Suffocate In Spirit - Shadows of the Night 4

Chapter 2

Hi!

Chapter 2. Book four. Still feels weird that we're actually on our way into book four! Once again, thank you all for reading and for your fabulous comments. Sometimes I just gape at my laptop, then go back and read them all over again cause I can't believe you guys actually wrote all that! Big thanks to all of you who are sharing their reading experience with me.

I hope you like this one. A word of warning: the cliffhangers keep coming. I know I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I just can't get rid of them ;-)

Lara

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Chapter 2

I turned to look back, making sure Travis was still talking to the blond twenty-something at the bar. Judging from his posture and the number of winks he was shooting at her, he already forgot about me.

Lucky for once.

I put on my leather jacket and headed out the door. I stepped out of the club, hit by the sudden absence of too-loud-noise and banter. The street lamps illuminated the street in the front, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my surroundings were darker than usual, obscure and somehow hostile.

Paranoia had me turning around, watching the entrance to the bar warily. There was an unshakeable pin-prick-sensation at the back of my skull that was trying to convince me someone was watching me. I stared, blinked, stared again. Everything looked normal. Just a bunch of humans stumbling in and out of the establishment – all of them moving without a hint of coordination skills; glutted with liquid intoxicants, among others. I turned back around, cursing under my breath. This was bordering on a quite extreme case of paranoia.

I pushed my hands into my pockets and stared up into the night sky for a long moment. The air was thick with fumes and exhaust gases, a blanket of smog that wrapped around the city night and day. I didn't care. To me breathing felt like a cleansing ritual of another sort. I felt the music of the bar beating against my back and took another long, deep breath, before starting my journey home.

It wasn't until I almost passed him that I noticed. The faceless stranger wasn't a stranger. At all.

Andy was leaning against the wall opposite the bar's entrance, watching me. His arms were crossed in front of him, casual and unobtrusive. He was standing in a shaft of darkness that showed little of his face, or the tone of his muscled arms for that matter. The normal bystander wouldn't have wasted a second look if his life depended on it. I, however, should have noticed. As things were my life did depend on me noticing such things.

My emotions were all over the place. Fatal in the position I was in.

I should have spotted him straight away. I should have been aware of any potential, imminent dangers and walking catastrophes surrounding me. The place was crawling with punks, junkies, and leather clad, self-professed bad boys that kept playing with their jackknives like it was their favorite pastime.

The punch line? Out of the fifty-something people in front of the bar Andy's face was the only one that had the ability to hold my attention and keep it in a death-grip. And that was where the real danger lay.

It had been two weeks since I last saw him – and wasn't that a moment I remembered just too well? It was the day he accused me of having some sort of romantic relationship with Alexander. At least I think he did.

Fact was we had a big fight. I had no idea where we were standing at this point in time. If he was here to ask me where my loyalties were, again, I was going to walk out on him. I wasn't ready for that kind of conversation. If he was going to mention the head vamp, I was going to run screaming. I wasn't ready for that one either.