Shadow

Chapter 35

"Welcome, Raven!" Carlo grinned, his hands held out from his midline, "How great it is to see you back!"

"Yeah," I smiled sarcastically, "Great."

Not noticing a single amount of sarcasm that I displayed, Carlo grinned and me and took a seat with his minions on the thrones. 

"How are you feeling?" He continued, resting his chin on his palm. 

"I'm great," I lied, which was obvious because I forgot my crutches and now I was limping. 

"Are you sure?" Alec, the one I fought with, smirked, "I messed you up pretty badly."

"No," I smirked back, "I'm doing pretty well, actually, how's your nose doing though? I hope I didn't mess that up too badly, wouldn't want the only good part about your face joining the rest, now would we?"

Ajax, Alec's twin chuckled, while Alec frowned angrily at me, "I'll deal with you later."

Carlo laughed along with Ajax, and the rest of us suddenly tensed. Well, I did at least, was it too far to say that? How much power did Alec have in saying whether I got in or not? Probably a lot, considering that he's one of the leaders of the company. 

"I like her," Ajax smiled at Carlo, then looked at me, "I've been waiting for someone to stick up to Alec."

"That's only because you can't do it yourself," Alec frowned at Ajax, who rolled his eyes. 

Carlo looked back and me, and cleared his throat, "Now, back to what we came here for. Your admission."

I gulped nervously, and suddenly I felt like I was standing in front of a crowd of a thousand people rather than three.

"I requested some of our deputies to go through your records..." He continued, suspicion laced in his voice. 

Crap.

There was no way that they'd traced my history without finding anything bad. They were going to kill me, this was how I was going to die. Goodbye world, tell Zayn Malik I love him.

I looked at Carlo expectantly, he might as well get it over and done with. What was it going to be, burned to death? Stake to the heart? Poisoned wine? Or just a simple gunshot? I didn't want to die, but there was nothing I could do to save myself. I couldn't call anyone here, I was underground for God's sake, that would make it impossible to even track me!

Carlo opened his mouth to speak, and my heart faltered, "... I'm sorry about your parents, you didn't deserve that."

Ajax and Alec nodded their heads in agreement, their expressions sympathetic. 

"I'm assuming you already know who killed them," He continued, "Or at least you think you do. Police claimed that it was just a robbery gone wrong, but now that you're going to be part of us, I think you have the right to know what actually happened."

"We've been around for more centuries than you can imagine," Carlo said, suddenly the creases on his forehead were more prominent, his perfectly straight, black hair looked worn out, his eyes tired, the wisdom that filled his personality was suddenly much more visible, "Over time, we've gathered a lot of enemies, almost all of them defeated by our forces. Almost all, but one. I'm sure these guys have told you about the Shadows, yes? They are our strongest enemies, we can't defeat them because we work antagonistically, we're natural enemies. Think, and excuse the childish example, but vampires and wolves, wherever one goes, the other follows."

"Anyhow, they are the ones that killed your parents," He said frankly, "We were there that night, and we saw them go in, and we heard the gunshots."