Breathe Under Water - Shadows of the Night 1

Chapter 35

Hi!

I'm back with the next chapter, which absolutely was fun to write! It looks like Alexander will get what he wants and Anna will have to do something she doesn't like. Won't tell you more... Let me know if you like it, and as always thank you for reading!! :D

Lara

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Chapter 35

The lack of the building’s usual hustle and bustle was unsettling, a two-forked alley of comfort and absurdity I had no idea how to navigate through. Comfort, because the corridors were empty and vacant. There wasn’t a single soul to watch my discomfort, or my possible failure to perform what I should have been able to do in theory. Absurdity? Tons of it. Yeah, maybe it just felt wrong being sandwiched between the head vampire of New York and my boss.

While Alexander had covered his face with the usual blankness, the expression on my face was another matter altogether. I didn’t like this. Not at all.

Heartbeat heavy and accelerated, I strained and angled my eyes, let them glide over parts of the training equipment, a feeling of loneliness settling deep into my bones. The gymnasium, the place where sweat and hard work teamed up to meet with pain, lay before us like a shadow-land of open space.

“What now?” I said, simply out of the need to fill the silence. “I have no idea how this works.”

“You are repeating yourself, little witch,” Alexander said from behind me.

Trying to ignore the vamp as much as humanly possible, I turned to Brown. “If it’s been done before, you must know how it works in principle.”

I didn’t even make it a question. It was a sign how great my faith in Brown was. By the three great witches, I hoped he wasn’t going to destroy that faith this night.

He closed his eyes and nodded, the motion barely discernable.

“Hiding one’s aura is very individual and a personal matter,” he said quietly. “The way in which it’s done differs from witch to witch. Close your eyes and think about what you usually do when you hide your aura.”

I breathed in and out evenly. Finding that I still could, beat some sense of affirmation into me. I did what he said.

“Good. You have to open up to the person you want to share your power with. In a way, you have to embrace Alexander on a metaphysical level.”

I yanked my eyes open, staring at him. I wouldn’t touch Alexander willingly, no matter on which plane of existence.

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

Brown shook his head. “I’m not a witch of the air, Anna. I cannot navigate you through this. The rest you must do yourself.”

“Why don’t we simply try it? There is no other way to know whether and how it will work,” Alexander offered.

Sullenly, I turned around to face the vampire. Open up to somebody else? Me? Hah! I didn’t do opening up – no matter who or where. Now they expected me to open up to a living corpse. As if that wasn’t bad enough it was the head vamp himself, a walking redefinition of the term ‘big bad’.

Yeah, I was definitely a witch with issues. But, did I have another choice? … Probably not.

Another deep breath and I soldiered on. I was going to get through this.