Chapter 51: Appearances can be Deceiving
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Academy. Richelle Mead owns all.
So last chapter you were missing some vital information. Here it is. I hope you like where this is going.
APOV
My Aunt had summoned us to her chambers. She had been acting rather strange lately and I was curious. It was unheard of for such a young Royal to be allowed access to the type of housing Belikov had managed to arrange for Lissa and Christian Last of the Dragomirs or not. The only reason I was able to get it was my bloodline was directly linked with the Queen. I had begun to get suspicious when Belikov made the announcement at Graduation. My neighbors had been distant Ivashkovs but heavily into politics and had very close ties to my Aunt. It was strange that I hadn't had prior knowledge of their leaving the Royal Court. I checked into their departure, but became even more disturbed when I could not find any information on where they had gone or why.
My Aunt had become somewhat of a recluse over the past few months. Usually she summoned me to Court at least once a month and gave me a hard time about my drinking and over not having tied myself down to some Royal Moroi Bitch for some political alliance or another. She liked to coach me on ways to one-up Ozera and win over Lissa. What a joke. I was never interested in Lissa or politics, but she was my Aunt and I loved her so I allowed her to bounce her new ideas off me while I listened bored out of my mind, but always trying my hardest to appear as if I were paying great attention. She was one woman you didn't want on your bad side. In addition to her not summoning me to Court, she also stopped pestering me to join committees and attend other such irritating functions meant for Royals of our stature or so she called it.
As we were leaving for her chambers I ruffled my clothing and mussed my hair up a little. I hadn't fed so it would make me look sluggish. I strategically spilled Vodka down the front of my shirt and swished it around in my mouth so I wreaked sufficiently enough to appear intoxicated. In truth I hadn't had anything to drink in over twenty-four hours.
I wanted to get a good take on my Aunt's Aura and I needed her to think I was wasted to do so. She always put up walls whenever she knew I was sober so I couldn't quite get a fix on her intentions, but she wouldn't do that if I could convince her that I was plastered. That shouldn't be hard to do seeing is that I'm usually plastered by this hour of the morning on a typical day.
I needed it to look as real as possible so I didn't let any of my friends in on my plan either.
I studied her Aura critically when no one was paying attention to the drunk in the corner. Sure enough she wrote me off as hammered the second she saw me or should I say smelled me.
She was being very overtly polite and nice well nice for her, but I could tell that on the inside she was agitated. Her Aura was burning with hatred and disgust especially when she glanced over towards Rose. She also did not appear to be as friendly to Lissa as she claimed to be. She held great animosity for her as well as Ozera. When she embraced me I could see regret, sadness and love appear in her Aura. I wondered what that was about.
Her Aura was also flickering slightly as if it were being snuffed out. I'd only seen this a few times once when my grandmother was dying and the other when Rose was lying beaten and bloody on the Belikov's couch.
The rest of the group knew something was off, but they dismissed it as her rearing her ugly head in the matchmaking department. I was sure that wasn't the case so I staggered off as if I were still drunk and went into my house.
Her Aura showed worry and nervousness when she told me I'd be traveling to Romania in three days. I'd agreed to appease her although I had no intention of flying the coup when my friends were in such danger. Nor would I attend some Royal meeting to represent Spirit. I would not allow them to use me as their lab rat. In fact she seemed relieved that I had agreed so easily. It was like she wanted desperately for me to be away from the Royal Court for some reason.
This was bad because she had me scheduled to leave in three days. That meant whatever she was planning was going down soon. I couldn't imagine what it could be. I turned on my computer and began searching for the answers I needed. I wanted to find something concrete before I involved the others. I had to be sure she was up to something no good before I outright accused her of anything. Even I as her favorite could be tried and convicted of treason and blasphemy against the Queen.
Her Aura had looked as if maybe she were hiding the fact that she was ill. I decided to hack into the mainframe of the Royal Court's infirmary. Most people thought since I spent most of my time drinking and smoking that I was useless and stupid which I had to say worked to my advantage most of the time. I may be lazy and a lot of other bad qualities, but stupid was not one of them. I'd learned long ago to hack into almost any computer I wanted. Hell I had to do something with my time while everyone else was in school. I'd actually taken several computer programming classes online and made some pretty interesting friends over the internet.
They had taught me how to hack almost anything. It only took me a few minutes to bypass the rather uncomplicated firewalls they had set up. I searched for Tatiana Ivashkov in the patient records, but came up empty. Why would there be no records for her unless they had anticipated someone getting into their files and were hiding vital information. I thought of any other alias she could have used and after trying variations on her first, middle and last name came up empty I came across a file labeled Patient X.
It by itself had its own personal security codes which I easily bypassed. These people were certainly not skilled. I didn't even use any real knowledge to accomplish this task. The file opened and before me was a complicated battery of tests and medical trials. It said the patient was female, age sixty-three, Moroi and specialized in Air. (No idea what she specialized in or how old she was so I made it up.)
It showed that she had Sandovsky's Disease which was the same Disease that Victor Dashkov had suffered from. It showed she was in the early stages, but despite all kinds of clinical trials, blood transfusions and medications her case was becoming progressively worse.
This had to be my Aunt's file. She fit the description exactly. "Oh Aunty what's happening?" I groaned.
I loved my Aunt, but she was not always fair and just and most of the time she was entirely self-serving. I can't believe that she would just invite Lissa here without having any plans to force her to heal her. Maybe that is what she is planning to do while I am in Romania. She couldn't get it from me because I wasn't as skilled as Lissa was.
I went an extra step and hacked into her personal banking files even the ones I knew she though no one else knew about. I'd stumbled across them a few years ago while randomly trying to crack passwords out of boredom.
There was one transaction in particular that caught my interest. A large sum of money had been transferred to the prison that Victor Dashkov was in. I quickly checked into the prison records and realized that his were missing. It was as if he'd never been there.
Things were much worse that I'd imagined. Not only did I have to worry that my Aunt was up to something where Lissa was concerned, but Victor Dashkov was no longer safely behind bars. I wondered if the two were working together.
No. I thought to myself. She's not that crazy. She wouldn't have helped a convicted felon escape prison would she? I sighed and scratched my head. I ached for a nice bottle of something Russian possibly Vodka. No I needed to stay sober. This could not wait. I needed to find out what was going on once and for all and if Victor was on the loose then the game had just become even more dangerous.
I decided I needed to talk to someone about what I'd discovered and fast. I could only think of two people I could involve in this that would possibly be able to help. I picked up my phone and dialed.
"Don't say anything. It's Adrian and I need to see you right away. Don't tell anyone and I mean anyone who you are meeting. I have information about a possible attack on the Princess. Come alone."
I made another similar phone call. I gathered all the information I had and made my way to the upstairs apartment above my townhouse. It would serve as a meeting place until I was ready to share with the rest of the group. I just hoped that my Aunt didn't suspect that I'd figure things out and bug my apartment.
So what do you think? I am dying to know… Please Review. Who do you think Adrian called? If you guess right I will use your name in a future chapter. Who you gonna call?
