Chapter 3
"What do you mean she's Moroi?!" I screamed back at my brother.
For some weird reason the cafeteria became quiet, everyone looking at us, most likely wondering what we just said.
"Don't just yell it Mals. Make a Facebook update about it." Nik sassed me.
"We need to meet elsewhere after school, we need to talk, openly, without the constraints that we currently have." Said Noah, gesturing around at the still staring Americans. He then proceeded to make a scene, with him, Zac and the new wolf in the pack, Nik. They were joking around, purposefully making their accents thicker, so no one could understand them. I understand what they're doing, making the others think they didn't hear us right; instead of us saying a word that to the average person, means absolutely nothing. They're running around like headless chooks, I couldn't stop myself from laughing at them.
Art passed in the usual pace for any art class, calmly. As an artist's daughter, I guess that I had some talent; most of it was just the background knowledge. We were painting and I decided to do a traditional Aboriginal painting. Growing up near the towns of Indigenous people, I saw plenty of their amazing art, the kangaroos, koalas and turtles.
Gym passed as it was expected to, well mostly so.
My uniform was given out, and we were sent into the change rooms to squeeze ourselves into these tiny black spandex shorts and a white tee with SMH on it.
It's safe to say, I look like a stripper. I was met by a few whistles and second glances by the boys when I walked out of the changing rooms with the rest of the girls; some of which I had begun to befriend. I don't know why, but seeing Nik there, while I was practically naked made me want to sink into the desert around Uluru. And I only met the guy today!
Hell even he gave me a saucy little wink; I returned it, as he so deserved that piece of love. He is sex on legs.
We were doing something classic, run as far as you can in an hour gym class. I don't know why they bothered separating boys and girls on the timetable because we were all running together on the track.
It was easy; Nik and I set a pace together; slightly faster than any of our other classmates. Hell, it was hilarious listening to them complain. I joked to Nik how I had to run around the Daintree rainforest for my running program, to which he joked that his was around the desert in Alice Springs.
By the end of however long we ran, my blond hair was sticking to the nape of my neck and forehead. Nikolai had put his hair into a man bun for the gym session so I could see small curls stuck to his neck.
Yum.
I had to quickly shower and get changed to get to Russian on time, mainly so I could suss out the Moroi teacher.
As the Moroi race, and therefore the Dhampir race goes back to Eastern Europe; Russia, Romania and Ukraine, generally all of us could speak at least basic parts of these languages. But in my favour I spoke fluent Russian as my father was born in Russia; it didn't help that the Queen demanded that her Dhampir grandchildren be even more intelligent than her other Moroi family to help make up for our lowness of species. Queen Tatiana, or Babushka as some would think, was a difficult woman to understand, she could be very harsh and strict; never failing to remind my brothers and I that we were unequal to our cousins, but she also had this way of being oddly kind.
She wasn't the grandmother who was obvious about it, but she spoiled us like crazy. When my parents wouldn't let me have a motorbike, one appeared on the front lawn, with an envelope containing the keys and my name on it.
The teacher was absent when we arrived, taking a seat in the back row, so we could observe easier before we made a move to approach her.
"Nik, I was thinking." I started.
"Oh Jesus help us, this never ends well!" His eyes were twinkling with mischief as he said this, making me swoon even more. Mahalia Zoya, don't you dare fall off your chair!
"Ha ha. Oh your wit renders me speechless. Anyway, I don't think we should show how well we speak Russian, you know, try to hide our half-Moroiness from her?" A moment of pure genious from me.
"Mals, all she needs to do is look at our last names, Dragomir and Ivashkov are some of the most prestigious names someone like us can have." Nik smiled at me. "We would have a higher chance of successfully persuading her that we were horses."
Shame that I forgot how much our last names are almost Iconic of the Moroi culture
Now, when you speak of the devil, the devil shall appear. This phrase is proven by a willowy Moroi sweeping into the classroom in a cloud of, "Sorry I'm late."
What she was lacking in a Russian accent, she made up for with by being extremely pale, tall and skinny – all serious Moroi traits. She started calling out the class list, doing a visible double take before choking out. "N-Nikolai D-D-Dragomir-r?"
Since the boy in question is an insufferable pain in the ass, he only grinned and yelled out "Present!"
The teacher was so flustered she literally stared at the sheet of paper in her hands for god only knows how long before continuing.
This started again when she got to the 'I' section of the list.
