"What are you thinking so hard about?" Dimitri asked.
"What do you mean?"
"I said your name about four times, Roza."
"Sorry. I was just thinking about Abe and his birthday."
"Are you still stressed about that?"
"A bit, but I was thinking more about the nazar Mom gave me. I want to know if she took it."
"Well – the only way you're going to know is to ask," Dimitri pointed out reasonably.
"Yeah, thank you Captain Obvious," I muttered under my breath, careful to make sure Dimitri didn't hear me.
I was in a filthy mood, probably because my monthlies had arrived. Not only did I get bloated and a heavy feeling in my lower abdomen, but I'd get short tempered as well. I'd already told off Eddie today for talking too loudly, and I was seriously considering blowing off training this afternoon in favor of a lie in bed with a heat pack and some chocolate.
"You haven't spoken to your Mom since you've been here. Why don't you give her a call?"
"And say what? 'Hi, Mom. Hope you're well. By the way, eighteen years ago did you ransack Abe's room and steal his only remaining link with his murdered family?' That will be a cheerful conversation!"
"Well maybe if you ease into it a bit," Dimitri laughed. "She'll be hurt you haven't rung. Even if you don't ask her about that, I'm sure she'd appreciate a call..."
I put the pillow over my face and let out a loud groan. I hated it when Dimitri was so reasonable and right!
"Fine! Pass me my cell. But if this ends badly, I blame you," I grumbled, taking the phone and dialing the numbers for my mother.
It clicked through and rang, Mom picking up on the second ring.
"Rosemarie."
"Hi Mom," I said, conscious I hadn't left things in a good way with her. "Sorry for not calling earlier, things have been crazy here."
"I understand. You're training?"
"Yes. Seven or eight hours a day. Abe's got his Guardians working with Dimitri, so we're doing heaps of stuff beyond what they cover at the Academy. We're doing this weekly fight club sort of thing, too. We fight the local Dhampir and learn some of the street moves. It's been handy."
"Street moves?" Mom's voice was laced with disapproval.
"Yeah. It's good to know some of the stuff we might come up against and how to defend against it," I said, neglecting to mention I was working some of the new moves into my fighting repertoire.
"Well, that makes sense I suppose," Mom said, still slightly disapprovingly.
"So how's the leg going?" I asked.
"Fine. I'm fit as a fiddle. I just wish Croft would realize that and take me off desk duties!"
"Guardian Croft? He rang me the other day."
"Guardian Croft rang you?" Mom gasped, sounding every bit as panicked as Dimitri had been.
"Yeah. He rang Eddie and Meredith, too. Something about a report he was writing for the Guardian Council about practical training."
"Hmm. That's interesting. He's not said anything to me about it. Has he spoken with Guardian Belikov?"
"Not that I know of," I told her, not wanting to give away the fact Dimitri told me everything, so I knew it was a no.
"Well, it's probably nothing," she said, still sounding perturbed. "What else have you been up to? I hope you're making yourself agreeable for Guardian Belikov's family?"
I smothered a laugh. Olena basically considered me a fourth daughter, I was 'Auntie Rose' to Dimitri's niece and nephew, and called his only remaining grandparent Babushka. In a short space of time, I had been welcomed as part of the family.
"We all get along well," I reassured her. "Dimitri's Mama, Olena, is amazing – I like her a lot! I like Dimitri's sisters, too. One is at St. Basil's so she's only home on weekends, but the other two live at home although one is probably going to get engaged soon and move out."
"Engaged?" my mother repeated judgmentally. She didn't spell it out – but I knew where she was coming from. Dhampir women generally did not wed. They were typically Guardians, mistresses to Moroi men, single mothers or blood whores.
"Sonya is seeing an unpromised Dhampir guy. He lives in the human world and has started a successful chain of electronics shops in Omsk," I explained. I didn't mention Sonya was also pregnant. Heavens knows what my mother's prejudice would make of that!
