I was right. Once my group had split off and peered around behind the club, I saw the Strigoi and the girl lurking in the shadow of a trash can. He was leaning over her, mouth near her neck, and I silently swore. They didn’t waste any time. Hoping she was still alive, I came charging down the alley, the others on my heels. From the alley’s other side, Denis and Lev also came running. As soon as he heard the first footfall, the Strigoi reacted instantly, his staggeringly fast reflexes kicking in. He immediately dropped the girl, and in the space of a heartbeat, he chose Denis and Lev over Artur, Tamara, and me. Not a bad strategy, really. There were only two of them. Because he was so fast, he probably hoped to incapacitate them quickly and then turn on us before we could flank him.
And it almost worked. A powerful hit sent Lev flying. To my relief, a couple of trash cans blocked him from the building’s wall. Hitting them wouldn’t feel good, but if I had the choice, I’d rather hit metal cans than solid bricks. The Strigoi pounced on Denis next, but Denis proved remarkably fast. Unfairly, I’d assumed none of these unpromised had any real fighting skills. I should have known better. They’d had the same training as me; they just lacked discipline.
Denis dodged the blow and struck out low, aiming for the Strigoi’s legs. The hit landed, though it wasn’t strong enough to knock him over. A flash of silver showed in Denis’s hands, and he managed to partially swipe the Strigoi’s cheek just before a backhanded slap knocked the dhampir into me. A cut like that wouldn’t be lethal to the Strigoi, but the silver would hurt, and I heard him snarl. His fangs gleamed with saliva.
I sidestepped Denis quickly enough that he didn’t knock me over. Tamara grabbed his arm, holding him so that he wouldn’t fall either. She was fast too and had barely steadied him before leaping up at the Strigoi. He swatted her away but didn’t manage to hit her hard enough to push her far. Artur and I were on him by that point, our combined force knocking him against the wall. Still, he was stronger and the pinning was brief before he broke free. A responsible voice in my head—that sounded suspiciously like Dimitri’s—warned me that that had been my window to kill him. It would have been the smart and safe thing to do. I’d had the opening, and my stake was in my hand. If my crazy interrogation plan failed, the others’ deaths would be on my head.
As one, Artur and I leapt out again. “Help us!” I yelled.
Tamara threw herself against the Strigoi, landing a swift kick to the stomach as well. I could feel him starting to shake us off, but then Denis joined in too. Between the four of us, we wrestled the Strigoi down so that he lay back-first on the pavement. But the worst wasn’t over. Keeping him down wasn’t easy. He thrashed around with incredible strength, limbs twisting everywhere. I heaved myself up, trying to throw my body’s weight across his torso while the others restrained his legs. Another set of hands joined us, and I looked up to see Lev lending his strength too. His lip was bleeding, but his face was determined.
The Strigoi hadn’t stopped moving, but I felt satisfied he wouldn’t break away anytime soon, not with all five of us holding him. Shifting forward, I placed the point of my stake at his neck. It gave him pause, but he soon resumed his struggle. I leaned over his face.
“Do you know Dimitri Belikov?” I demanded.
He shouted something incomprehensible at me that didn’t sound very friendly. I pressed the stake in harder and drew a long gash against his throat. He screamed in pain, pure evil and malice shining out from his eyes as he continued swearing in Russian.
“Translate,” I demanded, not caring who did it. “What I said.”
A moment later, Denis said something in Russian, presumably my question since I heard Dimitri’s name in there. The Strigoi growled back a response, and Denis shook his head. “He says he isn’t going to play games with us.”
I took the stake and slashed at the Strigoi’s face, widening the gash Denis had made earlier. Again, the Strigoi cried out, and I prayed club security wouldn’t hear any of this. I gave him a smile filled with enough malice to match his own.
“Tell him we’re going to keep playing games with him until he talks. One way or another, he dies tonight. It’s up to him whether it happens slowly or quickly.”
I honestly couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth. They were so harsh . . . so, well, cruel. I’d never in my entire life expected to be torturing anyone, even a Strigoi. The Strigoi gave Denis’s translation another defiant response, and so I kept on with the stake, making gashes and cuts that would have killed any human, Moroi, or dhampir.
