Drown Under Earth - Shadows of the Night 3

Chapter 35

Hi!

Busy weekend and work no matter where I look. I finished editing with a major headache ;-) Anyway, I hope you like the chapter :-)

Lara

___________________________________________________________

Chapter 35

Ever since I set the first step onto Magenta Warrens' murder scene and crossed the doorstep, I felt that I was dealing with an extraordinary case. It was not only the knowledge that she had been a powerful witch within the Circle and the Invisibility Cloak. There was more. I still didn't know what it was exactly that bothered me so much.

One murderer, or two? It didn't matter. Even with the help of another vampire it was hard to imagine that a newly turned version of the undead would be stupid enough to attack a powerful witch on the supposedly first night of murder. Why her?

I had to find out, and I was ready to cross thin lines to get what I wanted.

Andy had managed to get a hold of both: the keys to Magenta Warrens house and the whole police report of the first investigation. Sitting in his car, I kept flipping through it, the knowledge that I wouldn't be able to read a thing in the flickering darkness of the car ignored and stashed away somewhere in the back of my brain. Frustrated, I closed the file for the umpteenth time. Sure as hell I would be reopening it in a few seconds.

"I still can't believe you got that thing," I said. The words bounced into the lulling monotony of the engine noise, wreaked havoc with the spell of silence we'd been under ever since I got in. I eyed him from the side. "What exactly was it that you had to do to obtain the file?"

I watched Andy turn to me. We were bathed in darkness, splashed by occasional flashes of light coming from the world outside. No chance for me to get a good look at his face. And yet, somehow I knew he was smiling. Probably a smug look somewhere in there too.

"Wouldn't you like to know," he said in a low voice.

"Yeah, I get it. You're not going to tell me. But, I mean, this is something Gremer would have a very human tantrum about. He'd probably rip his trench into pieces and start trampling on it, if he found out," I said.

"You know that at first I only wanted to humor you, but, actually, I've been thinking along the same lines." Andy's voice was still low, but it had a certain edge, the kind of tone that lets you know things were serious. "People getting killed in their homes by a vampire that's not even fit enough to lace his boots? Even if he had help from someone else, how did they get past Warrens' wards? I heard the house was warded stronger than most banks. Something's wrong with this picture. It just doesn't make sense."

A deep, suspense-laden silence filled the car as soon as we spotted the house. It sat there in all its upper-class beauty, white and tall like the rest – but stained. Scraps of the yellow tape the human police had left as a reminder of what had happened all those nights ago. If I craned my neck enough, I could see the tops of St. Nathaniel Church. Just another thing adding to the sense of false security and non-existent small-town-proximity. But no, we were still in New York, and things could go rough and ugly real fast.

Hiding in the shadows along the sidewalk, we approached the building slowly. Silence and darkness seemed to have plotted against us, the soft noise of our careful steps like an enforced pounding in dark stillness. The streets were empty, abandoned, and still it felt as if sinister and invisible eyes were watching our every move.

Of course, that simply could have been Medici's watchdogs (whether birds or rogues didn't really make a difference to me). About the birds, I didn't know. Their more human counterparts were there, however. They were the ones who were making me nervous.