Shadow Kiss (36 page)

Halfway to the chapel, I saw someone move out from behind a tree. I spun around, stake in hand, and nearly struck Christian in the heart.

"God, what are you doing?" I hissed.

"Trying to get back to the dorm," he said. "What's going on? I heard screaming."

"There are Strigoi on campus," I said.

"What? How?"

"I don't know. You have to go back to the chapel. It's safe there." I could see it; we could get there easily.

Christian was as reckless as me sometimes, and I almost expected a fight. He didn't give me one. "Okay. Are you going with me?"

I started to say I would, and then I felt that nauseous feeling creep over me. "Get down!" I yelled. He dropped to the ground without hesitation.

Two Strigoi were on us. They both moved in on me, knowing I'd be an easy target for their combined strength, and then they could go after Christian. One of them slammed me into a tree.

My vision blurred for half a second, but I soon recovered. I shoved back and had the satisfaction of seeing her stagger a little. The other one—a man—reached for me, and I dodged him, slipping out of his grasp.

The pair of them reminded me of Isaiah and Elena from Spokane, but I refused to get caught up in memories. Both were taller than me, but the woman was closer to my height. I feinted toward him, and then struck out as fast as I could toward her. My stake bit into her heart. It surprised both of us. My first Strigoi staking.

I'd barely pulled the stake out when the other Strigoi backhanded me, snarling. I staggered but kept my balance as I sized him up. Taller. Stronger. Just like when I'd fought Dimitri. Probably faster too. We circled and then I leapt out and kicked him. He barely budged. He reached for me, and I again managed to dodge as I scanned for some opening to stake him. My narrow escape didn't slow him down, though, and he immediately attacked again. He knocked me to the ground, pinning my arms. I tried to push him off, but he didn't move. Saliva dripped from his fangs as he leaned his face down toward mine. This Strigoi wasn't like Isaiah, wasting time with stupid speeches. This one was going to go in for the kill, draining my blood and then Christian's. I felt the fangs against my neck and knew I was going to die. It was horrible. I wanted to live so, so badly…but this was how it would end. With my last moments, I started to yell at Christian to run, but then the Strigoi above me suddenly lit up like a torch. He jerked back, and I rolled out from underneath him.

Thick flames covered his body, completely obscuring any of his features. He was just a man-shaped bonfire. I heard a few strangled screams before he grew silent. He fell to the ground, twitching and rolling before finally going still. Steam rose from where fire hit the snow, and the flames soon burned out, revealing nothing but ashes underneath.

I stared at the charred remains. Only moments ago, I'd expected to die. Now my attacker was dead. I nearly reeled from how close I'd been to dying. Life and death were so unpredictable. So close to each other. We existed moment to moment, never knowing who would be the next to leave this world. I was still in it, barely, and as I looked up from the ashes, everything around me seemed so sweet and so beautiful. The trees. The stars. The moon. I was alive—and I was glad I was.

I turned to Christian, who was crouched on the ground.

"Wow," I said, helping him up. Obviously, he was the one who had saved me.

"No shit," he said. "Didn't know I had that much power." He peered around, body rigid and tense. "Are there more?"

"No," I said.

"You seem pretty certain."

"Well…this is going to sound weird, but I can kind of sense them. Don't ask how," I said, seeing his mouth open. "Just roll with it. I think it's like the ghost thing, a shadow-kissed side effect. Whatever. Let's get back to the chapel."

He didn't move. A strange, speculative look was on his face. "Rose … do you really want to hole up in the chapel?"

"What do you mean?"

"We just took out two Strigoi," he said, pointing to the staked and charred bodies.

I met his eyes, the full impact of what he was saying hitting me. I could sense Strigoi. He could use his fire on them. I could stake them. Provided we didn't hit a group of ten or something, we could do some serious damage. Then reality hit.

"I can't," I told him slowly. "I can't risk your life…."

"Rose. You know what we could do. I can see it in your face. It's worth risking one Moroi life—and, well, yours—to take out a bunch of Strigoi."

Putting a Moroi in danger. Taking him out to fight Strigoi. It pretty much went against everything I'd been taught. All of a sudden, I remembered that brief moment of clarity I'd just had, the wonderful joy of being alive. I could save so many others. I had to save them. I would fight as hard as I could.

"Don't use your full power on them," I finally said. "You don't need to incinerate them in ten seconds like that. Just light them up enough to distract them, and then I'll finish them. You can save your power."

A grin lit his face. "We're going hunting?"

Oh man. I was going to get in so much trouble. But the idea was too appealing, too exciting. I wanted to fight back. I wanted to protect the people I loved. What I really wanted was to go to Lissa's dorm and protect her. That wasn't the most efficient idea, though. Lissa had my classmates on hand. Others weren't so lucky. I thought about those students, students like Jill.

"Let's go to the elementary campus," I said.

We set off at a light run, taking a route we hoped would keep us away from other Strigoi. I still had no idea how many we were dealing with here, and that was driving me crazy. When we were almost to the other campus, I felt the weird nausea hit me. I called a warning to Christian, just as a Strigoi grabbed him. But Christian was fast. Flames wreathed the Strigoi's head. He screamed and released Christian, trying frantically to put the flames out. The Strigoi never saw me coming with the stake. The whole thing took under a minute. Christian and I exchanged looks.

Yeah. We were badasses.

The elementary campus proved to be a center of activity. Strigoi and guardians were actively fighting around the entrances to one of the dorms. For a moment, I froze. There were almost twenty Strigoi and half as many guardians. So many Strigoi together…Until recently, we'd never heard of them banding together in such large numbers. We'd thought we'd disbanded a large group of them by killing Isaiah, but apparently that wasn't true. I allowed myself only a moment more of shock, and then we jumped into the fray.

Emil was near a side entrance, fending off three Strigoi. He was battered and bruised, and the body of a fourth Strigoi lay at his feet. I lunged for one of the three. She didn't see me coming, and I managed to stake her with almost no resistance. I was lucky. Christian meanwhile set flames to the others. Emil's face reflected surprise, but that didn't stop him from staking another of the Strigoi. I got the other.

"You shouldn't have brought him here," Emil said as we moved to help another guardian.

"Moroi aren't supposed to get involved with this."

"Moroi should have been involved with this a long time ago," said Christian through gritted teeth.

We spoke little after that. The rest was a blur. Christian and I moved from fight to fight, combining his magic and my stake. Not all of our kills were as fast and easy as our early ones had been. Some fights were long and drawn out. Emil stuck with us, and I honestly lost count of how many Strigoi we took down.

"I know you."

The words startled me. In all this bloodshed, none of us, friend or foe, did much talking. The speaker was a Strigoi who looked to be my own age but was probably at least ten times older.

He had shoulder-length blond hair and eyes whose color I couldn't make out. They were ringed in red, which was all that mattered.

My only answer was to swing out with my stake, but he dodged that. Christian was setting a couple of other Strigoi on fire, so I was handling this one on my own.

"There's something strange about you now, but I still remember. I saw you years ago, before I was awakened." Okay, not ten times my age, not if he'd seen me when he was a Moroi. I hoped his talking would distract him. He was actually pretty fast for a young Strigoi. "You were always with that Dragomir girl, the blonde." My foot hit him, and I jerked my kick back before he could grab me. He barely budged. "Her parents wanted you to be her guardian, right? Before they were all killed?"

"I
am
her guardian," I grunted. My stake swiped dangerously close to him.

"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."

DEAD 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.