ rules and authority, but they responded surprisingly well to me telling them what to do.

Well, more or less. Every once in a while, I’d see a bit of that unhinged recklessness. One of them would try to play hero, underestimate a Strigoi, or go in without the rest of us. Artur nearly ended up with a concussion that way. As the largest of all of us, he’d gotten a bit cocky and was therefore caught off guard when a Strigoi threw him into a wall. It had been a sobering moment for all of us. For a few agonizing moments, I’d feared Artur was dead—and that it was my fault as their leader. One of Sydney’s Alchemists had come—though I’d made sure not to be around, lest Abe find me—and had treated Artur. The guy said Artur would be fine with some bed rest, meaning he had to stop hunting for a while. It was hard for him to do—and I had to yell at him when he tried to follow us one night, reminding him of all their friends who had died before because of such stupidity.

Out in the human world, dhampirs tended to run on human schedules. Now I put myself on a nocturnal schedule, just like I’d been on at the Academy. The others followed suit, except for Tamara, since she had a day job. I didn’t want to be asleep during the time Strigoi prowled the streets. I had called Sydney each time we left a kill, and word had to be getting around in the Strigoi community that someone was doing a lot of damage. And if the Strigoi we’d released had carried my message, some of those Strigoi could specifically come looking for me.

As days passed, our kills dropped a little, making me think the Strigoi were indeed being cautious now. I couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing, but I urged the others to be extra careful. They were beginning to revere me as a goddess, but I took no satisfaction in their adoration. My heart still ached from all that had happened with Lissa and Dimitri. I wrapped myself up in my task, trying only to think of working the Strigoi community to get closer to Dimitri. But when we weren’t out hunting Strigoi, I had a lot of downtime with nothing to do.

And so I kept visiting Lissa.

I’d known there were a lot of kids—like Mia—who lived at the Royal Court because their parents had jobs there. I didn’t quite realize how many there were, though. Avery naturally knew them all, and to no one’s surprise (at least not mine), most of them were spoiled and rich.

The rest of Lissa’s visit had been a series of other functions and formal parties. The more she listened to royal Moroi talk business, the more it irritated her. She saw the same abuses of power she’d noted before, the same unfair way of distributing guardians like they were property. The controversial issue of whether Moroi should learn to fight alongside the guardians was also still a hot topic. Most of the people Lissa ran into at Court were of the old-school mentality: Let guardians fight and Moroi stay protected. After seeing the results of that policy—and the successes that had happened when people like Christian and I tried to change it—hearing the selfishness among the Moroi elite enraged Lissa.

She welcomed her escapes from these events whenever she could, anxious to run wild with Avery. Avery was always able to find people to hang out with and attend parties of a much different nature than Tatiana’s. Stifling Court politics never came up at these parties, but there were still plenty of other things to drag Lissa’s mood down.

In particular, Lissa felt her guilt, anger, and depression over me spiraling deeper and deeper. She’d seen enough of spirit’s effects on her moods to recognize potential warning signs, though she hadn’t been actively using spirit while on this trip. Regardless of the moods’ cause, she still continued to do her best to seek distraction and drown her depression.

“Watch it,” warned Avery one evening. She and Lissa were at a party the night before they had to fly back to the Academy. A lot of those who lived at Court had permanent housing, and this party was at the town house of some Szelsky who served as an aide on a committee Lissa didn’t know. Lissa didn’t really know their host either, but that didn’t matter, save that his parents were out of town.

“Watch what?” asked Lissa, staring around the sights. The town house had a courtyard out back, lit up by tiki torches and strings of twinkling lights. There were drinks and food in full force, and some Moroi guy had a guitar out and was trying to impress girls with his musical skills—which were nonexistent. In fact, his music was so awful that he might have discovered a new way to kill Strigoi. He was cute enough, though, that his admirers didn’t seem to care what he played.

“This,” said Avery, pointing at Lissa’s martini. “Are you keeping track of how many of those you’re taking down?”

“Not from what I can tell,” said Adrian. He was sprawled on a lounge chair nearby, a drink in his own hand.

Lissa felt a bit amateur compared to them. While Avery was still her wild and flirtatious self, she didn’t have the crazed or stupid air of someone completely trashed. Lissa didn’t know how much the other girl had been drinking, but it was presumably a lot since Avery always had a drink in hand. Likewise, Adrian never seemed to be without a beverage, the effects of which mostly mellowed him out. Lissa supposed they had a lot more experience than her. She’d gone soft over the years.

