THIS WORLD IS MADE OF SECRETS

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What would have happened if Rose and Lissa had discovered the element of Spirit during their time on the run? How would their stories have changed? The world of Dhampir and Moroi is much darker than what they could have ever imagined while they were living under the protection of the Academy. When they are brought back to the safety of St. Vladimir's, they can't ignore what they have learned or the effects it has had on them.

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Author's Note: I have been away from Fanfiction for a long time and haven't written anything in even longer. However, I have been brought back into it thanks to Vampire Academy fanfics, so much so that when this idea appeared in my head, I couldn't let it go. I am posting this first chapter as a tryout of sorts and will be grateful for any kind of constructive criticism (English is also not my first language, so I appreciate corrections in that area too). Thank you to everyone who reads it. Please review!

Disclaimer: none of the characters you recognize are mine, and the parts written in cursive are excerpts from Book 1.

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Chapter 1 – The Beginning.

I realized we were being followed the moment we left the gym.

Lissa had been talking about our new yoga class when a shadow caught my attention from the corner of my eye. I felt myself tense, my body instinctively preparing for whatever was coming, but she didn't notice. Her excitement clouded her normal perceptiveness – we had intended to settle here for a while and decided on a whim to spend some of our money in the monthly classes those fancy studios tend to offer. But at some point I had made a mistake, I realized. I had gotten comfortable and became careless.

To an untrained eye, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Families with small children had taken advantage of the first spring Saturday in which the rain had finally stopped, and the warmth of the sun rays encouraged people to spend time outside. Workers from nearby restaurants were setting up the outside eating areas, and the weekly Farmer's Market at the park was already full of customers and curious visitors. Its cheesy likeness to a Hallmark's movie opening scene was ruined, however, by the eerie feeling that settled in me. I had learned to trust my instincts during these past few years, as they had often been our only saving grace out of many dangerous situations. So, when I noticed a blonde man, stocky and looking like a fish out of water in between a crowd of cheerful families and retirees, I was certain we were in trouble.

I tried to scour our surroundings without being too obvious, and I quickly located a red-headed man and a tiny woman about two hundred yards ahead of us, sitting on a bench and pretending to be a couple. Another man with a hideous red and green lumberyard jacket was looking at an old lady's watercolor stall. Something was out of place with all of them.

"Don't react. We are being followed".

"Guardians?" To her credit, she didn't move an eyebrow. She remained relaxed and unsuspicious, but immediately became as alert as I was.

"I don't know. The woman has short hair, so maybe. But there are at least four of them, one has been following us since we left the gym, and the others are ahead of us". I kept looking, but it was hard to know for sure when I had to act normally and couldn't crane my neck in all directions like I wanted to do.

"What do we do? Do we go directly to the garage?" A year ago we had convinced a very-drunk, very-confused college freshman that he didn't need his Honda Civic with a bit of Lissa's special power of conviction. Neither one of us were proud of it but using public transport had become too dangerous and we needed to keep moving. "Our bags are already in there".

"We can't. The laptop and memory card are on the desk". We always kept a bag with essentials in the car in case we needed to make a quick exit out of wherever had become our hiding place, but we couldn't leave without the two things that I had been so incredibly stupid not bring with me on the day I needed to the most. Damn it. "Flat. Then car. Then we get the hell away from here."

The walk to our tiny, run-down apartment was at least five minutes, but we could get there through the main street. It was busy enough that I knew they wouldn't risk doing anything just yet. We tried to keep a normal pace, but we were tense and my body was begging me to start a fight. When we spied the large apartment block that had become our home for the past two months, Lissa's relieved exhale interrupted her loud rant about how cool these weekend markets were and how she was planning to buy some lilies for the kitchen table. I opened the hallway's door and quickly closed it once we were inside. We sprinted up the three flights of stairs until we got to the door of our flat, that I almost threw down in my hurry to open. I grabbed our shared laptop, the memory card and hard drive beside it, and snatched a picture of us at a Carnival a few months ago from the refrigerator's door. I stuffed it all in my sports bag and threw a quick look at our small living space, checking that I wasn't leaving anything behind. Most importantly, that we weren't leaving any clues of our discoveries. Just before I was about to call for Lissa to hurry, she appeared in the doorway assuring her cat, Oscar, that he would be alright stuffed in her bag along with her sport clothes. I highly doubted it.

"The furball? Seriously?" She opened her mouth in protest, certainly to argue the value of a four-legged companion as moral support during our escape, or something along those lines, but there was no time. "Whatever. Let's go."

