Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection: 1/6 (20 page)

Yikes. I’d never felt so relieved to have a service start. Through the bond, I felt a sort of dark satisfaction coming from Lissa. It was uncharacteristic for her, and I didn’t like it.

Needing to distract myself from her troubling behavior, I studied other people as I so often did. Nearby, Christian openly watched Lissa, a troubled look on his face. When he saw me, he scowled and turned away.

Dimitri sat in the back as usual, for once not scanning every corner for danger. His attention was turned inward, his expression almost pained. I still didn’t know why he came to church. He always seemed to be wrestling with something.

In the front, the priest was talking about St. Vladimir again.

“His spirit was strong, and he was truly gifted by God. When he touched them, the crippled walked, and the blind could see. Where he walked, flowers bloomed.”

Man, the Moroi needed to get more saints—

Healing cripples and blind people?

I’d forgotten all about St. Vladimir. Mason had mentioned Vladimir bringing people back from the dead, and it had reminded me of Lissa at the time. Then other things had distracted me. I hadn’t thought about the saint or his “shadow-kissed” guardian—and their bond—in a while. How could I have overlooked this? Ms. Karp, I realized, wasn’t the only other Moroi who could heal like Lissa. Vladimir could too.

“And all the while, the masses gathered to him, loving him, eager to follow his teachings and hear him preach the word of God. . . .”

Turning, I stared at Lissa. She gave me a puzzled look. “What?”

I didn’t get a chance to elaborate—I don’t even know if I could have formed the words—because I was whisked back to my prison almost as soon as I stood up at the end of the service.

Back in my room, I went online to research St. Vladimir but turned up nothing useful. Damn it. Mason had skimmed the books in the library and said there was little there. What did that leave me with? I had no way of learning more about that dusty old saint.

Or did I? What had Christian said that first day with Lissa?

The storage room above the chapel. It had the writings. Christian had pointed them out. I needed to look at them, but how? I couldn’t ask the priest. How would he react if he found out students were going up there? It’d put an end to Christian’s lair. But maybe . . . maybe Christian himself could help. It was Sunday, though, and I wouldn’t see him until tomorrow afternoon. Even then, I didn’t know if I’d get a chance to talk to him alone.

While heading out to practice later, I stopped in the dorm’s kitchen to grab a granola bar. As I did, I passed a couple of novice guys, Miles and Anthony. Miles whistled when he saw me.

“How’s it been going, Rose? You getting lonely? Want some company?”

Anthony laughed. “I can’t bite you, but I can give you something else you want.”

I had to pass through the doorway they stood in to get outside. Glaring, I pushed past, but Miles caught me around the waist, his hand sliding down to my butt.

“Get your hands off my ass before I break your face,” I told him, jerking away. In doing so, I only bumped into Anthony.

“Come on,” Anthony said, “I thought you didn’t have a problem taking on two guys at the same time.”

A new voice spoke up. “If you guys don’t walk away right now,
I’ll
take both of you on.” Mason. My hero.

“You’re so full of it, Ashford,” said Miles. He was the bigger of the two and left me to go square off with Mason. Anthony backed off from me, more interested in whether or not there’d be a fight. There was so much testosterone in the air, I felt like I needed a gas mask.

“Are you doing her too?” Miles asked Mason. “You don’t want to share?”

“Say one more word about her, and I’ll rip your head off.”

“Why? She’s just a cheap blood—”

Mason punched him. It didn’t rip Miles’ head off or even cause anything to break or bleed, but it looked like it hurt. His eyes widened, and he lunged toward Mason. The sound of doors opening in the hall caused everyone to freeze. Novices got in a lot of trouble for fighting.

“Probably some guardians coming.” Mason grinned. “You want them to know you were beating up on a girl?”

Miles and Anthony exchanged glances. “Come on,” Anthony said. “Let’s go. We don’t have time for this.”

Miles reluctantly followed. “I’ll find you later, Ashford.”

When they were gone, I turned on Mason. “‘Beat up on a girl’?”

“You’re welcome,” he said drily.

“I didn’t need your help.”

“Sure. You were doing just fine on your own.”

“They caught me off guard, that’s all. I could have dealt with them eventually.”

“Look, don’t take being pissed off at them out on me.”

“I just don’t like being treated like . . . a girl.”

“You
are
a girl. And I was just trying to help.”

I looked at him and saw the earnestness on his face. He meant well. No point in being a bitch to him when I had so many other people to hate lately.

“Well . . . thanks. Sorry I snapped at you.”

We talked a little bit, and I managed to get him to spill some more school gossip. He had noticed Lissa’s rise in status but didn’t seem to find it strange. As I talked to him, I noticed the adoring look he always got around me spread across his face. It made me sad to have him feel that way about me. Guilty, even.

How hard would it be, I wondered, to go out with him? He was nice, funny, and reasonably good-looking. We got along. Why did I get caught up in so many messes with other guys when I had a perfectly sweet one here who wanted me? Why couldn’t I just return his feelings?

The answer came to me before I’d even finished asking myself the question. I couldn’t be Mason’s girlfriend because when I imagined someone holding me and whispering dirty things in my ear, he had a Russian accent.

Mason continued watching me admiringly, oblivious to what was going on in my head. And seeing that adoration, I suddenly realized how I could use it to my advantage.

Feeling a little guilty, I shifted my conversation to a more flirty style and watched Mason’s glow increase.

I leaned beside him on the wall so our arms just touched and gave him a lazy smile. “You know, I still don’t approve of your whole hero thing, but you did scare them. That was almost worth it.”

