Drown Under Earth - Shadows of the Night 3

Chapter 50

Hi!

Once again your comments and reactions to the last chapter amazed me. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this with me!! Well, as most of you suspected, Anna will be spending some quality time with the head vampire. Enough with unnecessary introductions! Read, Vote, Comment! Let me know what you think about this one!!

Lara

________________________________________________________

Chapter 50

"You can take it off now," Vanessa said.

I felt like a trained monkey, but I complied and fumbled with the knot at the back of my skull. I tore at the black cloth until it gave way and wrested it down, all but flinging it into Vanessa's pale face. I blinked away the dull darkness I had been living in for the rest of the trip and got my first look of our surroundings.

Yup. I was right.

If I didn't go crazy – and that was debatable after all that happened this night – we were at Alexander's secret lair. The ridiculously spacious garage with all its expensive posh cars couldn't really impress me anymore and that included the red Lamborghini I gaped at on my first visit. I had seen the whole show. And let me tell you, the memory of my last stay as a guest here wasn't a happy one. Somehow it had made it into my top ten of moments-in-which-Anna-experienced-mortal-fear.

We walked out the door to the garage and right into the house. Wordlessly, I followed George with Vanessa right on my heels. The whole show was a bit over the top, if you asked me. What did they expect me to do? Make a run for it and flail about with my arms screaming bloody murder?

I shook my head and let my eyes run over the posh house with hidden awe. The head vampire could be a cocky bastard as much as he wanted to be, I had to give him that much: he had taste. In spades. It was the kind of taste that couldn't be bought with money alone, the kind of style that needed the keen eye of someone who just knew what color pattern went together with which fitment.

Alexander liked art. As I noted on my first visit, he clearly favored decoration and art belonging to the late Twentieth and early Twenty-first Century.

Contemporary. Why?

We climbed one set of stairs to reach yet another door. It led to a marble-plastered hallway, tasteful flowers placed strategically on a round black table in front of the main staircase to our left. I expected George to move in that direction. The vampire, however, marched into the opposite one, feet not making a sound on the white and black marble. The sharp click-click sounds of Vanessa's high heels were like hastened clockwork behind me. I had the feeling I should take that as a hint that time was up. I hoped it wasn't mine. I glued my eyes on to George's back as if my life depended on it.

The turn to the right was sudden and unexpected, but I followed the vampire as he walked into another room. Setting my first step into the room was like entering another world. The parlor, for that was the only name fitting the thing we entered, was a firework of red. Velvet enrobed various shapes and forms of furniture and decoration.

From what I had seen of the house so far, I assumed Alexander had done away with sentimentalism for times that no longer were and decided to stay in the near past when it came to interior design. I stood corrected. This was from another century. I was looking at a parlor that could have well served as the setting for colonial pompousness and privilege.

My eyes couldn't seem to decide where to latch upon first. Was it the shiny black piano to my right? The intricate pattern of the oriental carpet on the parquet floorboards? The red velvet couch and matching Edwardian parlor chairs? Or the-