Shadow Kiss (33 page)

"Be quiet," I said. "What I want to know, Christian, is who told you?"

"Ralf," he said, looking uncertain for the first time.

"You should have known better than to listen to him," remarked Eddie, face darkening at the name.

"Except, for once, Ralf was actually telling the truth— aside from Adrian being in on it. Ralf's related to the queen's best friend," I explained.

"Wonderful," said Christian. He seemed calm enough, so Eddie and I released him. "We've all been played."

I looked around, suddenly taken aback by something. "Where's Lissa? Why didn't she stop all of this?"

Adrian raised an eyebrow at me. "You tell us. Where is she? She didn't come to dinner."

"I can't. …" I frowned. I'd gotten so good at shielding myself when I needed to that long periods of time would go by without me feeling anything from her. This time, I sensed nothing because there was nothing coming from her. "I can't feel her."

Three sets of eyes stared at me.

"Is she asleep?" asked Eddie.

"I can tell when she's asleep…This is something different…" Slowly, slowly, I gained a sense of where she was. She'd been blocking me out on purpose, trying to hide from me, but I'd found her as I always did. "There she is. She was— oh God!"

My scream rang down the hall, echoing Lissa's own screams as, far away, pain shot through her.

OTHERS IN THE HALL stopped and stared. I felt like I had just been hit in the face. Only it hadn't been my face. It had been Lissa's. I shifted into her mind and became instantly aware of her surroundings and everything happening to her—like the next time rocks flew up from the ground and slammed into her cheeks. They were guided by a freshman I didn't know anything about, save that he was a Drozdov. The rocks hurt both of us, but I withheld my screaming this time and gritted my teeth as I shifted back to the hallway with my friends.

"Northwest side of campus, between that weird-shaped pond and the fence," I told them.

With that, I broke away from them and headed out the door, running as hard as I could toward the part of campus where they were holding Lissa. I couldn't see all of the people gathered there through her eyes, but I recognized a few. Jesse and Ralf were there. Brandon. Brett. The Drozdov guy. Some others. The rocks were still hitting her, still cutting into her face. She didn't scream or cry, though—she just kept telling them over and over to stop while two other guys held her between them.

Jesse, meanwhile, kept telling her to
make
them stop. I only half-listened to him through her mind. The reasons didn't matter, and I'd already figured it out. They were going to torture her until she agreed to join their group. They must have forced Brandon and the others in the same way.

A suffocating feeling suddenly overwhelmed me, and I stumbled, unable to breathe as water smothered my face. Fighting hard, I separated myself from Lissa. That was happening to her, not me. Someone was torturing her with water now, using it to cut off her air. Whoever it was took their time, alternately filling her face with water, then pulling it back, then repeating. She gasped and sputtered, still asking them to stop when she could.

Jesse continued watching with calculating eyes. "Don't ask them. Make them."

I tried running harder, but I could only go so much faster. They were at one of the farthest points of campus's boundaries. It was a lot of distance to cover, and with every agonizing step, I felt more of Lissa's pain and grew angrier and angrier. What kind of a guardian could I ever be to her if I couldn't even keep her safe here on campus?

An air user went next, and suddenly, it was like she was being tortured by Victor's henchman all over again. Air was alternately taken from her, leaving her gasping, and then slammed back into her, crushing her face. It was agony, and it brought back all the memories of her capture, all the terror and horror she'd been trying to forget. The air user stopped, but it was too late.

Something snapped inside of her.

When Ralf stepped up next to use fire, I was so close that I actually saw it flare up in his hand.

But he didn't see me.

None of them had been paying attention to their surroundings, and there'd been too much noise from their own spectacle to hear me. I slammed into Ralf before the fire could leave his hand, pulling him to the ground and punching his face in one skilled maneuver. A few of the others—including Jesse— ran to help him and tried to pry me away. At least, they tried until they realized who it was.

