“Why? Did you run into them?”
“Kind of.”
“What’d you do?”
“Why do you think I did anything?”
He laughed. “Alchemists only show up when trouble happens, and you bring trouble wherever you go. Be careful, though. They’re religious nuts.”
“That’s kind of extreme,” I said. Sydney’s faith didn’t seem to be anything bad.
“Just don’t let them convert you.” He winked. “I like you being the sinner you are.”
I started to tell him that Sydney probably thought I was beyond all salvation, but he ended the dream, sending me back to sleep.
Except, instead of returning to my own dreams, I woke up. Around me, the train hummed comfortingly as we sped through the Russian countryside. My reading lamp was still on, its light too bright for my sleepy eyes. I reached over to turn it off and noticed then that Sydney’s bed was empty. Probably in the bathroom, I thought. Yet, I felt uneasy. She and her group of Alchemists were still mysteries, and I suddenly worried that she might have some sinister plan going on. Was she off meeting with some covert operative? I decided to find her.
Admittedly, I had no idea where she could be on a train of this size, but logic had never really deterred me before. No reason they should now. Thankfully, after slipping on my shoes and stepping out in the hall adjacent to our cabin, I discovered I didn’t have to look very far.
The corridor was lined with windows, all draped in those rich curtains, and Sydney stood with her back to me, gazing outside, a blanket wrapped around her. Her hair was messy from sleep and looked less gold in the poor lighting.
“Hey . . .” I began hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
She turned slightly toward me. One hand held the blanket; the other played with the cross around her neck. I remembered Adrian’s comments about religion.
“I can’t sleep,” she said bluntly.
“Is it . . . is it because of me?”
Her only answer was to turn back to the window.
“Look,” I said, feeling helpless. “If there’s anything I can do . . . I mean, aside from going back and canceling this trip . . .”
“I’ll handle it,” she said. “This is just, well, it’s really strange for me. I deal with you guys all the time, but I don’t actually deal with you, you know?”
“We could probably get you a room of your own, if that would help. We can find an attendant, and I’ve got the money.”
She shook her head. “It’s just a couple of days, if that.”
I didn’t know what else to say. Having Sydney along was inconvenient in the grand scheme of my plans, but I didn’t want her to suffer. Watching her play with the cross, I tried to think of something comforting to tell her. Bonding over our views of God might have been a way to get closer, but somehow, I didn’t think telling her how I had daily battles with God and doubted His existence lately would really help me out with the whole evil-creature-of-the-night reputation.
“Okay,” I said at last. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
I returned to my bed and fell asleep surprisingly fast, despite worrying that Sydney would be standing in the hall all night. Yet, when I woke in the morning, she was curled up on her bed, fast asleep. Apparently, her exhaustion had been so strong that even fear of me had driven her to rest. I got up quietly and changed out of the T-shirt and sweatpants I’d gone to bed in. I was hungry for breakfast and figured Sydney might sleep longer if I wasn’t around.
The restaurant was in the next car over and looked like something out of an old movie. Elegant burgundy linens draped the tables, and brass and dark wood, along with bits of bright-colored stained glass art, gave the whole place an antique feel. It looked more like a restaurant I’d find on the streets of Saint Petersburg than a train dining car. I ordered something that reminded me vaguely of french toast, except that it had cheese on it. It came with sausage, which thus far seemed to be the same everywhere I went.
I was just about finished when Sydney wandered in. When I’d met her that first night, I’d assumed her dress pants and blouse had been for the sake of the Nightingale. I was discovering, however, that that was her normal style. She struck me as one of those people who didn’t own jeans or T-shirts. She’d been mussed while standing in the hall last night, but now she was in neat black slacks and a dark green sweater. I was in jeans and a long-sleeved gray thermal shirt and felt kind of sloppy beside her. Her hair was brushed and styled but had a slightly messy look that I suspected never went away, no matter how hard she tried. At least I had my sleek ponytail going for me today.
She slid across from me and ordered an omelet when the server came by, again speaking in Russian.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“What, Russian?” She shrugged. “I had to learn it growing up. And a few other languages.”
“Wow.” I had taken intros to a couple of languages too and performed miserably in all of them. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but now, because of this trip and because of Dimitri, I really wished I’d learned Russian. I supposed it wasn’t too late, and I had picked up a few phrases in my time here, but still . . . it was a daunting task.
“You must have to learn a lot of stuff for this job,” I mused, pondering what it must mean to be part of a secret group that crossed international lines and interacted with all sorts of governments. Something else crossed my mind. “And what about that stuff you used on the Strigoi? That disintegrated the body?”
She smiled. Almost. “Well, I told you the Alchemists started off as a group of people trying to make potions, right? That’s a chemical we developed to get rid of Strigoi bodies fast.”
“Could you use it to actually kill one?” I asked. Dousing a Strigoi in some dissolving liquid would be a lot easier than the usual ways: decapitation, staking, or burning.
“Afraid not. Only works on corpses.”
“Bummer,” I said. I wondered if she had other potions up her sleeve but figured I should ration my amount of Sydney questions for the day. “What are we going to do when we get to Omsh?”
