The car ride was pure torture.
I'm not referring to the pain that was coming from Roza's battle with Strigoi. It wasn't the long drive in a cramped vehicle that only accomplished increasing my stress or the seemingly impossible plan Pavel was trying to outline. I'm talking about my mind flashing back to the events of Spokane.
I'd almost lost my Roza that night. Roza lost one of her closest friends and part of her innocence as well. I couldn't help but feel like I was going to lose someone tonight, and nothing I said, or Pavel said, could shake the feeling.
I prayed. I prayed more than I had in my entire life combined. I prayed for my Roza. I prayed that she would at least make it out of this alive. I prayed for myself, that I would be able to live a relatively long life with my soulmate. I prayed for the surrounding company.
I'd grown to appreciate Christopher's wit and harsh glares, and Kyle's silent observations were rather insightful. I knew Jasper and Sydney were going strong, and I would hate for either of them to lose the other.
Roza had just gotten to know her father and uncle, and I knew it would crush her should she lose either of them because of Tasha. I knew about her thinly veiled hatred for the woman, but should anything happen to someone she loved because of her actions, her hatred would become extreme and she would probably seek revenge.
I felt a shiver run through me at the thought of Roza's dedication should her mission be revenge. That was if I made it out of this alive. I knew Guardian Nelson wasn't going to kill her, she hadn't served her purpose yet, but I doubt that he would have any qualms with killing me. My heart stuttered at the thought of Roza having to live without me.
Would she be able to? Would I want her to? Of course, I would want her to live a happy life should I die tonight, but would she?
I tried to keep my mind on the plan that Pavel was laying out, but the random bursts of pain were distracting. I thought about trying to put up mental blocks like Roza had said she could do with Lissa, so I could focus my mind, but I didn't know if that would block the pain as well. I needed to take the pain from Roza so she could keep fighting no matter how much it took out of me.
My pain could further Roza's fight. She could gain strength from the damage that was being dealt to me. I would gladly deal with any pain as long as it ensured Roza's ongoing safety.
"Belikov! Are you even listening to me?" Abe asked, not for the first time either. He'd been receiving the same answer since we got in the car and he began doing what he does best: planning. He sighed in preparation as I muttered my response once again.
"I'm trying, but the pain is more than a little distracting." My voice held an air of annoyance and restraint that it hadn't when we started the trip, but I assumed after all this time he would figure out that I wasn't able to focus as more wounds appeared.
Due to quick healing, none of the wide gashes that appeared on my body stayed for long, and the hits that I'm sure were going to be large bruises eased up in a few moments. The larger scraps bled for a few minutes, and the time that it took for the cuts to stitch themselves together grew longer.
"You look like hell, by the way," Pavel said, glancing back at me in the rearview mirror. There were at least three cuts that were working on closing themselves up. My clothes were stained with my blood, and that wasn't counting the blood that didn't even make it to the fabric and dried on my skin.
"Thanks, just remember these are Roza's wounds manifesting themselves on my body," I said narrowing my eyes at him. His jaw set harshly and his knuckles tightened around the steering wheel.
"What do you remember? Of the plan, that is." Abe sighed rubbing his temples in frustration. I knew it was getting to him every time I reminded him that it was Roza taking the hits while I took the pain, though I didn't like that fact either.
"My priority is Roza. I'm not to let myself be distracted by anyone unless they're in my direct path to get to her. I can use lethal action at any point in time if I think it necessary, which I probably will. You gave me blueprints to the house, but I haven't been able to concentrate long enough to study them well." I said tiredly.
"How long have they been at it?" Pavel asked gently.
"How long have we been on the road?" I countered.
"Almost three hours," Abe answered.
"Then they've been fighting for almost three hours," I said, letting my head fall back against the headrest. "She's managed to snap the neck of a few of them to put them out of commission for a few minutes, but there isn't a lot of downtime by the time she gets all twelve of them down."
"Wait, so she's been fighting for three hours?" Abe asked, his eyes wide in horror.
