Reality Bites - Wattys 2018 Shortlist

Chapter 102 - Christmas Belles

"Milaya, you're going to wear a hole in the carpet," Dimitri warned, looking up from where he sat reading another one of his Westerns. "They'll be here soon."

"They should have been here half an hour ago," I whined. "I wanna play in the snow!"

"Me too! Let's attack Christian with snowballs," Adrian said enthusiastically, earning himself a grimace from my Russian God.

"Don't encourage her," he muttered under his breath.

"You're on, Adrian!" I beamed, flopping onto Dimitri's lap. "Come on Comrade," I cajoled. "It's Christmas Eve! You can't have Christmas without playing in the snow!" I lowered my voice to whisper in his ear, "And afterward, when I'm all cold and wet, you can bring me back inside, and we can..."

"Rose!" Lissa shrieked excitedly, walking through the door followed by Christian, Eddie, and Kirk.

"Lissa!" I squealed, jumping out of Dimitri's lap and going to cuddle my best friend. I hadn't seen her in two and a half weeks, so naturally, I had a lot to tell her. Sure we'd kept in touch via the bond, but it wasn't the same as actually being together. "Hey, Sparky! Eddie! Kirk! Merry Christmas!" I said excitedly, bouncing around the room like the energizer bunny. "Let's go play in the snow."

Dimitri put away his book with a sigh. He knew once I was in this type of mood there'd be no satisfying me unless we all did as I said. "Come on Eddie, Kirk. We'd better do a perimeter check," he said almost concealing the twinkle in his eye. Perimeter checks my ass. He just wanted to get plum snowball attack positions, and I knew it! But playing along, I pretended not to notice.

"You're right, duty calls," I said lightly, pulling on my snow boots and thick padded jacket, following my fellow Guardians outside. We'd decided to spend Christmas in Rothenburg, Bavaria. A medieval town, with its cobblestone streets, snow-laden red roofs and golden-lit windows the place looked like every cheesy Christmas card – but it was all real! Dimitri and I had done a thorough sweep when we'd arrived two days ago and detected no hint of Strigoi, but the nights were long here, and the daylight limited, so we couldn't afford to let our guards down. So the four of us obediently trudged around the outside of the three-storied building we'd rented for the Christmas and New Year period; the guys looking for anything unusual, me using my shadow-kissed gifts to see if I could sense anything nearby.

'All clear!' I sent to Lissa through our bond. 'Come outside and play!'

A moment later, Lissa, Christian, and Adrian ventured outside; Lissa walking across to the relative safety of an outdoor bench while Christian stood on the front path looking around him in wonder.

"It's like we landed in the middle of a Christmas fairytale," he said gazing around him.

"More like a nightmare," I giggled, pegging a snowball at him.

And then it was on! Kirk and the traitorous Eddie had snowballs in their hands ready to pelt Christian, except they turned on me. Kirk missed, his snowball landing at Dimitri's feet, but Eddie's hit me dead on.

"You're gonna regret that, Castile," I threatened narrowing my eyes dangerously.

"Just protecting my charge, Hathaway!" Eddie smirked, although I noticed him carefully backing away as I collected snow in one hand, packing it tightly with the other.

We traded snowballs for ten minutes, Lissa looking on from one side where she sat next to Adrian. He'd just lit one of his hideous clove cigarettes when a flying snowball smacked across his face, knocking it out of his lips and drenching him.

"Who threw that?" he roared indignantly, looking across to where Christian, Eddie, Kirk, and Dimitri stood all looking innocent. I took the opportunity while they were distracted to peg a snowball at Christian, hitting him in the face.