“She’s still alive, then. . . . There were rumors that she’d died last year. . . .” There was a sense of wonder in his voice, which mixed weirdly with the malice. “You have no idea what kind of reward I’d get to take down the last living Drag—Ahh!”
He’d dodged my stake from hitting his chest again, but this time I managed an upward strike that dragged the stake’s tip across his face. It wouldn’t kill him there, but the touch of a stake—so filled with life—would feel like acid to the undead. He screamed, but it didn’t slow his defenses.
“I’ll come back for you after I finish her,” he snarled.
“You’ll never get near her,” I growled back.
Something shoved into me from the side, a Strigoi that Yuri was fighting. I stumbled but managed to drive my stake through Yuri’s Strigoi’s heart before he could regain his balance. Yuri gasped his thanks, and then we both turned to other parts of the battle. Only the blond Strigoi was gone. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Another took his place, and as I moved toward that one, flames lit up around him, making him an easy mark for my stake. Christian had returned.
“Christian, this Strigoi—”
“I heard,” he panted.
“We have to go to her!”
“He was messing with you. She’s across campus, surrounded by novices and guardians. She’ll be okay.”
“But—”
“They need us here.”
I knew he was right—and I knew how hard it was for him to say that. Like me, he wanted to run off to Lissa. Despite all the good work he was doing here, I suspected he would rather have sunk all his magic into protecting her, keeping her ringed in a wall of fire no Strigoi could cross. I had no time to deeply investigate the bond, but I could sense the important things: She was alive, and she wasn’t in pain.
So I stayed on, fighting with Christian and Yuri. Lissa hovered at the back of my mind, the bond telling me she was okay. Aside from that, I let battle lust consume me. I had one goal and one alone: Kill Strigoi. I couldn’t let them get into this dorm, nor could I let them leave this area and possibly go to Lissa’s dorm. I lost track of time. Only the Strigoi I was currently fighting at any given moment mattered. And as soon as that one was gone, it was on to the next.
Until there wasn’t a next one.
I was sore and exhausted, adrenaline burning through my body. Christian stood beside me, panting. He hadn’t engaged in physical combat like me, but he’d used a lot of magic tonight, and that had taken its own physical toll. I looked around.
“We gotta find another one,” I said.
“There are no others,” a familiar voice said.
I turned and looked into Dimitri’s face. He was alive. All the fear for him I’d held back burst through me. I wanted to throw myself at him and hold him as close to me as possible. He was alive—battered and bloody, yes—but alive.
His gaze held mine for just a moment, reminding me of what had happened in the cabin. It felt like a hundred years ago, but in that brief glance, I saw love and concern—and relief. He’d been worried about me too. Then Dimitri turned and gestured to the eastern sky. I followed the motion. The horizon was pink and purple. It was nearly sunrise.
“They’re either dead or have run away,” he told me. He glanced between Christian and me. “What you two did—”
“Was stupid?” I suggested.
He shook his head. “One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Half of those are yours.”
I looked back at the dorm, shocked at the number of bodies lying around it. We had killed Strigoi. We had killed a lot of them. Death and killing were horrible things . . . but I had liked doing what I just did. I had defeated the monsters who had come after me and those in my care.
Then I noticed something. My stomach twisted, but it was nothing like my earlier Strigoi-sensing feeling. This was caused by something entirely different. I turned back to Dimitri.
“There are more than just Strigoi bodies there,” I said in a small voice.
“I know,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of people, in all senses of the word.”
Christian frowned. “What do you mean?”
Dimitri’s face was both hard and sad. “The Strigoi killed some Moroi and dhampirs. And some . . . some they carried away.”
TWENTY-FIVE
D
EAD OR TAKEN AWAY.
It wasn’t enough that the Strigoi had come and attacked us, that they’d killed Moroi and dhampirs alike. They’d also carried some off. It was something Strigoi were known to do. Even they had limits on how much blood they could drink at once. So they’d often take prisoners to keep as snacks for later. Or sometimes a powerful Strigoi who didn’t want to do the dirty work would send his or her minions off to bring back the prey. Every once in a while, they’d even purposely take back captives to turn into more Strigoi. Whatever the reason, it meant that some of our people might still be alive.
