You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
incapable of having the imagination for it—and her bland clothing choices proved she really<br />
didn't have an imagination—I would have thought she was lying. It was more than a story. It<br />
was an epic tale, the kind of thing that gets made into movies and wins Oscars.<br />
She talked about how her charge, Lord Szelsky, and his wife had attended a ball put on by<br />
another prominent royal family. Several Strigoi had been lying in wait. My mother discovered<br />
one, promptly staked it, and then alerted the other guardians present. With their help, she<br />
hunted down the other Strigoi lurking around and performed most of the kills herself.<br />
"It wasn't easy," she explained. From anyone else that statement would have sounded like<br />
bragging. Not her. There was a briskness to the way she spoke, an efficient way of stating facts<br />
that left no room for flourishes. She'd been raised in Glasgow and some of her words still had a<br />
Scottish lilt. "There were three others on the premises. At the time, that was considered an<br />
unusually large number to be working together. That's not necessarily true now, considering the<br />
Badica massacre." A few people flinched at the casual way she spoke about the attack. Once<br />
again, I could see the bodies. "We had to dispatch the remaining Strigoi as quickly and quietly<br />
as possible, so as not to alert the others. Now, if you have the element of surprise, the best way<br />
to take Strigoi is to come around from behind, break their necks, and then stake them. Breaking<br />
their necks won't kill them, of course, but it stuns them and allows you to do the staking before<br />
they can make any noise. The most difficult part is actually sneaking up on them, because their<br />
hearing is so acute. Since I'm smaller and lighter than most guardians, I can move fairly quietly.<br />
So I ended up performing two of the three kills myself."<br />
Again, she used that matter-of-fact tone as she described her own stealthy skills. It was<br />
annoying, more so than if she'd been openly haughty about how awesome she was. My<br />
classmates' faces shone with wonder; they were clearly more interested in the idea of breaking a<br />
Strigoi's neck than analyzing my mother's narrative skills.<br />
She continued with the story. When she and the other guardians had killed the remaining<br />
Strigoi, they'd discovered two Moroi had been taken from the party. Such an act wasn't<br />
uncommon for Strigoi. Sometimes they wanted to save Moroi for a later "snack"; sometimes<br />
lower-ranking Strigoi were dispatched by more powerful ones to bring back prey. Regardless,<br />
two Moroi were gone from the ball, and their guardian had been injured.
Change language