So this is the attack chapter! The aftermath, which is the better bit imo, will be the next two chapters mainly. Chapter Twenty-Five is one of my favourites so far!
I'm dying to know what you think, so leave me some reviews with your thoughts!
Twenty-Three
Christian
The next two weeks passed far quicker than I'd have liked. Rose and I were absorbed in each other so much that it hurt. Right now she laid in my arms, fingers dancing against my chest, making non-descript patterns. It was evening, but it was a Saturday, and we had nowhere to be. We'd stayed in bed all day.
Her lips kissed my neck, and my cock stiffened to attention. Her fingers kept moving down, and her mouth followed. When she wrapped her hand around my shaft and pumped, I groaned into the silence.
Then her lips reached my cock, and she wrapped her mouth around the tip, tongue flattening against it. I shuddered, wrapped my hand through her hair, and forced her down. She easily took me, keeping her gaze locked on mine as her mouth hit my pubic triangle.
"Fuck, Rose," I groaned, jerking my hips up to fuck her mouth in earnest.
We'd fucked so many times that I'd lost count now. Any time we could get our hands on each other, we ended up rolling around in the sheets. I knew her body better than I knew my own.
Every inch of me was on fire as she bobbed her head up and down on my cock, a satisfied glint in her eyes as I swore into the bedroom, unable to stop myself.
Then her mouth was gone and she was straddling me, lining her entrance up against my cock. She slid down onto it, until I was buried inside her. My hands went to her hips, fingers digging into the skin, nails leaving half-moon marks.
I watched, mesmerised, as my cock slammed into her again and again. "You're too perfect, Rose," I groaned, my thumb finding her clit and rubbing it until she was a shaking mess on top of me. She still managed to keep riding me, but her movements became erratic and she threw her head back, breasts bouncing.
When she came apart, I spilled inside her, too. She came to rest on top of me, holding up her hair and trying to catch her breath.
We both jumped, Rose making a move to cover her breasts when the door banged open on its hinges.
Guardian Petrov just stared at us for a moment, taking in our naked bodies and their position, before she shook herself out of it. "The perimeter has been breached. You need to get down to the gym, right now."
She shut the door behind us, and we were frozen. Then Rose was climbing off me and we were scrambling around the room to pull on clothes and shoes. Before we left the door, I took Rose's face in my hands kissed her, hard.
We met each other's panicked gazes for a moment, and then we were running down to the gym together, unable to hold hands like we wanted.
It was easy to spot Aunt Tasha and Dimitri, and we joined them, standing close together and waiting for Guardian Petrov to address us. "I'm splitting you in four." She did a cross movement with her arms, and everyone tried their best to split into four equal groups. Then she was assigning us areas of campus, and sending us on our way. Rose picked up a stake from a Guardian at the door and weighed it up in her hand.
The adrenaline coursed through my veins as we followed Aunt Tasha and Dimitri out of the hall. He was already glowing with the protection spell.
I took Rose's hand, and she pulled me into an alcove. Everyone was too busy trying to get out of the building to notice as she kissed me. It was a desperate kiss, possibly our last, and our bodies crushed together, mouths open.
"I love you," she said, when she pulled back, eyes searching my face.
"Fuck, I love you too, Rose."
We kissed once more, quickly, and then I cupped her face with my hands and pressed my forehead to hers, imbuing her with the protection spell until it hurt too much to keep holding her.
The orange was the brightest I'd ever seen it. She looked practically luminescent.
We joined the crowd and hurried out. We'd been assigned the elementary campus, and it didn't take us long to reach it and join the battle. I stayed by Rose's side and she launched at the nearest Strigoi.
We worked in perfect sync. I'd light a Strigoi's head on fire just long enough to distract them so Rose could stake them. It conserved my energy, and Rose's too. We dominated the battlefield along with Aunt Tasha and Dimitri, who were just as good together.
Then suddenly five jumped on us, and I could only light two on fire for Rose to stake. One came after me, and its hand was around my neck so tight that I could barely breathe, fangs lowered to my neck.
I struggled, but my strength was nothing compared to the monster that gripped me. He'd been a Dhampir before being turned, and he towered above me. His red eyes were shining with glee.
And then suddenly earth slammed onto his face, blinding him. He let go of me to claw at his face, and Rose took that time to stake him.
I turned to stare at one of the girls who had been in the offensive magic class I'd taught. She wasn't even paying attention; had already moved on to help another Guardian in danger. When I looked around, I saw at least half the class I'd taught were moving around the battlefield, helping out where they could.
My battle rage returned, and I shared a quick, intense glance with Rose before we launched back in.
The numbers of Strigoi seemed to increase, and I realised that this must be the main battle site. They were focusing their numbers here.
And then I saw her. My mother strode onto the field, eyes searching, until they found mine.
"Rose," I said, as she pulled her stake out of a smaller female Strigoi.
She followed my gaze and her eyes narrowed. She came to stand beside me. Her glow at almost faded by now. It must be sapped away when it was being used.
My mother wasn't alone, though. She had six Strigoi with her, and they were all descending on us. "Rose you should run," I told her, unable to help myself taking a step back. "Go join a different fight."
"I'm not leaving you, Christian," she said, taking up a fighting stance, stake brandished in her hand. She stood in front of me, protecting me, and my heart pounded so hard in my chest I felt sure it must be audible even over the sounds of the fighting.
