Chapter 3: A Little Q and A Never Hurt Anyone…

I was amazed that I was still in my own skin; in past situations that involved such sudden rushes of emotions or powerful feelings on Lissa's part, I had almost always unwittingly been sucked into her subconscious. I was by science fiction's definition a body snatcher, only a lousy one unable to control her host. Being able to put a stop to Lissa and Christian's one on one sessions while a third party namely I was present would have been useful to say the least.

"Rose?" Her panicked voice broke through my inner dialogue. She was worried that my silence indicated I was relieving the traumatic event.

Turning on the balls of my feet, I found myself face to face with two of them. I briefly contemplated shrugging the question off and trying to start a new topic of conversation but Lissa's facial expression told me that it was not going to be a viable option. So instead I opted to tell her the truth.

I crossed the room and sat down on the single bed that had once been mine. "People on the outside aren't Rose enthusiasts." I grinned up at the two of them, "Apparently even Strigoi are sensitive about their appearances, I mean you make one little joke about a peroxide blonde and she goes all skitzo on your ass."

At least my comment had the desired effect on Christian, he laughed at my recollection. Lissa on the other hand was still wearing the same saddened expression.

"How can you joke about it?" Her questioning gaze turned from me to Christian, wiping the small smirk from his face and then back to me. "It's not funny."

"The truth is Liss," I stood up from the bed and stood before her. "I don't remember how they happened."

"You don't remember?" Lissa's brow rose in response, she was unconvinced. She thought I was trying to hide the truth from her – again.

"I've been in a lot…" I struggled to find the right words, I didn't want to be brutally honest because I knew that the gory details of how I retained my scars would upset and scare her. "I've been in a lot of situations where my back has been used as a cutting board….after a while it gets hard to distinguish how each mark was made." There that wasn't too brutal.

"Each mark?" Christian asked intrigued, of course he would be.

Standing up from the bed, I turned my back on them both and lifted my tank top up to where the back of my bra was clasped together.

"Oh my god…"

"They're not as bad as they seem." One of my opponents had made sure that I had gotten a good look at their work of art. "Really, it's not that big a deal." I lied and slid my shirt back down my stomach so that my scars of torture were securely covered.

"Please stop saying that," Lissa's voice pleaded with me while her mind tapped into the bond and through it she was able to bombard me with a series of questions. Why was I lying to her? Why did I come back? Was I here for her? Did I find Dimitri? Did I kill him?

"Stop – please." My palm raised flat in the air to silence her thoughts and her voice, I could only process one thing at a time. "I've forgotten how it can be around you…" Her brow furrowed, upset. "No, no…I mean, it's just overwhelming to be so close – the bond."

Lissa nodded understanding.

Christian raised his brow and took two steps closer to Lissa. "Okay, I think that's my cue to quick soft kiss against her cheek. His chocolate coloured eyes turned back to regard me with a grin, "I'm glad you didn't die, Rose. "

Lissa threw her elbow back and elbowed him in the ribs.

"What?" He asked with a grin still plastered to his face as he playfully rubbed at the spot where she had hit him.

"It's called tact and I think that was her subtle way of telling you that you don't have it!" I grinned watching the two of them. In the past I had never been an advocate for their touchy-feely, puppy dog love but maybe it was true, maybe absence did make the heart grow fonder.

"Yeah well all I meant was its good to have you back." Christian admitted sheepishly, blushing from the admittance. From the way his pale cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink you would have thought he was confessing to something humiliating. "Life around here has been incredibly boring and uneventful."

"Aww, we gonna braid friendship bracelets and stay up all night talking?" I joked, hoping to keep the mood light for my imminent one on one session with Lissa.

"And the bitch is back." Christian rolled his eyes dramatically before shaking his head. He had obviously missed having me as a verbal sparring partner and was in need of some time to get back on form. "See you babe," he squeezed Lissa's shoulder before making his way out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Babe? Since when had they turned into that couple who used cutesy nicknames that made everyone else want to barf?

Lissa crossed the room and sat at the bottom of the bed. She kicked off her beige coloured wedges and sat crossed legs on the bed.

I turned and sat down at the head of the bed, mimicked her movements and sat crossed legged. It felt just like old times, where she would come over to my room so we could talk about boys, girls who had been bitches to us that day and…boys. Of course when she had started dating Christian, our long girl chats had become less frequent. And as my secret relationship with Dimitri heated up, I all but stopped the chats in fear of what I would say.

