“You want to send me off to wander alone among humans?”
“I never said alone. I’m your family’s guardian. Right now I’m assigned to you. You don’t need anyone’s permission to leave, and if you order me to come along and protect you, I will, and no rules will be broken.”
“It’s that easy, huh?” She watched the rain again and then gave him a sidelong look. “What if I command you to call me just Tasha, instead of Lady Tasha?”
“That would be breaking a rule. And I can’t do that.” Again, hesitation. “Even if I wanted to.”
We do the right things too but don’t do them right either, she mused. In the course of this brief conversation, they’d already moved closer together without either of them realizing it. It happened all the time in these rare, clandestine talks of theirs when she could finally drop the façade the rest of the world expected of her and say what was really in her heart. Well, not everything in her heart. Otherwise, she’d tell him how standing near him still made her nervous and excited, just as it had when they used to slip away together at St. Vladimir’s. She’d tell him how now, deprived of those stolen kisses, she lived for the brief, casual touches that were all they could share anymore. She’d tell him there was no other person who made her feel so valued. So real. She’d tell him that she loved how he was real too, with none of the show and ego that muddled the rest of the world. And she’d tell him she loved him, too.
Instead, she said, “I wish you weren’t so good at your job.”
For a few fleeting seconds, his stoic guardian face faltered, and she saw a longing that matched her own. “Me too, Lady Tasha.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes for long, not with that look in them. It wasn’t fair that dhampirs were forced to serve Moroi at all costs. It wasn’t fair that their society wouldn’t legitimize relationships between Moroi and dhampirs, no matter the indiscretions that took place on the side. His own birth had come about that way when a royal vacationing in Vietnam had been smitten by Vinh’s dhampir mother. He’d wooed her into a brief affair and then never spoke to her again, not even when she sent word about their son.
Tasha’s eyes strayed to the window again, where the rain had slowed and was falling against the panes in long streaks, tears to match those she refused to shed.
She saw the dark figure moving outside just a heartbeat before the glass shattered. A second window met the same fate, and then three guardians burst through the front door. Tasha screamed as all five of them fanned out around her and Vinh, their hands wielding guns and silver stakes. Tasha stepped back and bumped into the wall.
“Do you know where they are?” demanded one of the guardians.
“Know where who are?” she asked. She held her hands up, even though no one had asked her to. It seemed like the thing to do.
“Did you know what they had planned? Are you going to join them?”
Vinh faced a moment of indecision, stuck between obligation to Tasha and obedience to the guardian order. He chose her. He had no weapon, not on household duty at Court, but he positioned himself fearlessly between her and the five guardians.
“What’s going on?” he exclaimed. “How dare you break into this house and speak to her that way? She’s a scion of House Ozera! She and her brother—”
“She has no brother,” said the lead guardian bluntly. “He’s gone.”
“G-gone?” she stammered. “If you mean tonight, they were just driving to—”
“I mean, Lady Ozera, that he’s no longer among the living.”
The room began to spin around Tasha, and her knees gave out from under her. Vinh was by her side in an instant, his arm around her for support. “Lucas is … dead?” She could hardly hear her own voice.
“Not truly dead,” said another guardian. “Turned. He and his wife are Strigoi.”
“No … no! That’s … no. It’s impossible!” Or was it? They’d been warned of the dangers of traveling at night. Tasha leaned further into Vinh and tried to bring the room back into focus. “Where were they attacked? On the road? At our house?” Both seemed unlikely. A moving car wasn’t an easy target, and heavy wards ringed the house.
“They weren’t attacked,” said the first guardian. “They chose to turn Strigoi.”
Tasha’s moment of weakness vanished, and she pulled herself upright, suddenly recharged with fury. There was no greater sin in the Moroi world than purposely choosing the dark, undead path of the Strigoi, to give up one’s soul and morals in exchange for power and immortality. Suggesting it of Lucas and Moira insulted Tasha, her family, and the entire Ozera name.