"Almost. As I said, she's been able to find a few minutes here and there to give herself a break, but between the fire ring and the almost constant barrage of Strigoi, her strength is waning. I've given her all my negative emotions to help give her strength, but other than my pain, I've run out of negative emotions to give her." I said rubbing my hands across my face before another nasty cut sliced down my forearm causing me to hiss in surprised pain.
"Is there any way we can get there any faster?" Abe asked, paling at the sight of my blood, weird. Perhaps it wasn't my well-being he was concerned about, it was probably Roza's. If I was getting cut up like this, that meant that Roza was taking hits. She was getting tired, and the hits were becoming more frequent.
I couldn't find any positive emotions in this car, nor pull any from the vehicles we'd passed because of the speed at which we were traveling. I was growing weaker by the moment, but the pain was a constant.
"Not without risking a delay should we get pulled over," Pavel said, his grip becoming impossibly tighter around the steering wheel, and despite his words, he pressed a little harder on the gas pedal.
"How much longer?" I asked tiredly, my head falling back again as I fought to keep my eyes open. Pavel paused before answering, probably waiting until the headlights fell upon a mile marker to give me an accurate response.
"Half hour tops," Abe responded before Pavel got a chance.
"We're almost there, Roza." I breathed into her mind. Her relief flooded my senses and fueled my determination. "Hold on a little longer, milaya."
"I'm trying, Comrade. I'm not sure how much longer I can take on these Strigoi, but I know once I stop, Tyler will jump in and try to take me on. And that's not even considering what Tasha will do once I fall." Roza replied, sounding much more tired than I felt.
"If they touch you, they'll regret their existence," I growled.
"You realize how cliché that sounded, right?" Roza joked as I winched in pain as another long slash ran across my back. I gave a hiss of pain and shot off the seat as much as I could with my restraint.
Abe whirled around with a question on the tip of his tongue that was swiftly cut off as I barked out my order.
"Drive faster, Pavel!"
"I'm trying to get there as fast as I can, but I don't want to get pulled over and waste time, nor do I want to wreak the car and fail our rescue mission completely," Pavel explained, the pain evident in his voice.
I knew both of them were in pain, emotionally and mentally, I was too, but I was the only one dealing with the physical pain. I know what you're thinking: Wow, Dimitri, it's a little pain. You're taking it away from Roza so she can keep fighting, the least you can do is suck it up and stop complaining about it.
I was trying to, believe me, but I had been dealing with this pain (cuts, gashes, and what was probably a broken rib or two) for the past three hours with no end in sight. My strength was being drained slowly, not because of the secondary beating that I was enduring, but because Roza needed my strength to fuel her own.
I glanced down at the blueprints beside me, sure that I wasn't going to be able to memorize the floor plan at all, but after closing my eyes and imagining the floor plans, I could see exactly where I would need to go to get Roza.
We didn't know how many people were going to be guarding the house, I don't even think we discussed it, but nothing and no one was going to stand in between Roza and me. I was going to charge into the house and bring hellfire with me.
My eyes shot open in realization.
"Roza might not even be in the house," I stated, the pain-fueled fog lifting from my mind as Roza got a break (I know, I should have thought of it sooner, but, again, I was a little distracted by the pain). "We may not have to enter the house at all. Right now, they're outside, fighting in a ring of fire, no doubt drawing notice from at least one neighbor."
"I highly doubt that. The neighborhood they're in is eighty percent foreclosed, there aren't many people left to report anything to the authorities, and if there are, they're too scared of being kicked out of their own residences to tell anyone anything." Abe said.
"If we get there, and we see any sign of fire, we'll forego the house completely and charge the yard. Do you know how many people are outside the perimeter of the fighting ring? Once we get to Rose and give her a few weapons, the Strigoi won't be around much longer." Pavel said.
"I haven't seen anyone other than Guardian Nelson and Tasha standing around the ring, but that doesn't mean there isn't anyone else. Roza hasn't been too terribly concerned with what's outside the ring." I said, peeking into Roza's mind just to make sure I couldn't see anyone else outside the flames that Roza might have missed.
