Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection: 1/6

by Richelle Mead

  This was met with grumbles that soon turned into questions about how I’d actually killed the Strigoi. Decapitation was one of the hardest and rarest ways to kill a vampire; it wasn’t like carrying a sword was convenient. So I did my best to tell my friends what had happened, making sure to stick to the facts and not glorify the killings.

  The school day couldn’t end a moment too soon, and Lissa walked with me back to my dorm. She and I hadn’t had the chance to talk much since everything had gone down in Spokane. I’d undergone a lot of questioning, and then there’d been Mason’s funeral. Lissa had also been caught up in her own distractions with the royals leaving campus, so she’d had no more free time than me.

  Being near her made me feel better. Even though I could be in her head at any time, it just wasn’t the same as actually being physically around another living person who cared about you.

  When we got to the door of my room, I saw a bouquet of freesias sitting on the floor near it. Sighing, I picked up the fragrant flowers without even looking at the attached card.

  “What are those?” asked Lissa while I unlocked the door.

  “They’re from Adrian,” I told her. We walked inside, and I pointed to my desk, where a few other bouquets sat. I put the freesias down beside them. “I’ll be glad when he leaves campus. I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

  She turned to me in surprise. “Oh. Um, you don’t know.”

  I got that warning twinge through the bond that told me I wouldn’t like what was about to come.

  “Know what?”

  “Uh, he isn’t leaving. He’s going to stay here for a while.”

  “He has to leave,” I argued. To my knowledge, the only reason he’d come back at all was because of Mason’s funeral, and I still wasn’t sure why he’d done that, since he barely knew Mason. Maybe Adrian had just done it for show. Or maybe to keep stalking Lissa and me. “He’s in college. Or maybe reform school. I don’t know, but he does something.”

  “He’s taking the semester off.”

  I stared.

  Smiling at my shock, she nodded. “He’s going to stay and work with me . . . and Ms. Carmack. All this time, he never even knew what spirit was. He just knew he hadn’t specialized but that he had these weird abilities. He just kept them to himself, except for when he occasionally found another spirit user. But they didn’t know any more than he did.”

  “I should have figured it out sooner,” I mused. “There was something about being around him. . . . I always wanted to talk to him, you know? He just has this . . . charisma. Like you do. I guess it’s all tied into spirit and compulsion or whatever. It makes me like him . . . even though I don’t like him.”

  “Don’t you?” she teased.

  “No,” I replied adamantly. “And I don’t like that dream thing, either.”

  Her jade eyes went wide with wonder. “That is cool,” she said. “You’ve always been able to tell what’s going on with me, but I’ve never been able to communicate with you the other way. I’m glad you guys got away when you did . . . but I wish I could have figured out the dream thing and helped find you.”

  “Not me,” I said. “I’m glad Adrian didn’t get you to go off your meds.”

  I hadn’t found that out until a few days after being in Spokane. Lissa had apparently rejected Adrian’s initial suggestion that stopping the pills would let her learn more about spirit. She had admitted to me later, however, that if Christian and I had stayed missing much longer, she might have cracked.

  “How are you feeling lately?” I asked, recalling her concerns about the medication. “You still feel like the pills aren’t working?”

  “Mmm . . . well, it’s hard to explain. I still feel closer to the magic, like maybe they aren’t blocking me so much anymore. But I’m not feeling any of the other mental side effects . . . not upset or anything.”

  “Wow, that’s great.”

  A beautiful smile lit her face. “I know. It makes me think there might be hope for me to learn to work the magic after all someday.”

  Seeing her so happy made me smile back. I hadn’t liked seeing those dark feelings starting to return and was glad they’d vanished. I didn’t understand the how or the why, but as long as she felt okay—

  Everyone has light around them, except for you. You have shadows. You take them from Lissa.

  Adrian’s words slammed into my mind. Uneasily, I thought about my behavior these last couple of weeks. Some of the angry outbursts. My rebelliousness—unusual even for me. My own black coil of emotion, stirring in my chest . . .

  No, I decided. There were no similarities. Lissa’s dark feelings were magic-based. Mine were stress-based. Besides, I felt fine right now.

  Seeing her watching me, I tried to remember where we’d left off in the conversation. “Maybe you’ll eventually find a way to make it work. I mean, if Adrian could find a way to use spirit and doesn’t need meds . . .”

  She suddenly laughed. “You don’t know, do you?”

