"Of course you should have," said Grant at last. "What you did was amazing. And in a similar situation? Sure. You wouldn't want to be helpless. But that's the point–you have your fire. If it came down to you fighting a Strigoi, your magic's going to be the way to go. You already know how to use it–and it'll keep you safely out of their range."
"What about me?" asked Lissa. "I don't have any kind of magic like that."
"You'll never get close enough to a Strigoi for it to be a problem," said Serena fiercely. "We won't let you."
"Besides," added Grant with amusement, "it's not like we just go around handing out stakes." I would have given anything for them to go take a look in her suitcase right then.
Lissa bit her lip and refused to make eye contact with Christian again, for fear of giving away their intentions. This was not going according to their crazy plan. Christian again took the lead.
"Can you at least demo it?" he asked, trying–and succeeding–to look like someone just seeking the sensational and exciting. "Is it hard to do? It seems like all you have to do is aim and hit."
Grant snorted. "Hardly. There's a bit more to it than that."
Lissa leaned forward, clasping her hands together as she followed Christian's lead. "Well, then don't worry about teaching us. Just show us."
"Yeah. Let's see." Christian shifted restlessly beside her. As he did, their arms brushed, and instantly they moved apart.
"It's not a game," Grant said. Nonetheless, he walked over to his coat and produced his stake. Serena stared incredulously.
"What are you going to do?" she asked. "Stake
me
?"
He gave that small chuckle of his and searched the room with his sharp eyes. "Of course not. Ah. There we are." He walked over to a small armchair that had a decorative pillow. He lifted it up and tested its width. It was fat and thickly filled with some sort of dense stuffing. He returned to Lissa and gestured for her to stand. To everyone's astonishment, he handed her his stake.
Locking his body into a rigid position, he gripped the pillow hard between his hands and extended it out a couple feet in front of him. "Go ahead," he said. "Aim and hit it."
"Are you crazy?" asked Serena.
"Don't worry," he said. "Princess Voda can afford the incidentals. I'm proving a point. Strike the pillow."
Lissa hesitated only a few more moments. An excitement that seemed unusually intense filled her. I knew she'd been anxious to learn this, but her desire for it seemed higher than before. Gritting her teeth, she stepped forward and awkwardly tried to impale the pillow with her stake. She was cautious–fearing she'd hurt Grant–but there was no need for her to worry. She didn't even budge him, and all she managed with the stake was a slight snagging of the fabric on the surface. She tried a few more times but achieved little more.
Christian, being who he was, said, "That's all you can do?"
Glaring, she handed him the stake. "You do better."
Christian stood, snarky smile disappearing as he studied the pillow critically and sized up his blow. As he did, Lissa glanced around and saw the humor in the guardians' eyes. Even Serena had relaxed. They were making their point, proving staking wasn't an easy thing to learn. I was glad, and my opinion of them rose.
Christian finally made his move. He did actually pierce the fabric, but the pillow and its stuffing proved too much to break through. And again, Grant wasn't shaken at all. After more failed attempts, Christian sat down again and handed the stake back. It was kind of fun to see Christian's cocky attitude shot down a little. Even Lissa enjoyed it, despite her own frustration over how difficult this was becoming.
"The stuffing's got too much resistance," Christian complained.
Grant handed his stake to Serena. "What, and you think a Strigoi's body is going to be easier to get through? With muscles and ribs in the way?"
Grant got back into his position, and without hesitation, Serena struck with the stake. Its point burst through the other side of the pillow, coming to a halt just in front of Grant's chest as tiny fluffy pieces of stuffing drifted to the ground. She jerked it out and handed it to him like it had been the simplest thing in the world.
Both Christian and Lissa stared in amazement. "Let me try again," he said.
By the time Priscilla called them to dinner, there wasn't a pillow in that hotel room left untouched. Boy, she was going to be surprised when she got the bill. Lissa and Christian hacked away with the stake while the guardians looked on with a superior air, confident their message was being delivered. Staking Strigoi was not easy.
