Walk Into The Light - Shadows of the Night 6

Chapter 36

Hi,

I hope your weekend was great! Among other things, this chapter's about Anna's connection to the city. My question: What do you think (and we're talking strictly "human" here): is it possible to "feel" a city, like, say knowing it because it has its own "flavor"?

Enjoy the read, let me know if you liked it. :-)

Lara

_______________________________________________________

Chapter 36

I breathed in the vast entity of the city, its spirit, its people and its essence; let myself sink into the stillness around us, before I allowed my attention to wander to the busier streets in the city. Whether undead or alive, New York City felt to me like a live wire, burning in the palm of my hand. The city may have burned in the struggles between humans, shapeshifters, witches and vamps in the past, but it never died and it never will.

Even now I could feel its vibrancy. It breathed, it felt and it did not sleep. Ever. Music and voices mixed and mingled into a massive, chaotic wave of sound, lingering in the night. Underneath the soft beatings of hearts. Humans. I could practically measure life by the incoming sounds, and I found myself wanting to listen into that new eerie melody of hearts and blood.

I shook my head. Focus.

Where there was sound, there was always silence – its counterpart and darker brother. It had to be somewhere. He had to be somewhere. I stretched my awareness, reaching forward, fingers outstretched, and there he was.

Alexander's presence in the city was wrought up in a soft pull that made me aware of him like a star in my own personal cosmic system. It was a moving orbit that was alive and vibrant, faintly tasting of the particular bitter-sweet fragrance he carried.

But there was more. It had always been there ever since I rose as a vampire. A small dark shadow looming behind my heart, weighing it down with its presence alone. A second orbit was moving in my cosmic system. No, not an orbit, but a vast, dark presence that spun itself over the city like a black-see-through veil.

Omnipresent and so–

The world constricted, convulsed and stilled. The moment splintered into fragments of moments as I turned, seemingly in slow-motion. As a witch I might have only seen him appear out of thin. Now I could see his approach, watch as he seemingly defied physics in that eerie way vampires could move.

Zack appeared on the other end of the street, a lonely, seemingly lost figure in the long line of parked cars. His auburn hair was disheveled, as if the wind had combed through it with clumsy fingers.

And he wasn't alone.

A horde of dark shadows followed in his wake. More of Alexander's vamps, roaming through the street as if it was their own dark forest or playground. Perhaps this was what the Crimson District had always been for them. Perhaps the shadows of the night were what made the city theirs – like a spell that let them awake from their "undeadness" or a gothic, perpetually repeated version of "Sleeping Beauty".

Zack was moving forward, eyes scanning the street slowly. Somewhere on his way here, he had lost his boyish attitude. Lost that easy smile that probably made me underestimate him the first time we met. Compared to Alexander he always seemed so "human".

Not so now. Nothing about him or the way he moved was human. No, this was serious. His eyes never stilled on the spot we were standing in, but strayed, as if his fingers were slipping off a wet balloon he was trying to hold.