"Mahalia Ivashkov?" she sounded more scared by the prospect of me, one of the many Ivashkovs in the Moroi world then she did by having one of the rare Dragomirs in her class.
"Yes." I was classier than Nik, but still had a shit-eating smile on my face.
The entire lesson, Ms Zharova, avoided even breathing in the direction of the two Dhampirs sitting in the back of her classroom, rushing through topics that I knew from experience needed time and TLC.
When the bell finally rang, she dismissed the class, Nik and I as previously agreed, took our sweet time in getting out of the classroom.
"You two better not bring any unwanted attention to the area. I have been here for plenty of time alone and I haven't had any trouble." The fanged, and honestly, weak woman spat at us.
"At least we are capable of defending ourselves, we don't need to enslave a race of people just to keep ourselves from dying." Nikolai was definitely not happy. Recently, Dhampirs having been stepping away from the Moroi system in large numbers, we were treated as second rate citizens, yet were still expected to put our lives on the line for people we cared nothing more for money just above minimum wage.
By stepping away from the system, the Moroi had to take their safety into their own hands, and the previously strong Court system we had shattered as our population scattered to the far and obscure corners of the globe.
Apparently there was still at least one Moroi who thought we owed them a life debt.
"More numbers of us will make it easier for the Strigoi to notice us!" She was becoming unhinged. I needed to stop the blowout from happening, from the potential threat of our secret becoming known.
"You have no need to worry, there are four Dhampirs in my household, and four in his. Easily enough to keep anything bad from happening." I said this making calming gestures.
"How many of you are there at this school?"
Nikolai answered for me. "Five. Mali and her two brothers who are seniors, then my sister who is also a senior and myself." His sister surprised me; he hadn't told me that she was at the school.
"Well I am here alone, no one else is around this area that I know of. Now you two get to class before you bring attention to us." She was already less hostile towards Nik and I.
I met Nik's sister, Rhea in Food Science, because of budget cuts, some subjects had mixed classes; meaning I was blessed with the company of the twins. She was standing talking to my brothers by some of the benches. On the board was a notice for us to partner up and stand by a bench with aprons on.
Noah decided that his desired partner was Nikolai; I could see this going badly already. Zac ran off to be with some giggling cheerleader who was batting her eyes at my brother. I was left to Rhea, who I quickly found to be witty and funny.
As cooking is not apart of any Dhampir's education, the two full-Dhampir pairs suffered miserably when asked to make meatloaf. They were extremely burnt, but once the burnt parts were forcibly removed, actually edible. The same cannot be said for Zac and his interesting choice for a partner. It wasn't even cooked.
"Well how am I supposed to know when the oven's turned on? I have only ever been trained to kill –" Zac had defended himself, almost going into dangerous territory before Noah hit him with a wooden spoon.
Rhea impressed me more when she condescendingly told him. "There's a light in the oven, it turns on. And there's more! It even dings when the temperature is right!"
The two continued to banter until we were dismissed for the day.
I dropped my stuff into my locker before heading out to where we had parked the cars, the other four of my kind were already standing around.
"So nice of you to join us," Noah started.
"We've decided to all meet up at our house, to talk plans and stuff." Zac finished the sentence for Noah.
"Our mum is meeting us there, we're going to talk rotations and everything." Rhea was much more serious than my idiot twin brothers.
I loved them more than life, they really were some of my favourite people, but there were times that I just wanted to roundhouse kick some sense into them.
We all split into our vehicles, arriving at my parent's 10 acre property. Having acreage was useful; we had full privacy, could train without neighbours being nosy, and not to mention that we could better protect our home.
My parents were sitting in the kitchen with a beautiful blond woman, who resembled Nik and Rhea so much that I had no doubts who her children were.
"Darlings!" my mother greeted us, in her paint splattered clothing, she looked almost defenseless, but I knew better, under her dress; if you looked that is, but please stop looking up my mother's skirt; you would see a silver stake, something perfect for killing Strigoi strapped to her thigh.
"I want you to meet Viktoria, she has some news for us but she wanted to wait until everyone was present."
"Hey." Her accent was stronger than mine, she out Australianed me. "I have seen in some recent reconnaissance that there is a Dhampir Strike team living in a house nearby."
We all took several moments to process what she just said. A strike team; a newly developed idea involving a group of Dhampirs that band together with the sole purposes of tracking and killing strigoi.
The problem with this is; these teams stay in areas of a high Strigoi population. For them to be here…
The Strigoi must be here too.