Disclaimer: I don't own VA. I do own this plot.

36

My heart raced as I took in my surroundings. The dimly shadowed room, the naked fluorescent bulb hanging from a wire above me, the cold concrete floor biting into my sore shoulder and hip. No. No! I couldn't be back here! Dimitri and my mother had saved me, taken me away from my erstwhile prison. How was I back? It was all so real. I could smell the cold metal of the chains biting into my wrists and ankle, feel the way they squeezed on my joints until it felt like my bones were separating.

I tugged and tugged at my fetters, crying out in pain and frustration as they remained solidly in place. How could this be real? It wasn't real. Dimitri had saved me. My friends had come for me.

But it felt so real. Could dreams feel this real?

I looked down at myself. I was curled around the large bulk of my belly, trying to protect it and its inhabitant from our surroundings. The small protection of clothes was long since gone, the tattered remains of my blazer and blouse falling uselessly around me, unable to span my changing girth. The cold press of the concrete floor onto my stomach sent shivers down my spine and I felt the feeble struggles of my son moving away from the hard, cold press on my left side, orienting himself mostly to the right side of my womb. I wanted to cry. I did cry. I couldn't even protect him while he was inside of me. I couldn't give him a comfortable position.

Why was I here?

The room seemed to flicker around me and it took me a minute to realize that the light overhead was sputtering out, the filaments burned up at last.

I willed to live on. I couldn't be trapped here in the dark. The suffocating press of the shadows surrounding me threatened to move closer with each flicker of the light.

"Please don't go, please don't go," I repeated like it was a mantra.

But it did go.

The light sputtered out and I felt my breathing come in shallow gasps.

Not the dark. Isolation and restraints I could and had dealt with before. But the dark? When I couldn't see anything coming?

That was the worst. I couldn't stand being in the dark, both literally and figuratively.

"Why am I here?" I asked myself, panting. "Why? I haven't been here in months! My friends rescued me. They wouldn't leave me here like this!"

"They didn't have a choice," said a cold voice close by.

I shrieked as Marlen spoke to me. I hadn't heard the door open. Hadn't seen anyone come in. Had he been here all along?

His voice was amused. "Did I sneak up on you?" he asked. "I'm very good at that. I let you think you're safe and then I get you when you're most vulnerable."

I glared into the darkness.

"This isn't real," I told him stoutly. "I'm not really here."

"Aren't you?" he asked. "Did you ever really leave this room?"

"Of course I did! I've been back at Court for months!"

"That's not what I asked. Did you ever really leave this room?"

I was confused. I'd answered that question. Of course I had! I'd gone back to Court, graduated college, shared love and excitement with friends and family.

And had the worry and threat of Marlen hanging over me the entire time. I'd physically left this room but had I mentally? Had I been free mentally since Marlen had taken me or had I been hostage to my fears of both him and his partner ever since?

Marlen chuckled. The sound was low and cold.

"We'll see each other soon, Rose," he promised.

"Wake up!"

I gasped and sat up in bed, narrowly avoiding smacking foreheads with Sonya as I did.

"What?" I gasped, heart pounding furiously. I hadn't seen Sonya since our argument, finally coming back to my empty apartment after hours of meandering around Court grounds. It was a shock to see her now.

She stood beside my bed, hurriedly dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Her face was grim.

"What's wrong?" I demanded, all anger and panic over our argument fading in an instant as I realized her reason for being here was serious. Her next words confirmed it.

"There has been an attack."

Less than an hour later Sonya—clutching a sleepy Mandy—sat in the corner of Hans office in the guardian headquarters. I was wearing a path in the gray carpet as I paced back and forth before the desk. Guardian Stone, Hans second in command, sat behind the desk, talking rapidly into the phone at his ear. Outside the office door the guardian headquarters were a blur of activity as teams of guardians were prepared to leave and help handle the scene of the attack. The scene of the attack being the hotel in Boston that Lissa had been staying at.

When I had spoken to Dimitri last he had mentioned that they were rotating the hotels that Lissa stayed at to make sure that she wasn't in one place too long. The Eliot Hotel, where the attack had taken place, was the one Lissa was staying at her last night in Boston.

And we had no idea if Lissa was there when the attack happened.

Lissa's entourage had been scheduled to leave for the airport around the time of the attack but the weather in Boston had been severe and there had been concern that the flight would be delayed. We hadn't had another check in from the team since that news and therefore didn't know if they'd been present during the attack or not.

And from the sounds of it, the attack had been massive.

We were still receiving reports from the guardians who'd been present. The Eliot was housing over a dozen important Moroi from the conference and there had been an estimated thirty or so Strigoi that attacked during the early hours of dawn. That was part of the reason their attack was so successful, because with the coming dawn the threat of Strigoi had been relatively low—until the day had dawned extremely overcast with no signs of sunlight.