Finally, he shot off a string of words that didn’t sound like his usual insults. Denis immediately translated. “He said he’s never heard of anyone named that and that if Dimitri’s a friend of yours, he’ll be sure to kill him slowly and painfully.”
I almost smiled at the Strigoi’s last effort at defiance. The problem with my strategy here was that the Strigoi could be lying. I’d have no way of knowing. Something in his response made me think he wasn’t. He’d sounded like he thought I was referring to a human or a dhampir, not a Strigoi.
“He’s useless then,” I said. I leaned back and glanced at Denis. “Go ahead and kill him.”
It was what Denis had been dying to do. He didn’t hesitate, his stake striking hard and swift through the Strigoi’s heart. The frantic struggling stilled a moment later. The evil light faded from the red eyes. We stood up, and I saw my companions’ faces watching me with apprehension and fear.
“Rose,” asked Denis at last. “What are you hoping to—”
“Never mind that,” I interrupted, moving over to the unconscious human girl’s side. Kneeling down, I examined her neck. He’d bitten her, but not much blood had been taken. The wound was relatively small and bled only a little. She stirred slightly and moaned when I touched her, which I took as a good sign. Carefully, I dragged her away from the trash can and out into the light where she’d be most noticeable. The Strigoi, however, I dragged into as dark a place as I could, almost completely obscuring him. After that, I asked to borrow Denis’s cell phone and dialed the number I’d kept crumpled in my pocket for the last week.
After a couple of rings, Sydney answered in Russian. She sounded sleepy.
“Sydney? This is Rose.”
There was a slight pause. “Rose? What’s going on?”
“Are you back in Saint Petersburg?”
“Yes . . . where are you?”
“Novosibirsk. Do you guys have agents here?”
“Of course,” she said warily. “Why?”
“Mmm . . . I’ve got something for you to clean up.”
“Oh dear.”
“Hey, at least I’m calling. And it’s not like me ridding the world of another Strigoi is a bad thing. Besides, didn’t you want me to let you know?”
“Yes, yes. Where are you?”
I put Denis on the phone briefly so that he could explain our specific location. He handed the phone back to me when he finished, and I told Sydney about the girl.
“Is she seriously injured?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” I said. “What should we do?”
“Leave her. The guy who’s coming will make sure she’s okay and doesn’t go telling stories. He’ll explain it when he gets there.”
“Whoa, hey. I’m not going to be here when he arrives.”
“Rose—”
“I’m out of here,” I told her. “And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else that I called—say, like, Abe.”
“Rose—”
“Please, Sydney. Just don’t tell. Or else . . .” I hesitated. “If you do, I’ll stop calling when this happens. We’re going to be taking down a few more.” God, what next? First torture, now threats. Worse, I was threatening someone I liked. Of course, I was lying. I understood why Sydney’s group did what they did, and I wouldn’t risk the exposure. She didn’t know that, though, and I prayed she’d think I was just unstable enough to risk revealing us to the world.
“Rose—”
she tried yet again. I didn’t give her the chance.
“Thanks, Sydney. We’ll be in touch.” I disconnected and handed Denis the phone. “Come on, guys. We’re not done tonight.”
It was clear they thought I was crazy to be interrogating Strigoi, but considering how reckless they were sometimes, my behavior wasn’t quite weird enough for them to lose their faith in me. Soon they grew enthusiastic again, high on the idea of our first kill on this trip. My uncanny ability to sense Strigoi made me even cooler in their eyes, and I grew confident they’d pretty much follow me anywhere.
We caught two more Strigoi that night and managed to repeat the procedure. The results were the same. Lots of insults in Russian. No new information. Once I was convinced a Strigoi had nothing to offer us, I’d let the unpromised go in for the kill. They loved it, but after that third one, I found myself growing weary both mentally and physically. I told the group we were going to go home—and then, while cutting around the back of a factory, I sensed a fourth Strigoi.
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.”
SEVENTEEN
CONVINCING 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 a
ttend 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.
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