Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Academy.

Ch. 9 An Unexpected Visitor

Three days passed quietly in Baia. I met Dimitri's older sisters, Sonya and Karolina. They seemed nice and happy to meet me. Karolina had a baby girl, and a son-Paul. He was about ten, and was fascinated by me. I was surprised at the striking resemblance between him and Dimitri.

Sonya was pregnant, and going to have a baby in a few months. Dimitri told me she worked at a drugstore in town, and didn't say much about who had fathered the child. I knew that could be a sensitive topic, so I didn't ask.

We visited Viktoria every day, going to the hospital even three times a day. I could tell Dimitri was slowly losing hope that his little sister would wake up. Sometimes he would just stare off into space, his eyes looking haunted and far away.

On the fourth evening of my stay, I walked down to the hospital with Dimitri, hand in hand. The sun was about to go down soon, and the way the sunlight washed over everything looked very warm and soft. Golden hour.

He looked very down as we were walking across Baia, and I could practically feel his depression and worry churning inside of him. I squeezed his hand and tried to give him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Dimitri. Viktoria will probably wake up any day now."

"But the doctors said that too, and she's barely stirred since we visited her," Dimitri whispered, looking so upset I just wanted to hug him and ease his pain.

"Hey, doctors aren't always very accurate," I shrugged, trying to be reassuring.

This brought a faint smile to Dimitri's face as we crossed through the park. "That's true-"

His words were cut off as a wave of nausea washed over me. I winced, clutching my stomach. "Ugh!"

"Roza, what's wrong?" Dimitri asked, quickly tightening his hand around my own.

I winced again as a second wave of nausea rolled through me. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach, or someone had smashed my head in really hard, all at the same time. Of all times to be nauseous… "Be alert, Dimitri."

His face took on that wary, guardian face he was so good at. His silver stake came out, glinting in the sunset.

He swore, and my nausea intensified.

"What's wrong?"

"We're not alone."

"What?" I asked, trying to fight through my nausea.

"Strigoi."

I wanted to say that was impossible, but Dimitri wouldn't joke about something like that. I mentally assessed myself to check if I had anything on me that could be used as a weapon. Damn. I had no stake.

As if he knew what I was thinking, Dimitri reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a stake. "Here."

I took it, and gripped it tightly, scanning the area.

Two Strigoi appeared seemingly out of nowhere, their red eyes practically gleaming in the dying light, but they were careful to stick to the shaded part of the park. I forced back my nausea, and ordered myself to focus on the Strigoi.

One was a woman, her tall height indicating she might have been a Moroi before her conversion.

The other was a man, and to my surprise, he looked like he might've been a human before he'd been changed. Rare, considering how Strigoi often gave into their bloodlust and fed off of them.

Dimitri and I instantly fell into the back-to-back position partners used when facing enemies on different sides.

Don't hesitate, I told myself. One of the many lessons that Dimitri had taught me during our training sessions together.

I lunged out at the woman, and she instantly sidestepped my swipe. I straightened up before she had a chance to attack me.

We warily sized each other up. Her red eyes were malicious and cold, without even the slightest hint of emotion in them.

She feinted to the side, and I mirrored her move. I lunged out with my stake again, and swiped the side of her face.

She snarled in pain, and kept her chest protected. Still, I could tell she was doing a so-so job of protecting it, and if I could get past that, I could stake her.

The woman lunged at me unexpectedly with lightning speed, and grabbed my hair. I cried out in pain when she was gripping my hair tightly. It felt like it was going to rip out.

Dimitri almost started turning towards me and turning his back on his target. "Stop, Dimitri!" I cried, trying to push the woman away from me. "Don't worry about me."

This was what we'd both feared when he'd told me that he loved me. If we were both in battle and one of us got caught by a Strigoi…we'd let our feelings for each other get in the way. Painful memories of Mason came back to me. He'd liked me, and then he'd let his feelings for me get in the way, and got killed.

I ordered the painful memories back into the corners of my mind, and started fighting the woman. I painfully jerked most of my hair out of her hold, and swiped my stake across her arm although she was holding my hair tightly with one, and holding my free arm with her other. A tactical mistake, but I wasn't complaining. She should've been holding both of my arms so I wouldn't have room to maneuver with the stake.

She shrieked in pain, and her hold on my hair slackened. I pulled my hair out of her grip and faced her. I needed to end this fight soon, and help Dimitri.

I feinted to the side like she had earlier, and the woman fell for it. I lunged in with my stake at lightning speed and ran my stake up her ribs and through into her heart.

