I DIDN'T HAVE A PRECISE count of how many Strigoi were with Dimitri's group. So much of what I'd seen through Lissa had been blurred with confusion and terror. The guardians, knowing we were expected, had simply had to make a best guess about how many to send. Hans had hoped overwhelming force would make up for us losing the element of surprise. He'd dispatched as many guardians as he could reasonably clear from the Court. Admittedly, the Court was protected by wards, but it still couldn't be left entirely undefended.
Having the new grads there had helped. Most of them had been left behind, allowing the seasoned guardians to go on our hunting party. That left us with forty or so. It was as unusual as large groups of Strigoi banding together. Guardians were usually sent out in pairs, maybe groups of three at most, with Moroi families. This large of a force had the potential to bring about a battle rivaling that of the Academy attack.
Knowing that sneaking through the dark wouldn't work, Hans stopped our convoy a little ways from the warehouse the Strigoi were holed up at. The building was situated on a service road cutting off from the highway. It was an industrial area, hardly a deserted path in the woods, but all the businesses and factories were shut down this late at night. I stepped out of the SUV, letting the warm evening wrap around me. It was humid, and the moisture in the air felt especially oppressive when I was already smothered with fear.
Standing beside the road, I felt no nausea. Dimitri hadn't posted Strigoi this far, which meant our arrival was still--kind of--a surprise. Hans walked over to me, and I gave him the best estimate I could on the situation, based on my limited information.
"But you can find Vasilisa?" he asked.
I nodded. "As soon as I'm in the building, the bond will lead me straight to her."
He turned, staring off into the night as cars sped by on the nearby highway. "If they're already waiting outside, they'll smell and hear us long before we see them." Passing headlights briefly illuminated his face, which was lined in thought. "You said there are three layers of Strigoi?"
"As far as I could tell. There are some on Lissa and Christian, then some outside." I paused, trying to think what Dimitri would do in this situation. Surely I knew him well enough, even as a Strigoi, to calculate his strategy. "Then another layer inside the building--before you get to the storage room." I didn't know this for certain, but I didn't tell Hans. The assumption was made on my own instincts, drawn from what I would do and what I thought Dimitri would do. I figured it would be best if Hans planned for three waves of Strigoi.
And that's exactly what he did. "Then we go in with three groups. You'll lead the group going in for the extraction. Another team will accompany yours and eventually split off. They'll fight whoever's right inside, letting your group head for the captives."
It sounded so... militaristic. Extraction. Captives. And me... a team leader. It made sense with the bond, but always in the past, they'd simply used my knowledge and left me on the sidelines. Welcome to being a guardian, Rose. At school, we'd conducted all sorts of exercises, running as many different Strigoi scenarios as our instructors could dream up. Yet, as I stared up at the warehouse, all of those drills seemed like playacting, a game that could in no way measure up to what I was about to face. For half a second, the responsibility of it all seemed daunting, but I quickly shoved aside such concerns. This was what I had been trained to do, what I had been born to do. My own fears didn't matter. They come first. Time to prove it.
"What are we going to do since we can't sneak up on them?" I asked. Hans had a point about the Strigoi detecting us in advance.
An almost mischievous smile flickered on his face, and he explained his plan to the group while also dividing us into our teams. His approach tactic was bold and reckless. My kind of plan.
And like that, we were off. An outsider analyzing us might have said we were on a suicide mission. Maybe we were. It honestly didn't matter. The guardians wouldn't abandon the last Dragomir. And I wouldn't have abandoned Lissa even if there were a million Dragomirs.
So, with sneaking having been ruled out, Hans opted for a full-on attack. Our group loaded back into the eight SUVs and tore off down the street at illegal speeds. We took up the entire width of the road, gambling on no oncoming traffic. Two SUVs led the charge side by side, then two rows of three. We shot to the end of the road, came to a halt with screeching tires at the front of the warehouse, and spilled out of our cars. If slow stealth wasn't an option, we'd gain surprise by going fast and furious.
Some of the Strigoi were indeed surprised. Clearly, they'd seen our approach, but it had happened so fast that they'd had only a little time to react. Of course, when you were as fast and deadly as Strigoi, a little time was all you needed. A group of them surged at us, and Hans's "outside team" charged back, those guardians putting themselves between my group and the other going inside. The Moroi fire users had been assigned to the outside group, for fear of setting the building on fire if they went inside.
My team moved around the battle, inevitably running into a few Strigoi who hadn't fallen to the first team's distraction. With well-practiced determination, I ignored the nausea sweeping through me from being this close to Strigoi. Hans had strictly ordered me not to stop unless any Strigoi were directly in my path, and he and another guardian were beside me to cover any threats that might come at me. He wanted nothing to delay me from leading them to Lissa and Christian.
We fought our way into the warehouse, entering a dingy hall blocked by Strigoi. I'd been right in my guess that Dimitri would have layers of security. A bottleneck formed in the small space, and for a few moments things were chaotic. Lissa was so close. It was like she was calling to me, and I burned with impatience as I waited for the hall to clear. My team was in the back, letting the other group do the fighting. I saw Strigoi and guardians alike fall and tried not to let it distract me. Fight now, grieve later. Lissa and Christian. I had to focus on them.
"There," said Hans, tugging my arm. A gap had formed ahead of us. There were still plenty of Strigoi, but they were distracted enough that my companions and I slipped through. We took off down the hall, which opened into a large empty space that made up the warehouse's heart. A few pieces of trash and debris were all that was left of the goods once stored here.