Lissa was finally getting it. She realized that in some ways, piercing a pillow–or a Strigoi–wasn't even about understanding the principle. Sure, she'd heard me talk about lining your shot up to get to the heart and miss the ribs, but this was more than knowledge. A lot of it was strength–strength she physically didn't have yet. Serena, though seemingly petite, had spent years building up her muscle and could get that stake through practically anything. One hour-long lesson wouldn't give Lissa that kind of strength, and she whispered as much to Christian when the group went out to dinner.
"You're quitting already?" he asked, voice equally low as they rode in the backseat of an SUV. Grant, Serena, and a third guardian were there too, but they were deep in discussion.
"No!" Lissa hissed back. "But I've got to, like, train before I can do it."
"Like lift weights?"
"I . . . I don't know." The others were still talking to each other, but Lissa's topic was too dangerous for her to risk them hearing. She leaned close to Christian, unnerved yet again at how his closeness and familiarity affected her. Swallowing, she tried to keep her face impassive and stick to the topic. "But I'm just not strong enough. It's physically impossible."
"Sounds like you're giving up."
"Hey! You didn't make it through any of the pillows either."
He flushed slightly. "I almost got through that green one."
"There was hardly anything in it!"
"I just need more practice."
"You don't need to do anything," she shot back, fighting to keep her voice quiet through her anger. "This isn't your fight. It's mine."
"Hey," he snapped, eyes glittering like pale blue diamonds, "you're crazy if you think I'm going to just let you go and risk–"
He cut himself off and actually bit his lip, as though will alone wasn't enough to stop him from talking. Lissa stared at him, and both of us began wondering how he would have finished. What wouldn't he risk? Her putting herself in danger? That was my guess.
Even without talk, he spoke volumes with his expression. Through Lissa's eyes, I saw him drinking in her features and trying to hide his emotions. At last, he jerked away and broke that intimate space between them, getting as far from her as he could.
"Fine. Do whatever you want. I don't care."
Neither of them spoke after that, and since it was lunchtime for me, I returned to my own reality and welcomed a filing break–only to be informed by Hans that I had to keep working.
"Come on! Isn't it lunchtime? You have to feed me," I exclaimed. "That's just beyond cruel. At least throw me some crumbs."
"I did feed you. Or, well, you fed yourself when you inhaled that sandwich. You wanted your lunch break then. You got it. Now you keep working."
I slammed my fists against the endless piles of paper before me. "Can't I at least do something else? Paint buildings? Haul rocks?"
"I'm afraid not." A smile twisted the corners of his lips. "There's a lot of filing we need done."
"How long? How long are you going to punish me?"
Hans shrugged. "Until someone tells me to stop."
He left me alone again, and I leaned back in my chair, forcibly trying not to flip the table in front of me over. I thought it would make me feel momentarily better, but it also meant I'd have to redo the work I'd done. With a sigh, I returned to my task.
Lissa was at dinner when I tuned back into her later. It might have technically been in honor of her birthday, but really, it was all royal conversation with Priscilla. That was no way to spend a birthday, I decided. I'd have to make this up to her whenever I earned freedom. We'd have a real party, and I'd be able to give her my birthday present: gorgeous leather boots that Adrian had helped me acquire back at school.
Being in Christian's head might have been more interesting, but since that wasn't an option, I returned to my own and mulled over my earlier talk with Adrian. Was this punishment finally going to end? Was an official royal decree going to put me and Lissa together at last, despite the guardians' normal policy?
Trying to figure it out was like being on a hamster wheel. A lot of work. No progress. But it got me through the dinner conversation, and before I knew it, Lissa's group was getting up and heading for the restaurant's door. It was dark out now, and Lissa couldn't help but feel the weirdness of being on a human schedule. Back at school or the Court, this would be the middle of the day. Instead, they were now heading back to their hotel and would be going to bed. Well, probably not right away. I had no doubt that if Lissa and Christian could get over their current huff, they'd be back to stabbing more pillows. As much as I wanted those two dating again, I couldn't help but think they were a lot safer apart.
