A Guardian's Promise

Chapter 5 - Aeroplane Surprise

"Thank you." I say to the flight attendant. I had gotten a muffin because Dimitri and I had slept in and had to skip having breakfast to get to the airport. As we were going on a 'holiday' we had to take human transport. Not that I minded. Moroi and dhampirs took human transport all the time. I ate my muffin, which was chocolate chip, and decide I needed to do some poking around.

"Hey Comrade," I say, poking Dimitri. He takes one earbud out and looks at me. Those brown eyes. Alright I need to keep on track. "I am just going to check the plane over." He nods and I get up out of my seat. I walk forward, studying all the passengers. All of them so far were human. I figure all of the plane would be human. It was like that. There were so little moroi and dhampirs compared to the human population. Well that theory went out the window when I reached row eleven. Now, I wasn't quite if it was exactly row eleven, because I took one looks at the passengers and rushed past. It freaked me out. I probably would have been a bit calmer if I had seen this before, but I barely flew on a human aeroplane, so seeing a strigoi on board make my stomach turn. I continue along, and find something else, since my last fright, that I dreaded. First I see a strigoi, now a moroi without a guardian. I finish my search and my fears were confirmed. No guardian accompanying the moroi. I make my way back to my seat. As I pass the strigoi, I avoid eye contact, so he doesn't know there was a guardian on board. He could hardly do anything on the plane, but when we land, who knows what could happen.

Dimitri looks at me as I sit down in our seat at the back. We made sure we sat at the back of the plane so we could watch everything that was going on.
"So there is a moroi near the front." I say. "No other dhampirs though." His expression changes, wanting more information. "The seat next to her is empty, so she is alone." I take a deep breath, readying myself for what I was about to tell him. I didn't want to believe it myself, but telling someone, especially Dimitri, confirmed it. His face changes again, questioning my deep breath.
"There is a strigoi on board." I say.
Dimitri's face falls, and I could tell there were lots of thoughts and ideas running through his head. One came up in my own head, and I approve it with Dimitri.
"I am going to go sit with her." I decide. The plan shouldn't be hard, and I must say, it was pretty smart of me to think of something like that.
Dimitri looks aghast at my statement. I was sure my idea wasn't that bad. "With the strigoi?" He asks, appalled. I laugh.
"No. I think it would be safer to kill myself than sit with him. No I am going to sit with the moroi. Just in case." I say. Dimitri laughs with realisation that I had meant the moroi, and looked genuinely pleased with my idea. He doubted me when it came to plans. I had a reputation to be reckless and I tended to jump to conclusions, whether they were right or not.

I get up from my seat, but realising some important detail I should inform Dimitri on. "The strigoi is in row eleven I think." He nods and I wait for him to say something, but he doesn't, so I make my way over to the moroi. As I pass the strigoi, I don't look at him, but do the guardian looking without looking thing, just to make sure he hadn't realised there were dhampirs on board. He would figure it out soon enough. There were plenty of cases of strigoi tailing moroi, and I had a feeling he was stalking her, waiting for a more quiet opportunity to strike. I slide into the seat next to her. She looks up from the book she was reading, and her eyes widen with  bewilderment.

"Hi. I am Guardian Rose Hathaway." I say with authority. I don't know how she expects guardians to act, so I just followed a formal greeting we were taught to use around royals. For all I know, she might not even have a guardian. Dhampir numbers have dropped, and also more female dhampirs didn't become guardians, so not all moroi lived with them. Most of those moroi lived close to or at places like court and that where they can have a job and be safe inside the wards. The moroi woman looks at me, confused to why I had disturbed her just to introduce myself. She looked to be about 35, with sort of a golden tint to her shoulder length brown hair.
"I don't want to alarm you, but there is a strigoi on board. It seems to be that he is following you." I inform, and she looks right into my eyes, frightened. "Don't worry. He can't do anything while we are on board, there are too many humans." Strigoi loved moroi blood, but wouldn't risk it in front of humans; they didn't want to have to turn humans into strigoi for the sake of immortality. "And there are two guardians on board who will deal with him." I reassure her. Frankly, I was worried about it, but it was our job to keep the moroi safe, and part of that was making sure they felt safe and secure.

Some moroi weren't overly nice, Jill's 'killer' was one of those examples, but I felt oddly calm and secure around her, much like I felt around Lissa. This made me slightly sceptical, so I decide to figure it out. "Hey, what magic are you specialised in?"
"I haven't specialised." She looks down, dejected. This was exactly what happened to Lissa, and because of the spirit, which was unknown to her then, it made her really depressed about not specialising.
"Hey don't beat yourself up about it. You have specialised. Can you do anything strange like healing or seeing auras?"
"I can do both." She says plainly. My eyes widen. She is a spirit user, like Lissa, Adrian and Sonya. "What?" She asks, noticing my expression.
"You specialise in an extremely rare branch of magic called spirit." I say.
She looks at me in disbelief. "What do you know about magic? You are a dhampir." I sigh with frustration. She gets upset about not specialising, but then doesn't believe me when I give a very believable explanation.
"Spirit is a very strong branch of magic. I had died, but my moroi friend, a spirit user, saved me, and we were bonded. I could see her thoughts and what she was doing."
She raises an eyebrow. "I have a guardian that can do that. I hate that he can see what I am doing. But I guess it helps keep me safe." This confuses me. She has a guardian, who was more than capable of protecting her, especially with this condition, yet he wasn't here with her.
"If you have a guardian, then why isn't her here protecting you?" I ask.
"He is waiting for me when we land. I stayed with a family in Pennsylvania, and he guards my family in Siberia." She explains. Well that makes sense. That's what guardians did. If the family only had one guardian, they had to stay with the majority of the family, not go off with one person. That would be hell if your favourite one went off but they came first.
"So if he is bonded to you, he would know that there is a strigoi on board, ready to strike as soon as we are out of the airport." I say, directing it mainly to her shadow-kissed guardian.

She nods, and I pull out my phone.
I let the moroi know about the strigoi. I message Dimitri. Almost instantly, I get a response.
Is she okay? Where is her guardian? I smile.
Her guardian is here but not here. Shadow-kissed.
I look back and see Dimitri typing extremely fast. Must be dhampir reflexes.
She uses spirit? Can we get a name and some form of contact for further uses?
"Hey, could I get your name?" I ask her, and she looks up from her book.
"Sasha Ivanova." So she isn't royal.  No wonder she only has one guardian. It was a surprise she even had one at all, but it would be stupid to put her guardian with anyone else because of the bond. Also, I didn't know of many moroi living there, but I can bet that lots of moroi in Russia, royal or not, would have at least one guardian. I look back down at my phone.
'Sasha Ivanova.' I type.

Word count: 1503