Last Sacrifice

instructions. 'We wanted to talk to you about something.'

'Mm-hmm,' she said, gazing at bees hovering around some honeysuckle.

'Is there a relative of yours . . . someone who, uh, had a baby a while ago . . . ?'

'Sure,' she said. One of the bees flew from the honeysuckle to a rose, and she never looked away. 'Lots.'

'Articulate, Rosemarie,' remarked Victor. 'Very articulate.'

I bit my lip, knowing an outburst would upset Sonya. And probably Robert too.

'This would be a secret baby,' I told her. 'And you were the beneficiary on a bank account that took care of the baby . . . an account paid for by Eric Dragomir.'

Sonya's head whipped toward me, and there was no dreamy absentmindedness in her blue eyes now. A few seconds passed before she spoke. Her voice was cold and hard—not a Strigoi voice, but definitely a back off voice. 'No. I don't know anything about that.'

'She's lying,' said Robert.

'I didn't need any powers to figure that out,' scoffed Sydney.

I ignored both of them. 'Sonya, we know you know, and it's really important we find this baby . . . er, child. Person.' We'd made guesses on the age but weren't 100 percent sure. 'You said you were worried about Lissa earlier. This will help her. She needs to know. She needs to know she has another family member.'

Sonya turned her attention back to the bees, but I knew she was no longer watching them. 'I don't know anything.' There was a trembling in her voice, and something told me that maybe I shouldn't push this after all. I couldn't tell if she was afraid or on the verge of rage.

'Then why were you on the account?' This came from Victor.

'I don't know anything,' she repeated. Her voice could have made icicles form on the ornamental trees. 'Nothing.'

'Stop lying,' snapped Victor. 'You know something, and you're going to tell us.'

'Hey!' I exclaimed. 'Be quiet. You don't have interrogation rights here.'

'You didn't seem to be doing a very good job.'

'Just shut up, okay?' I looked back at Sonya, replacing my glare with a smile. 'Please,' I begged. 'Lissa's in trouble. This will help her. I thought you said before that you wanted to help her?'

'I promised . . .' said Sonya. Her voice was so low, I could barely hear it.

'Promised what?' I asked. Patience, patience. I had to remain calm. I couldn't risk a breakdown.

She squeezed her eyes shut and raked her hands through her hair violently, almost like a child about to have a tantrum. 'Promised not to tell. Promised not to tell anyone . . .'

I had the urge to run over and shake her. Patience, patience, I repeated to myself. Don't upset her. 'We wouldn't ask you to break your promise if it wasn't important. Maybe . . . maybe you can get in touch with this person . . .' Who had she promised? Eric's mistress? 'And see if it's okay to tell us?'

'Oh for God's sake,' said Victor irritably. 'This is ridiculous and getting us nowhere.' He glanced at his brother. 'Robert?'

Robert hadn't done much so far today, but at Victor's command, Robert leaned forward. 'Sonya?'

Still obviously distraught, she turned to look at him . . . and her face went still.

'Tell us what we need to know,' said Robert. His voice wasn't kind so much as smooth and lulling, with a faintly sinister touch. 'Tell us who and where this child is. Tell us who the mother is.'

This time, I did jump to my feet. Robert was using compulsion on her to get the answers. Sonya's eyes stayed locked on him, but her body began to shake. Her lips parted, though no sound came out. A tangle of thoughts swirled in my mind. Compulsion would get us what we needed to know, but something told me, it wasn't right—

Sonya stopped me from any more pondering. She shot up almost as quickly as I had. She was still staring at Robert, but no longer in that transfixed, hypnotized way. She'd broken the compulsion, and now . . . now she was pissed. The features that had been scared and fragile earlier were filled with fury. I had no magical senses, but after being with Lissa, I knew raging spirit when I saw it. Sonya was a bomb, about to explode.

'How dare you . . .' she hissed. 'How dare you try to compel me?'

