We Are Shadows

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

DPOV

What the hell is happening? Why can I all of a sudden hear Rose in my head? Well I should say thoughts because it's not conscious words but projection of intent, if you will. And what was that just then? We burned that strigoi, not with flame but with combined power somehow. My thoughts stopped racing as we reached the gate and the devastation that we found there. It looks like the battle here had been fierce and the amount of bodies on both sides were phenomenal. Maybe we should have been here rather than at the north eastern border but it was a hard fight there too. We really couldn't have got here any sooner. It had taken us only five minutes to run from the north eastern border to the gate; that was five miles away. A mile a minute! Our speed had increased during this battle too. Just a couple of days ago Rose and I measured our speed and we were up by nearly a minute on our best times. What the hell? Is it because we are in the presence of strigoi or the heat of a battle? I don't think so because if that was the case why hadn't I had this years ago? I had fought strigoi and there was not even a whiff of these abilities. Well whatever caused them to appear doesn't concern me as much as the abilities themselves. Mental communication, magic of some kind and more speed; what more surprises were we in for?

As I engaged my first strigoi in this area, I contemplated the biggest shock of the day; I kissed Rose; or nearly did. I shouldn't have done that. I really shouldn't have done that but she wasn't protesting, she leaned in too. I gave a smug smile and downed another strigoi before my brain kicked in again. I still shouldn't have done it though. I'm seven years older than her and I'm her mentor, for the lack of a better word. It's so easy to forget how young she is when she has the strength, speed and maturity that she does and, Lord forgive me, a body to die for. It's not only physical attraction either: It's something more. She 'knows' me, she came to find me and she brought food and that candle in the muffin was a lovely thought. Shame we didn't get to eat them but her lips captivated me and I wanted to eat those instead. As I downed my next strigoi I remembered that Rose was able to 'hear' my thoughts and cursed. Had she heard everything that I had been thinking?

"No, what were you thinking?" I felt rather than heard in my head. It made me jump slightly but I regained myself and noticed Rose off to the side with several strigoi at her feet. She was currently on the search for her next target.

"Roza, catch" I thought and she turned towards me and positioned herself as I threw my strigoi at her stake. I didn't look to see if she caught him as I engaged the next one, because I instinctively knew he was now dead.

"Dimitri, lift your right arm" and I leaned over to the left, raising my arm and exposing the strigoi's left side of her chest. Rose was there in an instant; another one gone.

"So what was it you were thinking?" I felt again. It looks like the telepathy, or whatever you want to call it, only works when the thought is directed towards Rose not simply when I'm thinking about her, which was a relief; knowing every thought would not be a pleasant experience for either of us. "Dimitri?" she pushed again.

"Now's not the time Roza" and I hoped the use of Roza would make it sound less harsh. I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye before engaging another strigoi.

Thirty minutes more saw us push back the strigoi far enough to have guardians shore up the gate. The strigoi had attacked them like a battering ram. The hinges were buckled and warped, and the gate itself was splintered with a few large holes where the strigoi had come through. As I looked around I again wondered if we should have come here first but as I thought more I realised Rose and I had been exactly where we needed to be. If we hadn't have gone to the north east corner first the strigoi would have hit open ground and be widespread throughout the campus but here the door held for a while and the strigoi had to come through one at a time until more holes were created, only then did the fight become intense.