Suffocate In Spirit - Shadows of the Night 4

Chapter 25

Hi!

Ok, I came home just now and it's late late late. BUT I knew I was going to post this one anyway.
Guys, this one's going to be fast-paced. Did anyone expect THIS? Let me know!

Lara

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Chapter 25

I think I lost a few seconds. The next thing I knew, I was slumped over, riding out another wave of tremors. The ricochet of using too much magic – magic that hit hard like the violent backlash of a gun. The room was spinning like a drunken, vertical cartwheel. I blinked and closed my eyes again, then reconsidered. Closing them was worse. Dammit, I was going to throw up. Any second.

Sounds pierced into my perception and slowly began to make sense. There were noises of things settling and cracking, bits and pieces of stones crunching underneath heavy-booted feet. Coughing and gasps. Moaning. Angry voices. And above all laughter and a voice I'd come to resent like nothing else.

I looked up, trying to breathe like a normal person would do – like someone that wasn't at the brink of passing out. The room looked like a war zone in a bad B-movie. Dust billowed out from the centre, dissipating. My vision clearing up with it. The floor looked like a minefield of deadly bombs went off – cracks and bits of marble stone, no matter where I looked.

I followed the line of destruction and found him. Looked like Raphael Medici dodged whatever magical shit I sent his way. He was standing one foot beside the crater in the floor, and he was laughing. He was laughing!

"A good try, but not what I wanted from you, Anna Johnson. I was looking for another kind of magic." He stared at me for a long moment. "You need more incentive? Something else apart from the pain to make you cooperate?"

I twitched. White, hot pain flashed in my shoulder. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe through the pain. I'd wiped myself out with that blast of earth magic and Medici was still standing. Dammit. I blinked, peered through the curtain of brown hair.

Medici was coming closer. I righted myself, watched him warily as he took another step.

I was so exhausted, I barely noticed it. There was a tear high up his left trouser leg. Was that blood? Did I actually hit him?

"I could, for instance, give you the kind of information you've been, I hear, looking for these past few weeks," he said.

I stared at him mutely, trying to keep a blank face amidst the pain.

"You went to meet the half witches," he said. "You must know."

I tensed. Dammit, was everybody keeping tabs on me?

"How much do you know about the new cooperation between Alexander and the head of the Circle, Anna Johnson?"

Why was he bringing that one up? Why in connection with the Bloody Warden members? I tried to shove myself into that place of perfect nonchalance, using the kind of expression that said 'So what? Like I give a damn.' And it probably would have worked, hadn't the muscles between my shoulder blades tensed into a complete lockup.

By the look on the Raven's face he noticed.

"Did you mind that Gustav Brown sold you out to the head vamp to save his own backside?" he said. "Did you mind being shoved around? Used and played by both, the head vampire and your boss?"

I jerked, eyes widening.

Medici laughed. It was a throaty laugh, and it made goose bumps crawl over my skin.