  “What?”

  “That Adrian does medicate himself.”

  “He does? But he said—” I groaned. “Of course he does. The cigarettes. The drinking. God only knows what else.”

  She nodded. “Yup. He’s almost always got something in his system.”

  “But probably not at night . . . which is why he can poke his head into my dreams.”

  “Man, I wish I could do that,” she sighed.

  “Maybe you’ll learn someday. Just don’t become an alcoholic in the process.”

  “I won’t,” she assured me. “But I will learn. None of the other spirit users could do it, Rose—well, aside from St. Vladimir. I’ll learn like he did. I’m going to learn to use it—and I won’t let it hurt me.”

  I smiled and touched her hand. I had absolute faith in her. “I know.”

  We talked for most of the evening. When the time came for my usual practice with Dimitri, I parted ways with her. As I walked away, I pondered something that had been bothering me. Although the attacking groups of Strigoi had had many more members, the guardians felt confident Isaiah had been their leader. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be other threats in the future, but they felt it’d be a while before his followers regrouped.

  But I couldn’t help thinking about the list I’d seen in the tunnel in Spokane, the one that had listed royal families by size. And Isaiah had mentioned the Dragomirs by name. He knew they were almost gone, and he’d sounded keen on being the one to finish them. Sure, he was dead now . . . but were there other Strigoi out there with the same idea?

  I shook my head. I couldn’t worry about that. Not today. I still needed to recover from everything else. Soon, though. Soon I’d have to deal with this.

  I didn’t even know if our practice was still on but went to the locker room anyway. After changing into practice clothes, I headed down into the gym and found Dimitri in a supply room, reading one of the Western novels he loved. He looked up at my entrance. I’d seen little of him in these last few days and had figured he was busy with Tasha.

  “I thought you might come by,” he said, putting a book-mark between the pages.

  “It’s time for practice.”

  He shook his head. “No. No practice today. You still need to recover.”

  “I’ve got a clean bill of health. I’m good to go.” I pushed as much patented Rose Hathaway bravado into my words as I could.

  Dimitri wasn’t falling for any of it. He gestured to the chair beside him. “Sit down, Rose.”

  I hesitated only a moment before complying. He moved his own chair close to mine so that we sat directly across from each other. My heart fluttered as I looked into those gorgeous dark eyes.

  “No one gets over their first kill . . . kills . . . easily. Even with Strigoi . . . well, it’s still technically taking a life. That’s hard to come to terms with. And after everything else you went through . . .” He sighed, then reached out and caught my hand in his. His fingers were exactly like I r
emembered, long and powerful, calloused with years of training. “When I saw your face . . . when we found you in that house . . . you can’t imagine how I felt.”

  I swallowed. “How . . . how did you feel?”

  “Devastated . . . grief-stricken. You were alive, but the way you looked . . . I didn’t think you’d ever recover. And it tore me apart to think of that happening to you so young.” He squeezed my hand. “You will recover—I know that now, and I’m glad. But you aren’t there. Not yet. Losing someone you care about is never easy.”

  My eyes dropped from his and studied the floor. “It’s my fault,” I said in a small voice.

  “Hmm?”

  “Mason. Getting killed.”

  I didn’t have to see Dimitri’s face to know compassion was filling it. “Oh, Roza. No. You made some bad decisions . . . you should have told others when you knew he was gone . . . but you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t kill him.”

  Tears brimmed in my eyes as I looked back up. “I might as well have. The whole reason he went there—it was my fault. We had a fight . . . and I told him about the Spokane thing, even though you asked me not to. . . .”

  One tear leaked out of the corner of my eye. Really, I needed to learn to stop that. Just as my mother had, Dimitri delicately wiped the tear off my cheek.

  “You can’t blame yourself for that,” he told me. “You can regret your decisions and wish you’d done things differently, but in the end, Mason made his decisions too. That was what he chose to do. It was his decision in the end, no matter your original role.” When Mason had come back for me, I realized, he’d let his feelings for me get in the way. It was what Dimitri had always feared, that if he and I had any sort of relationship, it would put us—and any Moroi we protected—in danger.

  “I just wish I’d been able to . . . I don’t know, do anything. ...”

  Swallowing back further tears, I pulled my hands from Dimitri’s and stood up before I could say something stupid.

  “I should go,” I said thickly. “Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for . . . talking.”

