Blood Promise va-4

by Richelle Mead

  “Well, here’s hoping for better choices,” said Lissa. “And hoping no one thinks too badly of me.”

  “I don’t,” said Jill. “And I’m sure Christian won’t either.”

  Lissa frowned, confused for a moment. “Well… there’s no point in stressing him out over it. It was my stupid mistake; I’ll deal with it.”

  Now Jill frowned. She hesitated before speaking, that old nervousness returning. “But you have to. You have to tell him the truth, right?”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Lissa, surprised at how defensive she suddenly felt. That unpredictable anger started to raise its head.

  “But… you guys are in a serious relationship… You have to always be honest, don’t you? I mean, you can’t lie to him.”

  Lissa rolled her eyes. “Jill, you haven’t been in a serious relationship either, have you? Have you even gone on one date? I’m not lying to him. I’m just not telling him stuff that’s going to freak him out for no reason. It’s not the same.”

  “It is,” argued Jill. I could tell how much it killed her to talk back to Lissa, but I admired her boldness. “He has a right to know.”

  Lissa sighed irritably and stood up. “Forget it. I thought we could have an adult conversation, but apparently not.” The withering look she gave Jill made the girl flinch.

  Still, back at the Academy, guilt plagued Lissa. Christian greeted her return happily, showering her with kisses and hugs. She firmly believed Jill had overreacted, yet each time Lissa looked at Christian, she kept thinking about that kiss with Aaron. Was it as wrong as Jill had implied? It had been casual and under the influence of alcohol. Lissa knew telling Christian would upset him, though, and she hated to bring that on. Avery, listening as Lissa deliberated, agreed that there was no need to worry about it. Yet, as I looked at her through Lissa’s eyes, my impression was that Avery was more worried about what Lissa’s emotional reaction would be if she and Christian had a blowout. The morals seemed beside the point; Avery wanted to protect Lissa.

  It seemed like it was all going to blow over… until later in the day, when Lissa met up with Christian to walk to dinner. His face was a storm cloud as he approached Lissa in her dorm’s lobby, his pale blue eyes looking like they could shoot lightning bolts.

  “When were you going to tell me?” he demanded. His voice was loud, and several passing people turned in surprise.

  Lissa hurried him to a corner, pitching her voice low. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You using your weekend getaway as a chance to hook up with other guys.”

  She stared at him for several heavy seconds. Then the truth hit. “Jill told you!”

  “Yes. I had to drag it out of her. She showed up to practice with me and was on the verge of tears.”

  Uncharacteristic anger suddenly burned through Lissa. “She had no right!”

  “You had no right. Do you honestly think you could do something like that-without ever letting me know?”

  “Christian, it was a stupid drunk kiss, for God’s sake. A joke because he saved me from falling off a table. It meant nothing.”

  Christian’s face grew pensive, and Lissa thought for sure he was about to agree with her. “It would have been nothing,” he said at last, “if you’d told me yourself. I shouldn’t have had to hear it from someone else.”

  “Jill-”

  “-isn’t the problem. You are.”

  Shock stunned Lissa for a moment. “What are you saying?”

  “I…” Christian suddenly looked weary. He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. It’s just… things have been rough lately. I just… I’m just not sure if I can deal with all this. You were picking fights with me before you left, and now this?”

  “Why won’t you listen? It was nothing! Even Avery agreed.”

  “Oh,” said Christian sarcastically, “if Avery agreed, then it must be okay.”

  Lissa’s temper raised its ugly head. “What’s that supposed to mean? I thought you liked her.”

  “I do. But I don’t like how you’re confiding in her more than me lately.”

  “You didn’t have a problem with me confiding in Rose.”

  “Avery’s not Rose.”

  “Christian…”

  He shook his head. “Look, I don’t really want to go to dinner anymore. I just need to think.”

  “When am I going to see you again?” she asked frantically. Her anger had been supplanted by fear.

  “I don’t know. Later.”