"Ah yes. Unpromised Dhampir are more common there," she said, making it sound like a horrid, dirty affliction and not a valid life choice to do something other than guard Moroi. There was no point discussing it; I knew my mother's stance on Dhampir duty, and any comments to the contrary would only rile her up.
"So Abe had his birthday the other day," I ventured, testing the water to see my mother's reaction.
"Did he?" she replied neutrally.
"Yeah. We had a small get together, and he noticed my nazar."
"Oh." One loaded word was her confession. It was judge and jury in one syllable.
"He wanted to know how I came to have it," I said leadingly. I tried to keep my voice neutral and encouraging.
"And what did you tell him?"
"I said you gave it to me at Christmas."
"And what did he say about that?"
"Just that it was similar to one he had that belonged to his mother. One that went missing some eighteen years ago."
There was a long pause, and I thought she'd hung up on me when I heard Mom say to someone that she'd be back in a minute and she needed to take this call in private.
"So what do you want to know?" Mom's voice was both hard and nervous. I could tell she was worried and trying to fall back on bravado to cover it.
"I want to know if you took it and why" I whispered.
There was another long pause.
"I did take it, but not intentionally. It was in a safe with some money I took. I didn't even know it was with the money until afterward."
"You stole money from Abe?"
"I don't expect you to understand, but I did. I'm not proud of it, but I'd just discovered I was pregnant. I was a recently graduated Guardian with no savings and no backup plan. I tracked Abe down, and came to tell him about you, only to discover he already had a new love interest." Mom's voice was very low now, but it was impossible to ignore the bitterness with which she spoke. "I couldn't see him stepping up to the plate to help me, and I didn't want to tarnish my reputation by having people know I'd fallen pregnant to a mobster. So I took his money and disappeared."
"Is that why you never told me who he was?"
"It's part of it."
Whatever Mom wasn't telling me was major. It was at the crux of the whole secrecy about my paternity. And then it came to me – the reason why she'd been so secretive for so long. It hadn't just been my mother's pride that had been wounded.
"You cared for him, didn't you?" I asked gently. "Back then. You loved him?"
"Aye," she said with a regretful sigh, falling back to her native tongue.
Dimitri was sitting next to me on the side of the bed when I finally hung up. Mom and I had never spoken so openly before, and maybe it was my rampant hormones, but I was feeling teary.
"She loved him. She never told him, but she really cared. When she came back to tell him about me, he was already seeing someone else, so she cleared out the safe and left."
"Are you going to tell Abe?"
"She said I could tell him about the nazar and explain she took the money so she'd be able to go somewhere and look after me until I was old enough to go to an Academy. She really doesn't want me to tell him that she was in love with him."
Dimitri nodded. It was all water under the bridge now, and nothing good would come of opening up old wounds.
"She was very open with you."
"I think now she knows Abe is a permanent fixture in my life she knew she'd have to come clean eventually."
"Still, it can't have been easy for her."
"No, I suppose not. I just wish she'd tell me other stuff. About her history and my extended family."
"Well maybe now her biggest secret is out, she might be more inclined to tell you other things?"
"I hope so."
"So where do they have her working?" Dimitri continued curiously.
"They have her going over Guardian reports correcting them. She's complaining about it, but knowing Mom, I bet she loves it," I laughed. I could just see some poor Guardian getting a printout of their report covered in red corrections in my mother's neat, officious handwriting!
"I bet she does, too," Dimitri smiled. "Are you feeling better now?" he continued cautiously. While he hadn't been on the receiving end of my hormone-induced wrath, he'd been treading carefully in any case.
"A little. My lower back hurts, and I'm feeling all crampy," I explained, looking at him meaningfully.
"Ahh," Dimitri replied, twigging why I was feeling out of sorts. The dude did grow up in a household of women, after all! "Why don't you lie on your tummy? I'll give you a nice lower back rub," he suggested sweetly.
Before I knew it, it was Friday night, and Vika was back from St. Basil's. The first hours after her return were spent with her talking a hundred miles an hour, filling us in on inconsequential school matters.