Students, Moroi and dhampir, were gathered up once certain buildings had been declared Strigoi-free. Adult Moroi were herded inside with us, leaving the guardians to assess the damage. I wanted desperately to be with them, to help and do my part, but they made it clear my part was over. There was nothing I could do at that point except wait and worry with the others. It still seemed unreal. Strigoi attacking our school. How could it have happened? The Academy was safe. We’d always been taught that. It had to be safe. It was why our school years were so long and why Moroi families endured being separated for most of the year. It was worth it for children to have a safe place to go.
That was no longer true.
It took only a couple hours for them to get a casualty count, but waiting while those reports trickled in felt like days. And the numbers . . . the numbers were harsh. Fifteen Moroi had been killed. Twelve guardians had been killed. A group of thirteen, both Moroi and dhampirs, had been taken away. The guardians estimated that there had been close to fifty Strigoi, which was beyond mind-boggling. They’d found twenty-eight Strigoi bodies. The rest appeared to have escaped, many taking victims with them.
For that size of a Strigoi party, our casualty count was still lower than one might have expected. A few things were credited for saving us. One was the early warning. The Strigoi had barely penetrated the school’s inner grounds when I’d warned Stan. The school had gone into lockdown quickly, and the fact that most everyone was already inside for curfew had helped. Most of the Moroi victims—dead or taken—were those who had been out in the open when the Strigoi came.
The Strigoi had never made it into the elementary dorms, which Dimitri said was largely thanks to me and Christian. They had managed to breach one of the Moroi dorms, however—the one that Lissa lived in. My stomach had dropped when I heard that. And even though I could feel that she was fine through the bond, all I could see was that smirking blond Strigoi, telling me he was going to finish the Dragomirs off. I didn’t know what had happened to him; the attacking Strigoi group hadn’t gotten far into her dorm, thankfully, but there had been casualties.
One of them was Eddie.
“
What
?” I exclaimed when Adrian told me.
We were eating in the cafeteria. I wasn’t sure which meal it was since the campus had reverted to a daylight schedule that threw my sense of timing off. The cafeteria was nearly silent, all conversations in low whispers. Meals were the only reason students could leave their dorms. There was going to be a guardian meeting later on that I was actually invited to, but for now, I was confined with the rest of my friends.
“He was with you guys,” I said. I focused on Lissa, almost accusingly. “I saw him with you. Through your eyes.”
She looked up at me over the tray of food she had no interest in eating, her face pale and full of grief. “When the Strigoi got in downstairs, he and some other novices went down to help.”
“They didn’t find his body,” said Adrian. There was no smirk on his face, no humor anywhere. “He was one of the ones they took.”
Christian sighed and leaned back in his chair. “He’s as good as dead, then.”
The cafeteria disappeared. I stopped seeing any of them. All I could see in that moment was that room back in Spokane, that room where we’d been held. They’d tortured Eddie and nearly killed him. That experience had changed him forever, affecting the way he now conducted himself as a guardian. He’d grown extremely dedicated as a result, but it had cost him some of the light and laughter he used to have.
And now it was happening again. Eddie captured. He’d worked so hard to protect Lissa and others, risking his own life in the attack. I’d been nowhere near the Moroi dorm when it had happened, but I felt responsible—like I should have watched over him. Surely I owed it to Mason. Mason. Mason who had died on my watch and whose ghost I hadn’t seen since he’d warned me earlier. I hadn’t been able to save him, and now I’d lost his best friend too.
I shot up from my chair and shoved my tray away. That dark fury I’d been fighting blazed through me. If Strigoi had been around, I could have burned them up with it, without any need of Christian’s magic.
“What’s wrong?” asked Lissa.
I stared at her in disbelief. “What’s wrong? What’s
wrong
? Do you seriously have to ask that?” In the silent cafeteria, my voice rang out. People stared.
