Suffocate In Spirit - Shadows of the Night 4

Chapter 48

Hi,

Happy New Year to all of you! Hopefully it will be a good one for all of us :-)  Anna's still in trouble and Red Night's Eve isn't over (yet). You'll find out how it ends for her in this one. I hope you'll like it!

Lara

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Chapter 48

Red Night's Eve, that one event vampires and human servants – everyone belonging to their realm – worshipped like an unholy version of Sabbath. Celebrating it like the cornerstone of their faith. The beginning and end of vampirism.

When I came here I believed it was part of a twisted set of beliefs that had nothing to do with forgiveness and altruism, but all with power and death. A set of beliefs I was not part of and never would be. Now I knew Red Night's Eve was more than that. It was a coin with two sides where one side could not exist in the absence of the other.

These halls were saturated with choking power and whispering with cold death. Whoever crossed them walked the thin line between mortality and its counterpart, life. Humanness and inhumanness. Alteration and permanence.

We tend to accept stasis and longevity too easily, forgetting that once we were just like them.

I remembered Antonio Cellini's words, saw them in another light. Was this night a night for them to remember that they once were human? Was that what he was trying to say?

Dead or undead – everyone was watching, holding their collective breaths. The Cellinis descended from their throne, the sepulcher-like section of the church where they dined and feasted throughout the festivities.

The cordon of vampires opened out into the night, a passageway to the yard surrounding the monastery. The burning fire in the front yard crackled and hissed, warm currents like fissures in the cold night air outside.

I didn't watch the Cellinis' slow progression into the open arms of servants, humans, and vampires alike; didn't watch their ritual, their worshipping of an old tradition I didn't fully understand. Couldn't watch. I scanned the crowd around me, trying to get a reading, see some sort of reaction on the vampires' faces.

No sign of Titus and Ramondo. Not then, not now.

An elaborate ceremony that involved a willing elder and blood. An oath I barely heard, whispered words of honor and protection, and peace. Everyone returned after it was over.

Somewhere in the excitement of the evening, the crowd streamed out into the night and I lost sight of Vladislav and Helena too. I kept scanning the crowd for both of them, and for Titus and Ramondo, but they weren't among the sea of faces. Not before me. Not behind.

Alexander remained beside me for the duration of the ceremony, a reversed shadow that didn't stir or move. Once in a while I'd become aware of his gaze, the slow prickle of something between my shoulder blades and the knowledge I was being watched. It was a weight, an awareness I had no name for.

I was restless and impatient, growing more wary the longer I looked. I was watching a pair of vampires, trying to figure out what to do next, when I felt his hand descend on my shoulder.

"Follow me," Alexander said from behind me. There was no rise and fall, not a hint of inflection in his voice. It was not a question. It was laced with soft pressure, the contracting of muscles and a force, more than flesh. A motion, more like a command than anything else, that was supposed to make me turn and go.