Vampire Academy

"Night, Tim Tim."

"Goodnight, Rayne," Timur mumbled sleepily with a very small smirk.

Rayne, as predicted, was leading Tyler along to a church after coaxing him out of the wards. She'd made him promise not to tell anyone about what she was about to show him and had led him through most of the church, watching him all the while before leading him to a door. "Are you ready?"

///////lamepost

"Probably not," Tyler answered, "but show me."

Rayne opened the door and went down the stairs, leading him into a room with a Strigoi who was sitting in a circle of blood, symbols in it also drawn in blood. He was much, much paler than most Strigoi, and looked up groggily at them when they came in. He snarled at them but didn't move otherwise.

"Those symbols are in Hebrew." She glanced at him. "He's trapped in there."

Tyler stared at the Strigoi, instantly whipping out a stake, but examined the circle and the Strigoi's pallor. He frowned deeply, examining the symbols, and finally asked, "How?"

"Him, I drained so that I didn't have to worry about him attacking me. I...found something about this in Vlad's Papers. Anna wrote it though, explaining kind of cryptically about this, as she wasn't able to do a lot of research because she felt Zedekiah closing in on them..." She frowned. "That's what I've spent most of my time with, trying to see if I couldn't figure this out. It... kind of works like a seal, a trap. Those words in Hebrew help to 'lock' the Strigoi in, the circle acts as the cage."

She glanced at her arms and back to him. "Thing is, it requires shadow-kissed blood to do it. I've been using mine. It fucking works though." She drew her knife and cut her arm a tiny bit. The Strigoi smelled it and got up, sluggishly, and wandered to the edge of the circle, grabbing at her. However, it didn't cross the threshold. 

"Only thing is, I haven't used it yet on a Spirit using Strigoi."

Tyler listened to her, examining the Strigoi and the circle while he did. "What do the symbols say?" he asked. He prepared to ask how she knew the Strigoi wasn't faking, but stopped when it attempted to step out of the circle and glanced at Rayne. "How much of your own blood have you had to use?" he asked, a little nervously.

"A lot," Rayne muttered. "Part of the reason why it's taken so long." She frowned and pulled up her sleeve to show needle marks on the inside of her arm. "They read 'seal', 'demon', 'cage', and 'lock'."

Tyler stopped looking at the Strigoi, staring at her arm. He swallowed hard and reached over to give her a gentle hug. "Well, it works," he muttered. "You can ask others for help now. Rose, Justin, whoever, so you don't have to keep doing this to yourself. Not as much." Tyler then asked, "How are you going to implement this?"

Rayne hugged him back and nodded at his comment about Rose and Justin, then sighed. "I know where Zed and them 'stay'. I'd say it's fucking time to bring this to them. I do need to see if it works with Spirit Strigoi though."

"How exactly are you going to find a spirit Strigoi and lure them into a circle?"

"Well, it'd be too dangerous for me to go after Tiveon. Lilly's out of the question... Maybe we could find and track one down."

"Delilah, maybe," Tyler muttered, only half-serious. He shook his head.

"But she doesn't use Spirit," she teased.

"With how strong she is, I doubt one of these could hold her anyway," he joked lightly.

"Probably not... I worry if it will hold Zedekiah either."

"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out."

"Yeah... Do you wanna help?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'll help," Tyler said.

"You want to go now then?"

"Sure." Tyler glanced at the Strigoi in the circle. "What about him?"

"We need to kill him," Rayne muttered. "Do you want to that or me?"

"You can," Tyler said after a moment.

Rayne nodded and drew her stake. She went towards the Strigoi and quickly stabbed him in the chest, watching him turn to ash. "Let's get going," she muttered, already starting for the stairs.