Fade Into Black - Shadows of the Night 5

Chapter 29

Hi,

The bombshell has been dropped! I think most of you didn't see it coming. ;-) 

How will Anna handle the encounter with the head vamp, now that she knows she's no longer his human servant? Does it change everything or nothing at all?

Lara

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Chapter 29

I leaned into him, pulled forward by a reversed, perverse horizontal gravity that drew me to him no matter how hard I tried to run. What was it in those eyes that made me want to look? Look long enough so that I might figure it out, figure him out if just stared long enough?

Alexander's hand sought my waist, brushed against my leather coat. The cold of the grave scalded me with the ghost of a touch on fabric alone, connected with skin on another level. Power grazed my hip and reacted, a soft backlash from the deadly magical junk I carried concealed in my pockets.

I jerked back.

My pockets. My jacket.

One motion. Enough to remind me of what I was carrying in my pockets. Enough to remind me of the weight on my shoulders. People died because of me. I had no business giving in to dangerous feelings, playing games with the head vampire. Games he was bound to win, if given enough time.

I had put a concealing spell on the artifacts of power and kept it up at all times, and still they reacted to his touch. Had Alexander figured out I marched into this brothel armed to the teeth? Was this just another mindfuck he was using to gain the upper hand?

"The hour's up," I said, stepping back.

"The hour is most certainly not up, Anna," he said. "I will have the truth, and I will have it now. You-"

He stopped mid-air, midsentence, cocking his head. The door opened, practically flying open with a violent bang.

Zack rushed in, stopping in the middle of the room. His auburn hair was tousled as if whipped thoroughly by a vicious gust of wind. His broad jaw was set in stone, an expression so alien on his face, it gave me pause for a second. Alexander's second in command looked far from his usual easy-going-attitude, and I wanted to know why.

Alexander didn't spare him a look, eyes still poised on me.

"I said I did not want to be disturbed." He said the words softly, without the human inflection and that raise of the voice usually used in a sentence.

"Something's happened," Zack said. "You might want to come out for this."

Alexander stepped away from me, blinked into non-existence like the ghost of a still-life portrait. The door shut with loud bang. The sound reverberated. Another blink of the eye and Alexander reappeared beside Zack like an apparition blotting into reality.

I watched them in silence. Scraps of sound, like the indistinctive wail of a miniature see-saw cutting through air. Their lips were moving, but for all the sound they made, they might have been actors of a silent movie.

I cupped my elbows. The weight in my pockets grew heavier with every breath, every step I took. I could feel the objects like a seduction song I couldn't stop listening to. As if they had a mind of their own. As if they wanted to be used, when in fact it was me who wanted to use them.

How much longer until I gave way to temptation? What if I did use one of them? Would it corrupt my soul to the point of no return? Would wielding the magic really kill me in one blow as the old witch told me a few nights ago?