Author's note:

Thank you so much for waiting. I am a full time teacher and during the pandemic I have been teaching extra classes as well as doing online classes simultaneously with in person classes. The result has been a complete lack of desire to be near a computer during non work hours. You are all amazing and I hope to get two chapters out a month from here on out.

Also, this story was fighting with me for a bit. I did not intend for this story to take the direction that it has, so hopefully, now that I am listening to what the characters want, I will be able to write more.

Horses; Rose couldn't believe it. Horses were the exception to the "animals hating dhampirs." rule. Well, that and wolves, but that was more of a kindred spirit thing rather than a companion thing. She'd discovered this when having to flee an accidental marriage proposal in one of the keeper's nests. Rose shivered and it had nothing to do with the wind, that was a startling revelation. Vampire luddites all together, pockets of them around the world. At least it is better than blood whore communes. At least the keepers aren't forced to be what they are. A few keepers had even joined Rose on her journeys from coven to coven.

The more Rose learned, the more she realized how little anyone really knew about the vampire world. Between the alchemists, keepers, dhampir, moroi, and strigoi, they were so divided. Each contained chunks of knowledge that could actually help make the world better but instead they squirreled it away.

"No wonder the humans outnumber us," Rose muttered, patting her mare on its head. The mare knickered and continued to graze. Rose grabbed a well worn journal and began to write down her thoughts on the matter and her discoveries. It would be easier to keep things on a smartphone, but most of the places she went these days didn't have proper cell service and sometimes the thoughts got lost along the way.

One thing was clear in all of her journeys. They come first was the mantra of a dying race, imposed upon those enslaved for the sake of producing young. As the ranks of the moroi and dhampir diminished, the ranks of the strigio swelled. Soon there would be too many and the world would become a wasteland barren of life. They were a virus, killing the very host that gave them life.

Staying away from the vampire world had not meant that the strigoi had stayed away from her. It was one of the reasons she was here, at the "big hole in the ground" with a canister full of ashes.

*Flashback*

Rose had to pull over six blocks away from her gym. She ripped her car door open and threw up on the side of the road. The tang of blood was in the air, that salty iron that awakened the killer within Rose. In the past she would have continued on foot, but in the past she didn't have a jeep with enough gear to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Drip...drip...drip. It wasn't the sound of blood, that sounded thicker, softer, almost like water wrapped in velvet. No, this sound was the old sink that Jack kept saying that he would fix. Rose used her ears, far sharper than those of any human and listened. She heard the skitter of a rat in the alley, the rumbling of traffic in the distance, the soft sweep of paper being blown across the street. No movement could be heard inside the gym. A squeak pierced the night and Rose's eyes zeroed in on the steel door hanging on one hinge, ripped in half like tissue paper. It was unnecessary, a show of intimidation, bravado. Despite her nausea, Rose took a deep breath in and stepped through the door of her shattered life.

Jack and his wife lay against the wall, their flesh luminescent, bloodless, like ice. Jack had defensive wounds, he had put up a hell of a fight. Most humans couldn't do that. His wife's neck was broken, her fingernails torn from how she had tried to protect herself. Around her gym equipment was shredded. This gym had been her home, a place to push herself and train for the life she wanted to live rather than the life she wanted to sacrifice. Jack had been family, now he was just a husk. Rose crossed herself and touched a gloved hand to Jack and his wife's foreheads. There was evidence of others, but they had either been taken or awakened.

It took a quick call to the alchemists. One month to get permission to take their ashes to the grand canyon, the place where Jack had proposed. Another month to hunt down the strigoi, and three days to get here. All in all, Rose had been free from the vampire world for three years, two months, twelve days.

Rose didn't bother with hand to hand combat to kill these strigoi. They had killed without emotion, she returned the favor. She remained still on a damp rooftop, not moving for hours. When they appeared it took one pull of the trigger and a silver arrow pierced the heart of the first. When the other looked around, trying to find the direction of the assault, Rose reloaded and sent another arrow down range.

There was no epic fight. Rose was smarter than that. She only fought when ambushed; now, she killed from a distance.

Three years, two months, twelve days.