Those who saw my face immediately backed off. Those who didn't quickly learned the hard way when I went after them. I'd taken out three fully trained guardians earlier today. A group of spoiled royal Moroi took hardly any effort. It was ironic, too—and a sign of how unwilling some Moroi were to lift a hand in their defense—that while this group had been so eager to use magic to torture Lissa, none of them had actually thought to use it against me.

Most of them scattered before I could even lay a hand on them, and I didn't care enough to go after them. I just wanted them away from Lissa. Admittedly, I gave Ralf a few extra punches even after he'd gone down, since I held him responsible for this whole mess. I finally left him alone, lying on the ground and groaning, as I straightened up and looked for Jesse—the other culprit here. I quickly found him. He was the only one left.

I ran over to him and then skidded to a halt, confused. He was just standing there, staring into space, mouth hanging open. I looked at him, looked at where he was staring, and then looked back at him.

"Spiders," Lissa said. Her voice made me jump. She stood off to the side with wet hair, bruised and cut, but otherwise okay. In the moonlight, her pale features made her look almost as ghostly as Mason. Her eyes never left Jesse as he spoke. "He thinks he's seeing spiders. And that they're crawling on him. What do you think? Should I have gone with snakes?"

I looked back at Jesse. The expression on his face sent chills down my spine. It was like he was locked in his own private nightmare. Scarier still was what I felt through the bond. Usually when Lissa used magic, it felt golden and warm and wonderful. This time, it was different. It was black and slimy and thick.

"I think you should stop," I said. In the distance, I heard people running toward us. "It's all over."

"It was an initiation ritual," she said. "Well, kind of. They asked me to join a couple of days ago, and I refused. But they bugged me again today and kept saying they knew something important about Christian and Adrian. It started to get to me, so … I finally told them I'd come to one of their sessions but that I didn't know anything about compulsion. It was an act. I just wanted to know what they knew." She tilted her head barely at all, but something must have happened to Jesse. His eyes widened further as he continued to silently scream. "Even though I hadn't technically agreed yet, they put me through their initiation ritual. They wanted to know how much I could really do. It's a way to test how strong people are in compulsion. Torture them until they can't stand it, and then, in the heat of it all, people lash out and try to compel the attackers to stop. If the victim manages any sort of compulsion at all, that person's in the group." She regarded Jesse carefully. He seemed to be in his own world, and it was a very, very bad one. "I guess this makes me their president, huh?"

"Stop it," I said. The feel of this twisted magic was making me nauseous. She and Adrian had mentioned something like this before, this idea of making people see things that weren't there.

They'd jokingly called it super compulsion—and it was horrible. "This isn't how spirit is supposed to be used. This isn't you. It's wrong."

She was breathing heavily, sweat breaking out along her brow. "I can't let go of it," she said.

"You can," I said. I touched her arm. "Give it to me."

She briefly turned from Jesse and looked at me, astonished, before fixing her gaze back on him.

"What? You can't use magic."

I focused hard on the bond, on her mind. I couldn't take the magic exactly, but I could take the darkness it brought on. It was what I'd been doing for a while now, I realized. Every time I'd worried and wished she'd calm down and fight dark feelings, she had—because I was taking it all from her. I was absorbing it, just as Anna had done for St. Vladimir. It was what Adrian had seen when the darkness jumped from her aura to mine. And this—this abuse of spirit, using it to maliciously harm another and
not
for self-defense, was bringing the worst side effects of all in her. It was corrupting and wrong, and I couldn't let her have it. All thoughts of my own madness or rage were completely irrelevant at this moment.

"No," I agreed. "I can't. But you can use me to let it go. Focus on me. Release it all. It's wrong.

You don't want it."

She stared at me again, eyes wide and desperate. Even without direct eye contact, she was still able to torture Jesse. I both saw and felt the fight she waged. He'd hurt her so much—she wanted him to pay. He had to. And yet, at the same time, she knew I was right. But it was hard.

So hard for her to let go …

Suddenly, the burn of that black magic vanished from the bond, along with that sickening sensation. Something hit me like a blast of wind in the face, and I staggered backward. I shuddered as a weird sensation twisted my stomach. It was like sparks, like a coil of electricity burning within me. Then it too was gone. Jesse fell to his knees, free of the nightmare.

