Blood Promise (Vampire Academy 4)

"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."

Chapter 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 attend 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.