Alchemists were en-route to the hotel now and the guardians who had reported the attack to Court were searching the building for signs of Lissa's party. The humans who worked the front desk were among the victims of the attack so the guardians were trying to navigate the hotel's database to see if Lissa's group had checked out. Meanwhile they were scouring the building for signs of her.

I'd tried calling Lissa, Dimitri and my mother immediately following Sonya's news, dialing frantically as I rushed across Court grounds in the dim morning light. They hadn't answered. Nobody in the party had.

We all tried to reason that there could be another explanation for this lack of communication but none of those excuses eased the knot of pain settled firmly in my chest.

They aren't gone, I thought to myself. They are on their way back home and when they get here they'll have a damn good explanation as to why they couldn't answer a fucking phone.

I thought back to my dream when Marlen had said "I let you think you're safe and then I get you when you're most vulnerable."

I looked down at my stomach, glaring. Most vulnerable was right. I couldn't have gone on the trip and even if I had I'd have done nothing but get myself killed trying to help. I was vulnerable and by being so I made those that I loved vulnerable.

I knew Marlen was behind this.

Technically speaking it could be any group of Strigoi who managed to rally together and attack a large congregation of Moroi. The meeting in Boston wasn't exactly a secret. But what were the chances of more than one large group of Strigoi being present in New England and managing a strategic attack on such a large group of guardians?

That many Strigoi together was practically unheard of up until a few years ago and there hadn't been many occurrences of such a group since.

Marlen had rebuilt his army.

"Rose sit down," Sonya said in a quiet, tired voice. "You'll send yourself into labor at this rate."

I paused in my pacing to assess the validity of this statement.

I had one hand pressed to my lower back, trying to assuage the pain there. The other was resting on my sternum where I was steadily applying pressure in an attempt to alleviate the knot of pain nestled behind it.

She had a point and I knew Dr. Gibson would be berating me if she was here now. I moved to the chair beside her, animosity forgotten, and lowered myself into it with a small groan of pain.

"Mikhail still not answering?" I asked her quietly, mindful of the sleeping toddler in her lap. She'd had her phone out at frequent intervals, trying to reach her husband.

She shook her head, lips tight.

"They've been sorting through the damage for over an hour," I said, trying to cheer her up as much as myself. "They would have known if Lissa and the team were there by now."

"It was a mess there," she said, gesturing to the computer on Hans' desk where we'd seen many bloody pictures taken by guardians on sight. Once the Alchemists got there we'd have much more thorough documentation. Until they arrived, however, the guardians were doing their best to find and treat the wounded, catalogue the dead, search for any lingering Strigoi, and fend off the human authorities. The hotel was extremely large. There were any number of rooms that the team could have barricaded Lissa in for her safety.

And as much as I knew they would protect Lissa I also knew that if they were there during the attack Dimitri, my mother and the others would not have stood idle while their comrades were in trouble.

If they had been there they would have fought. And if they had fought and survived they would have contacted us by now. I remembered the images of white marble steps in the grand entrance of the hotel, a waterfall of blood staining them, and shuddered.

God please say they weren't there.

Many of the Strigoi had gotten away. They'd attacked in the predawn, taking sleepy humans and guardians alike unaware. It had been a quick hit and then retreat. Guardians had reported numbers, a total of at least forty-three dead, made up of a dozen Strigoi, four Moroi, seven guardians and twenty humans so far.

The attack seemed to be more about scaring and sending a message than targeting our people. Still, four Moroi and seven guardians dead. A dozen Strigoi? Marlen almost certainly had five times that by now.

Guardians flittered in and out of the office over the next few hours, carrying reports. The teams of guardians on standby left, leaving Court seriously low on guardians. Guardian Stone made an executive decision to employ several of the best students in the Moroi combat class, getting their names from me, and posting them along the wards with guardian partners in case this was all a distraction for an attack at Court.

They should have been back by now.

I tried not to think about it. It wouldn't do me any good to think like that. I needed facts.

For the first time in years I missed the effects of being shadow kissed. What I wouldn't give to be able to see into Lissa's mind and know that she was okay. To walk outside the wards and call the ghosts to me just to make sure no familiar faces lay among them.

Sonya excused herself for a minute, draping her sleeping toddler over my own lap before she left. I sat there, stroking Mandy's curly brown hair, smiling as I caught hints of her mothers auburn among the strands.

Would my son be like this, such a perfect blend of both his parents? I admired Sonya's striking beauty and would be lying if I said I didn't find Mikhail attractive but seeing the combination of those looks on such a small person brought that beauty to an entirely new level.

I loved Dimitri's soulful brown eyes and heart stopping smile but I somehow knew that if our son had those features they would put his father to shame just as I knew if he had my wicked cool hair mine would pale by comparison. Everything looked better on a child.