She strode toward the guardians, fists clenched and fear gone. “You’re lying. There’s no way they would do that.”
The guardian who spoke didn’t flinch under her gaze. “The evidence is very clear. There’s no indication of any attack by outside Strigoi. We found one of their cars abandoned on the side of the highway. One of them had drained their feeder. The other snapped Nolan Orr’s neck and drained him.”
Tasha heard a sharp intake of breath from Vinh. He and Nolan had become close friends in the year they’d worked together. Nolan had protected her since she was a child. “There was another guardian,” she said. “Locke. One who was—”
“He’s dead too, Lady Ozera. We found his body thrown into the brush nearby. The Strigoi took the second car.”
There were no words to describe what Tasha felt in that moment. Nothing she could say. Nothing she could even think. She started to tremble. Seeing that the news had finally sunk in, the lead guardian asked, “Do you have any idea at all of where they’d go? Did they say anything? They’re not at the house—it’s still warded.”
“Please, Lady Ozera,” said another. “I know this must be difficult, but we need to act while we can still track them. New Strigoi are careless.”
We need to act while we can still track them.
Track them to kill them. Because that was the only thing to be done at this point.
“No.” The word barely came out. Tasha swallowed and tried again. “No. I have no idea where they’d be. All they said was that they were going home tonight. I was supposed to join them tomorrow. Today.” It was dawn, after all.
She didn’t know where they were, but she should have known something was up. Not this, of course … but something. They’d been so insistent they leave last night, despite the risk. Darkness, away from the safety of Court, was ideal for Strigoi—and apparently for their creation, too. Neither had wanted the extra guardian. And Moira had wanted the feeder close, an easy victim to drain and initiate the turning.
Try to have fun, little sister. And I hope … I hope when you look back on tonight, you’ll remember how much I love you. How much we all love you.
Tasha didn’t realize she was getting dizzy again until Vinh returned to her side. “Breathe,” he murmured. “Just breathe.”
“I’m sorry, Lady Ozera.” The lead guardian, calmer now, appeared sincere. “I believe that you didn’t know anything. But we’ll still have to interrogate you back in our headquarters, just in case there’s some detail you don’t realize is important.”
Again, she had no words. How could she? Not when—
“Aunt Tasha?”
She whirled around and saw Christian peering around the bannister at the top of the stairs, his young face drawn and uneasy.
“Christian! Go back to bed. Everything …” Tasha could feel herself choking up. “Everything’s going to be okay. …”
But nothing was okay. Nothing would ever be okay again.
Christian stepped out of the shadows, fully revealing himself. He looked beyond Tasha, to the group of guardians. Uncertain, he finally settled his gaze on Vinh.
“You have to hunt down my parents, don’t you?”
Vinh didn’t blink, but Tasha knew his heart was breaking, just as hers was. “Yes, Lord Christian.”
“Because you have to kill them.”
Tasha turned away and buried her face in her hand
s, not wanting to hear the rest. And she knew that Christian was addressing Vinh because Vinh had always treated him like an adult and would always tell him the truth.
“Yes, Lord Christian.”
Word spread quickly at Court. Gossip usually did, and this was the sort of horror that people often speculated about but never expected to happen. Tasha and Christian were allowed to clean up and change, and by the time the guardians escorted the two of them away for questioning, curious onlookers had gathered outside both the town house and the guardians’ office.
Except most everyone was trying very hard not to appear like an onlooker. They acted as though they were casually out and about, that they’d just happened to be strolling around at noon—when most Moroi were asleep. Some even tried to pretend that they hadn’t noticed Tasha and Christian. Others had no such tact. But Tasha felt the weight of all their eyes. She saw them lean their heads together to speak covertly. She heard the whispers.
“Aunt Tasha, all these people are watching us.”
Tasha tightened her hold on Christian’s hand and quickened her step. “They don’t matter. None of them matters to us.”