  I started to turn; then I heard him say abruptly, “No.”

  I glanced back. “What?”

  He held my gaze, and something warm and wonderful and powerful shot between us.

  “No,” he repeated. “I told her no. Tasha.”

  “I . . .” I shut my mouth before my jaw hit the floor. “But . . . why? That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You could have had a baby. And she . . . she was, you know, into you. . . .”

  The ghost of a smile flickered on his face. “Yes, she was. Is. And that’s why I had to say no. I couldn’t return that . . . couldn’t give her what she wanted. Not when . . .” He took a few steps toward me. “Not when my heart is somewhere else.”

  I almost started crying again. “But you seemed so into her. And you kept going on about how young I acted.”

  “You act young,” he said, “because you are young. But you know things, Roza. Things people older than you don’t even know. That day . . .” I knew instantly which day he referred to. The one up against the wall. “You were right, about how I fight to stay in control. No one else has ever figured that out— and it scared me. You scare me.”

  “Why? Don’t you want anyone to know?”

  He shrugged. “Whether they know that fact or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that someone—that you—know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it’s hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It’s much easier being with someone who’s just more of a casual friend.”

  “Like Tasha.”

  “Tasha Ozera is an amazing woman. She’s beautiful and she’s brave. But she doesn’t—”

  “She doesn’t get you,” I finished.

  He nodded. “I knew that. But I still wanted the relationship. I knew it would be easy and that she could take me away from you. I thought she could make me forget you.”

  I’d thought the same thing about Mason. “But she couldn’t.”

  “Yes. And, so . . . that’s a problem.”

  “Because it’s wrong for us to be together.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of the age difference.”

  “Yes.”

  “But more importantly because we’re going to be Lissa’s guardians and need to focus on her—not each other.”

  “Yes.”

  I thought about this for a moment and then looked straight into his eyes. “Well,” I said at last, “the way I see it, we aren’t Lissa’s guardians yet.”

  I steeled myself for the next response. I knew it was going to be one of the Zen life lessons. Something about inner strength and perseverance, about how the choices we made today were templates for the future or some other nonsense.

  Instead he kissed me.

  Time stopped as he reached out and cupped my face between his hands. He brought his mouth down and brushed it against my lips. It was barely a kiss at first but soon increased, becoming heady and deep. When he finally pulled away, it was to kiss my forehead. He left his lips there for several seconds as his arms held me close.

  I wished the kiss could have gone on forever. Breaking the embrace, he ran a few fingers through my hair and down my cheek. He stepped back toward the door.

  “I’ll see you later, Roza.”

  “At our next practice?” I asked. “We are starting those up again, right? I mean, you still have things to teach me.”

  Standing in the doorway, he looked over at me and smiled. “Yes. Lots of things.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like always, this book couldn’t have been written without the help and support of my friends and family. In particular, I need to thank my IM Counseling Team: Caitlin, David, Jay, Jackie, and Kat. You guys logged more late-night online hours than I can even begin to count. I couldn’t have gotten through this book and the rest of this year’s craziness without you.

  Thanks also to my agent, Jim McCarthy, who has moved heaven, earth, and deadlines to help me finish what I need to. I’m glad you’ve got my back. And finally, many thanks to Jessica Rothenberg and Ben Schrank at Razorbill for their continued support and hard work.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  Acknowledgments

  Shadow Kiss

  RAZORBILL

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group

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  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  eISBN : 978-1-440-69718-0

  Copyright © 2008 Richelle Mead

  All rights reserved

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  For my nephews, Jordan and Austin

  ONE

  HIS FINGERTIPS SLID ALONG my back, applying hardly any pressure, yet sending shock waves over my flesh. Slowly, slowly, his hands moved across my skin, down the sides of my stomach to finally rest in the curves of my hips. Just below my ear, I felt his lips press against my neck, followed by another kiss just below it, then another, then another. . . .

  His lips moved from my neck toward my cheek and then finally found my mouth. We kissed, wrapping ourselves closer together. My blood burned within me, and I felt more alive in that moment than I ever had. I loved him, loved Christian so much that—

  Christian?

  Oh no.

  Some coherent part of me immediately realized what was happening—and boy, was it pissed off. The rest of me, however, was still actually living in this encounter, experiencing it as though I was the one being touched and kissed. That part of me couldn’t break away. I’d merged too much with Lissa, and for all intents and purposes, this was happening to me.