“Omsk,” she corrected. “We’ll get a car and drive the rest of the way.”
“Have you been there? To this village?”
She nodded. “Once.”
“What’s it like?” I asked, surprised to hear a wistful note in my own voice. Aside from my quest to find Dimitri, there was a piece of me that just wanted to cling to everything I could of him. I wanted to know everything about him that I hadn’t known before. If the school had given me his possessions, I would have slept with them each night. His room had been cleared out pretty quickly, though. Now I could only gather what pieces of him I could, as though hoarding these bits of information would keep him with me somehow.
“It’s like any other dhampir town, I guess.”
“I’ve never been to one.”
The server set Sydney’s omelet down, and she paused with her fork in the air. “Really? I thought all of you . . . well, I don’t know.”
I shook my head. “I’ve been at the Academy my whole life. More or less.” My two-year stint among humans wasn’t really relevant.
Sydney chewed thoughtfully. I was willing to wager she wouldn’t finish the omelet. From what I’d seen that first night and while waiting for trains yesterday, she hardly seemed to eat anything. It was like she subsisted on air alone. Maybe it was another Alchemist thing. Most likely it was just a Sydney thing.
“The town is half-human and half-dhampir, but the dhampirs blend in. They have a whole underground society that the humans are completely oblivious to.”
I’d always figured there was a whole subculture going on, but I’d had no idea how it would fit into the rest of the town. “And?” I asked. “What’s that subculture like?”
She set her fork down. “Let’s just say you’d better brace yourself.”
FIVE
THE REST OF THE TRIP passed uneventfully. Sydney never entirely lost that discomfort she seemed to
have around me, but sometimes, while I was trying to figure out Russian television, she’d take the time to explain what was going on. There were some cultural differences between these shows and the ones we’d both grown up with, so we had that in common. Every once in a while, she’d crack a smile over something we both found funny, and I’d sense there was someone in there I could possibly be friends with. I knew there was no way I’d ever find a replacement for Lissa, but I think some part of me still longed to fill the void of friendship that had been opened up when I left her behind.
Sydney napped throughout the day, and I began to think she was just an insomniac with bizarre sleep patterns. She also continued her equally odd treatment of food, hardly touching her meals. She always let me have the leftovers and was a bit more adventurous with Russian cuisine. I’d had to experiment when I first arrived, and it was nice to have the guidance of someone who, though not a local, knew a lot more about this country than me.
On the third day of our trip, we arrived in Omsk. Omsk was a larger and prettier city than I’d expected of Siberia. Dimitri had always teased me that my images of Siberia looking like Antarctica were wrong, and I could tell that he was right—at least as far as the southern part of the region was concerned. The weather wasn’t much different from what I’d have found in Montana this time of year, cool spring air occasionally warmed by sunshine.
Sydney had told me when we got there, she’d get us a ride from some Moroi she knew. Several lived in the city, blending in with the large population. Yet as the day went on, we discovered a problem. No Moroi would take us to the village. Apparently, the road was dangerous. Strigoi often hung out near it at night, hoping to catch traveling Moroi or dhampirs. The more Sydney explained it, the more worried I became about my plan. Apparently, there weren’t many Strigoi in Dimitri’s town itself. According to her, they lurked on the town’s periphery, but few lived out there permanently. If that was the case, my odds of finding Dimitri had dropped. Things got even worse as Sydney continued describing the situation.
“A lot of Strigoi travel the country looking for victims, and the village is just an area they pass through,” she explained. “The road is kind of remote, so some Strigoi will stay for a while and try to get easy prey. Then they move on.”
“In the U.S., Strigoi often hide in large cities,” I said uneasily.
“They do that here too. It’s easier for them to take victims without being noticed.”
Yes, this definitely threw a wrench into my plans. If Dimitri wasn’t residing in this town, I was going to have some serious problems. I’d known Strigoi liked big cities, but somehow, I’d convinced myself Dimitri would return to the place where he grew up.
But if Dimitri wasn’t there . . . well, suddenly, the enormity of Siberia hit me. I’d learned Omsk wasn’t even the biggest city in the region, and finding even one Strigoi here could be hard. Looking for him in any number of cities that might be larger? Things could get very, very ugly if my hunch proved wrong.
Since setting out to find Dimitri, I’d occasionally had weak moments in which I half-hoped I’d never find him. The idea of him as a Strigoi still tormented me. I was also visited by other images . . . images of the way he’d been and memories of the time we’d spent together.
I think my most precious memory was of just before he was turned. It was one of those times when I’d sucked up a lot of the spirit-induced darkness from Lissa. I’d been out of control, unable to get a grip. I was afraid of becoming a monster, afraid of killing myself like another shadow-kissed guardian had.
Dimitri had brought me back to myself, lending me his strength. I’d realized then just how strong our connection was, how perfectly we understood each other. I’d been skeptical about people being soul mates in the past, but at that moment, I knew it was true. And with that emotional connection had come a physical one. Dimitri and I had finally given in to the attraction. We’d sworn we never would, but . . . well, our feelings were just too strong. Staying away from each other had turned out to be impossible. We’d had sex, and it had been my first time ever. Sometimes I felt certain it would be my only time.
