Drown Under Earth - Shadows of the Night 3

Chapter 34

Hi!

Thanks for all your comments on the last one. I know I already said it before, but I'll say it again. We're coming to a part of the book I love because I think the action moves things and I put a lot of effort in them. Anyone figured out what Anna's plan is? Let me know! Read, vote, comment! I hope you like this one :-)

Lara

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Chapter 34

An express train of speculations and Andy's expert views on various fighting techniques – no matter how you looked at it, this evening was a welcome distraction to the rollercoaster-ride of crap luck my life had become. Watching the open combat in the Hurricane had been like stepping into another world. The sweat-dropping, flash-like agility of the fighters, their determination, and above all, their skill had made me forget the mess my life was in for a while.

I should have just bowed out and thanked Andy, getting ready to prepare for the next morning and the boatload of problems that came with it. Guess what I did? The stupid thing.

Pretending I had something coming close to a normal life wasn't going to solve anything. Procrastinating the inevitable, that's what it was, and it didn't make any sense. But damn, it felt good.

So here I was, watching the waitress turn around, her hips swinging from right to left as she walked away. How she simultaneously managed to balance the tray steadily was a complete mystery to me. I toyed with the label of my beer, my second one this night, redirected my eyes to my opposite, and found that Andy Varner was looking at me with watchful, brown eyes.

"What's wrong?" he said, eyes narrowing.

"Why would you think something's wrong?" I tried my best to flash him with a genuine smile. It came out lopsided.

"I can see it in your face. Something's bothering you," he said, shifting in his seat.

The tendons in his broad shoulders twisted, the cloth of his white shirt straining with the movement, as he put his elbow on the backrest casually.

"Watching all those hulks fight kind of creeped me out, I guess. I'm already envisioning our next training session," I said, cursing myself as soon as the words left my lips.

That's the best you could come up with?

He shook his head, causing his blondish hair to do a bounce-like movement. Through some trick of the lighting conditions in the bar, the blond strands appeared to be more shiny and beautiful than usual, just like his dark brown eyes seemed to be sparkling. I shook my head. Had to be the alcohol.

"No, there's more," he said. Pure iron and steel manifested behind his eyes.

Andy knew me better than I thought. And I didn't like that I'd have to lie to him. Lies had become essential to me, a daily necessity. The wheels kept turning, I kept lying; my daily grind, my only chance of survival. There would be no absolution, no relief for me.

But no, I couldn't tell him another lie.

The ugly truth? I was too much of a coward to tell him about anything relating to the shocking circumstance that I was in fact the human servant of the head vampire of New York. Besides, I had no way of knowing how close the Raven's squad of rogues was. For all I knew they were sitting one table over. No, it was way too risky to tell him about that one. Or maybe I was just a coward after all.

That left me with only one topic: work. Kicking myself mentally, I realized that that was what I should have been worrying about all along. How could I forget something as important as that? I had been busy planning how to trap the Raven and had neglected the vampire killer case in the course of it. Not good. My mind did the necessary adjustments, filled in the blanks, and up I came with what I had supposedly been worrying about all the time.