So lots has been happening in my life. New kitchen is ordered, (the day after we did, our current dishwasher broke T.T) still looking for new floors, I have a new job and for the first time in my life I get to negotiate a pay. So excited but a little scared too. But I am so happy so I can tell my current boss to go shuff it. ;)

Chapter 11

RPOV

Dimitri was calling someone, who I didn't know, but he was relaying information, quickly and efficiently. Listing the number of dead, human and Strigoi, the amount in need of medical attention and he listed two detainees. He told whoever was on the other end where we were. Then he disconnected the phone and came back to me.

"Who did you call?'

"Alchemists."

I looked at him confused. I didn't know that word other than people trying to turn normal metal into gold, but I doubt that was what he was referring too. Something seemed to click for Dimitri.

"Right, you didn't graduate. I'll fill you in later."

He still looked pale and a little green form his hurling earlier. I suppose that answers that question about him having Strigoi sensing capabilities.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded as he was about to sit down. When he realized who had occupied the seat before him and what they were doing he chose to stand, even if it was costing him more energy.

"How come you don't throw up your dinner when you sense them?"

I thought about it, certainly when I had seen his reaction. I became nauseated sure, but I hardly had the same reaction as Dimitri.

"I think we all react differently to different things. Remember that time I was exposed to Ghosts outside of the wards. I screamed and screamed and was brought to the infirmary. You said you had a bit of a headache when you first crossed the wards. And you seem to be doing fine now. It took me a few exposures to Mason and some serious blocking before I could function outside of the wards. I suppose we have the same abilities but react differently. Good news is, I got the hang of the ghost hangover, so you should be able to handle the Strigoi sensing thing a bit better the more you get exposed."

He looked a little relieved. I don't think my big scary Russian God was used to being sick.

A groan from the corner alerted us that the bartender was starting to wake up.

"We might as well ask him too. He probably has more dealings with Strigoi in this area. And not all Strigoi would have known about each other."

We moved towards the man and bend down. He was taken aback a little. I guess two Dhampirs bending over and smiling strangely at you when you were handcuffed was a bit off-putting.

"Alina and Viktor, The female blond, former Moroi, The male dark-haired and previously Dhampir."

I saw him scanning his mind for them, going through the long list of clients he has had. But he shook his head.

"If they are here, I don't remember their names."

I saw the truth in his eyes. It was disappointing, but I didn't think we would find them on the first night here.

"Then you are useless to us." I knocked him out with the bud of my stake.

There was a knock on the door and a girl about my age with blond hair and a golden tattoo of some sort of flower on her cheek walked in. She seemed to want to be anywhere but here. She took Dimitri and I in, apprehensively.

"Ambulance is on the way. Anything to report?" The girl said in a business tone of voice.

Dimitri stepped forward, but when she backed-up he raised his hands in an attempt at a peace offering and stepped back. I wondered why. Obviously we were the good guys here.

Instead I stepped forward, realizing Dimitri was the scarier of us two.

"We saw two Strigoi come in. We had observed the barkeeper all night and realized he was a bit shady, when we stormed the room, they had already drained one of the victims but we were able to stop them from killing anybody else. The bartender was counting bills when we entered and I doubt this was his first time facilitating this sort of stuff."

The girl nodded. And wrote down something on her report.

"These two men (the bartender and the guard) will be taken into custody and we will make sure they receive the punishment they deserve. Anything else you need?"

It seems she couldn't get rid of us fast enough. Dimitri answered.

"I need two kill reports. One for me and one for her."

She nodded and took out two forms form her bag. She took out a vial as well. She sprinkled a substance onto the two Strigoi bodies and I saw them disintegrate in front of my eyes.

Dimitri and the girl seemed unperturbed, but I was looking at it with my mouth open. I suppose this is one of the things that Dimitri will explain to me later.

"Names?"

I saw Dimitri look apprehensive for a moment before complying.

"Dimitri Belikov and Rosemarie Hathaway."

The girl looked up from her form and raised an eyebrow at the names. Apparently we had made a name for ourselves. She noted one name on one paper and one on the other. She handed both papers to me, obviously more comfortable being closer to me than Dimitri.

She looked at us expectantly and Dimitri took that as our cue to leave. He grabbed my hand and with a large arch made its way around the girl and tried to pull me outside.

"Hang on. I didn't catch your name?"

Judging by the horrified expression on Dimitri's face that was the wrong question. But I saw a small smile on the girl's face. The first indication she thought we didn't have a horrible deforming disease.

"Sydney Sage."

Dimitri didn't know how fast to get me out of there. He hailed a cab and we were in our hotel room half an hour later.

He first went to the bathroom to freshen up a bit. He had thrown up a few times. I made some hot chocolate as he did so. When he was finished, we sat down in the living area.

"Next time, don't ask an alchemist their name. They want as little to do with us as possible. I was surprised she answered."

"So who are these Alchemists? And shouldn't we have stayed to make sure those girls were okay?"

He shook his head.