The woman faltered, but the way she was twisting made it hard for me to directly push it through. I grimaced as she kept wriggling and undoing my progress with the stake. I pushed the stake through with all my strength, and the woman stopped moving. She fell, and I bent down to get back the stake.

I turned back around to Dimitri. He was still fighting the man, and the man put up a good fight for a Strigoi who was once human. Several cuts covered the man's face, no doubt from Dimitri's stake.

The man reached out, and before I knew what he was doing, he had Dimitri in a chokehold.

I gasped. "NO!"

Dimitri was still making a valiant struggle against his captor, but he clearly couldn't keep going much longer. The Strigoi had him in a tight grip around his neck, slowly cutting off his oxygen.

I was horrified, but felt rooted in place. I ordered my legs to start running towards them. Oh, Dimitri! Don't die, please don't die…

When I thought all was lost, Dimitri's eyes snapped open and he resumed his struggle against the Strigoi. I stared in surprise. Had he been pretending?

Dimitri lashed out at the man with his stake, and the man flailed, losing his grip on Dimitri. I desperately wanted to lunge in and help Dimitri, but I was afraid that he would lose concentration that way if I suddenly came in. I had to help him somehow though.

I don't want to lose you, I thought as I closed in on the man from the other side.

Dimitri advanced on the man, graceful and deadly at the same time. His face was perfectly focused on the Strigoi man.

The Strigoi stayed away from Dimitri, clearly wary of him. He probably hadn't expected Dimitri to be able to free himself from his chokehold. I wasn't sure if he knew I was behind him, but I had to be stealthy.

I lunged in, and plunged my stake into his shoulder. He snarled, and backhanded me so I landed several feet away. I fell, knocking my cheek against the pavement of the sidewalk. I quickly got to my feet. The stake!

The Strigoi had quickly gotten out the stake I'd plunged. It lay to one side, and I gulped as he advanced on me. He looked downright pissed.

I slowly started backing away, towards the very last bit of sunlight streaming through the trees.

Dimitri jumped in front of me, as if from nowhere. He lunged too quickly at the Strigoi and plunged his stake into the Strigoi's heart.

The man screamed, flailing in pain. Dimitri pushed the stake in further, and the man fell to the ground.

Dimitri pulled out the stake, and struggled to pull up the body. "Come on, Rose, let's get the bodies into the sunlight."

Sunlight would definitely incinerate the bodies so no one would notice. We had to get rid of the evidence of vampires. People would start asking questions if they saw two unnaturally pale bodies. I dragged the woman's body over into the dying rays of the sun just as Dimitri stepped away from the man's body.

"Let's go," Dimitri said, taking my hand in his and squeezing it. "Are you hurt?"

I lightly touched the side of my cheek. It was bleeding a little, from when the Strigoi had backhanded me. "Not that badly."

"Not that badly?" he exclaimed as he handed me back the stake he'd given me earlier. I concealed it in my jean pockets, and pulled my jacket over it to cover it. "We're getting you looked at."

"I've had worse, Comrade," I remarked as we resumed walking to the hospital. This time, we were more cautious and tried to stay where there were more pedestrians and streetlights.

Dimitri shook his head as the hospital came into view. "Nope, no arguing. We're getting you to a doctor."

"I thought you would've had an emergency kit on you at all times," I teased as we entered the lobby.

The receptionist looked absolutely aghast at my wound. Was it really that bad? I wondered as she rushed me into an office with a doctor.

The doctor mostly talked to Dimitri in Russian. I was curious to what Dimitri's excuse for my cheek wound would be. After all, humans couldn't know that there was a secret vampire world…

The man turned to me and put something on my cheek that stung pretty badly. I winced. "Ouch!"

The doctor then put a small gauze bandage over my cheek and then sent me on my way. "What did you even tell him?" I asked Dimitri as we walked across the lobby and headed for the elevators.

Dimitri smiled briefly. "That you tripped and fell on the sidewalk."

I rolled my eyes. "Typical. You would pick the excuse where I'm very accident-prone."

We arrived on the third floor and walked into Viktoria's room, like always.

Dimitri took the seat next to her bed and took her hand, which was now bandaged like her forehead. She still looked like she was peacefully sleeping, although she'd been in a coma for close to a week…or was it a week? My sense of how much time had passed was a bit messed up.

Eventually, I found out through the bond that the story at school was that I was visiting my mom, the famous guardian Janine Hathaway, at her charge's home. Only Adrian knew the real story of where I was.