  He left without another word. Lissa stared after him, aghast as he walked out of the lobby. She wanted to go throw herself at him, beg him to come back and forgive her. There were too many people around, however, and she refused to make a scene-or intrude on his space. Instead, she took off to the only resource she had left: Avery.

  “Didn’t expect to see you again,” Avery said, opening the door to her room. “What are you-Jesus Christ. What’s the matter?”

  She ushered Lissa in and demanded the story. With a lot of tears and near-hysteric rambling, Lissa related what had happened with Christian. “And I don’t know what he meant. Does he want to break up? Will he come talk to me later? Should I go to him?” Lissa buried her face in her hands.

  “Oh God. You don’t think there’s anything going on with him and Jill, do you?”

  “Jailbait? No,” exclaimed Avery. “Of course not. Look, you need to calm down. You’re freaking me out. This is going to be okay.” Anxiety lined Avery’s face, and she went to get Lissa a glass of water. Then, reconsidering, she poured a glass of wine instead.

  Sitting alone, Lissa felt her wild emotions torment her. She hated what she’d done. She felt like there was something wrong with her. First she’d alienated me, and now Christian. Why couldn’t she keep her friends? What did it take? Was she really going crazy? She felt out of control and desperate. And she Bam!

  Suddenly, and without warning, I was shoved out of Lissa’s head.

  Her thoughts disappeared completely. I’d neither left of my own choice, nor had I been snapped back because of something in my own body. I stood in the room alone, having come to a standstill while pacing and thinking. Never, never had anything like that happened to me. This had been like… well, like a physical force. Like a glass wall or force field slamming down in front of me and pushing me back. It had been an outside power. It hadn’t come from me.

  But what was it? Had it been Lissa? To my knowledge, she’d never been able to feel me in her head. Had that changed? Had she kicked me out?

  Had her spinning feelings grown so strong that there was no room for me?

  I didn’t know, and I didn’t like any of it. When it had happened, aside from the sensation of being pushed, I’d experienced another strange feeling.

  It was like a fluttering, as if someone had reached in and tickled my mind. I’d had brief warm and cold flashes, and then it had all stopped once I was out of her head. It had felt invasive.

  And it had also felt… familiar.

  CHAPTER 23

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember where I’d felt it before.

  Considering everything else that had been happening to me, the fact that I’d even recalled it at all was remarkable. My memories were a little scattered, but I did my best to sift through them, wondering where I had experienced that tickling in my brain. I received no answers, and pondering it all soon became as frustrating as coming up with an escape plan.

  And as more time passed, I realized I really did need an escape plan. The endorphin withdrawal was killing me, but I was thinking more and more clearly as the effects left my system. I was astonished at how out of it I’d let myself become. As soon as I’d allowed Dimitri to bite me… I’d fallen apart. I’d lost my higher reasoning. I’d lost my strength and skills. I’d become soft and silly and stupid. Well, not entirely. If I’d completely lost it, I’d be a Strigoi now. There was some comfort, at least, in knowing that even while high on bites, some part of me had sti
ll fought through and refused to succumb.

  Knowing I wasn’t as entirely weak as I’d believed helped keep me going. It made it easier to ignore the yearning in my body, to distract myself with bad TV and eating all the food in the little refrigerator. I even stayed awake for a long time in the hopes of exhausting myself. It worked, and I crashed as soon as I hit the pillow, drifting into a dreamless sleep with no withdrawal effects.

  I was awakened later when a body slid into bed beside me. I opened my eyes and stared right into Dimitri’s red ones. For the first time in days, I looked at him with fear, not love. I kept that off my face, though, and smiled at him. I reached out and touched his face.

  “You’re back. I missed you.”

  He caught my hand and kissed my palm. “I had things to do.”

  The shadows shifted on his face, and I caught the tiniest glimpse of dried blood near his mouth. Grimacing, I rubbed it off with my finger. “So I see.”

  “It’s the natural order, Rose. How are you feeling?”

  “Better. Except…”

  “What?”

