Vampire Academy: Last Sacrifice (Dimitri's POV)

Chapter 14

I waited until I'd fully regained my composure before waking Rose. I couldn't let this purge her view of me. I wanted to make sure that she thought I was over it; I didn't want her to fear me. I couldn't allow that. Sydney kept shooting me worried glances which meant that she was sworn to secrecy. I took a deep breath and suddenly there was a honk and the car jolted across the road as another car caught up behind us. For a moment I thought it would be the guardians, but it was just some stupid idiot who shouldn't be allowed on the road. Sydney glared out of the window and Rose gasped.

"Sorry," Sydney apologised. "That jerk cut me off." Rose took a breath and I wondered what she was thinking. There was no reason to be mad at Sydney. At least, not in my eyes.

"Where are we?" Rose asked.

"Outskirts of Lexington." She pulled over and entered the address I gave her into the GPS. I shuddered as I realised we were only five miles away.

"Not a great part of town from what I hear," I told them. "Donovan runs a tattoo parlour that's only open at night. A couple of other Strigoi work with him. They get partiers, drunk kids...the kind of people that can easily disappear. The kind that Strigoi love." I thought back to the reputation Rose had when we first met, and about how everyone thought she was perpetually drunk. I wouldn't have let this happen to her. Ivashkov, on the other hand, I didn't mind so much, although I was worried about what that would do to my reputation.

"Seems like the police would eventually notice that every time someone went out for a tattoo, they disappeared," Rose pointed out. I didn't mean to laugh. It really wasn't as amusing as Boris thought; In fact, it was quite sick. But I laughed anyway.

"Well the 'funny' thing is that they don't kill everyone that comes in. They actually give tattoos to some of them and let them go. They smuggle drugs through the place too."

"You sure know a lot." I steeled myself before making my response.

"I made it my business to know a lot, and Strigoi have to keep a roof over their heads too. I actually met Donovan once and got most of this straight from the source. I just didn't know where exactly he worked out of until now." Yes, it hadn't been a very pleasant experience. I'd caught him drinking from one of my subjects. He was lucky he was alive.

"Okay, so we've got the info on him. What do we do with it?" Time for my plan. I'd been thinking it up in the car and it was the best we could get. Not exactly safe, but things never were in our world.

"Lure him out. Send in a 'customer' with a message from me needing to meet him. I'm not the kind of person he can ignore-well, that he used to not-never mind." I couldn't be bothered to explain our relationship. I'd allowed him to live on certain conditions, which weren't exactly the most pleasant conditions. I hadn't wanted to come within a particular radius of him, so I wondered how he would react to my new condition. "One he's out, we get him to a place we choose."

"I can do that."

"No, you can't."

"Why not?" Her voice was defensive. Honestly,Rose, I thought. You know me better than that. Have you forgotten your existence?

"Because they'll know you're a dhampir the instant they see you. They'll probably smell it first. No Strigoi would have a dhampir working for him-only humans." There was a flash of realisation on her face which vanished as soon as Sydney dropped into our conversation.

"No!" she exclaimed. "I am not doing that!" I shook my head, desperately trying to think up other options but coming up blank.

"I don't like it either, but we don't have a lot of options. If he thinks you work for me, he won't hurt you." I told her this with as much confidence as I had so that she would be reassured, but I had a feeling it wasn't working.