And it was just our luck, they had caught up with us. As we ran towards the stairs, we saw three men that were coming up. One of them was the stocky blonde from the market, but I hadn't seen the other two before. Damn it. That upped the count to at least six fuckers. I quickly directed Lissa to the stairs anyway, and we ran to the upper floors. I had obtained a key to the roof when we moved in, even though it was closed to the residents, just in case we needed an alternative escape route one day. I hated that we had to use those every so often.

I slammed the door behind us but cursed out loud when I didn't hear it close, hearing instead the unpleasant sound of three pairs of footsteps following us. We ran towards the end of the roof, where there was a fire escape that would take us to the street running behind the apartment complex. From there we would be able to cross the two parking lots that separated us from our very dear, very beaten-up car.

While I helped Lissa, I turned around to watch our chasers. The first man, running ahead of the other two, was older than us, maybe mid-twenties, and probably six-six or six-seven feet tall. And under different circumstances - say, when he wasn't dangerously close to ruining our desperate escape - I would have thought he was hot. Shoulder-length brown hair, tied back in a short ponytail. Dark brown eyes. A long brown coat - a duster, I thought it was called.

But his hotness was irrelevant now. I jumped behind Lissa and we ran away. We could hear their frustrated grunts. They had surely expected a Moroi to not be able to keep up, but Lissa's speed and resistance thanks to my training had surprised many these past two years.

We were barely a hundred feet ahead of them when we reached the car, and I could see that walking crime against fashion running towards us from the other side of the parking lot, followed by someone I recognized. Her name was Celeste, and she had begun working at the Academy the year before we ran away. I got into the car just as Lissa was starting the engine.

"They must be from the Academy. Guardian Williams is here". I could feel Lissa's instant relief through the bond. Guardians trying to take us back to St. Vladimir's were problematic, but easier to deal with. However, the many members of the retrieval team worried me.

She reversed the car just as the tall cowboy imitation reached us. He tried to grab a hold of the door handle, but we were already speeding towards the exit. The other two were there, standing in our way. They probably thought we would stop immediately at the risk of running them over, but instead Lissa stepped on the brakes and didn't alter our course. One thing we had learned is that nobody would actually remain on the path of a runaway car once they realized its driver has no intention of stopping, and they effectively jumped out of the way once it dawned on them. We took a sharp turn to the left and sped towards the road out of the city. We needed to put as many miles between us and them as possible, as fast as we could.

…

Our relief was short lived, however, once we realized we were being followed by two black SUVs five minutes later. Our little Honda was a relatively good car and had served us faithfully since we got it, but it stood no chance of outrunning our chasers. Lissa realized that as soon as I did.

"What do I do Rose?"

We had reached the outskirts of town, but still had a bit to go until we got to the highway, and they would catch up with us before then. I had studied the area before we moved, but with the path we had taken we didn't have may options.

"Keep going". In a couple minutes we would reach a split on the road. I knew one path would circle back towards downtown, but the other led towards the dense forest that marked the beginning of the mountains. It was rarely used, thanks to its unkempt narrow roads that created dangerous slopes in between the trees. I had taken the car and explored the terrain after we moved and would never suggest taking that road with Lissa otherwise, but it would still be light outside for a while – so Strigoi wouldn't pose a threat for the moment – and I didn't really see another choice. "When we reach the diversion in a minute, you're going to pretend that we'll take the way back downtown. At the last second, you're going to turn right and take the mountain road."

She didn't answer, but I could feel her concentrating through the bond. Say all you want about her Barbie appearance, but this woman loved a car chase and could really give Vin Diesel a run for his money. I had thought it odd at the beginning that she hadn't developed a fear of cars, but quickly understood it had become a control mechanism for her.

I looked at the rearview mirror. I looked ahead of us. "Now". And Lissa turned the steering wheel sharply, sending us practically flying towards the parallel road. She had done it fast enough, without any kind of signaling or warning, that the two SUVs didn't have time to change directions and had to take the other road, effectively separating from us in between all the furious whistling and yells of passerby traffic.

As we drove through the trees, she let out a relieved laugh. I relaxed in my seat. We had successfully avoided the danger. It would take them at least ten minutes to be able to turn around and come back to the entry to the forest road, and by that time they wouldn't find us on time in this maze. We would already be on the highway.

"Where to now?" She had asked that many times in these past two years, and our craving for a bit of stability had eventually become too much for the both of us. That is why we had decided to settle for a couple months. We wanted to forget about being on the run for a while, but it seemed we wouldn't be able to just yet.

"How does Portland sound to you?"

Oscar mewed his approval from the back seat.