Hi!
I did extra work, and more extra work. And so here I can post another chapter, which you will hopefully enjoy. Some of you said you were impatient for Anna to see her attraction for Alexander for what it was and accept it. Now, I'm not saying the attraction is real (I'm not saying it has no substance either), however, I want you all to think about what happened in Anna's past. I don't think that's something you can just overcome and walk away from.
We shouldn't even think about such things, but, just for a moment, imagine the unthinkable: if somebody murdered your family, and carried a specific trait or distinctive appearance, belonged to a certain group - how would you feel like everytime you saw someone looking like that person? What would it take for you to forgive and forget? If you like, feel free to answer that question and let me know your thoughts on it.
Lara
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Chapter 24
The blurring vision steadied and I was placed on my feet again.
Whoa!
My head was spinning and my body felt like it had been on a freaking carousel ride with my mind drugged on psychedelics. Dizziness made me trying to grab something, afraid that I would lose my balance. Too late did I realize that I had grabbed Alexander's shirt. I blushed and let go, about to toss a few dirty words at him that had been hanging on the tip of my tongue for days. Being thrown over his shoulder like a garbage sack was the final straw to what the head vampire had been orchestrating lately.
I opened my mouth, noticing only then that the vampire was ignoring me completely. He moved past me, brushing my hand away wordlessly. I closed my mouth and looked around in bewilderment. Had he really sensed the death of one person in the whole damned city? I drew up my walls of air and took a look around, scowling.
This better be good.
We were in an alley and the faint music from Crimson District's clubs was like a weak memory, remote and silent. The alley was deserted, and by the looks of it we were in one of the run down parts of the city at the fringe of the district. I couldn't seem to see past that mayhem of darkness and shadows around us. I was seriously starting to believe that the head vampire was only giving me the run around.
I froze. I saw it behind Alexander's crouching figure. Blood is being drawn. Somebody is on the verge of dying. I remembered his words. He had been right.
There on the cold, dark asphalt. A body. Eyes wide open. Arms loosely at her side. Skin white. My eyes widened in horror. I sucked in a breath. The corpse had two puncture marks on her neck. Red. Blood. I gulped, tasting sour spit. Alexander looked at me. His blue eyes were piercing and cold, a visual twin to the tone of his voice.
"Do you sense anything?"
And then it hit me. If Alexander really had sensed the death of the victim, it would mean that the murder happened less than five minutes ago. I delved into second sight. The world tipped and changed its colors, giving me access to a vision of surrounding auras. My vision was smacked and saturated with the dark nothingness in front of me. Alexander's aura danced into my sight with ease. Apart from that nothing but the endlessness of patchy gray. The circle of awareness widened as I opened myself up fully. I saw it at the very edge of my perception. Movement. Dark nothingness.
"A vampire. Down the street," I said, drawing a shallow breath.
Alexander shot up and was gone before I even had a chance of saying more. I sprinted after him, running into a crisscross pattern of unknown alleyways. Hesitation made me stop in my tracks as I reached the next deserted street, not sure which way to go. Icy night-air made my breath foggy. A cold breeze slapped against my face. There was darkness all around me and no movement – nothing that could have even remotely hinted at a blood-crazed vampire lurking in the shadows.
I settled on the second street to my left, kitty-corner from where I came from. I forced my feet to move on and on, my lungs pumping oxygen through my blood system rapidly. The noise behind me was suddenly there. Instincts had me turn around. But I was human. I was slow. Too slow.
A vampire crashed against my shields, making me stumble back a few feet, the shields still intact. He snarled at me, his face a mask of stirred deadness. Extracted, long fangs contorted his face into the visage of a monster.
I stretched out my left hand, palm facing him, and sent a shock wave of compressed air in his direction. He evaded it and vanished from my sight. I turned and turned, peering into the veils of night around me. I found myself alone in the street. The drum-like sound was coming from inside of me. It was deafening and it was getting faster by the second. On the outside, however, I was surrounded by silence. Unknown darkness and danger seemed to be lurking in every shadow.
In all likelihood I had just met our murderer. My senses stretched and sharpened, brimming with electric-like attention. I let the air become my extended hand, running my mental eye through all the particles in the air, trying to see what could not be seen.
The vampire lunged at me from behind. I never had a chance. Flesh met asphalt, pain exploded, as I nosedived into the street. He was in front of me, above me, before I could even breathe. I raised my hands instinctively. The sphere of power burst from my palms like an explosive bomb. The vampire evaded it without missing a beat, coming at me with the force and speed of a freaking tornado in fast forward.
A blur of colors and darkness; a gust of wind. That was all I perceived at first – before I saw it. The head vampire himself had made his entrance into the fight. Before I knew it Alexander was holding the vampire, his white fingers curled around his opponent's neck. White flesh upon white flesh. The vampire's feet were dangling in the air, his two hands closing around Alexander's arm. An intricate interplay of emotional deadness and sparks of hatred marked the unknown vampire's face as he tried to pry his opponent off.
Alexander, meanwhile, was unfazed by his 'comrade's' attempts at escaping.