"I can't imagine that Natasha has more than Guardian Nelson and Guardian Moore working with her. Most know of Rose and respect her. She'll be surprised to hear it, but she's extremely important to the Moroi world and not many people would think about putting her in danger lest they risk putting the entire Moroi population at risk." Abe said turning back to face the road.
I could see we were two exits away from the one that Pavel had deemed our location. Christopher came over our comms to ask a few more questions as he followed us off the highway and on to the exit ramp.
The already tense air in the car thickened as Abe fidgeted with his gun, checking and double checking that it was loaded and ready to go. Pavel's eyes flicked back to mine once more before he turned on the street that held my Roza.
Kyle sped past us and pulled up to the curb roughly. The doors opened quickly right as we pulled up behind them, following in suit. My right hand had already pulled out my scimitar while my left hand had tightened around Roza's weapons.
The façade of the rough looking house showed only one light on in one of the upstairs rooms, but the bright glow that emanated from each side of the house indicated that the party was being held at the back of the house.
I followed directly behind Pavel, who followed Jasper and Christopher. Abe was behind me next to Kyle with Sydney bringing up the rear. I'm not sure when it happened, but Sydney held a gun slightly out in front of her. I'm not even sure she'd been trained with the weapon, but the fire burning in her eyes made me certain that she'd hit her target.
Abe also had his gun out but the Guardians had each opted for a stake.
"Comrade?" Roza whispered in my mind. We'd just rounded the corner of the house, and I immediately made eye contact with her. While her face showed just how exhausted she really was, the only way you could tell she had been fighting for three hours was her hair.
Her gorgeous, long hair was disheveled like she'd been running through thick brush and the twigs and branches had been pulling her hair in all directions. She'd been provided a large shirt to cover her swimsuit, but it was torn in too many places to be covering much of anything.
"Just a little longer, Roza. We've got to take out the Strigoi and then Tasha and Guardian Nelson. Then we'll find Guardian Moore. You'll be out of her in no time." I assured her and the visual evidence of her relative safety soothed me.
After my eyes scanned her face over the flames, they flicked to the two silhouettes that stood with their backs to us on this side of the circle. One was male and the other was female: Tyler and Tasha.
"Tasha! Look out!" Came a shout from our right, the direction of the house. My head whirled in that direction, as did Tasha's, to see another male that I instantly recognized as a Palace Guard, Ethan Moore.
When Tasha turned, Tyler did, too. After sending a confused look to Guardian Moore, both of them turned in our direction, but it was slightly too late. Pavel was charging them and yelling for them to get down, hoping for them to give up without a fight. Unlikely.
With Tasha distracted, the flames' intensity lessened and a few of the Strigoi leapt bravely over the flames and launched themselves at new targets while the rest of them hesitated in the attack on Roza.
Roza took the opportunity our momentary distraction provided to also leap over the flames, following the Strigoi in our direction. She wore a large smile as her Darkness rushed out to wrap itself around me. My Light met her halfway, but I couldn't let myself get too distracted.
I tossed her a sword, letting her know that now wasn't the time for fond embraces. She caught the hilt in her right hand and pulled the sheath off with her left. While her movements were still quick, they were much slower than they should have been.
I'd stopped in my tracks as soon as I was close enough to her to throw her a sword. She kept running and only stopped when she was beside me before she turned back to what should have been charging Strigoi.
The events that lay before us were odd. Strigoi were charging, just not us. It seemed that Roza's three-hour battle had left the Strigoi with little desire to fight her again. Instead of charging us, the Strigoi where attacking the closest living thing.
Ethan had bolted from the back deck and was making his way toward Tasha. Tasha was looking terrified as Strigoi stalked slowly toward her, the flames in her palms being the only protection she had. Guardian Nelson had pulled out a stake and was fighting off two Strigoi that he'd back toward the ring of fire that was quickly dying without Tasha's magic to fuel it.
Kyle, Jasper, and Christopher had circled around Sydney, who was doing a decent job at not looking completely terrified and seemed to be holding their own against the four Strigoi that had surrounded them.
