"Where's Rose?" Lissa asked.
Damien massaged the back of his neck sheepishly and didn't answer. Lissa's eyebrows furrowed. "Damien, where is Rose?" Damien gulped. He opened his mouth to answer but a commotion at the front door cut him off before he'd even begun.
Dimitri and Eddie instinctively stood and moved in front of the young Moroi Queen. Damien moved towards the hallway but before he could advance more than two steps, the front door burst open and three black-clad figures moved out of the shadows of the night and into the bright light of Damien's hallway. Two were male, and the other was female. The two men were supporting the girl between them. As the trio moved further into the light, Lissa screamed. The female's face was covered in blood and a large gash stretched across her stomach. It was Rose. And she looked barely alive.
Dimitri felt the world go quiet and slow, though he could clearly see the others yelling and racing to get Rose on a couch. Suddenly, his ears started working again and everything sped up. "What happened?" Damien demanded of the two men. Dimitri could tell instantly that they were both Dhampirs, yet they were clearly not Guardians. One of them, also covered in blood and with his share of cuts and bruises, leaned back on his heels as he crouched next to Rose's unconscious form.
"We were ambushed, we arrived at the warehouse too late. Rose decided not to wait for us." He said. Damien cursed under his breath before he strode from the room.
Lissa stared, horrified, at her best friend, though she was clearly listening to the two Dhampirs' conversation as they tried to make Rose comfortable. Dimitri realised that he should be listening too. He caught little of the mumbled conversation but what he did hear was plenty enough to make him suspicious of Rose's activities of late.
Damien re-entered the room. He carried a first-aid kit and a bowl of water. He knelt next to Rose and started cleaning away the blood that covered her face, neck and arms. As the blood started washing away the true extent of Rose's injuries became more and more apparent. The two Dhampirs, Leon and Alex, joined Damien in tending to Rose's wounds and soon included Damien in their conversation. Dimitri now realised that Damien, too, was a Dhampir and he wondered how it had escaped his notice.
Finally, Dimitri had had enough. "What happened to her?" His voice shook with suppressed emotion. Alex glanced over his shoulder at the Russian and sighed. "We're part of a gorup of rogue Dhampirs. When Rose got to New York, she found us and joined up. I guess she was angry at being banished from the Court..."
At this Lissa interrupted. "Rose wasn't banished! I wanted her to be able to relax and grieve for a while, after everything she's been through." Dimitri frowned at the use of the word 'grieve'. Alex watched the Queen with a steely gaze. "Well, your Highness, I'm just repeating how Rose described it. Anyway, she found us, joined us and she's helped us kill more Strigoi in the past year than we have in the 10 years we've been doing this. A couple of months ago, we found out about a group of Strigoi who were taking kids from the street, mostly homeless kids or orphans, and were using them as blood-whores or turning them into Strigoi."
A horrified silence fell over the group. Dimitri felt sick. Using children as bloodwhores? Damien and Leon started cleaning and bandaging Rose's injuries while Alex continued.
"Anyway, we've been planning on attacking this group and freeing what children we could. That's what we were doing tonight. Rose got there first. She was supposed to watch them and report on the layout of their security detail and whatnot. En route, we were ambushed by a number of Strigoi who were out hunting. We lost two people. In the end, Rose decided to go in herself. Getting herself pretty beat-up in the process."
They finished wrapping Rose, almost head to toe, in bandages. No-one spoke for a while until, finally, Christian spoke, his voice cracking. "Rose is smart. She knows to wait for back-up in situations like that. So, my question is, what did she see in that warehouse that drove her to run in there like that?" Silence fell again, with each person desperately trying to shove horrific images from their minds.
After a while, no-one was quite sure how long, Rose started stirring. She moaned and put a hand to her ribs. No-one said anything as she slowly moved until she was sitting semi-upright. Her eyes fluttered open and moved blearily from one face to another, passing over Lissa and Dimitri as quickly as she did Leon and Damien. Suddenly, it seemed to hit her that there were four more faces that were not usually there. Her eyes widened as they darted from Dimitri to Lissa to Eddie to Christian and back to Dimitri. Suddenly, her eyes squeezed shut, she slapped a hand to her forehead and sunk back into the cushions. "No no no. No!" She moaned. They all sat in a state of confusion, listening to Rose say 'no' in varying tones and volumes until finally she said, "You can't be here! You sent me away!" She pointed an accusatory finger at Lissa, who looked stricken. Rose clumsily tried to get to her feet and would've fallen if it weren't for Damien, who'd grabbed her arm and steadied her. "I'm going to bed." She whispered. "And I want them gone! I can't handle them right now."