Oh, that voice. Dimitri’s voice. The voice I heard when I fell asleep at night, the voice that had once told me he loved me…

No! It’s not him. Dimitri is gone. This is a monster.

Desperately, I tried to think of how I could win here. I even thought of the ghosts I’d summoned on the road. Mark had said I could do that in moments of wild emotion and that they’d fight for me. This was as wild as emotion could get, yet I couldn’t seem to call them. I honestly had no clue how I’d done it before, and all the wishing in the world couldn’t make it happen now. Damn. What good were terrifying powers if I couldn’t use them to my advantage?

Instead, I pulled the DVD player off its shelf, cords ripping from the wall. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but I was desperate now. I heard a strange, primal battle scream, and some distant part of me realized I was making it. Again, I ran at Dimitri, swinging the DVD player as hard as I could. It probably would have hurt a little-if it had hit him. It didn’t. He intercepted it again, taking it from me, and throwing it down. It smashed to pieces on the floor. In the same motion, he grabbed a hold of my arms to stop me from hitting or reaching for something else. His grip was hard, like it could break my bones, but I kept struggling.

He tried reason again. “I’m not going to hurt you. Roza, please stop.”

Roza. The old nickname. The name he’d first called me when we’d fallen prey to Victor’s lust charm, both of us wrapped naked in each other’s arms …

This isn’t the Dimitri you knew.

My hands were incapacitated, so I struck out with my legs and feet as best I could. It didn’t do much. Without full use of the rest of my body for balance, I had no force to throw into my kicks. For his part, he looked more annoyed than truly concerned or angry. With a loud sigh, he grabbed me by the shoulders and flipped me around, pressing me against the wall and immobilizing me with the full force of his body. I struggled a little but was as pinned as the Strigoi had been when the others and I had gone hunting. The universe had a sick sense of humor.

“Stop fighting me.” His breath was warm against my neck, his body right up against mine. I knew his mouth was only a couple inches away. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I gave another fruitless shove. My breath was coming in ragged gasps, and my head injury throbbed. “You’ll have to understand if I have a hard time believing that.”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. Now, if you’re going to keep fighting, I’ll have to tie you up. If you stop, I’ll let you stay unrestrained.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll escape?”

“No.” His voice was perfectly calm, and chills ran down my spine. “I am not.”

We stood like that for almost a minute, deadlocked. My mind raced. It was true that he probably would have killed me already if that were his intent, yet that gave me no reason to believe I was even remotely safe. Nonetheless, we were at a draw in this fight. Okay, draw wasn’t entirely accurate. I was at a draw. He was toying with me. My head was throbbing where his blow had landed, and this pointless fighting would only take a further toll. I had to regain my strength in order to find a way to escape-if I lived that long. I also needed to stop thinking about how close our bodies were. After our months of being so careful not to touch, this much contact was heady.

I relaxed in his hold. “Okay.”

He hesitated before letting me go, probably wondering if he could trust me. The whole moment reminded me of when we’d been together in the little cabin on the periphery of the Academy’s grounds. I’d been raging and upset, brimming with spirit’s darkness. Dimitri had held me down then, too, and talked me out of that horrible state. We had kissed, then his hands had lifted my shirt, and-no, no. Not here. I couldn’t think about that here.

Dimitri finally eased up, releasing me from the wall. I turned around, and all my instincts wanted to lash out and attack him again. Sternly, I reminded myself to bide my time so that I could gain more strength and information. Even though he’d let me go, he hadn’t moved away. We were only a foot apart. Against my better judgment, I found myself taking him in again, like I had on the street. How could he be the same and yet so different? I tried my best not to focus on the similarities-his hair, the difference in our heights, the shape of his face. Instead, I concentrated on the Strigoi features, the red in his eyes and pallor of his skin.

I was so fixated on my task that it took me a moment to realize he wasn’t saying anything either. He was studying me intently, like his eyes could look right through me. I shivered. It almost-almost! — seemed as though I captivated him the same way he captivated me. That was impossible, though. Strigoi didn’t possess those kinds of emotions, and besides, the thought of him still having any affection for me was probably just wishful thinking on my part. His face had always been hard to read, and now it was overlaid with a mask of cunning and coldness that made it truly impossible to know what was on his mind.

“Why did you come here?” he asked at last.

“Because you hit me on the head and dragged me here.” If I was going to die, I was going to go in true Rose style.

The old Dimitri would have cracked a smile or given an exasperated sigh. This one remained impassive. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.

Why are you here?” His voice was low and dangerous. I’d thought Abe was scary, but there was no competition at all. Even Zmey would have backed off.

“In Siberia? I came to find you.”

“I came here to get away from you.”

I was so shocked that I said something utterly ridiculous.

“Why? Because I might kill you?”

The look he gave me showed that he thought that was indeed a ridiculous thing to say. “No. So we wouldn’t be in this situation. Now we are, and the choice is inevitable.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what this situation was. “Well, you can let me go if you want to avoid it.”

He stepped away and walked toward the living room without looking back at me. I was tempted to try to do a sneak attack on him, but something told me I’d probably only make it about four feet before getting backhanded. He sat down in one of the luxurious leather armchairs, folding his six-foot-seven frame up as gracefully as he’d always done. God, why did he have to be so contradictory? He had the old Dimitri’s habits mixed with those of a monster. I stayed where I was, huddled against the wall.

“Not possible anymore. Not after seeing you now…” Again, he studied me. It felt strange. Part of me responded with excitement to the intensity of his gaze, loving the way he surveyed my body from head to toe. The other part of me felt dirty, like slime or muck was oozing over my skin as he studied me. “You’re still as beautiful as I remember, Roza. Not that I should have expected anything different.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never really had a conversation with a Strigoi, short of trading a few insults and threats in the midst of a fight.

The nearest I’d come was when I’d been held captive by Isaiah. I actually had been tied up then, and most of the talking had been about him killing me. This… well, it wasn’t like that, but it was still definitely creepy. I crossed my arms over my chest and backed up against the wall. It was the closest I could come to some semblance of a defense.

He tilted his head, watching me carefully. A shadow fell across his face in such a way that it made the red in his eyes hard to see. Instead, they looked dark. Just like they used to, endless and wonderful, filled with love and bravery…

“You can sit down,” he said.

“I’m fine over here.”

“Is there anything else you want?”

“For you to let me go?”

For a moment, I thought I saw a bit of that old wryness in his face, the kind he’d get when I made jokes. Studying him, I decided I’d imagined it.