richellemead-vampireacademy01-vampireacademy-110824015328-phpapp02

"Fine. I'll stab him with a silver stake.”
Dimitri sat up now, crossing his long legs in one fluid motion. I still couldn't figure out how
someone so tall could be so graceful. "Oh?" He raised his dark eyebrows. "Do you have a silver
stake? Do you even know how to use one?”
I dragged my eyes away from his body and scowled. Made with elemental magic, silver stakes
were a guardian's deadliest weapon. Stabbing a Strigoi through the heart with one meant instant
death. The blades were also lethal to Moroi, so they weren't given out lightly to novices. My
classmates had just started learning how to use them. I'd trained with a gun before, but no one
would let me near a stake yet. Fortunately, there were two other ways to kill a Strigoi.
"Okay. I'll cut his head off.”
"Ignoring the fact that you don't have a weapon to do that, how will you compensate for the fact
that he may be a foot taller than you?”
I straightened up from touching my toes, annoyed. "Fine, then I'll set him on fire.”
"Again, with what?”
"All right, I give up. You've already got the answer. You're just messing with me. I'm at the
mall and I see a Strigoi. What do I do?”
He looked at me and didn't blink. "You run.”
I repressed the urge to throw something at him. When I finished my stretches, he told me he'd
run with me. That was a first. Maybe running would give me some insight into his killer
reputation.
We set out into the chilly October evening. Being back on a vampiric schedule still felt weird to
me. With school about to start in an hour, I expected the sun to be coming up, not down. But it
was sinking on the western horizon, lighting up the snow-capped mountains with an orange
glow. It didn't really warm things up, and I soon felt the cold pierce my lungs as my need for
oxygen deepened. We didn't speak. He slowed his pace to match mine, so we stayed together.