“But you don’t approve?”

I trailed fingers up his arm. “No. I mean, it’s hot in principle but not in practice.”

He laughed. “The hell it isn’t.” He caught hold of my hand and gave me a knowing look. “Sometimes you need to be saved. I think you like being saved sometimes and just can’t admit it.”

“And I think
you
get off on saving people and just can’t admit it.”

“I don’t think you know what gets me off. Saving damsels like you is just the honorable thing to do,” he declared loftily.

I repressed the urge to smack him over the use of
damsels
. “Then prove it. Do me a favor just because it’s ‘the right thing to do.’”

“Sure,” he said immediately. “Name it.”

“I need you to get a message to Christian Ozera.”

His eagerness faltered. “What the—? You aren’t serious.”

“Yes. Completely.”

“Rose . . . I can’t talk to him. You know that.”

“I thought you said you’d help. I thought you said helping ‘damsels’ is the honorable thing to do.”

“I don’t really see how honor’s involved here.” I gave him the most smoldering look I could manage. He caved. “What do you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him I need St. Vladimir’s books. The ones in storage. He needs to sneak them to me soon. Tell him it’s for Lissa. And tell him . . . tell him I lied the night of the reception.” I hesitated. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. Just do it. Please?” I turned on the beauty queen smile again.

With hasty assurances that he’d see what he could do, he left for lunch, and I went off to practice.

M
ASON DELIVERED.

He found me the next day before school. He was carrying a box of books.

“I got them,” he said. “Hurry and take them before you get in trouble for talking to me.”

He handed them over, and I grunted. They were heavy. “Christian gave you these?”

“Yeah. Managed to talk to him without anyone noticing. He’s got kind of an attitude, did you ever notice that?”

“Yeah, I noticed.” I rewarded Mason with a smile that he ate up. “Thanks. This means a lot.”

I hauled the loot up to my room, fully aware of how weird it was that someone who hated to study as much as I did was about to get buried in dusty crap from the fourteenth century. When I opened the first book, though, I saw that these must be reprints of reprints of reprints, probably because anything that old would have long since fallen apart.

Sifting through the books, I discovered they fell into three categories: books written by people after St. Vladimir had died, books written by other people when he was still alive, and one diary of sorts written by him. What had Mason said about primary and secondary sources? Those last two groups were the ones I wanted.

Whoever had reprinted these had reworded the books enough so that I didn’t have to read Ye Olde English or anything. Or rather, Russian, I supposed. St. Vladimir had lived in the old country.

 

Anna again. And “shadow-kissed.” He talked about her a lot, among other things. Most of the time he wrote long sermons, just like what I’d hear in church. Super boring. But other times, the book read just like a diary, recapping what he did each day. And if it really wasn’t just a load of crap, he healed all the time. Sick people. Injured people. Even plants. He brought dead crops back to life when people were starving. Sometimes he would make flowers bloom just for the hell of it.

Reading on, I found out that it was a good thing old Vlad had Anna around, because he was pretty messed up. The more he used his powers, the more they started to get to him. He’d get irrationally angry and sad. He blamed it on demons and stupid stuff like that, but it was obvious he suffered from depression. Once, he admitted in his diary, he tried to kill himself. Anna stopped him.

Later, browsing through the book written by the guy who knew Vladimir, I read:

 

It sounded a lot like what the priest had said, but I sensed more than just a “winning personality.” People adored him, would do anything he asked. Yes, Vladimir had used compulsion on his followers, I was certain. A lot of Moroi had in those days, before it was banned, but they didn’t use it on Moroi or dhampirs. They couldn’t. Only Lissa could.

I shut the book and leaned back against my bed. Vladimir healed plants and animals. He could use compulsion on a massive scale. And by all accounts, using those sorts of powers had made him crazy and depressed.

Added into it all, making it that much weirder was that everyone kept describing his guardian as “shadow-kissed.” That expression had bugged me ever since I first heard it. . . .

“You’re
shadow-kissed
! You have to take care of her!”

Ms. Karp had shouted those words at me, her hands clenching my shirt and jerking me toward her. It had happened on a night two years ago when I’d been inside the main part of the upper school to return a book. It was nearly past curfew, and the halls were empty. I’d heard a loud commotion, and then Ms. Karp had come tearing around the corner, looking frantic and wild-eyed.

She shoved me into a wall, still gripping me. “Do you understand?”

I knew enough self-defense that I could have probably pushed her away, but my shock kept me frozen. “No.”

“They’re coming for me. They’ll come for her.”

“Who?”

“Lissa. You have to protect her. The more she uses it, the worse it’ll get. Stop her, Rose. Stop her before they notice, before they notice and take her away too. Get her out of here.”

“I . . . what do you mean? Get her out of . . . you mean the Academy?”

“Yes! You have to leave. You’re bound. It’s up to you. Take her away from this place.”

Her words were crazy. No one left the Academy. Yet as she held me there and stared into my eyes, I began to feel strange. A fuzzy feeling clouded my mind. What she said suddenly sounded very reasonable, like the most reasonable thing in the world. Yes. I needed to take Lissa away, take her—

Feet pounded in the hallway, and a group of guardians rounded the corner. I didn’t recognize them; they weren’t from the school. They pried her off of me, restraining her wild thrashing. Someone asked me if I was okay, but I could only keep staring at Ms. Karp.

“Don’t let her use the power!” she screamed. “Save her. Save her from herself!”

The guardians had later explained to me that she wasn’t well and had been taken to a place where she could recover. She would be safe and cared for, they assured me. She would recover.