"That is what the Alchemists do. They clean up Strigoi scenes and make sure the victims are taken care off and that the presence of Vampires in the world remains unknown to the human world. She will make sure the barkeeper and the guards are charged. If they can't be charged with their actual crime they will make sure something else sticks. They will also make sure they will never talk about the monsters they had dealings with."

"So how come I don't know about them?"

He smiled a little.

"Since their dealings are mostly with Guardians, many Moroi and non-guardians are unaware of their presence. Novices are told at graduation how to use and deal with Alchemists. But you hadn't got that lesson yet."

I chuckled. Yeah there were some downsides to pulling out of school a few months before graduation.

"So why is she so jittery around us then?"

"Alchemists believe all vampires are inherently evil. They recognize Strigoi as the bigger threat and that cooperating with us, helps the human world, but they still think we are all 'evil creatures of the night'."

That was just stupid. Dhampirs weren't even real vampires. We didn't need blood.

"So they make up reports and make the Strigoi go poof?"

Dimitri chuckled but nodded.

"What about the forms she gave me. Should we really have given her our names?"

He shrugged.

"They are kill reports. Saying you killed a Strigoi and so did I. We can take it to a Guardian tattooist and get molnija. I thought about not giving our names. Even though it isn't ideal to have our names out there, if we make it out of here alive and in time, the added kills could be your ticket back into the Academy. Although most of the time, we believe Guardians at their word when they say they killed Strigoi, in this case a kill report will be needed."

"So we will do this again tomorrow night? Check out a club, see if we can locate some Strigoi activity and hope they are, or know Alina and Viktor?"

"Yeah, Ivan kept track of them a little, but the last time he saw them was two months ago. They were in Omsk then, but they might not even be here. He is looking as well, but without any leads it isn't going to be easy. Strigoi don't tend to have ties with each other. They mostly know about each other from turf squabbles and they usually don't all survive. But we need to start somewhere."

Two weeks later and we were nowhere near finding them. We had to start somewhere, but every night we hit a dead end. I mean, we found Strigoi, but nobody seemed to know Alina and Viktor. And I believed them. Dimitri and I had gotten adept at extracting information from them.

I did get a new appreciation for Alto's lessons though. I had no idea the Strigoi population was this high in Russia. It made me realize how lucky Lissa and I really were, that we hadn't run into any of them in the two years we had been on the run. The area's we visited when on the run weren't infested with Strigoi like they seemed to be here, but had Lissa and I somehow made it to Russia we would have been dead a hundred times over.

And it wouldn't have just been the Strigoi threat, I had seen some pretty nasty stuff from humans too. Some had an idea of the monsters they were serving, other's simply looked at the money they received not interested in the creatures that gave them. Strigoi were capable of horrible things. But in the end, I could see they were simply shells without souls, being controlled by their own bloodlust. Whatever the humans excuse was, I didn't know. But I was starting to appreciate the Alchemists role more and more. Keeping humans in the dark about Strigoi and other Vampires, wasn't just protecting them from harm, but protecting them from temptation as well.

Because from what I have seen, human suck as resisting temptation.

Sydney had been a huge help to us. She was now on Dimitri's speeddial. She and the Alchemists had all been tired of us calling the central line and having to re-route, so after our third night, she just gave us her number. Now when we called, Dimitri immediately started with the location. You could hear the audible sigh from the other end of the line before she hung up and met us a few minutes later.

Sydney was on her first field assignment and in a way so am I. So we sort of had a baptism by fire together, or more accurately baptism by blood. Last week we had stumbled on a particular bad situation. We had killed the Strigoi and Sydney had made sure any surviving human perpetrators would be sentenced, but it had shaken me to the bone.

We had walked into the room, and I nearly threw up at the door, not because of the Strigoi presence, there were only three, but because of the smell. The smell of blood had permeated every inch of the place and walking in the strong salty metallic smell overwhelmed your senses. Dimitri had struggled too. He had been getting better with his Strigoi associated nausea and was now able to be around them and fight them without wanting to hurl at them. But this was beyond either of us.

The killing had been rather easy. The three Strigoi had been so engorged by blood they had become slow. One even threw up a good amount of blood when I punched him in the stomach. It had been disgusting. There was one Moroi male amongst the bodies, and he was drained to the last drop. The other bodies had been of human males and females. All deceased and some completely drained whereas others still seemed to have some sort of composure in their bodies. Almost as if the Strigoi had been too full to fully drain them, but wanted to take enough blood so they would die. Also by the blood spatters on the wall, ceiling, and carpet they hadn't used all the blood just to feed. I suspected the entire content of blood from a couple of bodies was sprayed across the room.

Strigoi had been laughing and throwing around bodies like they were nothing when we entered. We had found one surviving human in the corner, he was counting the blood soaked money, with a crazy smile on his face. He hadn't moved when we entered the room, he had made no indication that he knew we were there. He had simply counted his money over and over again. He obviously wasn't working with a full deck of cards anymore, and Sydney had had no problem hauling him away. We had burned the place down after that. No person should ever have to be in that room again. There was no way the blood and horror that occurred within these walls would ever leave it.