Doors led off of the room, but now I didn't need the bond to tell me where Lissa was. Three Strigoi stood guard outside a doorway. So. Four layers of security. Dimitri had one-upped me. It didn't matter. My group had ten people. The Strigoi snarled, bracing in anticipation as we charged them. Through an unspoken signal, half of my group engaged them. The rest of us busted down the door.
Despite my intense focus on reaching Lissa and Christian, one tiny thought had always been dancing in the back of my brain. Dimitri. I hadn't seen Dimitri in any of the Strigoi we'd encountered. With my full attention on our attackers, I hadn't slipped into Lissa's head to verify the situation, but I felt totally confident that he was still inside the room. He would have stayed with her, knowing I would come. He would be waiting to face me.
One of them dies tonight. Lissa or Dimitri.
Having reached our goal, I no longer needed extra protection. Hans pulled out his stake on the first Strigoi he encountered, pushing past me and jumping into the fray. The rest of my group did likewise. We poured into the room, and if I thought there'd been chaos earlier, it was nothing compared to what we faced. All of us--guardians and Strigoi--just barely fit inside the room, which meant we were fighting in very, very close quarters. A female Strigoi--the one Dimitri had slapped earlier--came at me. I fought on autopilot, barely aware of my stake piercing her heart. In this room, full of shouting and death and colliding, there were only three people in the world that mattered to me now: Lissa, Christian, and Dimitri.
I'd found him at last. Dimitri was with my two friends against the far wall. No one was fighting him. He stood with arms crossed, a king surveying his kingdom as his soldiers battled the enemy. His eyes fell on me, his expression amused and expectant. This was where it would end. We both knew it. I shoved my way through the crowd, dodging Strigoi. My colleagues pushed into the fray beside me, dispatching whom-ever stood in my way. I left them to their fight, moving toward my objective. All of this, everything happening, had led to this moment: the final showdown between Dimitri and me.
"You're beautiful in battle," said Dimitri. His cold voice carried to me clearly, even above the roar of combat. "Like an avenging angel come to deliver the justice of heaven."
"Funny," I said, shifting my hold on the stake. "That is kind of why I'm here."
"Angels fall, Rose."
I'd almost reached him. Through the bond, I felt a brief surge of pain from Lissa. A burning. No one was harming her yet, but when I saw her arms move out of the corner of my eye, I realized what had happened. Christian had done what she'd asked: He'd burned her ropes. I saw her move to untie him in return, and then my attention shifted back to Dimitri. If Lissa and Christian were free, then so much the better. It would make their escape easier, once we cleared out the Strigoi. If we cleared out the Strigoi.
"You've gone to a lot of trouble to get me here," I told Dimitri. "A lot of people are going to die--yours and mine."
He shrugged, unconcerned. I was almost there. In front of me, a guardian battled a bald Strigoi. That lack of hair was not attractive with his chalk white skin. I moved around them.
"It doesn't matter," said Dimitri. He tensed as I approached. "None of them matter. If they die, then they obviously aren't worthy."
"Prey and predator," I murmured, recalling what he'd said to me while holding me prisoner.
I'd reached him. No one stood between us now. This was different from our past fights, where we'd had lots of room to size each other up and plan our attacks. We were still crammed into the room, and in keeping our distance from the others, we'd closed the gap between us. That was a disadvantage for me. Strigoi outmatched guardians physically; extra room helped us compensate with more maneuverability.
I didn't need to maneuver quite yet, though. Dimitri was trying to wait me out, wanting me to make the first move. He kept a good position, though, one that blocked me from getting a clear shot on his heart. I could do some damage if I cut him elsewhere with the stake, but he would likely get a hit in on me that would be packed with power in this proximity. So I tried to wait him out as well.
"All this death is because of you, you know," he said. "If you'd let me awaken you... let us be together... well, none of this would have happened. We'd still be in Russia, in each other's arms, and all of your friends here would be safe. None of them would have died. It's your fault."
"And what about the people I'd have to kill in Russia?" I demanded. He'd shifted his weight a little. Was that an opening? "They wouldn't be safe if I--"
A crashing sound off to my left startled me. Christian, now freed, had just slammed his chair into a Strigoi engaged with a guardian. The Strigoi shrugged Christian off like a fly. Christian flew backward, slamming into a wall and landing on the floor with a slightly stunned look. In spite of myself, I spared him a glance and saw Lissa running to his side. And so help me, she had a stake in her hand. How she'd managed that, I had no idea. Maybe she'd picked it up from a fallen guardian. Maybe none of the Strigoi had thought to search her when she came in. After all, why on earth would a Moroi be carrying a stake?
"Stop it! Stay out of the way!" I yelled at them, turning back to Dimitri. Letting those two distract me had cost me. Realizing Dimitri was about to attack, I managed to dodge without even seeing what he was doing. It turned out he'd been reaching for my neck, and my imprecise evasion had spared me the full damage. Still, his hand caught me on the shoulder, knocking me back almost as far as Christian had gone. Unlike my friend, though, I had years of training that had taught me to recover from something like that. I'd honed a lot of balance and recovery skills. I staggered only a little, then quickly regained my footing.
I could only pray Christian and Lissa would listen to me and not do anything stupid. My attention had to stay on Dimitri, or I'd get myself killed. And if I died, Lissa and Christian died for sure. My impression while fighting our way inside had been that the guardians outnumbered the Strigoi, though that meant little sometimes. Still, I had to hope my colleagues would finish our foes off, leaving me to do what I had to do.