“I’m fine,” lied Lissa, who was watching her surroundings spin a little and seriously contemplating joining some girls dancing on a table across the courtyard.

Avery’s lips quirked into a smile, though her eyes showed a bit of worry. “Sure. Just don’t get sick or anything. That kind of thing gets around, and the last thing we need is everyone knowing that the Dragomir girl can’t hold her liquor. Your family has a fierce reputation to maintain.”

Lissa downed the drink. “Somehow, I doubt alcohol consumption is part of my family’s illustrious ancestry.”

Avery pushed Adrian over and lay down next to him on the lounge chair. “Hey, you’d be surprised. In ten years, this group will be your peers on the council. And you’ll be trying to pass some resolution, and they’ll be like, ‘Remember that time she got trashed and threw up at that party?’”

Lissa and Adrian both laughed at that. Lissa didn’t
think
she was going to get sick, but like everything else, she would worry about it later. The bright point of all this was that drinking was helping numb the memories of what had happened earlier in the day. Tatiana had introduced her to her future guardians: a seasoned guy named Grant and the “young lady,” who was named Serena. They had been nice enough, but their parallels to Dimitri and me had been overwhelming. Taking them on had seemed like a betrayal to us, yet Lissa had simply nodded and thanked Tatiana.

Later, Lissa had learned that Serena had originally been lined up to be the guardian for a girl she’d known her entire life. The girl wasn’t royal, but sometimes, depending on guardian numbers, even non-royals got assigned guardians—though never more than one. When positions for Lissa’s protection opened up, however, Tatiana had pulled Serena from the job with her friend. Serena had smiled and told Lissa it didn’t matter. Duty came first, she said, and she was happy to serve her. Yet Lissa felt bad, knowing it had to have been hard on both girls—and terribly unfair. But there it was again: an unfair balance of power with no one to really keep it in line.

Leaving that encounter, Lissa had cursed her own meekness. If she hadn’t had the courage to follow me, she thought, she should have at least put her foot down and demanded that Tatiana give her my mother instead. Then Serena could have gone back to her friend, and there’d be one friendship still left intact in the world.

The martini simultaneously seemed to numb the pain and make her feel worse, which honestly made no sense to Lissa.
Whatever,
she thought. And when she caught a glimpse of a server passing by, she waved him over to order more.

“Hey, can I—Ambrose?”

She stared in surprise at the guy standing before her. If there’d been a swimsuit calendar for hottest dhampir guys, this one would have been the cover model (aside from Dimitri—but then, I was biased). This guy’s name was Ambrose, and she and I had met him on our trip there together. He had deeply tanned skin and well-formed muscles underneath his gray button-down shirt. He was a particular oddity at Court, a dhampir who’d rejected guardian service and performed all sorts of tasks here, like giving massages and—if rumor was true—having “romantic encounters” with the queen. That one still made me cringe, and I’d run into some pretty disgusting things in my life.

“Princess Dragomir,” he said, flashing her one of his perfect white grins. “An unexpected surprise.”

“How have you been?” she asked, genuinely happy to see him.

“Good, good. I have the best job in the world, after all. And you?”

“Great,” she replied.

Ambrose paused, eyeing her. He didn’t drop that gorgeous grin, but Lissa could tell he didn’t agree with her. She could see the disapproval in his face. Avery accusing her of drinking too much was one thing. But some pretty dhampir servant? Unacceptable. Lissa’s demeanor grew cold, and she held out her glass.

“I need another martini,” she said, her voice as haughty as that of any perfect royal.

He sensed the change in her, and his friendly smile turned to one of polite indifference. “Right away.” He gave her a small bow and headed off to the bar.

“Jeez,” said Avery, watching admiringly as he walked away. “Why didn’t you introduce us to your friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” snapped Lissa. “He’s nobody.”

“Agreed,” said Adrian, putting an arm around Avery. “Why look elsewhere when you’ve got the best right here?” If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have sworn there was a hint of legitimate jealousy underneath his jovial tone. “Didn’t I go out of my way to bring you to breakfast with my aunt?”

Avery gave him a lazy smile. “That’s a good start. You’ve still got a ways to go to impress me, Ivashkov.” Her gaze drifted over Lissa’s head and turned surprised. “Hey, Jailbait’s here.”

Mia, with Jill in tow, came striding through the garden, indifferent to the shocked looks she received. The two of them were clearly out of place.