“Rose, you know what she means,” said Adrian, voice unusually calm. “We’re all upset. Sit back down. It’s going to be okay.”
For a moment, I almost listened to him. Then, I shook it off. He was trying to use compulsion to chill me out. I glared at him.
“It is not going to be okay—not unless we do something about this.”
“There’s nothing to be done,” said Christian. Beside him, Lissa was silent, still hurt from when I’d snapped at her.
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
“Rose, wait,” she called. She was worried about me—and scared, too. It was tiny and selfish, but she didn’t want me to leave her. She was used to me being there for her. I made her feel safe. But I couldn’t stay, not right now.
I stormed out of the commons and into the bright light outside. The guardians’ meeting wasn’t for another couple hours, but that didn’t matter. I needed to talk to someone now. I sprinted to the guardians’ building. Someone else was walking into it as I was, and I bumped her in my haste.
“Rose?”
My fury turned to surprise. “Mom?”
My famous guardian mother, Janine Hathaway, stood there by the door. She looked the same as she had when I’d seen her at New Year’s, her curly red hair still worn short and her face weathered from the sun. Her brown eyes seemed grimmer than last time, however, which was saying something.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
As I’d told Deirdre, my mother and I had had a troubled relationship for most of my life, largely because of the distance that inevitably came with having a parent who was a guardian. I’d resented her for years and we still weren’t super close, but she’d been there for me after Mason’s death, and I think we both tentatively hoped things might improve in coming years. She’d left after New Year’s, and last I’d heard, she’d gone back to Europe with the Szelsky she guarded.
She opened the door, and I followed her through. Her manner was brusque and businesslike, as always. “Replenishing the numbers. They’ve called in extras to reinforce campus.”
Replenishing the numbers
. Replacing the guardians who had been killed. All the bodies had been cleared away—Strigoi, Moroi, and dhampir alike—but the hole left behind by those who were gone was apparent to all. I could still see them when I closed my eyes. But with her here, I realized I had an opportunity. I grabbed hold of her arm, which startled her.
“We have to go after them,” I said. “Rescue the ones who were taken.”
She regarded me carefully, a small frown the only sign of her feelings. “We don’t do that kind of thing. You know that. We have to protect those who are here.”
“What about those thirteen? Shouldn’t we protect them? And you went on a rescue mission once.”
She shook her head. “That was different. We had a trail. We wouldn’t know where to find this group if we wanted to.”
I knew she was right. The Strigoi wouldn’t have left an easy path to follow. And yet . . . suddenly, I had an idea.
“They put the wards back up, right?” I asked.
“Yes, almost immediately. We’re still not sure how they were broken. There were no stakes used to pierce them.”
I started to tell her my theory about that, but she wasn’t up to speed with my ghostly shenanigans. “Do you know where Dimitri is?”
She gestured toward groups of guardians hurrying all around. “I’m sure he’s busy here somewhere. Everyone is. And now I need to go check in. I know you were invited to the meeting, but that’s not for a while yet—you should stay out of the way.”
“I will . . . but I need to see Dimitri first. It’s important—it might play a role in what happens at the meeting.”
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
“I can’t explain yet. . . . It’s complicated. It’d take too much time. Help me find him, and we’ll tell you later.”
My mother didn’t seem happy about this. After all, Janine Hathaway wasn’t someone people usually said no to. But she nonetheless helped me find Dimitri. After the events over winter break, I think she’d come to regard me as more than a hapless teenager. We found Dimitri with some other guardians, studying a map of campus and planning how to distribute the newly arrived guardians. There were enough people gathered around the map that he was able to slip away.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he and I stood off to the side of the room. Even in the midst of this crisis, in the midst of worrying so much about others, I could tell that there was part of him that worried just about me. “Are you okay?”
“I think we should launch a rescue mission,” I said.
“You know we—”
“—don’t usually do that. Yeah, yeah. And I know we don’t know where they are . . . except, I might.”