Or maybe not.
The group had hung out at the restaurant far past the normal dinner hour, so the lot was mostly empty as they walked across it. The guardians hadn't exactly parked in the back, but they weren't near the main entrance either. They had, however, made a point of parking next to one of the street lamps illuminating the lot.
Except it wasn't lit now. The light had been broken.
Grant and Priscilla's guardian noticed it right away. It was the kind of little detail we were trained to notice: anything unusual, anything that might have changed. In a flash, the two of them had stakes out and were flanking the Moroi. It only took seconds for Serena and the guardian assigned to Christian to follow suit. That was something else we were trained to do. Be on guard. React. Follow your colleagues.
They were fast. All of them were fast. But it didn't matter.
Because suddenly, there were Strigoi everywhere.
I'm not entirely sure where they came from. Maybe they'd been behind the cars or on the parking lot's edges. If I'd had a bird-eye's view of the situation or been there myself with my "nausea alarm," I might have had a better sense of it all. But I was watching the scene through Lissa's eyes, and the guardians were going out of their way to block her from the Strigoi who seemed to have appeared out of thin air as far as she was concerned. Most of the actions were a blur to her. Her bodyguards were shoving her around, trying to keep her safe as white, red-eyed faces popped up everywhere. She saw it all through a fear-filled haze.
But before long, both of us could see people dying. Serena, just as fast and strong as she'd been in the hotel room, staked a male Strigoi cleanly through the heart. Then, in return, a female Strigoi leapt at Priscilla's guardian and broke his neck. Lissa was distantly aware of Christian's arm around her, pressing her against the SUV and shielding her with his own body. The remaining guardians were also still forming a protective ring as best they could, but they were distracted. Their circle was faltering–and they were dropping.
One by one, the Strigoi killed the guardians. It wasn't for lack of skill on the guardians' part. They were simply outnumbered. One Strigoi tore out Grant's throat with her teeth. Serena was backhanded hard against the asphalt, landing facedown and not moving. And, horror of horrors, the Strigoi didn't seem to be sparing Moroi either. Lissa–pushing so hard against the SUV that it seemed as though she might become one with it-stared wide-eyed as one Strigoi swiftly and efficiently ripped into Priscilla's neck, pausing to drink her blood. The Moroi woman didn't even have time to register surprise, but at least there had been no real suffering. The endorphins dimmed the pain as the blood and life were drained from her body.
Lissa's emotions shifted into something beyond fear, something that hardly felt like anything at all. She was in shock. Numbed. And with a cold, hard certainty, she knew that her death was coming and accepted it. Her hand found Christian's, squeezing it tightly, and turning toward him, she took small comfort in knowing the last sight she would see in life was the beautiful, crystalline blue of his eyes. From the look on his face, his thoughts were along similar themes. There was warmth in his eyes, warmth and love and-
Total and complete astonishment.
His eyes widened, focusing on something just behind Lissa. At that same moment, a hand grabbed Lissa's shoulder and whipped her around.
This is it
, a small voice inside her whispered.
This is where I die
.
Then, she understood Christian's astonishment.
She was facing Dimitri.
Like me, she had that surreal sense of it being Dimitri yet not being Dimitri. So many of his features were the same . . . and yet so many were different. She tried to say something, anything, but while the words formed on her lips, she just couldn't manage to get them out.
Intense heat suddenly flared behind her, and a brilliant light lit Dimitri's pale features. Neither Lissa nor I needed to see Christian to know he had produced a ball of fire with his magic. Either the shock of seeing Dimitri or fear for Lissa had spurred Christian into action. Dimitri squinted slightly at the light, but then a cruel smile twisted his lips, and the hand resting on her shoulder slid up to her neck.
"Put it out," said Dimitri. "Put it out or she dies."
Lissa finally found her voice, even with her air cut off. "Don't listen to him," she gasped out. "He's going to kill us anyway."