Suffocate In Spirit - Shadows of the Night 4

Chapter 14

Hi!

This was supposed to be a long weekend, and it's over alreay! Anyway, I've been working on the next chapter, so here it is! Did you see that one coming?

Hope you like it!

Lara

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Chapter 14

The night was crammed with dark shadows and uncrowded space, filled with the kind of silence that only thrived in the dead hour of midnight. I turned my head, searching the shadows for movement again. I'd gone into and out of second sight twice, combing through the aerial landscape with a nervous urgency I was barely able to hide in front of Andy. If Alexander had sent someone to watch me, it would in all likelihood be someone of the non-breathing kind. I didn't mind a little protection after what happened the night before, but not if it meant the head vampire would know every time I so much as sneezed.

We hit the streets with Andy's motorcycle, touring through the city like a drunken tornado, running in random circles before we crossed the borders to the Bronx. It had paid off. By all appearances we'd managed to shake off whoever was keeping an eye on me.

We were about to visit one of Andy's informants, and things could deteriorate if anyone found out who his secret sources were. Luckily, there was no one in the vicinity. No vampire crouching in a tent of shadows waiting to report to Alexander. I sighed. What kind of world was I living in that I had to deal with stuff like that?

"What are you doing?"

I turned and scowled at Andy, but walked back to him.

"Just checking," I muttered. The comment didn't come out the way I intended to. There wasn't enough nonchalance in my voice – too much tightness. Andy had no idea why I was so anxious about being followed and I wanted it to stay that way.

We walked through what once had been a flourishing part of the city, stepped further into a place that reeked of deterioration and desolation. This quarter eerily reminded me of the Red Zone, the zero space in which vampires walked the street like the predators they truly were. Something about this place was just as much a dangerous vacuum as the Red Zone, even though it was different in one important detail. In here it was not the vampiric predator that crawled in the spaces in between. The humans had claimed this part of town for them. Among the reports of violent felony offenses and bloody gang wars that had been coming in over the past years, a majority originated here.

We crossed the street and walked past a solitary group of hunched down shadows that were gathered around a fire in a trash can, smoke billowing up and around them. Even without looking I knew that they were not part of the staggering amount of homeless people this part of town was housing. What we were looking at were gang members, gearing up for another night in the city, another night filled with violence and drugs.

It was not before we came to a halt in front of the building that I realized where Andy was headed to. The building's exterior fit the area's description like a glove, and yet it was extraordinary in its own way. An old, shut-down hotel that must have looked shabby even in its younger years. The windows were barricaded with bits and pieces of cardboard and wood, just like the entrance. Graffiti and vile word combinations mantled its walls like a second skin. Someone must have gotten over the chain-link fence repeatedly, and apparently no one cared.

Andy made a sign to follow him and together we slipped through a narrow opening in the fence, before moving along the side of the building to its back.

The illusion that the hotel was truly deserted, and had been for a long time, evaporated in a sea of faint music and tainted light as we reached the back part. There was jazz music, soft and muffled, but definitely there. Andy motioned for me to be silent as we approached what looked like a back entrance. Just as he knocked on the door, the awkward, discomforting feeling of déjà vu I had been having for the past few minutes, finally burst and exploded.