Whatever may come (complete)

Chapter 16

"Roza can see, hear, feel and experience everything that Princess Vasilisa Dragomir does. It's kind of like, for lack of a better term, a psychic GPS or Lojack system. If the princess is sick, hurt, scared or in danger then Roza can and does zero in on her location and either saves her herself or sends someone to save her. Also because of being shadow kissed, when strigoi are within a few hundred feet or so of her she gets sick at her stomach. And depending on the number of strigoi that there are, there is also an accompanying pain in her lower right side. During the initial attack on the academy and the subsequent rescue mission Roza was sooo sick and in sooo much pain that she could barely stand let alone fight. But she is so bloody amazing that she pushed through all of that crippling nausea and pain and killed more strigoi than you could ever even imagine. And to go along with the pain and the nausea the more kills that she makes the further and further away that she can feel the strigoi. And the better she gets at being able to detect exactly how many strigoi that there are around her. And all because the more death that she deals out the closer she gets to falling back into the land of the dead herself."

I waited until I thought that they all understood what I'd said so far before I continued.

"As I said as we were walking out of the caves that we thought that we had cleared out. But we had in fact not because two strigoi had managed to hide themselves from us by staying far enough away so that Roza moya couldn't feel them. Anyway, when they got close enough my Roza's strigoi alarm once again went off, again for a lack of a better term. Those two strigoi captured and dragged Roza and I back deeper into the caves where we found out some very disturbing news." (my)

"What kind of news Dimka?" My mother asked.

Out the corner of my eye I saw anger on my babushkin face. So, I figured that she must have already known some, if not all, of what I was about to tell the others. (grandmother's)

"Apparently Natasha Ozera had gone to Galina Smirnov, my old mentor from St. Basil's, who was turned on a mission in Omsk several years ago. Anyway, Natasha went to her and asked, convinced, begged, pleaded or paid Galina for her and her strigoi army to attack the academy."

My family all gasped, even little Paul.

"Natasha had two goals for this attack to take place, one was to turn me, and the other was to kill Roza moya." (my)

My whole family aside from my babushka gasped as tears slid down their faces. Paul even crawled up into Roza's lap, wrapped his little arms around her neck and buried his face between her neck and shoulder just as Janine had done with Abe earlier. (grandmother)

"Shhh, it's all right Paul. Your Uncle Mitya and I are just fine; ok?"

He sniffled but nodded his head against her shoulder. He had gotten very attached to Roza moya very quickly which was very unusual for him. Because he is a lot like me, neither of us have ever really took to new people very well or very quickly. But he had done exactly that with Roza moya, and I knew exactly how he felt because I had been there done that just as soon as I'd met her myself. She is just so bloody amazing, that she has managed to bring both my nephew and me out of our shells pretty much from the moment that we first met her. (my, my)

"Why... why would she do that?" My mother asked in shock.

"She was jealous that I chose Roza over her. This past CHRISTmas, Natasha again asked me to be her guardian and her life partner. As she has been doing four or five, sometimes even six, times a year for the last almost thirteen years. Before that, a few months after I turned eleven years old, she had started asking me over and over again to be her boyfriend."

"But... you were still just a little boy Dimka! And she was eighteen years old!!! She was technically an adult!!!" My mama reminded me.

"I know mama, I know. Do you remember the first weekend that she came home with Karo to work on a mid-term project for school?"