Hello! This story have been sitting in my head (the first chapters) and some one paper for the past two years. I'm not the fastest writer, but I finally found a wonderful Beta who could correct my mistakes and I feel satisfied enough to start posting the story!

The main characters will be out of my own imagination, though the original characters will appear in the story. They all belong to the very talented author Richelle Mead.

I hope that you will enjoy this story of mine!

One

12 years earlier
December, a few days before Christmas

"Da, mama, i daĭ Alexei bolʹshoĭ potseluĭ ot menya", (Yes mom, and give Alexei a big kiss from me)

"Da, dorogaya, ya budu. Do svidaniya", (Yes sweetheart, I will. Goodbye)

"Do svidaniya", Nina pressed the call away. While talking to her mother, she had heard her son's talk and noises in the background as he played with some of his cars. She had only been away for three days, but she missed him as if she had been gone for three months.

"Nina! We are serving the dessert now!" Amy Badica appeared in the doorway to the guest room and knocked on the already open door. Nina nodded towards her friend and rose from the bed in the guest room. She was still full from the dinner and dessert did not appeal that much to her. But it was Amy's birthday, and Nina could take a small slice. She was thirstier for blood than cake anyway.

"I am coming", she smiled.

Amy Badica (Though married Drozov since about a year back) smiled widely back. She was a Moroi, born into one of the smaller royal families in America, the Badica's. She was just as tall and slim as every other Moroi; however, she was now a little curvier around the bust and bottom after the birth of her daughter two months ago. She had dark blonde hair, cut in a longer page that reached to her shoulders and dark blue eyes. All of the Badica's had that northern Europe emergence; the whole family was probably descended from northern Scandinavia or possibly Russia.

Nina herself was a non-royal Moroi from Russia, born and raised in Saint Petersburg where she lived in her mother's house along with her six year old son Alexei. Her pregnancy had been totally unplanned and she had given birth to him about six months after she had graduated, much to her mother's dismay. But even though she disapproved of her daughter having a child in such young age without a man, she had supported Nina during the whole process. Towards the end, she thought that her mother finally started to melt into the thought of having a grandchild; that was until she met him though. The father was a Dhampir that had been in one of her classes at school; and as know, Dhampir and Moroi relationships could end in a Dhampir child. Her mother was a strict woman; and in her opinion, Moroi women didn't birth Dhampir children.
Nevertheless, Nina loved her little boy more than anything.

Amy vanished from the doorway and went to entertain her guests and take out the dessert. Nina followed her though the hallway and into the living room, where Amy's husband and brother still sat at the table, talking open hearted with each other as they each drank from a glass of wine. It was a poor gathering for Amy's 25th birthday, but apparently this had been a bad weekend for her relatives to drive all the way to Billings to celebrate her.
Amy's nephews, two boys 9 and 7 years old, had already left the table and were playing loudly in the guest room.

Just as Nina sat down at the table Amy came out of the kitchen with a blue tray in her hands. On the tray stood a chocolate cake covered in cream along with some plates and spoons. It was a small cake, but Moroi couldn't consummate as much ordinary food as Dhampirs and humans could. Amy's brother whistled and clapped his hand at the sight of the cake.

With a wide smile on his lips, he rose from the table and held his glass up. "Let us sing for the birthday girl."

With blushing cheeks, Amy sat down while the other rose and started to sing. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear A- -"

They were interrupted in the song by the sound of crushed glass. Everyone grew quiet, waiting for further sounds. They all hoped that the boys had accidentally broken a window pane or that whatever they had heard was something they had imagined.
Rather, they all hoped that it was nothing to worry about.

All the guardians in the house were suddenly on high alert. All three of them had their stakes out, ready to kill any possible threat, searching and listening for more sounds. But everything was quiet.

Amy shot her husband a frightened look turned her head towards the bedroom where their daughter had started to cry from the noise.