I continued stroking the child's curly head, humming softly. Such sweet innocence. I hoped to anyone who was listening that she didn't grow up without a father. She was extremely lucky for a dhampir, having both her parents eagerly participating in her life. Not many of us got that opportunity and I wanted her to experience it all through her formative years. My son, too. If Mikhail and Dimitri didn't come back it wasn't just Sonya and I who would suffer. Sure we would suffer, I couldn't imagine life without Dimitri, but I was an adult and I knew the cost of a guardian's job, just as Sonya did. Our children didn't. All they would know would be the absence of their fathers and the incomprehension of why that had happened.

Sonya returned, a cup of tea in each hand. She set one beside me and retrieved her daughter before settling down, skillfully managing to not scald her daughter in the process.

"I wonder if I'll ever be able to do that," I said with a wry smile.

She returned it. "Practice. I suggest starting with colder drinks first."

I took up my own drink and sipped carefully at it. It did help a bit, at least it gave me something to focus on.

"Rose," she hesitated. "About the other day—"

"Don't," I cut her off. "I'm not mad. I was scared."

"I know," she agreed. "And I didn't mean to do that to you. I don't want to make your child into some sort of experiment. I didn't realize how it would seem when I first asked."

I shrugged. "I understand why you asked and maybe in the future he," I patted my belly and felt an answering kick, "can decide for himself whether he wants to help or not. But I'm not going to make that decision for him." I wrinkled my nose. "Not that I'm against an anti-Strigoi vaccine. I think it's wonderful. But I'm not going to use my son that way."

"Looking at it from a mothers perspective I agree. The scientist in me is the one that argues."

I didn't respond to that, I didn't think it was necessary. I was friends with Sonya and all her perceived aspects but I would fight her scientist-self tooth and nail if I had to in order to protect my son.

Guardian Stone had yet to be off the phone during this entire ordeal but he put whoever he was talking to on his cellphone on hold when the desk phone rang.

"Stone," he answered curtly.

I couldn't hear the other end of the conversation but I saw the immediate effect it had on the harried guardian. He sat up straighter and gripped the phone tighter.

"When?" he demanded. He glanced at the wall clock to compare it to whatever answer he got. "I want them here as soon as they land."

I sat up, tea forgotten as I listened. As soon as they land? As soon as who lands?

He returned the phone to the receiver and I immediately jumped on him.

"What's happening?" I demanded.

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow before answering.

"That was the control tower at the tarmac," he said. "They just got radioed for permission to land. It's the queens jet."

I couldn't have made it across Court grounds and to the private tarmac before the plane landed. Still, it was nearly unbearable to wait as the landing party was immediately escorted to the guardian building.

I resumed my pacing but when the doorway to the office was blocked by a large crowd, I stopped, staring.

"Sparky!" I gasped, throwing myself at Christian before he had a moment to blink. He caught me, surprised, and stumbled. Mikhail, right behind him, braced the Moroi.

"Mikhail!" Sonya screeched, startling her daughter into frightful wakefulness. She began to cry but for once her mother wasn't there to comfort her. She was across the room and in her husbands arms.

"What the hell is going on?" Hans gruff voice demanded as Christian and I were elbowed out of the doorway for the rest of the large group to enter.

Things became very cramped as over a dozen people crammed into the tiny room. I abandoned my hug with Christian as I searched the crowd. The two people was most anxious to see were among the last to enter.

"Liss!" I gasped, drawing her to me in the tightest hug I could manage. "Oh thank God!"

"What's wrong?" she asked, echoing Hans who was already in quiet conversation with Guardian Stone and my mother. Mikhail and Sonya had made their way over to Mandy and were trying to console her quietly.

I didn't answer right away. I'd caught sight of Dimitri.

He looked as wonderful as ever, hair drawn back into a ponytail, duster draped over his long form.

I threw myself at him and he caught me expertly.

"Roza wh—"

I reached up and clasped the back of his head in a firm grip before drawing him down for a fierce kiss.

He tensed in surprise but didn't fight me, instead drawing me closer and kissing me back.

Normally I wouldn't have kissed him quite so long or thoroughly in front of a crowd but I couldn't give a damn at the moment.

"I thought you were dead!" I gasped when I finally released him.

"What?" he demanded. "Why? We didn't run into any trouble."

I stared around the gathering with wide eyes. They hadn't? They were supposed to land hours ago! How had they gotten here so late and managed to miss the attack?

I could see that Hans, my mother and Mikhail had been enlightened of the situation, grim and pale faces set as they spoke with their companions.

"You don't know," I said slowly. "How do you not know? Why don't any of you answer a damn phone?"

"When we got to the tarmac the storm was terrible," Lissa informed me. "A cell tower nearby got struck by lightning and we had no service. We took off as soon as we could but we didn't get radio reception until we were closer to Court. What. Happened?" she demanded of me.

I felt my own face grow pale as I was tasked with informing the group of just how close to death they'd come today. I gripped Dimitri's hand tightly.

"There was an attack at the Eliot Hotel this morning," I informed them. "We thought you were dead."