Plants and vines near Robert suddenly sprang to life, growing to impossible heights. They reached out, tangled themselves around his chair's legs, and pulled. The chair toppled over, Robert along with it. Victor moved to help his brother, but Robert was already taking matters into his own hands. Recovering remarkably fast, he narrowed his eyes at Sonya, and she went flying backward, slamming against the wooden fence. Air users could do that trick sometimes, but this wasn't air blowing her back. This was spirit's telekinetic abilities. He apparently possessed them outside of dreams too. Lovely.

I'd seen spirit users battle it out before, when Avery Lazar and Lissa had gone one on one. That hadn't been pretty, particularly since more than this exterior psychic phenomena had occurred. Avery had actually dug into Lissa's mind—and mine. I didn't know Robert or Sonya's full skill set, but this couldn't end well.

'Dimitri!' I yelled, springing toward Sonya. I didn't exactly know what I was going to do, but tackling her seemed like a sound plan. From what I'd observed, a lot of spirit involved eye contact with the target.

And sure enough, when I managed to wrestle her to the ground, she struggled half-heartedly but mostly fought to keep her gaze on Robert. He screamed in sudden alarm, looking down at his own body in terror. Sonya was planting visions into his head. His expression hardened. He had to know it was an illusion, and a few moments later, he looked up, having broken her spell like she'd broken his earlier compulsion.

Dimitri came tearing out the door at that point, just as Robert used his mind to fling one of the chairs toward Sonya. Of course, I was on top of her, so the chair hit me in the back. Dimitri picked up pretty quickly what was going on and ran toward Robert, attempting the same tactic as me. Victor, possibly thinking his brother was in physical danger, tried to pry Dimitri away, which was futile. More vines began to reach toward Robert, and I realized constraining Sonya wasn't all that useful.

'Get him inside!' I yelled to Dimitri. 'Get him away from her!'

Dimitri had already guessed that and began dragging Robert toward the door. Even with Victor interfering, Dimitri's strength was enough to get Robert out of there and back into the house. As soon as her target was gone, all the energy seemed to fade out of Sonya. She made no more efforts to fight me and collapsed to the ground. I was relieved, having feared she'd turn on me once Robert was gone. Tentatively, still on guard, I helped Sonya sit up. She leaned against me, weak as a rag doll, and cried into my shoulder. Another breakdown.

After that, it was a matter of damage control. In order to keep the spirit users apart, Dimitri had taken Robert to the bedroom and left Victor with him. Robert seemed as worn out as Sonya, and Dimitri deemed the brothers safe enough to leave alone. Sonya collapsed on the couch, and after both Dimitri and I had tried to calm her down, we stepped away while Sydney held the Moroi woman's hand.

I briefly recapped what had happened. Dimitri's face grew more and more incredulous as I did.

'I told you it wasn't time!' he exclaimed. 'What were you thinking? She's too weak!'

'You call that weak? And hey, I was doing fine! It wasn't until Victor and Robert got involved that things went to hell.'

Dimitri took a step toward me, anger radiating off him. 'They should never have gotten involved. This is you, acting irrational again, jumping in foolishly with no thought of the consequences.'

Outrage shot through me in return. 'Hey, I was trying to make progress here. If being rational is sitting around and doing therapy, then I'm happy to jump over the edge. I'm not afraid to get in the game.'

'You have no idea what you're saying,' he growled. We were standing closer now, hardly any space left between us as we engaged in our battle of wills. 'This may have set us back.'

'This set us forward. We found out she knows about Eric Dragomir. The problem is she promised not to tell anyone about this baby.'

'Yes, I promised,' piped up Sonya. Dimitri and I turned as one, realizing our argument was fully visible and audible to Sonya and Sydney. 'I promised.' Her voice was very small and weak, pleading with us.

Sydney squeezed her hand. 'We know. It's okay. It's okay to keep promises. I understand.'

Sonya looked at her gratefully. 'Thank you. Thank you.'