Breathe Under Water - Shadows of the Night 1

Chapter 22

Hi!

Sorry for not posting sooner. This week was just like crazy and then my internet didn't work. *rolls with her eyes* Anyway, I'm back with a new (long) chapter! I hope you like it. Read, vote (if you like), comment! Let me know what you think about it and if you like how the story is progressing. Thanks for reading! :D

Lara

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Chapter 22

You know that feeling when you wake up, knowing from the first conscious blink that your day will go downhill with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy? This was nothing like getting up with the wrong foot. I was a hair's breadth away from disaster and I knew it.

One, the shades were still drawn so that it was dark, and, apart from the fact that I couldn't see shit, I didn't even know what time it was. So much to having a bad 'morning.' Two, it felt like my abdomen was going to explode within the next few minutes. Three, I was lying on my back, but it felt like the left side of my body was touched by something cold – a life wire fused with steeled muscles and flesh.

I stilled, didn't move. My mind was racing, trying to put puzzle pieces together that didn't seem to fit. The clearer the picture got, the more I was convinced I didn't like what I would be seeing.

"How long will you pretend that you are still asleep, little witch?"

His voice was soft, reminded me of darkness, sheets, and cold skin. Bits and pieces of memory that were somehow embedded in my mind without me knowing how they got there.

I made the mistake of trying to move. It felt like someone was twisting a knife into my stomach, drawing it out, then starting all over again. I licked my lips and asked the one question I thought I already had an answer to.

"What are you doing in my bed?"

"Is this the first thing that came to your mind, little witch? After what happened last night, there are things that are of far greater importance, other questions you should be asking," he said. I heard the blandness in his voice, could almost feel the lack of emotion on the tip of my tongue.

"What the hell are you doing in my bed, Alexander?" I could hear violent impatience in my voice, among other things. I didn't care.

"Why don't you express your gratitude for me saving your life first? For that is what I did last night." An undertone of a dark quality – something else apart from that deadened voice.

It reminded me of things, helped put puzzle pieces together that hadn't made sense moments before. I saw the full picture and instantly wished I hadn't. My heart traveled south, then back up north again. I had slept in one bed with a vampire.

No, I corrected myself, you slept in one bed with the head vampire of New York!

Then again, he had taken care of me. I had been injured for witch's sake! But did that undo the fact that I had been in one and the same bed with him? Or that I hadn't even protested? No.

The three great witches only knew what he could have done to me. I replayed what happened the night before and felt my heart stutter.

We talked. We had something coming close to a civilized conversation – about the magical society's interpretive why's and what's of elemental interplay, covering a philosophical redefinition of good and bad while at it. Hadn't he asked me about the tattoo on my hip too? The thought of Alexander's eyes on my naked skin made my flesh crawl. I shuddered and decided to abandon it. Completely. How did the saying go? 'What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over.' What a stupid saying was that anyway?