The fire lost its heat. The smoke lost its sting. I was still sitting way too close to the raging inferno, but I couldn't move. I sat there and choked from smoke and sobs alike. Frozen, the seconds seemed to blend into minutes. Christian was dead. He was dead. A bullet had penetrated his heart; it wasn't like when I had been shot, when the bullets had hit my chest, but had miraculously missed my heart. This wasn't a near-hit. He was dead. And no Lissa there to save him. To bring him back.
I lost the feeling for how long I sat there and watched him. The fire kept on raging next to me; it seemed to burn itself out. Maybe it missed its creator. Maybe Christian's flames could only survive as long as he was there to nurture them. They even seemed to flee back to him. Even though the fire died down next to us, the fiery wreath around his head kept on burning.
It was a while before I stretched a shaking hand out over his face to close his eyes. There. There was no comparing him to a sleeping person. Even though the hole in his chest was barely visible on his dark shirt, the fire painted his face in a way that made it impossible to see sleep in it. It was more like he had turned into the statue of the god of fire. Which had fallen into the flames of his own making.
Time started to come over me again when I heard another car approaching. I don't know what made me so sure it was Lissa. But I knew. And time started again. Suddenly, the world was full of action. It was only seconds before Lissa would come and see her dead love lying in a rim of fire on the ground. Yet, everything that became active in me was my heart. It beat even more frantically than ever before, as if it could spare Lissa the pain by beating it away.
I heard them calling for me and for Christian, both Lissa's and Dimitri's voices. They sounded worried. They didn't know yet that worry wasn't covering it.
"Rose?" Lissa had spotted me. In the fraction of a second, she also spotted the motionless figure on the ground.
And the expression on my face. I don't know when I had started to cry, but when I turned to Lissa, I became aware that my cheeks were wet with tears.
Fear must give her powers beyond her body, because she managed to outdistance Dimitri in their race to reach us. I wished I could stop her, slow her approach, but she was there in a heartbeat, the fire illuminating her blonde hair to create a halo around her beautiful face.
"No…" Her voice was barely a whisper. She bent over Christian's still figure, putting a hand over his unbeating heart, touching his face.
Dimitri slowed his approach when he was almost with us. The last steps seemed to take all his energy, and he dropped to the ground beside me as if the cords that held him upright had been cut. Neither of us could do anything to comfort the other. This was the second time he found me weeping over the dead body of one of my best friends. This was the second time he was looking at the dead body of a charge of his, the second time his assigned Moroi had died, the friend he had sworn to protect and give his life for.
Maybe it was this thought that finally thawed me from my stupor.
"We need to get out of here." My voice sounded as if I had a cold. I knew it was cruel to make them move so fast. But it was a miracle the fire hadn't been noticed yet. We had to get away, or we would seriously endanger the integrity of the vampiric race's secret.
"No," Lissa said again. Suddenly, she didn't sound weak or afraid any more. She sounded determined. She placed her hands on Christian's chest and took a deep breath, and I realized what she was about to do.
"No, Lissa, don't!" A weird whimper escaped me, but I couldn't stop it. "It's too late! It's been …I don't know, twenty, thirty minutes! Lissa, please, it's too late!"
She didn't listen. I could almost feel the magic she was putting out, the warmth, the glow of it. I heard Dimitri groan. Looking at him, I almost broke at seeing the pain on his face.
Another whimper fought its way out of me. I wanted to reach over to Lissa, stop her from what she was doing. I had sat here for all this time, watching him. It was too late. It was way too late.
Dimitri gripped my hands. I couldn't fight him. We sat frozen, as if spellbound by watching Lissa work herself out by channeling energy into …
It just couldn't work. He was too far gone. Lissa was tiring herself out for nothing. Her face grew strained. She was panting with the effort. She kept working away, and it was only after nothing happened after several minutes that the tears started flowing over her face.
The last flames died at the same time that Lissa stopped the magic. She didn't pass out, as I was afraid she would. She blinked, coming out of her spirit trance. The scene looked so different now; Christian was no longer bathed in the angry orange light of the fire. Instead, the sun's first morning rays took all the color away from him and the rest of the world.
Now he looked like he was sleeping. With his eyes closed, his black hair ruffled, his face turned slightly to the side.
Lissa sighed in exhaustion. Her eyes closed. She slid down slowly, coming to a rest over Christian's chest.
I caught her shoulders, but just held her still. I was again paralyzed; I didn't have the energy to make her move.
Then I felt Dimitri's hand close around my arm. His fingers dug into me painfully.