  I looked away, conflicted again. The look in his eyes just then was more than simple curiosity. There was concern there-only a little-but it was there. Concern for me. And yet only a moment ago, I’d wiped blood from his face-blood from some poor person whose life had been snuffed out within the last few hours, most likely.

  “I was in Lissa’s head,” I said at last. There was no harm in telling him this. Like Nathan, he knew she was at the Academy. “And… I got pushed out.”

  “Pushed out?”

  “Yeah… I was seeing through her eyes like I usually do, and then some force… I don’t know, an invisible hand shoved me out. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  “Maybe it’s a new spirit ability.”

  “Maybe. Except, I’ve been watching her regularly, and I’ve never seen her practice or even consider anything like that.”

  He shrugged slightly and put an arm around me. “Being awakened gives you better senses and accessibility to the world. But it doesn’t make you omniscient. I don’t know why that happened to you.”

  “Clearly not omniscient, or else Nathan wouldn’t want information about her so badly. Why is that? Why are the Strigoi fixated on killing the royal lines? We know they’ve-you’ve-been doing it, but why? What does it matter? Isn’t a victim a victim-especially when plenty of Strigoi used to be royal Moroi?”

  “That requires a complicated answer. A large part of hunting Moroi royalty is fear. In your old world, royalty are held above all others. They get the best guardians, the best protection.” Yes, that was certainly true. Lissa had discovered that much at Court. “If we can still get to them through that, then what does it say? It means no one is safe. It creates fear, and fear makes people do foolish things. It makes them easier prey.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Prey or-”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Prey or predator.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly, apparently not liking the interruption. He let it go. “There’s also a benefit to unraveling Moroi leadership. That creates instability, too.”

  “Or maybe they’d be better off with a change of leadership,” I said. He gave me another odd look, and I was a bit startled myself. There I was, thinking like Victor Dashkov again. I realized I should just be quiet. I wasn’t behaving like my usual scattered and high self. “What’s the rest?”

  “The rest…” A smile curved up his lips. “The rest is prestige. We do it for the glory of it. For the reputation it gives us and the satisfaction of knowing we’re responsible for destroying that which others haven’t been able to destroy for centuries.”

  Simple Strigoi nature. Malice, hunting, and death. There didn’t need to be any other reasons.

  Dimitri’s gaze moved past me to my bedside table. It was where I took off all my jewelry at night and laid it out. All his gifts were there, glittering like some pirate’s treasure. Reaching over me, he lifted up the nazar on its chain. “You still have this.”

  “Yup. Not as pretty as your stuff, though.” Seeing the blue eye reminded me of my mother. I hadn’t thought about her in a very long time. Back in Baia, I’d grown to see Olena as a secondary mother, but now… now I kind of wished for my own. Janine Hathaway might not cook and clean, but she was smart and competent. And in some ways, I realized with a start, we thought alike. My traits had come from her, and I knew with certainty that in this situation, she wouldn’t have stopped planning escape.

  “This I haven’t seen before,” Dimitri said. He’d set the nazar back down and picked up the plain silver ring Mark had given me. I hadn’t worn it since I was last in the Belikov house and had set it on the table next to the nazar.

  “I got it while I was-” I stopped, realizing I hadn’t ever brought up my travels before Novosibirsk.

  “While you were what?”

  “While I was in your hometown. In Baia.”

  Dimitri was playing with the ring, moving it from fingertip to fingertip, but he paused and glanced over at me when I said the name. “You were there?” Strangely, we hadn’t talked much about that. I’d mentioned Novosibirsk a few times, but that was it.

  “I thought that’s where you’d be,” I explained. “I didn’t know that Strigoi did their hunting in cities here. I stayed with your family.”

  His eyes returned to the ring. He continued playing with it, twirling it and rolling it around. “And?”

  “And… they were nice. I liked them. I hung out with Viktoria a lot.”

  “Why wasn’t she at school?”

  “It was Easter.”

  “Ah, right. How was she?”

  “Fine,” I said quickly. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about that last night with her and Rolan. “Karolina’s good too. She reminds me of you. She really laid into some dhampir guys who were causing trouble.”