It was a relief to reach the guardians’ headquarters, not that interrogation proved much better. A group of guardians questioned Tasha for almost two hours, and she had a hard time answering coherently when she herself was still having trouble coming to terms with what had happened. It seemed dreamlike. Or like it was happening to another person, and she was simply watching from the outside.
They interrogated Christian next, and although they warned her not to say anything, they at least allowed her to stay in the room. As the afternoon progressed, something new occurred to her as she analyzed both the line of questioning and the gawkers’ attitudes. There was more to this than just the shock of Lucas and Moira’s crime.
“They think we might turn too, don’t they?” she asked Vinh once it was over. “Or, at least, that I will.”
He couldn’t lie to her any more than he could lie to Christian. “Most Moroi who turn by choice act alone. They’re mentally disturbed. Or desperate. Or too selfish to have ties to others. When pairs or groups turn … yes, sometimes there’s a larger conspiracy of loved ones doing it together.”
“And some people just think it’s in the blood,” she added. “That there’s something inherently evil in all of us.”
His silence was confirmation enough. As they were about to exit the building, Tasha caught sight of two guardians walking into a conference room. When the doors opened, she saw more guardians inside, gathered in front of a giant screen. Faces were tense. This wasn’t an ordinary patrol meeting.
She came to a halt. “That’s where they’re planning it, isn’t it? How to track Lucas and Moira down?”
Vinh gently touched her arm, but she was too distracted to experience any of the old thrill. “Lady Tasha, you should go home.”
“I want to see.” She pulled away. “I have a right to see, don’t I?”
“Yes,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I’ll go with you. But not him. I’ll get another guardian to take him back home.”
Tasha looked down at Christian and felt the ache inside her intensify. How did someone so young even begin to make sense of this? “No. He’s not going back out there without me—not while those vultures are still circling. He can wait in the hall. …” But she faltered, unsure if she wanted to leave him alone here either.
“Lady Ozera? I can wait with him while you meet with the others. I’ll make sure no one bothers him.”
The speaker was a dhampir a little younger than her, his Russian accent thick. He stood taller even than Vinh, with the kind of face that probably made girls swoon, and every bit of him was composed and respectful. “This is Dimitri Belikov,” said Vinh. “He’s part of a group of novices who are visiting Court. You can trust him.”
There weren’t many Tasha truly believed she could trust anymore, but if Vinh trusted this novice, then she would as well. She knelt down and brushed a kiss over Christian’s forehead. “I’ll be right back. I need to … check on something.”
Christian’s icy-blue eyes—Lucas’s eyes, her eyes—studied her without comment. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what was happening.
The guardians’ meeting was already in session when she and Vinh entered the room. It came to a standstill when the others noticed her, and the guardian taking charge at the podium—a short, fierce woman with red hair—cleared her throat. “Lady Ozera, we’re honored at your presence, but perhaps … this isn’t the best place for you to be right now.”
The more people stared at her today, the easier it became for Tasha to ignore them. “Thank you, but this is exactly where I should be right now, Guardian …”
“Hathaway,” Vinh murmured. “Janine Hathaway.”
“Guardian Hathaway,” Tasha said. “Please continue.”
Janine studied Tasha a beat more and then gave a sharp nod before pointing at the screen. It displayed a map of the area south of the Poconos and Court. “Here’s where the first car was found. Based on the estimated time of turning, we can accurately calculate the farthest they could have gone before sunrise. That’s still a big area, but at least it’s contained. For now. When nighttime comes, the radius gets larger and larger, and then it’s beyond our control. Studying the highways, we can also make some educated guesses on which way they went and start sending search parties. New Strigoi usually steer clear of Moroi areas because they don’t want to run into guardians. They do, however, have less control of their bloodlust than a more experienced Strigoi does. We can count on them to make at least one human kill tonight, and that’ll help us pinpoint the direction they went, if not their location.”