"So…does this feel awkward?" Lissa asked, causing the tension in the room to be kicked up a notch - because it did feel awkward.

"Yeah it does," I admitted, "So why don't we just cut all the bull and just dive right in." There was no point in trying to dodge this bullet, she was going to pester me until she found out all of the details.

"Okay," She nodded. I expected the first question to be something simple, something that would ease us into what was undoubtedly going to be a heart wrenching conversation. But she skipped the formalities and dived straight in, just like I had told her to. "Did you find him?" She waited a couple of seconds for me to answer and when I didn't, she repeated herself. "Did you find Dimitri?"

"Did you tell anyone that's why I left?" I asked impulsively, wondering if my cover had been blown. Maybe my mother wasn't here out of purely love and affection, maybe she had found out that I had been having an affair with Dimitri.

"No, I didn't tell anyone...technically." Lissa paused and bit down on her bottom lip, an unbreakable habit of hers indicating her nerves. "Adrian told me that he had set you up with a bank account and that after you had…you know, done what you needed to do." She said, trying to be sensitive about what had been my objective. "He said that you would come back."

"I didn't kill him." I answered, a little less tactful. "I thought he would go home – so I went there." It was hard for me, excruciatingly so to talk about this but she deserved an honest answer from me for a chance. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath to stop myself from reliving the moments. Sure the fighting, the torture I could handle but remembering the look on his mother's face when I had told her why I had come to Russia…it was heartbreaking. "He didn't – so instead I started tracking other Strigoi hoping that sooner or later I would come across the ones he was with."

"What do you mean?" Lissa asked.

I didn't need for her to clarify which part she didn't understand, I already knew. "They've become… strategic." It was a diplomatic way of saying that they were better killers if they stuck in packs. Her eyes clouded over in confusion, she couldn't comprehend my words but then we had been always taught that Strigoi were more like wild dogs than any other rational animal – unable to stay together. "They live and hunt in packs – it makes them more efficient killers."

A visible shiver ran through her, she closed her eyes to stop the mental pictures of early fall from coming back. She hadn't witnessed the things I had been subjected to but she had a good imagination like any. "And that's how you got your scars?" She asked with her eyes still closed.

"Yeah – apparently I'm too pretty and entertaining to kill straight off the bat." Not that I was complaining. It was over this time, when they had kept me chained up like a pet to abusive that I had learnt ways to efficiently break them down and defeat them.

"How many are usually in a …" Her light jade eyes opened as she searched for the word I had used earlier to describe them, "pack?"

"It can range from three to seven or eight." This was a conversation I had expected to have with Alberta and my AGCT former classmates, not my Moroi best friend. "The more of them there are, the harder it is for them to co-exist peacefully."

"You know so much…" Lissa was astounded at the extent of my knowledge, two months by her standards wasn't enough time to gather so much data. "How many have you killed?"

Throughout school I had imagined tallying up my Strigoi death count so that the molnija marks on my neck would be represented honestly, thus letting the world know how many I had killed. And yet here I was a simple high school drop out with three marks to my neck and countless deaths on my hands. How many had I killed? Thirty? Possibly forty? The truth was I had stopped counting after the first three; it became less about the glory and more about the precision of the kill.

"You know when I was chained to a wall and being someone's little play thing of the day," The words tumbled out before I had a chance to monitor them for content, "One of the things that kept me going was our bond." My eyes found her beautiful jade coloured eyes and a warm, gentle smile touched my lips. "Being able to be here with you was my escape." At times breaking away mentally from the physical torture I had been subjected to, was the only thing that kept me alive.

"You kept an eye on me?" Lissa asked slightly surprised by my admission.

"Of course I did!" I responded as though it were the most natural thing in the world, for me to be checking up on her. I was hardly going to leave my best friend, the only person who had never abandoned me high and dry.

Lissa looked down as a tender smile played at her lips for a moment before she let brow furrow once again. She had never expressed so much open concern on her face than she had these past twenty minutes. "You said you didn't kill him…" She glanced up at me, eyes confused. "Then why are you back?"

I should have lied. I should have told her that she was the reason for my sudden return. I should have said that I couldn't miss graduation despite everything that we had been through. I should have said anything other than what involuntarily came out of my mouth.

"Because he's coming here…they're all coming here."