"He's breathing," he whispered. "Rose. He's breathing."
It couldn't be. My head started shaking before my voice could answer. But then, I watched him again.
No, it couldn't be. I had to imagine it. It couldn't be true.
His chest was rising and falling ever so slightly. He was breathing.
"Leave," Dimitri said, his voice hoarse. "We have to leave. Now."
In a trance myself, I got up; this was unreal. I made Lissa get up and supported her. She was close to passing out now. Dimitri picked up Christian. We went to the car.
"We have to go fast," I said. Finding my voice made me find my wits. I couldn't drift off now. "Lissa needs a feeder."
He nodded.
I put Lissa in the front seat. She was barely conscious, but trying to keep her eyes open.
"It's okay, Liss," I whispered to her. "You've done what you could. It's going to be okay."
She didn't have the strength to talk, but a few more tears escaped her eyes before she allowed them to close.
Dimitri had laid Christian down on the rear bench seat. He was bending over him to feel his pulse. When he drew his head back from out of the car, he turned to me with a look so desperate I forgot to breathe for a moment.
"Roza," he said, his voice cracking.
"Dimitri," I whispered. I knew we didn't have time; I knew we needed to leave ten minutes ago. But I couldn't help to stop and put my arms around him. "There's nothing you could have done. Don't blame yourself. He's alive."
He took a shaking breath, but that was all the emotion we could allow ourselves. He got into the driver's seat, and I squeezed into the space between the rear bench and the front seats, so I could watch over Christian. He was unconscious, unnaturally pale but breathing regularly.
"We can't go back to Court," Dimitri said. "We still don't know who's influenced."
"We need a motel," I said.
Dimitri pulled back into the road and continued into the opposite direction from Court. The silence between us was tense. Lissa kept turning her head around to see us in the back seats. I kept staring at Christian's face and listening for his breaths to make sure they didn't stop. Dimitri kept his glance straight ahead, focusing on nothing but the road and gripping the steering wheel so tight I was afraid it might snap.
We drove for an hour until we decided to stop; we wanted to bring a little distance between us and wherever Tim was now. We had no idea whether he had gone back to Court, of course, but we had to settle for something.
I stayed in the car with a sleeping Lissa and an unconscious Christian while Dimitri checked us into the little motel we had found. Thankfully, it was still early enough in the morning so that no one was out when we brought them inside. Lissa woke up when I shook her gently; she leaned on me, watching Dimitri carry Christian out of the car with drowsy desperation.
"Did he wake up?" she whispered half into my shoulder.
"Not yet." I tried to sound comforting. "Let him sleep a while. You're going to need some sleep, too."
Inside, Dimitri was depositing Christian on one of the two queen-sized beds, carefully resting his head on a pillow. I led Lissa to the other side of the bed and made her lie down, too. She rolled to her side to face Christian, reaching for him and pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Even in her addled state, she was distraught. Like Dimitri and me, the fear that maybe she hadn't brought Christian all the way back seemed to get through to her.
Lissa closed her eyes, and exhaustion got the better of her. She fell into an uneasy sleep within a minute. I was perched on the bed beside her, still holding onto her. Dimitri was crouched on the floor next to Christian.
I watched as he slowly pulled the soot-stained black shirt up to Christian's chest to reveal smooth, unblemished skin, albeit smeared with blood in places where the shirt was torn.
Our eyes met. In that instant, I knew we were both trying to mutely console the other, trying to convey the feeling that everything was going to be okay; just like I had told Lissa. I was immeasurably glad that Dimitri was with me. I hoped he could read that in my eyes, too.
"They are alive," Dimitri croaked. I nodded. I got up when he did, and walked over to him to put my arms around him.
"What are we going to do now?" he whispered into the crook of my neck. He was holding me tightly.
"We'll have to wait," I told him. I was stroking his back soothingly. We were swaying slightly, moving together in our embrace. "We'll have to wait to see if he wakes up."
"And what if he doesn't?" Dimitri's voice was almost cracking again. "What if he doesn't wake up? "
"Then we'll get him to a Moroi hospital," I told him, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "And they will know how to help him."
I don't think I fooled him, but he stayed quiet. When he talked again, his voice was carefully controlled again. "What are we going to do about Tim?"
I sighed. "I don't know…"
"We have to call Hans," Dimitri said.
"He'll have to have everybody checked for silver in their bodies," I added.
"What if Tim has Hans under his control?"
"We've got to start somewhere," I said, unconvinced. We were still holding on to each other. Outside, doors opened and closed; the human day was starting.