Tasha again had that strange detached feeling as she listened to more of the plan. It was all so logical, all so strategic. The guardians addressed the problem with total indifference, and Tasha could almost—almost—forget that it was Lucas and Moira being hunted and not some other monster.
Lucas. My big brother. Almost like a father because of the age difference, especially after our own passed. He used to spin me around until I was too dizzy to stand. He didn’t tease me when I was eleven and gave myself that terrible haircut. He loved cinnamon rolls. He binge-watched old TV sitcoms and would laugh and laugh at the stupidest jokes. …
But Lucas hadn’t laughed so much in recent days, not after his friends died. Knowing what she knew now, Tasha kicked herself for not having realized that when he grew quiet and stared off, he wasn’t reliving old memories. He was fearing for the future, and the inevitable end of his life. How could immortality not sound appealing? Especially with his vain wife constantly panicking about losing her youth and beauty …
“Let’s go,” she told Vinh when the guardians dispersed.
“I’ll find a more discreet way back.”
“Not to our town house.” She peered around the hall and spied Dimitri speaking with Christian. The boy was smiling, but his smile had a haunted quality. “I want to leave Court, Vinh. I need to get away from here. I don’t want Christian around this anymore—around their judgment. And their condemnation.”
“The guardians won’t want you to go far,” Vinh warned. “And they’ll want you to go somewhere well guarded.”
“To protect me from myself, no doubt.”
But she had nowhere to go. The country house was out of the question. Statistics said Lucas and Moira wouldn’t return to it, but it was still suspect. Out of options, she trekked over to Ronald’s Court home. His eyes went wide when he found her and Christian at his door.
“Uncle, I want to go to your estate in Poughkeepsie.”
“Now, Tasha, let’s not do anything that—”
“There’s no time for your scheming or pandering! People saw me come here. You can’t avoid that. Give us the keys, and let us stay upstate for a while until this blows over.”
Some of Ronald’s shock faded. “Until this blows over? Do you realize what’s been done? Tash
a, this is never going to blow over! The stain of this will be with your family forever.”
“Our family,” she snapped. “Remember what you told me last night? About how all the Ozeras look after one another?”
He cringed again. Did he think she was going to turn Strigoi before his very eyes? Or was he just unprepared to have her finally stand up to him? “Tasha, please. Try to understand where I’m coming from. It’s not too late for me. If I can distance myself from this … tragedy, my political career still has a chance.”
Tasha took a step forward and saw Ronald’s guardian tense in her periphery. “Your political career has a better chance if you make the council. And guess what. I am now the voting member of my branch of the Ozeras. And if you want to hold on to any hope of being elected to the Ozera council seat, you will give me those keys now.”
An hour later, she was on the road with Vinh, Christian, and another borrowed guardian, Jonas. Officially, he’d come along so that she and Christian could each have their own protection. In reality, she knew it was to put a double watch on her. Christian was too young to drain anyone and become Strigoi, but she was still suspect. And no feeder had been allowed to come with them.
Ronald hadn’t visited his other home in a while. Dust had gathered, and much of the furniture remained covered. Even still, the estate was bigger and more luxurious than Lucas’s, though it hadn’t been styled with Moira’s eye for detail. Tasha wondered how much of a person’s self vanished with the soul when becoming Strigoi. Even as a bloodthirsty creature of the night, was Moira still consumed by the latest fashions?
They arrived a couple of hours before sunset, prime time for Moroi, but their schedules were all thrown off from not sleeping the previous day. After a light dinner, Tasha let Christian run off to the house’s massive home theater. Jonas, unsure of the wards’ status, patrolled the house’s periphery. Tasha uncovered a sofa and collapsed onto it, too exhausted to do anything else. She didn’t intend to sleep, but the next thing she knew, she was yawning and blinking at the garden scene painted on Ronald’s vaulted ceiling. Vinh sat across from her on another couch.