Pavel had backed Abe against the house and was protecting him against three Strigoi, and it was a losing battle. Without giving it a second thought, Roza and I moved in sync to aid Pavel in his fight. Roza distracted the Strigoi that Pavel was most focused on, giving Pavel a chance to put his stake through the undead being's heart.
Much like my own, Roza's movements were slow and getting slower. We couldn't flawlessly decapitate one Strigoi let alone several. However, with one less Strigoi to worry about, Pavel and I were able to put down the remaining two. Roza had backed out of the fight once she saw she wasn't needed.
I turned to check if she was alright. When I stuck my arm out to catch her as she stumbled backward, she waved me off in a slow and lethargic movement.
"Help the others. I'll be fine, just finish off the Strigoi." She said giving me a look that meant I wasn't to argue. I nodded and rushed toward Sydney's group but arrived just as Christopher and Jasper were killing their Strigoi.
The only Strigoi left were the ones that were circling Tasha, and as much as I wanted to let them kill her and be done with it, I thought she deserved a trial and to spend the rest of her life rotting in prison.
Ethan was doing a decent job at fending the Strigoi off, as was Tasha with her fire, but it wasn't anything that was going to last long and there was no way either of them had the strength left to kill.
Tasha had wasted a lot of her energy holding the ring of fire for an extended period of time. While it didn't require much energy to hold the flame steady after the ring was set with a match, holding it for three hours was bound to take a toll on her physical ability.
Tasha looked paler than usual, and Ethan had more than his fair share of scrapes and bruises. He was getting slower with each block, and knowing that he also needed to stand trial, I rushed toward them vaguely aware that the other Guardians were following close behind.
With four more Guardians as back up, the three Strigoi didn't stand a chance. Tasha looked grateful for the assistance, and her eyes lit up in excitement when she noticed me. The look she gave me made uncomfortable knots form in my stomach that weren't caused by the close proximity to Strigoi.
Knowing a losing battle when they saw it, the Strigoi tried to run, trying to get away to live another day, but they didn't succeed. Sydney raised her gun and fired as one started his dash toward the woods at the back of the property. The bullet found its mark and the Strigoi hissed in slight discomfort before turning toward Sydney.
All thoughts of escape vanished upon the challenge, and the Strigoi was quickly staked by a protective Jasper before the Strigoi could even take a step in Sydney's direction. Jasper gave Sydney a wink to which she responded with a roll of her eyes.
The last Strigoi bolted for the woods, not wanting to take a risk even if there was a challenge. Everyone, myself included, sagged in relief. I felt my face start to twist up into a smile as I turned to find Roza.
We'd left her leaning up against the house. She was trying to stay conscious, but after the beating we'd both taken, I wouldn't blame her if she'd closed her eyes for a little while. However, she wasn't leaning against the house where we'd left her.
She wasn't laying down to rest her eyes. She wasn't taking a break from all the fighting, and she sure as hell wasn't relaxing now that the Strigoi were gone.
She was standing with Guardian Nelson.
A gun was pointed to her head.
His eyes were wide and frantic.
Her expression was apologetic as her eyes shone with love and unshed tears. A thousand words passed between us as she was pulled backward toward the woods with Guardian Nelson. He was screaming for us to stand down, drop our weapons, and back off.
The look in his eyes told truth when he said he'd blow her head off. She was too tired to fight him off, and I was too weak to risk her life to give her a fighting chance. There was no way out of this where she would remain safe.
I'd failed yet again.
I was the last to drop my weapons, not because I was going to risk Roza's life and challenge him, but I was too frozen to actually move. My Roza was standing with a manic who had a gun pointed to her head.
She hated guns.
I felt her pushing at the bond that had frozen along with me. She was trying to tell me something, and I thought it would be something useful. A way to help her or a plan she'd come up with, but I was wrong.
I heard someone scream as a single tear fell from her eyes. She gave me her most dazzling smile, the one that made her whole being light up. She was giving me the perfect image to remember her by as she finally pushed her thought through the bond, but I, for once, didn't want to hear her beautiful voice echoing in my mind. I didn't want to hear what she had to say, not because of what she said but because of the way she said it.
It was a goodbye.
"I love you, Comrade. I always will."