"Sonya," he said. "We have to tell Sonya. She's harder to influence, being a spirit user herself. She has to see to it that everybody is checked."
"She will need instructions from Lissa. And Hans has to be debriefed by Lissa, too."
"We have to wait for her to wake up," Dimitri said. "For both of them."
To wait was really all we could do. Dimitri left to get some food and water. I settled into one of the chairs that stood by the window in the back of the room, waiting for him to come back and the others to wake up. Dimitri returned, immediately looking at the two in the bed expectantly and disappointed when they were still the same. He left again to find a feeder, something that would take a while because the next feeder station was about forty miles away.
Lissa woke up when he'd been gone for half an hour. She hadn't slept nearly enough to make up for the exhaustion of what she had done, but I guess she couldn't calm down enough. The first thing she did after her eyes opened was take a good look at Christian.
"Hey Liss," I said softly. She blinked and groggily took in the room.
"Rose… Where are we? I was so out of it earlier, I didn't notice." She struggled into a sitting position, and I went to sit down next to her on the bed, putting my arm around her.
"A motel in a hopefully safe distance from Court and everything."
She'd taken Christian's hand in one of hers; with the other, she was stroking his face gently. The look she was giving him made my heart clench.
"Why won't he wake up?" she whispered.
"You healed him," I said. "He used a lot of magic before. He must be as tired as you are. You need to give him time."
She leaned her head on my shoulder.
"I can't believe Tim did that," she said. "And I refused to believe Christian when he told me something was up. I could have stopped this."
"What happened after you left our place?" I asked.
"We drove out of Court. We didn't really know where to go, but putting a safe distance between us and Court seemed like a good idea. We lost my guardians, because we didn't know whether we could trust them. Then, Christian lost control over the car – maybe Tim made him see something again. Oh, Rose, how could I refuse to see what was happening?"
"Well, it seems like Tim was pretty good at hiding things. I think Christian was right all along: Tim wanted to get close to you."
"He offered us help when we crashed. We got out and walked towards the city to get a rental or a bus or something, and Tim just drove by and asked if we needed a lift. As if nothing had happened."
"He didn't know you could use spirit again," I suddenly realized. "The last thing you told him, you couldn't. He thought you wouldn't be able to notice the spirit on Dimitri and me."
"Maybe," Lissa said. "He realized we were on to something when we refused him. But even then, he didn't turn completely. He pretended we were all wrong, played innocent."
"He still didn't want you to think anything bad of him?"
"We told him to back off. Then he… he started doing things to Christian again. Christian fought back – with his fists, that is – and…" She twisted to reach into her jeans pocked. When she drew out her hand, two silver rings were lying on her palm. "Tim dropped this. I looked at them and saw that there was a lot of spirit within them, and… something about you and Dimitri. My theory is that there literally is something of you in there. A drop of blood or something. It's disgusting to think about it, but I think this is how he made the compulsion work so powerfully from a distance. This connects him with the silver within the person he wants to control."
I stared at the rings in her hand. I had never been as revolted by an innate object. This was twisted.
"I told Christian what I thought. He said I had to get away and disable the rings, un-charm them. Tim, he… he wanted me to come with him. But Christian held him up while I ran, only, I couldn't disable the charms. I don't know how. We thought you wouldn't be able to shake the spell…"
"I got rid of mine. I think Dimitri came out of his when Tim dropped his ring."
"I shouldn't have left him alone with him." Lissa's voice cracked a little. "I shouldn't have left!"
Lissa went back to sleep soon after this, still exhausted. I was left with nothing to do but watch their pale faces and listen to their soft breathing. It was a calming sound, slow and steady.
Dimitri returned with a human girl. He rented another room for her to wait in until Lissa and Christian would need her. There was no question of one of us sleeping; we wouldn't be able to sleep anyways. We huddled together in one chair, me virtually on his lap. We waited the day away; our phones put to mute to escape the frantic calls that were bound to come from Hans and the curtains drawn close to keep the night inside and prying eyes out.
I quietly recapitulated Lissa's story for Dimitri. He was as put out as I was.
"It's a weakness, though," he mused. "If he needs the silver connection, it's something we can take away. If we get to the silver objects."
Darkness again set in outside. I hadn't set foot out of the motel room all day. With the new vampiric day, I was starting to feel tired. As a dhampir, I should be more resilient than that, but even dhampirs have their limit. I dozed off a little in Dimitri's lap, but I was still too keyed up to properly sleep.
When the moon started to flood the room in soft, silver light, I took to watching Christian again.
And he opened his eyes.