Blood Promise Page 0,79

I'm coming with you." I took a deep breath, bracing myself for what came next. I'd promised Abe I'd leave Baia-but I hadn't promised to return to the U.S. "Take me to Novosibirsk."

Chapter Sixteen

Denis and his two unpromised friends, Artur and Lev, were ecstatic that I was going to be part of their posse. But if they expected me to share their crazy enthusiasm for reckless Strigoi hunting, they were about to be sorely disappointed. In fact, it didn't take long after I joined them before they realized that I was approaching the hunt very differently than they were. Denis's friend Lev had a car, and we took turns driving to Novosibirsk. The drive was about fifteen hours, and even though we stopped at a hotel for the night, it was still a lot of continuous time to be cooped up in a small space with three guys who couldn't stop talking about all the Strigoi they were going to kill.

In particular, they kept trying to draw me out. They wanted to know about how many Strigoi I'd slain. They wanted to know what the battle at the Academy had been like. They wanted to know my methods. Anytime my mind turned to those topics, though, all I could think of was blood and grief. It was nothing I wanted to brag about, and it took about six hours on the road for them to finally figure out that they weren't going to get much information from me.

Instead, they regaled me with tales of their own adventures. To be fair, they'd slain several Strigoi-but they'd lost a number of their friends, all of whom had been in their teens, like these guys. My experiences weren't that dissimilar; I'd lost friends too. My losses had been a result of being outnumbered, though. Denis's group's casualties seemed to have been more due to rushing in to without thinking. Indeed, their plan once we got to Novosibirsk wasn't really that solid. They reiterated that Strigoi liked to hunt at places that were crowded at night, like dance clubs, or in remote places like alleys, that made for easy pickings. No one noticed as much when people disappeared from those kinds of places. So Denis's plans mostly involved trolling those hot spots in the hopes that we'd run into Strigoi.

My initial thought was to immediately ditch this group and strike out on my own. After all, my main goal had been to simply get to Novosibirsk.

With everything I'd learned now, it seemed logical that Siberia's largest city would be the next best place to look. Then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that jumping into the Strigoi scene alone would be as stupid as one of the unpromised gang's plans. I could use their backup.

Plus, since I didn't actually know where Dimitri was yet, I had to come up with a method of getting some information. I'd need help for that.

We made it to Novosibirsk at the end of the second day of driving. Despite hearing about its size, I hadn't imagined it would be anything like Moscow or Saint Petersburg. And true, it turned out to be not quite as large as they were, but it was still just as much a city, complete with skyscrapers, theaters, commuters, and the same beautiful architecture.

We crashed with a friend of theirs who had an apartment downtown, a dhampir named Tamara. Her English wasn't very good, but from the sounds of it, she was another unpromised one and just as excited as everyone else to rid the world of Strigoi. She was a little older than the rest of us, which was why she had her own place, and was a cute brunette with freckles. It sounded as though she waited until whenever the guys came to town to hunt, which I took as a small blessing. At least she didn't go out alone. She seemed particularly excited to have another girl around, but like the others, she quickly picked up that I didn't share their enthusiasm.

When our first night of Strigoi hunting came around, I finally stepped up into a leadership position. The sudden change in behavior startled them at first, but they soon listened with rapt attention, still caught up in my superstar reputation.

"Okay," I said, looking from face to face. We were in Tamara's tiny living room, sitting in a circle. "Here's how it's going to work. We're going to hit the nightclub scene as a group, patrolling