We hadn't hunted the night after that. We hadn't known how to. I don't think we could have handled another massacre like that the next day. I remember how I had felt after we had seen the Badica house. It had been shocking and certainly seeing the bodies of a child had really made it real to me. But somehow the Badica house had been less… senseless. They had come with a purpose. To insight fear and to show them that they could invade a home like this. This massacre had a different feel. It was horror only for their enjoyment. It made their victim's deaths even more pointless.

In the two weeks Dimitri and I had been here, I had killed five Strigoi and Dimitri eight. We had gotten a molnija each the day after our first kill. Anatoly had inked us. He certainly was handy to have around. But after we killed three more the next day, we decided to save them up a bit, otherwise he would be seeing us every day.

So now we were walking towards his shop, me with an additional four confirmed kills and the paperwork to prove it and Dimitri with seven more.

We walked into his shop and he raised his eyebrow, clearly having identified the kill confirmation reports Sydney had provided.

"Sorry, trouble seems to find us."

He shook his head.

"I think it is because you two keep looking for it. How many this time."

"Four and seven." Dimitri said as he handed him the papers. Anatoly whistled between his teeth.

"A few more rounds and I will be the best tattoo artist around. So… off the record again?"

Dimitri nodded and started to take a seat in the tattoo chair.

The Alchemists had a surprising sense of privacy. They had records of every kill that was called in. So we were registered with them as having made these kills. They automatically shared these reports with Guardian headquarters if the Guardian in question had been on duty. If the Guardian was sanctioned but off duty, he or she usually got a say if they wanted to share the information with Court. But rogue Dhampirs and ex-guardians like us were 'off the record'. Our kills were classified sort to speak and Guardian headquarters couldn't find our kills if they searched the database by name. Which suited our needs at the moment. Anatoly would submit a record that we had been tattooed and would note the corresponding number from the kill report Sydney had given us, but other than an anonymous number, there was no trail leading them back to us. The Alchemist still had a copy with our names on it, so should it ever be necessary, we could still ask them to share that information with Court, but right now we wanted to be invisible, to Strigoi and Court alike.

Dimitri's neck was getting pretty full. Anatoly was starting to move the tattoo gun further and further down. God knows how far he will come before we finish. He tattooed my four owed molnija, always leaving room for my promise mark. I think Anatoly had more faith in me than I did, but it was a nice thought, that maybe somehow I could still go back after this was over.

But I was wondering if I wanted to go back more and more. When we took a taxi back to the hotel after we were finished inking, I slipped into Lissa's mind. I hadn't done it in the entire two weeks and was dreading it a bit. I had gotten mild annoyance in the first few days, but it had seemed after a few days she had gotten over it, over me.

But as I entered her mind she was in Adrian's room and the conversation was obviously about me.

"I don't understand why she can't at least call. We have no idea where she is or even what she is doing." The annoyance was clear in her voice. She didn't like not being in the loop.

"You know what she is doing Lissa." Adrian reminded her.

"Yeah, following Guardian Belikov around like a lovesick puppy. She gave up everything she has ever known, for a guy that she has known a couple of months!"

Adrian shook his head.

"She loves him, she almost lost him. She isn't willing to risk that again. You know that he is going after the Strigoi that killed his charge and friend. It is very dangerous. It will help him stay alive if she is with him."

She humphed and sat down.

"But it won't help her. She gave up everything for him. She gave up me. Sometimes I feel like I don't even know who she is anymore. She used to be here for me all the time, and now she is off somewhere and has abandoned me."

Lissa didn't seem to realize how self-absorbed she sounded, but by the look on Adrian's face he knew.

"So you compelled her to stay instead?"

I had told Adrian of that in a spirit dream and I could tell he hadn't approved. But I could feel shame through the bond. She hadn't actually meant to try and compel me. She had wanted me to stay and the darkness had made her lose a bit of control. But she wasn't ready to admit that.

"I just wanted her to stay and for her to be Rose she used to be. She has changed so much since Belikov."

Adrian shook his head.

"She has calmed down a bit, I agree, but she is still Rose. In fact I can't think of anything more Rose then sacrificing everything she has to help someone she loves. She did it with you when she was on the run. You just have to accept there are more people around now that she loves. But I knew she would have also dropped everything in order to help me or Christian. That is who she is. She can't help but protect people. Even if the person she is trying to protect is one scary ass Russian fighting God."

I felt Lissa think about it for a moment, but I knew it was hard for her to share me with anyone. She had admitted it to me after she found out about Dimitri and I, that she considered me hers. She wants me to be happy, but she also doesn't want to let me go.

I pulled out of her head and Dimitri looked at me questionably, wondering how things were back at the academy.

"How come Adrian understands why I have to be here, but Lissa doesn't."

He pulled me closer.

"Because Lissa has a blind spot when it comes to you. It has been you and her for so long, she isn't used to seeing you as anything else then her friend and Guardian."

I nodded, but still felt strange, but I was at least happy that Lissa had calmed down a bit.

"You up for some more hunting tonight? Anatoly told me there was some activity in a high end club on the east side."

Funny, how going on a hunt was his way of cheering me up. Or maybe just get my mind off of Lissa by getting me in battle mode, but it worked.