We Are Shadows

Chapter 29

A/N Happy New Year my fellow cyber bookworms.  Hope you have a good holiday season.  Here is the next chapter for you.  Enjoy.

Chapter 29

RPOV

I was fighting for my life. I shouldn't have left the villa grounds. So stupid Rose. Damn Dimitri. If I hadn't been angry with him I wouldn't have walked out after I blew up at him this afternoon, but he upset me with his apparent indifference or down right disgust at the thought of me. Maybe I should have just given him both barrels and all the hurt and rage that had built up since leaving St. Basil's but I was so hurt. Concentrate Rose, I said to myself as another strigoi replaced the one I had just dispatched with a stake thrust. I never gave back the stakes that I had used for the fight at St Basil's and I had taken it upon myself to wear them everywhere. I'm glad I did, because this attack was totally out of the blue. Who hears of a strigoi group of over twenty roaming together without there being a specific target in mind? Could this be another situation like we had at St Basil's? Was there a school near by or a large moroi settlement that the strigoi were after? That thought nearly caused me to loose my stride. Did this bunch have a specific target and that was the reason they were out here? Pavel hadn't had wind of any unusual activity in the area or he would have mentioned it so this must have been a sudden and surprise attack. Could she and Dimitri be those targets? Who knows? Focus Rose.

Ooff! That hurt. I'll have a bruise there in the morning. If I survive that is. This battle is brutal and I didn't have Dimitri as back up. Damn you Dimitri! Why did he have to be such an asshole? If I survive this I will have it out with him because I have had enough of him ignoring the fact that we have a connection and what is the point of denying that connection now that we know it's there? It's not like there is the risk of us being found out as that ship has already sailed and anything extra we find out isn't going to make it worse because, in the eyes of the moroi, we were as bad as strigoi anyway.

Shit, I think I'm about to find out the limit to my stamina. I'm getting slower and I've only been fighting for a fraction of the time of the St Basil's attack. Another indication of the connection Dimitri and I share. Damn and blast that man. Why isn't he here?

At that moment a strigoi caught me across the face and I can feel it sting. I think I am bleeding but I can't stop to investigate because if I do, it will be game over. I was straining my body to get every little bit of strength I had left inside me. If I was going down, I was taking more with me and with that thought I staked the strigoi that I was currently fighting. Maybe I had more strength left than I thought. Lets hope it continues. I caught the next strigoi off guard and staked him quickly. He was obviously relatively inexperienced at fighting because I would never have got the drop on one of the experienced ones. My next one doesn't look so green. She had been a guardian and she looks like she isn't holding anything back. I was assaulted with punch after punch and each one feels like a freight train hitting into me. I can't keep this up much longer. My body is beginning to burn with the strain but in the back of my mind I can feel a pushing, an urgency for me to keep going. Something which in itself was giving me the strength to continue. I managed to lash out at my opponent and punch her directly on the nose. I could feel it shatter beneath my fist but I also felt my knuckles complain at the force in which I struck her. That strength obviously came from deep down somewhere because I didn't think I had anything left. As she staggered back from the blow I lunged in with the stake and thrust upwards. Her eyes had faded back to their original colour of hazel by the time she hit the ground. I'm sure she smiled as I thrust the silver home but I couldn't contemplate too much on that because there were I don't know how many more strigoi that still wanted me dead.

As I fight on the chanting in my head is becoming more insistent like a voice just out of hearing range but getting closer. With it I'm finding new strength that I thought I'd already used. I don't question it too much because I need to concentrate but whatever it is I'm thankful for it at this time. As I dispatch another strigoi the answer comes to me. Dimitri. It is his voice I can hear in my head. He had heard me and was coming to help. Although I am still angry at him, right now I could kiss him. I finding a renewed urgency with my movements now that I have help on the way. I may actually survive this.