"You are not one of my subjects and I do not remember having ever seen you," he said.
His voice seemed to darken and deepen as the sentence stretched and lengthened. If I had to make an educated guess, I would have said he was fusing it with some sort of undead power.
"Who sent you? Tell me." Alexander shook him violently, the other vampire's eyes bulging.
"Fuck you!" he growled.
Alexander's eyes bled to a dark aquamarine. I felt the first stirrings of his power. Common sense made me re-erect my shields and search the darkness around us for other attackers. But there was nothing. No one. Just the three of us. My head snapped back to the two vampires when I heard Alexander's voice bursting with quiet hollowness – his most effective tool of intimidation he possessed. The silent whispering he performed held more threat than any human's roaring could have.
"You will tell me who sent you to kill the human, or I will rip you apart ... piece by piece."
I had lived through some of Alexander's tantrums, but the way he was acting at this moment was worse. This was the true nature of the undead. The unknown vampire, however, kept his mouth shut, contempt written all over his visage.
Alexander raised his other arm and drew back. Held by unknown forces that could have been cowardice, sick fascination, or shock – or maybe even an amalgam of all three, – I found myself incapable of moving. I watched and stared. Was the head vampire going to torture him?
Hushed peripheral sounds, though barely there, unhinged something in my brain. Renewed alertness and adrenaline made my eyes turn to the sky, made me look up. Darkness marred my sight wherever I looked.
I closed my eyes, plunging into second sight. Dark nothingness, distinctively auras of vampires, was moving in a collective blur on the tops of buildings around us. The vampires' movements were too fast to tell exactly how many there were.
"Alexander!" I had to call him a second time to make him stop shaking the vampire and look at me. "We're not alone anym-"
The shot rang through my ears, its echo swallowed by other sensations. The world narrowed down, time moving at a slower pace. The actions were too fast for me to contemplate what was happening and why. All I saw was how the vampire was suddenly dangling lifelessly from Alexander's hand. Someone shot him in the heart. Silver bullets.
Alexander let the vampire drop to the ground unceremoniously. And with the one action time began to speed up, taking up its pace again.
"Wait here." The words had barely left Alexander's mouth, and he was gone already.
* * *
That was how I was left standing on a street with the slowly decomposing corpse of a vampire. I knew that it would take about thirty minutes, give or take five minutes, and all that was left on the cold asphalt would be a heap of ashes.
I backed away from the corpse and flattened my back against the wall behind me. I let my eyes roam the tops of the buildings and the dark streets surrounding the crossroad, my senses stretched to the full. I heard faint sounds from the main street far behind – a couple of drunks hollering in the distance. Apart from that no sound. No auras. No trace of the attackers or Alexander.
Wait here. I grimaced, mimicking the head vampire's voice in my head. Yeah, right.
I scanned my surroundings again. I was too much out in the open. No way was I going to wait in that goddamn forsaken place. I made my way back to the main street of the Crimson District. Guided by the blinking neon lights and the never-ending sound, I started my marching back towards humanity. The corpse of the young girl we had found was still lying on the cold asphalt. I walked by and moved on, afraid of looking at the body. I'd seen enough this night.
Just as I reached the mouth of the side street, as I was about to step out of the darkness and right into the circus-like arena of blinking lights, someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned around, my arm swinging out to give a fatal blow. At first all I saw was the cold, steely hand that caught my wrist. Then I found myself staring at an inhumanly beautiful face, aquamarine eyes gazing back at me.
"I am the one vampire you do not have to fear this night, little witch," Alexander said in a low voice.
"What happened?"
He shook his head, still not letting go of my wrist. "I was too slow. They dispersed in the crowd." His grip tightened as he stared at the corpse behind us. "Vampires murdering humans in my own territory, in my presence."
I winced. "Alexander, you're hurting me!"
It was enough to bring him back. He loosened his grip. "I apologize. Come now," he said, before he started dragging me back into the street.
"What?! Hang on a minute! We have to call the TF3, or the police. We can't just leave the corpse like this!"
Alexander simply walked on. I tried to make him stop and listen, pulling at his hand.
"Where are we going? Alexander?!" I hissed, keeping my voice low.
The vampire ignored me, his gaze focused on the street, his movements almost mechanical. We were walking down the main street. The night was alive with all kinds of sounds floating through the air. Eerie music, way too loud bass drums, and people's voices were coming from the bars and clubs lined up on both sides of the street, blending into one huge wave of mesmerizing noise.
"Alexander, where are we going?"
His voice was quiet and steely. Maybe I was only imagining things, maybe I was getting better at reading him and his fast-shifting moods, but something in the tone of his voice told me that he was trying to fight for control. To me, it sounded as if his rage was on the verge of bursting.
"I have to know who it is that dares to insult me in such an impertinent manner. There is one person I know of that might have the answers I am looking for."
I frowned. "Who?"
His blue eyes found mine. When he answered, his voice was cold, devoid of any trace of emotion apart from that one named contempt. He said the name as if the word itself was an insult.
"Victor."