The act itself had been amazing, and I’d been unable to separate the physical joy from the emotional. Afterward, we’d lain together in that small cabin for as long as we dared, and that had been amazing too. It had been one of the few moments where I’d felt he was truly mine.
“Do you remember Victor’s lust charm?” I had asked, snuggling closer against him.
Dimitri looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course.”
Victor Dashkov was a royal Moroi, one who had been friends with Lissa and her family. Little did we know that he’d secretly studied spirit for years and had identified Lissa as a spirit user before she even knew. He’d tortured her with all sorts of mind games that truly made her think she was going crazy. His schemes had fully culminated in his kidnapping and torturing her until she healed the disease that was killing him.
Victor was now in prison for life, both for what he’d done to Lissa and because of his treasonous plans for rebellion against the Moroi government. He had been one of the few to know about my relationship with Dimitri, something that had worried me to no end. He’d even furthered our relationship by creating a lust charm—a necklace infused with earth and compulsion. The charm was full of dangerous magic that had made Dimitri and me give into our most basic instincts. We had pulled back at the last moment, and until our night in the cabin, I had believed our charm-induced encounter to be the ultimate physical high.
“I didn’t realize it could get better,” I had told Dimitri after we’d actually slept together. I felt a little shy talking about it. “I thought about it all the time . . . what happened between us.”
He turned to me, tugging the covers up. The cabin was cold, but its bed had warm blankets. I suppose we could have put clothes on, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. Being pressed skin-to-skin felt too good.
“I did too.”
“You did?” I asked, surprised. “I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought you were too disciplined for that. I thought you’d try to forget it.”
Dimitri laughed and kissed my neck. “Rose, how could I forget being naked with someone as beautiful as you? I stayed awake so many nights, replaying every detail. I told myself over and over that it was wrong, but you’re impossible to forget.” His lips moved to my collarbone, and his hand stroked my hip. “You’re burned into my mind forever. There is nothing, nothing in this world that will ever change that.”
And it was memories like that that made it so hard to comprehend this quest to kill him, even if he was a Strigoi. Yet . . . at the same time, it was exactly because of memories like that that I had to destroy him. I needed to remember him as the man who’d loved me and held me in bed. I needed to remember that that man would not want to stay a monster.
I wasn’t very excited when Sydney showed me the car she’d bought, particularly since I’d given her the money for it.
“We’re going in that?” I exclaimed. “Can it even make it that far?” The trip was apparently seven hours.
She gave me a shocked look. “Are you serious? Do you know what this is? It’s a 1972 Citroën. These things are amazing. Do you have any idea how hard it would have been to get this into the country back in the Soviet days? I can’t believe that guy actually sold it. He’s clueless.”
I knew little about the Soviet era and even less about classic cars, but Sydney stroked the shiny red hood like she was in love. Who would have guessed? She was a car geek. Maybe it was valuable, and I just couldn’t appreciate it. I was more into sleek, brand-new sports cars. To be fair, this car didn’t have any dents or rust, and aside from an outdated look, it appeared clean and well cared for.
“Will it run?” I asked.
If possible, her expression grew even more incredulous. “Of course!”
And it did. The engine sprang to life with a steady hum, and with the way it accelerated, I started to understan
d her fascination. She wanted to drive, and I was about to argue that it had been my money that bought it. Seeing the adoring look on her face, though, I finally decided not to come between her and the car.
I was just glad we were leaving right away. It was already late afternoon. If the road was as dangerous as everyone claimed, we wouldn’t want to be out there while it was dark. Sydney agreed but said we could get most of the trip in before sundown and then stay overnight at a place she knew. We’d arrive at our destination in the morning.
The farther we drove from Omsk, the more remote the terrain became. As I studied it, I began to understand Dimitri’s love of this land. It had a scrubby, barren look, true, but spring was turning the plains green, and there was something haunt ingly beautiful about seeing all this untouched wilderness. It reminded me of Montana in some ways yet had a certain quality that was all its own.
I couldn’t help but use Sydney’s crush on the car as a means of conversation. “Do you know a lot about cars?” I asked.
“Some,” she said. “My dad’s the Alchemist in our family, but my mom’s a mechanic.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “That’s kind of . . . unusual.” Of course, I was hardly one to talk about gender roles. Considering my life was dedicated to fighting and killing, I couldn’t really claim to have a traditionally feminine job either.
“She’s really good and taught me a lot. I wouldn’t have minded doing that for a living. Wouldn’t have minded going to college, either.” There was a bitter note in her voice. “I guess there are a lot of other things I wish I could do.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I had to be the next family Alchemist. My sister . . . well, she’s older, and usually it’s the oldest kid who has to do the job. But, she’s kind of . . . worthless.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Yeah, maybe. But she just couldn’t handle this kind of thing. When it comes to organizing her lip gloss collection, she’s unstoppable. But managing the kinds of networks and people we do? No, she’d never be able to do it. Dad said I was the only one capable of it.”
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