He'd visited my dreams a few times - yes, one of his spirit abilities involved being able to walk dreams – and we'd talked a little. He never asked what I was doing, and I didn't offer details. I was pretty sure he was already upset enough about me being far away in Russia without me adding to it.

My thoughts were interrupted when Dimitri gasped. "Viktoria?"

I suddenly shot to my feet, prepared for the monitors to immediately start beeping. There wasn't a sound inside the room.

I looked at Dimitri's sister lying on the bed. She started shifting a little on the bed, and her eyes fluttered open.

"Dimka?" she asked in a slightly raspy voice.

Her eyes were the same dark brown as Dimitri's. Everyone in the Belikov family shared those dark eyes.

"Viktoria!" Dimitri breathed, clasping her hand.

"What's going on? Where am I?" she asked, weakly struggling to rise from her hospital bed.

"Do you remember me?" Dimitri asked in a soft voice.

Viktoria replied in Russian, and they began conversing in rapid Russian. I picked out a few words here and there. St. Vladimir's. Montana.

Dimitri turned to me after a few minutes. "Viktoria, this is Rose. And Rose…well you know, this is my little sister Viktoria."

"Hello," I said, feeling a little awkward and not knowing what to do.

"Hi, Rose," Viktoria said, reaching a hand out to me. She pulled me into a hug and released me. "Dimka's told me all about you."

I shot a dangerous glare at Dimitri, and Viktoria laughed. "No, it was all good, I promise."

The dhampir nurse who'd been here earlier walked in. "Well, it looks like Viktoria's finally awakened!"

"What happened to me?" Viktoria asked, looking around in confusion. "I don't remember anything before waking up."

The nurse and Dimitri exchanged a look. "Well…you were in a car accident. The impact of the crash left you with very few minor external injuries. More of the damage came to your head."

Viktoria lightly touched her head, and found the bandage covering her forehead. "Now I remember a little. But it's all blurred."

"Well, that's something," the nurse murmured, scribbling something down on her clipboard. Did she always carry it around with her?

The doctors were called in. They debated over what to do with Viktoria, before deciding that she would stay at the hospital one more night to have check-ups done on her.

Viktoria wasn't too thrilled about having to stay in the hospital a night longer. "Why do I have to stay one more night?" she nearly yelled once the doctors and the nurse had left. "I'm perfectly fine! Even the doctors said there shouldn't be anything wrong with me."

"Just because they say so doesn't mean you can just leave the hospital," Dimitri retorted. I had to hide a smile. He was being protective of his little sister. "Besides, it's only one night. Not a whole twenty four hours."

Viktoria scowled, crossing her arms over her chest, but faked a pout. "Fine! If I'm going to stay here one more night, I want to sleep." She turned over in her bed, her back to us.

"Good night, Viktoria," I called out to her as we left her room.

Dimitri was definitely so much happier once we started walking back to his house. He was practically cheerfully whistling, that's how happy he was.

I smiled up at him as we walked down the street near his house. "Happy?"

"You can't believe how relieved I feel," he breathed softly in my ear. He smiled at me, and then kissed my lips very passionately.

I wrapped my arms around him to keep from falling over. There was nothing else in the world as he kissed me except for the two of us. I was dimly aware of other people walking on the sidewalk, but I didn't want to stop.

He stopped kissing me, and I pouted. "Did you really have to stop?"

"Fine, just one more." He leaned down to me, and planted another kiss on my lips. This time, it was softer and more lingering. He pulled away, and tugged at my hand. "Come on, let's go."

We continued walking and finally his house was in view. We walked in through the front door.

Olena greeted us, but she looked a bit uneasy and awkward, which peaked my interest. What was going on?

"Dimitri…you have a…visitor," she said to him, looking over her shoulder uneasily and then back at me.

I was instantly suspicious. Why was Olena looking at me like that?

Dimitri raised his eyebrows, clearly on alert as well. "Who is it?"

A woman practically flew at him from the living room to kiss him on the cheek. "Dimka!"

I bristled as she hugged him. Dimitri seemed extremely reluctant to hug her, and hastily let go as soon as possible.

When she finally let go of him, the light fell on her features. Jet-black, glossy hair. Large wintry, pale blue eyes. Purple, raised scars across her left cheek that somehow didn't distract from her stunning beauty.

I now recognized her, and I had to fight from curling my hands into fists and yelling.

Tasha Ozera.