Lissa sank with visible relief. She was still scared and hurt over what had happened, but she was no longer consumed with that terrible, destructive rage that had driven her to punish Jesse.

That urge within her had disappeared.

The only problem was, it was in
me
now.

I turned on Jesse, and it was like nothing else existed in the universe except him. He had tried to ruin me in the past. He'd tortured Lissa and hurt so many others. It was unacceptable. I lunged for him. His eyes had only a moment to widen with terror before my fist connected with his face. His head jerked back, and blood spurted from his nose. I heard Lissa scream for me to stop, but I couldn't. He had to pay for what he'd done to her. I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him hard against the ground. He was yelling now too—begging—for me to stop. He shut up when I hit him again.

I felt Lissa's hands clawing at me, trying to pull me off, but she wasn't strong enough. I kept hitting him. There was no sign of the strategic, precise fighting I'd used earlier with him and his friends, or even against Dimitri. This was unfocused and primal. This was me being controlled by the madness I'd taken from Lissa.

Then another set of hands ripped me away. These hands were stronger, dhampir hands, backed by muscles earned through years of training. It was Eddie. I struggled against his hold. We were closely matched, but he outweighed me.

"Let me go!" I yelled.

To my complete and utter horror, Lissa was now kneeling at Jesse's side, studying him with concern. It made no sense. How could she do that? After what he'd done? I saw compassion on her face, and a moment later, the burn of her healing magic lit our bond as she took away some of the worst of his injuries.

"No!" I screamed, straining against Eddie's hold. "You can't!"

That was when the other guardians showed up, Dimitri and Celeste in the lead. Christian and Adrian were nowhere in sight; they probably couldn't have kept pace with the others.

Organized chaos followed. Those from the society who remained were gathered up and herded off for questioning. Lissa likewise was taken away, led off to get her injuries treated. A part of me that was buried in all that bloodthirsty emotion wanted to go after her, but something else had caught my attention: They were also removing Jesse for medical help. Eddie was still holding onto me, his grip never faltering despite my struggles and pleas. Most of the adults were too busy with the others to notice me, but they noticed when I started shouting again.

"You can't let him go! You can't let him go!"

"Rose, calm down," said Alberta, her voice mild. How could she not get what was going on?

"It's over."

"It is
not
over! Not until I get my hands around his throat and choke the life out of him!"

Alberta and some of the others seemed to realize that something serious was happening now—but they didn't appear to think it had anything to do with Jesse. They were all giving me the Rose-is-crazy look I'd come to know so well in recent days.

"Get her out of here," said Alberta. "Get her cleaned up and calmed down." She didn't give any more instructions than that, but somehow, it was understood that Dimitri would be the one to deal with me.

He came over and took me from Eddie. In the brief change of captors, I tried to break away, but Dimitri was too fast and too strong. He grabbed my arm and started pulling me away from the scene.

"We can make this easy or difficult," said Dimitri as we walked through the woods. "There's no way I'm letting you go to Jesse. Besides, he's at the med clinic, so you'd never get near him. If you can accept that, I'll release you. If you bolt, you know I'll just restrain you again."

I weighed my options. The need to make Jesse suffer was still pounding in my blood, but Dimitri was right. For now.

"Okay,"
I said. He hesitated a moment, perhaps wondering if I was telling the truth, and then let go of my arm. When I didn't run off, I felt him relax very, very slightly.

"Alberta told you to clean me up," I said evenly. "So we're going to the med clinic?"

Dimitri scoffed. "Nice try. I'm not letting you near him. We'll get first aid somewhere else."

He led me off at an angle from the attack location, toward an area still at the edge of campus. I quickly realized where he was going. It was a cabin. Back when there had been more guardians on campus, some had actually stayed at these little outposts, providing regular protection for the school's boundaries. They'd long since been abandoned, but this one had been cleaned up when Christian's aunt had visited. She'd preferred hanging out here than in the school's guest housing where other Moroi regarded her as a potential Strigoi.