Then the six Strigoi launched. I managed to set two on fire, and Rose dashed between them to slip her stake into their chests. In any other circumstance I would have killed to stand on the side-lines and just watch her quick, deadly movements, lithe body moving so fluidly it looked like she was dancing.
A third Strigoi suddenly had a bubble of water around its head, and Rose managed to stake that one, too. But there were three more bearing down on us, and I couldn't do anything to stop them. I tried to set one on fire, but then another was slamming into my body, and I had to focus all my efforts on incinerating its head. My magic was starting to drain me, and every muscle in my body hurt. I kicked the dead body off me, and then two more were there.
I had no choice but to summon my dome of fire to protect myself, but then I was blind to the battle.
I held it for a minute, but lowering it again when I realised the sounds were beginning to die down.
But then I saw what had happened. They were retreating. My mum cast a look over her shoulder at me, and I realised why she looked so smug.
She was carrying an unconscious Rose back with her.
I couldn't even scream, my throat was so clogged with emotion that I could only watch, tears streaming down my face, as Rose was carried off.
It was my vision, come to life. Exactly how I'd imagined it.
There was a hand on my shoulder and I spun around only to look into my Aunt's face.
Everything in me felt numb, and I couldn't make my mouth work. She'd obviously seen what had happened to Rose, and her gaze searched mine, though I didn't know what she was looking for.
She wrapped her arms around me in a hug, but I didn't hug back. Tears streamed down my face, but I couldn't sob. My throat burned, and my heart felt empty.
She was gone. My mother had stolen her from me.
"I'm so sorry Christian," she murmured.
I didn't know how long we stood like that, me stiff as a board and her running her hand up and down my back.
"Where's Dimitri?" I asked, voice colder than I'd ever heard it before. "I need to speak to him."
She pulled back, looking at me sceptically, before nodding towards a group of Guardians. "He's there trying to calculate losses. To see who was taken."
I flinched, but I had to push everything from my mind. I couldn't stand around picturing how my mother was probably feeding on Rose right now; how she was probably trapped underground somewhere wondering what was going on.
She might already be dead.
I took a calming breath and scrubbed at my eyes, forcing it all down. "I need to talk to him," I repeated.
Tasha nodded, and beckoned for Dimitri to come over. He looked more tired than I'd ever seen, fatigue plaguing his hulking body. "What is it?"
I looked at my Aunt, and she nodded, before going to join the huddle and add what she knew to the discussion. Dimitri was looking down at me, and I could see the heartbreak behind his eyes, too. "We have to do something," I told him. I'd looked around the floor, and the numbers of dead Strigoi far outnumbered the number of dead Guardians. "You know they can't have gotten far."
He shook his head. "You know we don't go on rescue missions."
"We barely lost anyone, I can see that just by looking at the ground, and how many did they take? How many were Moroi?"
"About twenty-five were taken," he admitted. "Most Moroi. But that's not the point. We can't go after her."
I folded my arms, nails biting in my upper arms in an attempt to ground myself. I needed to look competent, not heartbroken. "There's more than enough people to take out the rest of the Strigoi. To take out my mother. She needs to die now, not to regroup and find more Strigoi and repeat this. We could kill her, now. We just need to find her." The sun was already beginning to rise in the sky. "They can't have gone far, and there are only so many places they could have gone. We could do it."
Dimitri watched me, eyes calculating, and he nodded. "I'll go and talk to Alberta. You need to stay here; she won't listen to you."
I knew it was true. After what she'd seen this morning, Guardian Petrov would know that all this was fuelled by my desire to get Rose back.
I didn't know what to do other than to stand where I was and watch the conversation play out. It wasn't hard to see that Dimitri's frustration was getting the better of him, and that meant he was losing.
She wasn't going for it.
My Aunt came to stand beside me, and she watched the conversation, too. "We have to do something," I told her. "We could rescue those people. You know we could."
"We turned the tides of this battle because of the Moroi students who joined us." She was looking at me, questioning.
"I taught them," I confirmed. "I was running a class for offensive magic, some students asked me to help them learn." I remembered Rose watching me teach, that appreciative glint in her eye, and I scrubbed at my eyes once more. "I didn't expect them to get out and help today. It was meant to be for in case the Strigoi got inside to them."
Tasha's lips quirked. "They bound the hands of the Guardian who was watching them with Earth and snuck out to help. I'm proud of you. You're the reason we won."
"But I lost Rose." The words were dead on my tongue, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
"Rose was taken, but hundreds of lives were saved. You know that's what she would have wanted."
"That doesn't make me feel any better."
Dimitri came back over, his body stiff with tension, and shook his head.
My hope was crushed and the numbness returned with a vengeance. I couldn't even bring myself to say anything as images of Rose's captivity flashed in front of my vision.
My Aunt took my arm and began leading me back inside. "We should go and see if Eddie's okay," she said.
I barely nodded, staring in front of me, a chill beginning to encase me. If Dimitri couldn't convince Alberta, then that meant there was no chance of anyone doing it. Not unless the Queen herself sanctioned it, and that was out of the question.
Eventually, the four of us found ourselves sat in a small lounge. Eddie was safe, and had taken down plenty of Strigoi himself. He told me that my students had saved his life plenty of times, but I couldn't manage a smile.
I sat on an armchair in the corner, brought my knees to my chest and rested my head on them. Vaguely I was aware of people giving me worried looks, but I couldn't find the motivation to try and reassure them.
Because I wasn't okay, and I wasn't sure how I was going to get myself back together without Rose there beside me.
She was what kept me going, kept me grounded, and she'd been taken from me.