  He smiled again, and it was… nice. I mean, the fangs still made it creepy, but it didn’t have that sinister edge I’d come to expect. There was fondness in his face, true affection that startled me. “I can see Karolina doing that. Did she have her baby yet?”

  “Yeah…” I was still a little thrown off by that smile. “It was a girl. Zoya.”

  “Zoya,” he repeated, still not looking at me. “Not a bad name. How was Sonya?”

  “Okay. I didn’t see too much of her. She’s a little touchy… Viktoria says it’s because of the pregnancy.”

  “Sonya’s pregnant too?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Six months, I think.”

  His smile dimmed a little bit, and he almost seemed concerned. “I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Her decisions aren’t always as wise as Karolina’s. Karolina’s children were by choice… I’m guessing Sonya’s was a surprise.”

  “Yeah. I kind of got that feeling too.”

  He ticked off the rest of his family members. “My mother and grandmother?”

  “Er, fine. Both of them.” This conversation was becoming increasingly strange. Not only was it the first normal one we’d had since I’d arrived, it was also the first time he’d really seemed interested in anything that wasn’t Strigoi related or that didn’t involve kissing and biting, aside from some reminiscing about our early fights together-and the teasing reminders of sex in the cabin. “Your grandmother scared me a little.”

  He laughed, and I flinched. It was so, so close to his old laugh. Closer than I’d ever imagined it could be. “Yes, she does that to people.”

  “And she pretended not to speak English.” That was a pretty small detail in the grand scheme of things, but it still kind of pissed me off.

  “Yes, she does that too.” He continued smiling, voice fond. “Do they all still live together? In that same house?”

  “Yup. I saw the books you told me about. The pretty ones-but I couldn’t read them.”

  “That’s where I first got into American westerns.”

  “Man, I loved making fun of you over those.”

&n
bsp; He chuckled. “Yes, between that, your stereotypes about Eastern European music, and the whole ‘comrade’ thing, you had plenty of material.”

  I laughed too. “‘Comrade’ and the music were kind of out of line.” I’d almost forgotten about my old nickname for him. It didn’t fit anymore. “But you brought the cowboy thing on yourself, between the leather duster and-” I stopped. I’d started to mention his duty to help those in need, but that was hardly the case anymore. He didn’t notice my lapse.

  “And then you left them and came to Novosibirsk?”

  “Yeah. I came with those dhampirs I was hunting with… those other unpromised ones. I almost didn’t, though. Your family wanted me to stay. I thought about doing it.”

  Dimitri held the ring up to the light, face shadowed with thought. He sighed. “You probably should have.”

  “They’re good people.”

  “They are,” he said softly. “You might have been happy there.”

  Reaching over, he set the ring back on the table and then turned to me, bringing our mouths together. It was the softest, sweetest kiss he’d given me as a Strigoi, and my already considerable shock increased. The gentleness was fleeting, though, and a few seconds later, our kissing returned to what it usually was, forceful and hungry. I had a feeling he was hungry for more than just kissing, too, despite having fed recently. Pushing aside my confusion over how… well, normal and kind he’d seemed while talking about his family, I tried to figure out how I was going to dodge more biting without raising suspicion. My body was still weak and wanting it, but in my head, I felt more like myself than I had in ages.

  Dimitri pulled up from the kiss, and I blurted out the first thing that came to mind before he could do anything else. “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like?”

  “Kissing.”

  He frowned. Score one for me. I’d momentarily baffled an undead creature of the night. Sydney would be proud.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said being awakened enhances all the senses. Is kissing different then?”

  “Ah.” Understanding flashed over his features. “It is, kind of. My sense of smell is stronger than it used to be, so your scent comes through much more intensely… your sweat, the shampoo in your hair… it’s beyond what you can imagine. Intoxicating. And of course, sharper taste and touch make this better.” He leaned down and kissed me again, and something about his description made my insides queasy-in a good way. That wasn’t supposed to happen. My hope was to distract him-not myself.