"Arthur, what's going on?" she asked worryingly. Guardian Schoenberg, a tall man in his late 40's, appeared in the entrance between the living room and the hallway, his silver stake ready in his hands and eyes searching the area.

"We don't know yet", he said. His legendary presence and dark voice calmed everyone down a bit, except for Amy, whose gaze was fixed on the direction of the nursery. Just as the glass to the patio door exploded she ran in direction towards her screaming daughter.

Nina screamed loud and covered her face with her hands, protecting it from the flying glass. The sharp pieces cut up small scratches on the top of her hands. She removed her hands just in time to see a tall and dark haired Strigoi entered the living room though the patio door. She had never seen a Strigoi before, and she was petrified by the apparition. She was used to the pale skin of the Moroi race, but this, his skin was chalky while shade as the skin of a corpse. Two eyes that once must have been warmly brown were lined with red, cutting of anything but a cold and listless look.

Nina was unable to say anything. This house was supposed to be safe; it was supposed to have wards to protect them. But now, a Strigoi stood in the living room.

And there was no guardians coming.

All of sudden, the sound of several more window panes being broken echoed in the house, along with the sound of broken wood. One Strigoi was bad enough, but now several Strigoi were suddenly entering the house. Two more came in from the patio door and at least two entered through the front door.

In the entrance to the hallway, Nina heard a gurgling sound and saw a body landed lump on the floor. Guardian Schoenberg's silver stake rolled a couple of feet on the ground before stopping. One of the boys, Daniel, who obviously was frightened by the situation but probably didn't realize the seriousness of it, came running into the living room to seek protection with his father.

For some reason, the two Strigoi in the hallway let him be. However, the female Strigoi in by the patio door didn't.
She took two steps towards him, and he barely had a chance to slow down before she grabbed him by his hair. Daniel's father, Amy's brother, took a leap up from the chair to get to his son's aid.

Nina took a step forward in a foolish attempt to help, her own motherly instincts acting on autopilot. No one had the time to act before the female Strigoi twisted Daniel's neck out of place and tossed the lifeless body aside, landing next to the sofa.

When she heard the painful whimpering from Daniel's father, Nina felt as she if had been slapped in the face. Coldness and fear clasped around her stomach. At first, she had thought everything had been a horrible dream and she just woke up to face the reality, which was almost worse than the feeling that it was a dream. There was Strigoi in the house who was there to drain them all. No mercy.

Of course, Strigoi felt no mercy or compassion towards anyone. Not even each other.

The female, a woman with blonde hair, took a step towards Nina, who stumbled back a few steps. The Strigoi, who was a lot faster, grabbed her throat in a choke hold, exposing her fangs in a growl of satisfaction before burying her strong fingers into Nina's throat. She saw the red ring of death around the blue eyes burning with blood thirst.

Nina's thoughts immediately went to her little boy in Russia, her little Alexei, and she sent a quick thought to any higher gods that might exist that she left him with her mother. She wasn't scared for her own sake, she was scared for his. If she died today, he would be an orphan since his father was not in the picture. The thought of not being able to be in his life as he grew up hurt more in her heart than the female Strigoi's hard grip around her throat. As the tight grip pressed her blood vessels together, cutting off the blood flow to the brain, Nina's head started to spin and her field of vision started to crawl inwards. Right before she thought that she would faint, she realized that she would not survive this. The female enjoyed seeing all hope of surviving vanish from Nina's brown eyes.

She gripped even tighter, her nails cutting through the skin with a sharp pain. With one jerk, the Strigoi ripped her throat open.

Nina's life was over in within a second, her face turned blank and she fell onto her back in front of the TV. Like a dark halo, her dark hair spilled out over the floor while the blood pumped out from the open gash.

It would take two days before someone found the victims of the Badica Massacre.

Let me know what you think of it and many thanks to my Beta-reader who sees every little mistake that I make! :)

Love, Zeraphime