"Oh and I saw the Vitsin twins!" she announced over dinner, earning herself a look and a word from Olena for speaking with her mouth full of meat dumpling. "They came over to talk to me at lunch one day."
"What did they say?" I asked quickly.
"Not much. Elizaveta asked if I was Dimitri's sister and I said yes. Then Artyom explained they'd been on a mission with Dimka and he was a great fighter. He was going to ask me something else, but I excused myself to go to class before he could," Vika announced smugly.
"Did anyone know Dimitri is training us here?" I pressed.
"No one said anything," she replied. "I sat near some St. Vlad's students the other day, and they weren't talking about it either."
"It doesn't really matter if they know does it?" Eddie asked.
"Not really – but I'm looking forward to Elizaveta's reaction when she sees us at graduation," I chuckled. "I want to see her face when we walk in, and I really want to beat her in the eliminations!"
"You and me both," Meredith said with a grin.
"She can't have been that bad?" Sonya asked Meredith.
"No. She was worse," Meredith replied with an eye roll.
"Ready to annihilate another bunch of unsuspecting Dhampir?" Abe asked the following afternoon as we assembled at the gym. All week Abe had been trying his hardest, and frankly, it was getting exhausting. I needed to talk with him, but right now I was focusing on the upcoming fights.
It had been a tense few days around the Belikov household. Sonya was unhappy it would be a couple of weeks until she saw Kirill again. He was dutifully calling her every evening after dinner, and the lovebirds would spend half an hour on the phone together, but it wasn't the same as being able to talk face to face a teary Sonya had confided to Meredith and me.
Little Zoya was cutting her first teeth, so was up all night and miserable. With her baby's sleep routine disrupted, Karolina had turned into a protective mother bear, demanding absolute silence in the house when the little one did manage to fall asleep – something almost impossible to achieve in a household of eleven people! I was still feeling tired and sore from my cycle, and while he was trying his hardest, Dimitri was tetchy thanks to my constant snippy comments.
"Heaven help the man who messes with Rose today," Eddie quipped from the edges of our group. I'm not sure whether Dimitri had clued him in, but he obviously knew why I was irritable – and that pissed me off even more.
"Fuck off, Eddie!" I snapped, shooting him my deadliest look.
Abe lifted an eyebrow in silent question, but Eddie knew better than to risk my fury any further.
"Is everything ok, Rose?" Abe asked quietly.
"It's nothing," I growled, picking up my sparring gloves and walking across to stand in line with Meredith and Vika.
The turnout was larger than last week's – and this time there were some women, too! A female Guardian home visiting her family had heard about us and come to fight, and she'd brought a couple of unpromised Dhampir girlfriends from town with her.
"Asimov," she introduced herself, using her surname as per Guardian custom and holding out her hand to shake Meredith's and then mine. Vika continued the introductions, knowing Asimov and the other women from around town.
"I can see why you girls enjoy training so much," Guardian Asimov said, casting an appreciative eye over to where Dimitri was chatting with Pavel. "Belikov just keeps getting hotter. And his friend is hot too! Is he seeing anyone?"
Vika looked quizzically at the young blonde Guardian. "Dimitri or Pavel?"
"Both!" Asimov replied, grinning wickedly at her friends.
"Dimka is. Not sure about Pavel," Vika replied.
"Damn. Is it serious?"
Vika looked across to me. She didn't know what to say.
"Yeah, it is," Meredith quickly stepped in answering Asimov's question.
"Figures," the female Guardian said with a sigh. "Still - I might challenge him to spar later on. I haven't seen Dimitri in years, but I wouldn't mind being pinned beneath him again!"
Normally such comments would be water off a duck's back, but today it was like throwing water into boiling oil! Meredith looked at me in amusement. She knew when it came to today's fights, I had dibs on Asimov and that I intended to wipe the floor with her!
The format was the same as the previous week. We each fought, took a five-minute break to discuss the fight and cool down, and then took on our next opponent. I had one of Abe's Guardians, Kirk, supervising my fights today. We'd worked together quite a bit during training, and I liked him. Dimitri was working with Vika, overseeing her fights and making notes to discuss with her later.