The two new molnija marks had already healed and Rose had shed her tears. "Goodbye," she murmured into the bitter cold. The wind carried her words away with the ashes. No matter how long she was alive, no matter how many strigoi she killed, no matter how many lives she lost in this war between life and unlife, she never wanted to lose the part of her that felt the pain of loss.

Rose turned the horse around and began to gallop back to her camp. The new regime at court was doing nothing to reduce strigoi numbers it seemed. Rose could no longer bury her head in the sand or race away with the winds. Tasha was right, the court needed to go on the offensive; however, with the true murderer of the former queen still in the wind (the one they executed had been only an accomplice, not the mastermind) the court was focused on internal matters.

Screw the court, Rose had other ways of handling matters. Having one autocratic body of government which was ruled by 12 families of hereditary nobles had worked at one point, but no longer. As the wind whipped past her face, Rose took a moment to revel in the speed and freedom of what was becoming her ride into war.

Three days later Rose tossed and turned in the driver's seat of her jeep. This was the last leg of her trip in order to meet up with Abe and after 18 hours of driving, Rose had pulled off to the side of the road to get some sleep. It was high noon outside which was as safe as she was going to get traveling this close to her old stomping grounds. She fell asleep almost instantly and felt her usual dreams wash over her. These dreams were ones she had trained herself to have, ones that came from mediation and disciplining her mind to keep spirit and PTSD dreams away. She did not necessarily control where the dreams took her, but she could determine where they didn't take her.

Today, just before her dreams took her back to the wilds of Alaska, she felt a tapping at the barriers in her mind. Damned spirit users, Rose swore. However, rather than keep them out, she changed her dream setting to the guardian offices at court and eased the barrier in her mind. She knew of only one person who would be looking for her using spirit, and she had some questions for him.

He was there, the cocky bastard was standing right there in her dreams. He and Robert were sitting in a library or study which was not the worst place in the world. Rose was standing in her guardians uniform, the picture of professionalism.

"Interesting; after all this time I would have believed you would have abandoned the trappings of your supposed oppression."

Rose shrugged, "I like the outfit." She took several steps around the library, noting that many of the books didn't actually have titles. "So, you must have wanted to meet pretty badly if you were willing to have Robert push through my defenses. What is on your mind?"

Annoyance flickered across Victor's eyes. "I see we aren't going to spend much time on small talk."

"Frankly Viktor, I just want to sleep."

"You are sleeping my dear."

"The sleep of the damned maybe, hardly restful. Either come out with it or get out of my head."

Viktor grimaced. "Alright then. I have information about the murder of the queen. The man executed was not responsible."

Rose rolled her eyes hiding a smile at Viktor's obvious annoyance, "Yeah, I don't care. The moroi seem content to hide behind their wards while my people die, it was only a matter of time before they started murdering each other."

"My my, you have grown cynical since your time away. What if I were to tell you that the queen's murder and the rise of dhampir fatalities are connected?"

"Then I would ask why you are coming to a disgraced dhampir who has been living outside the world of the moroi for about three years. Are you really that desperate for a plaything?"

"Because you fool, I need you. You are strong. Shadowkissed, yet you can live outside the wards; alone and still the scourge of the strigoi. You are the best dhampir warrior in a generation and yet you were able to break your conditioning and proved that dhampir could live without us. I help you, you help me, and then we are out of each other's lives forever."

Rose stopped in her examination of the books. "Okay, I'm listening."

"There is one who thinks as you do, that the moroi have too long relied on our slaves to die for us. Their solution, however, is to stir up fear. They tried to make the moroi see that they shouldn't rely on you, and since that did not work, they are making it so the moroi can't rely on you."

Her blood became ice in her veins, "By making it so we don't exist, at least not in significant enough numbers to mean anything."

"Yes."

Rose scoffed, "This is just like your kind. Can't get what you want so you throw us to the wolves? This is why I left, I'm done being disposable. The only reason I am coming back is that strigoi numbers are now threatening humans. Your kind aren't doing anything, the alchemists aren't doing anything, and if I don't do something soon, my kind won't be able to do anything."

"Yes, but you still have the heart of one in court."

"Lissa is politically inert. She has no family therefore cannot act on the council."

Viktor smiled, showing his fangs. "See, that is where you are wrong."