I'd had seven fights when I looked up and saw Asimov next in line. I raced forward to 'claim' her as my next opponent, narrowly beating a disappointed Castile. With short cropped bleached blonde hair and a lithe, toned body, Asimov was a very attractive woman. As it turns out, she was a decent fighter, too.
We were circling each other mid-fight. We'd been battling for over ten minutes, so were taking the time to regroup. She was in better shape than I – this was fight eight for me, and I was tiring – but I was holding my own. Until she lashed out unexpectedly with a kick to my shoulder. I didn't even see it coming. I plummeted to the mat, and she was on me, staking me as we landed. It was indisputably a kill.
She stood up and grinned.
"You made me work for it!" she said kindly.
"Yep," I replied brusquely, not wanting her to know how pissed I was she'd bested me. My eyes flicked across to where Dimitri was standing, and of course, he'd been watching and had seen me lose. "Thanks for the fight," I added lamely, not wanting to be seen as a bad sport, no matter how pissed I was about the outcome.
Dimitri walked over, Vika having finished her final fight. In fact, everyone had finished fighting, I now appreciated. Great – so everyone had just seen me lose!
"Nice one, Raisa," he complimented, shaking Asimov's hand.
"Long time no see, Belikov," she smiled, giving him a flirty look. "I haven't seen you since St. Basil's."
"I work in America now," he said. "This is my first trip home in three years."
"Well America obviously suits you," she simpered, reaching out to touch his arm familiarly. "If you've got time, I'd love to spar with you a little later?"
She was shorter than my man, so she was looking up at him through her lashes. I wasn't sure if he could tell she was flirting with him, but I sure as hell could. Not that it mattered. He hadn't said a word or even looked at me since he came over. He was about to respond to Raisa's request when I interrupted.
"Well I'll leave you two old friends to it," I said with a sweetness more artificial than saccharine. "There's a shower somewhere with my name on it."
I stomped off, not bothering to check whether Dimitri was following me. I got to the edge of the gym, grabbing my bag from where I'd dumped it near the doorway. Turning around, no one was paying me any attention. Olena and the girls were busy at the trestle tables laden with food; Abe was chatting with Pavel and a couple of other Guardians. Meredith and Eddie were talking with a group of local Dhampir as they stood together eating from paper plates.
And Dimitri? He was right where I'd left him, still talking with the suicide blonde who apparently knew him well enough to have experience lying beneath him. She was standing close to him – closer than was really appropriate. Not that it seemed to faze Dimitri. In fact, as I watched she touched his arm again in an unmistakably flirty gesture.
"Fuck you, Comrade," I muttered, shouldering my bag and slipping out the gym doors. I hadn't been lying about the shower. I was hot, sticky and irritable and a night alone with a tub of ice cream sounded perfect, right now.
The sun was setting, and I was happy to note the streets were deserted, the majority of Dhampir at the gym for the fights and feed. Not that I was worried. Dimitri had assured me there hadn't been an attack in Baia in years, so I wasn't concerned about the twenty-minute walk back to the house, even though I was unarmed.
The whole way home I was fuming. I couldn't believe Dimitri had blanked me in order to talk with some old flame! He was meant to be in love with me, for God's sake! He wasn't supposed to flirt with the first woman able to pin me, even if she'd only been able to do so after I'd won seven other fights!
I was stomping through the dark, furious at the man who'd claimed to love me when I felt a familiar yet unwelcome roll of my stomach. I hadn't been paying attention, but as I snapped to attention, I noticed I was on a side road still some five minutes away from the Belikov house. And if my stomach was to be believed, there were Strigoi nearby.
I quickened my step, suddenly alert to every shadow and noise nearby. I couldn't see anything, but the ominous feeling didn't abate. So either they didn't know I was near, or they weren't yet ready to attack.
In the end, it was almost a relief when I heard a cold voice mocking me.
"Well my my! What do we have here? A Dhampir walking alone after nightfall? You really should know better!"