Hi,

We've been waiting for this for a while: Another dance between Alexander and Anna. Any idea what happened to Anna, anybody? I hope you like the chapter :-) 

Lara

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Chapter 43

For a long moment he stared at her. Still, oh so still.

"When I entered the street you were gone. There was blood on the asphalt," Alexander said.

She stilled. Blood.

Something was tugging at her mind. A memory she was close to grasping, yet something was in her way and every time she reached for it, it slipped through her fingers.

She couldn't remember. She didn't know what it was, but it weighed upon her like a brick wall, threatening to fall and bury her under. She closed her eyes.

Blood.

"Whose blood was it, Anna? What happened?"

She didn't know. She might have lost minutes, maybe an hour in that street. Nothing in her mind but blank open space. Then that moment of new awareness and power.

The memory of who she was before that moment felt like a cheap Hollywood movie, or maybe a story a con-artist had made up to gain her trust and deceive her. She refused to fall victim to cheap tricks, be they coming from a small-time crook or the head vampire himself.

She had to focus on the here and now, for the time being. Priorities. Her eyes went back to the diary. Alexander had no right to take it. It belonged to her. She could try to snatch it away from him, fight him for it. Yet she hesitated. He was too formidable an opponent. She wasn't sure she could take him. Not without preparation.

She only had one bargaining chip to get the diary: Alexander thought she had valuable information – a missing puzzle piece she herself didn't have. She had to make use of that.

"This city isn't at the brink of chaos, it's neck-deep in it. You want to know what happened the night of the attack?" She lifted her chin. "Give me the book and I'll tell you everything I know."

She refused to call it diary, wondered whether he had guessed, or had read everything anyway.

He stared at her, blue eyes that were calculating with an ancient old mind.

"How would I know the information was worth handing it over? How would I know your words could be trusted? You are not only an outlaw in this city, you are a liar."

Liar. The world bounced off against her barely erected walls. She had to get herself in that perfect place again, that place where she felt no one and nothing. Nothing but the dark magic. She would get her hands on the diary, no matter how.

She shrugged. "You're a vampire, you'll know if I'm telling the truth or not. Besides, I'm not the first outlaw you've made bargains with."

He looked at her for a long moment. The familiar weight of his penetrating stare settled on her shoulders again. "We have a bargain, then. Tell me a single lie and it will be void."

The stone cold expression on his face left no room for argument or doubt. He was not going to budge on this. He had always been head-strong. Not that it mattered. She would give him the truth. At least as much as she knew of it.

"Fine," she said. "I was with the Fade pack. We were looking for the Inri Brotherhood. We thought they were hiding in the sewer system. It turned out we were wrong. They used it to hide human weaponry. They attacked us when we moved in. A diversionary tactic, apparently."

Up until this moment she had given him information he probably already had. Now the tricky part would begin.

"The Raven planned to attack the Invisibility Cloak's headquarters from the start. I stopped him. Then one of the rogues dragged me into a portal. We landed close to Victor Crawford's mansion."

She left out the details. She wouldn't give him more than he needed.

"When I was there, I didn't see anyone. I approached the mansion, but..." She tried to find the words. "Something was off about it."

Blue eyes, regarding her face stoically.

"Elaborate."

She shook her head. "When I looked, I saw no one in the street. No human servants, no vampires. Nothing. Just that eerie feeling of wrongness."

No motion, not a hint of a reaction. If possible, he stilled even further. Exactly what she anticipated. No reaction at all. At least on the outside.

What would it take for the head vampire to lose control?

"The blood on the street. Whose was it?" he said.

She shook her head. "I don't know."

He would sense that she was telling him the truth. She'd been very careful to tell him what happened without telling him everything, yet not lying.

He cocked his head. "Could it have been the Raven?"

There it was. One of the questions she didn't want him to ask.

The smile didn't reach her eyes. "I don't think so. After I fought him at the headquarters, he was injured by the Circle, or the Death Squad, but you would already know that, wouldn't you?"

Alexander went still, as if, with an intake of breath, the vampire had morphed into a statue. Now, more than ever she could see the otherworldliness in him, could almost taste it. The power of the grave was like a rare herb on the tip of her tongue, the pleasant bitter-sweet flavor unfolding anew with each breath she took. And still...

She shook herself. Unlike him, she was alive. Very much so. And she would do whatever it took to keep breathing.

She held his gaze, showing him with all her might that she was telling the truth. Alexander would be able to tell, he always had in the past.

He remained still, his face void of expression. Unreadable. He might have contemplated how to get rid of her body or philosophized about the benefits of using her yet again, going through all the calculations like a seasoned chess player before making his move.

"What did he do to you? Did Medici hurt you?"

The question caught her unaware. She licked her lips, focused on what was real. It wasn't that, it was...

This.

Another rush of dark magic, that tingle in her fingers that made her want to use the power. Right there, right in front of him.

She fought against the pull, blinked. As if emerging from a haze of dreams.

He was still looking at her, waiting.

Again that smile that felt wrong and misplaced on her lips. It vanished as fast as it had come.

"He tried to," she said. "What are you going to do about him? He teleported out and escaped, but he can't have gone far. Not with his injury."

She had to know, had to anticipate his movements and intentions. Knowledge was power, might tip the scales in her favor at the crucial moment.

He raised an eyebrow. "You mean what are we going to do about it. We, as in you and me will find him, and end this."

"There is no we," she said evenly. "Now, hand me the book."

She wouldn't call it diary, not until she was sure Alexander knew what he was holding in his hands.

She straightened. In the end it didn't matter.

He watched her with those blue eyes that once unnerved her.

"What do you need it for?" He said, taking a step towards her. The shadowland of the room seemed to shrink with his growing presence.

"That doesn't concern you," she said. "I gave you what you wanted. Now, give me the book."

"I will not, unless you tell me what you need it for," he said.

Finally something in his eyes, an emotion maybe. There was the hint of a challenge in the unfathomable depths of blue.

She moved forward, closing the distance between them. Her eyes went up to his face as she put her hand on the diary.

"I need it, because it's mine."

She wrenched the diary from his fingers.

He let her have it, she knew that. The thought had barely crossed her mind when he grabbed her elbow.

Dark magic flooded her. It was there, all around her. Ready in case she needed it. She didn't need him, she didn't need anybody. If there was one thing she learned in the past it was this: If you need saving, better save yourself. No one else came to her rescue when she needed it. It was a hard lesson, but she learned it. She learned it well. She learned to help herself.

She gasped. Another wave of dark-magic that threatened to knock her off her feet. She felt she would burst, if she didn't give in and make use of what was there. She let the dark power fill her. The magic was so close – twisting, slithering underneath her skin. Images and shadows, music impossible and surreal, but so so very real to her. A drop of dark power sizzled along her skin, electric bolts dancing over her fingertips.

A blink of the eye, a grain of sand tumbling down an invisible hour glass, and the vampire had stepped away from her. Alexander was looking at her, arms loose at his sides.

"Why did you go rogue, Anna?"

The words were soft, silent, placed with a deadly calm. There was something in his voice, something in the way he said her name that unsettled her.

The dark magic flickered, wavered, as if she was losing her grasp on it.

Damn him.

She squared her shoulders. It didn't matter.

"It doesn't matter. Just don't get in my way when I take down the Raven," she said evenly.

She was not going to tell him that she didn't know how she became who and what she was. Sometimes she wondered if it mattered. She had power now. No one could touch her, or bully her into doing something she didn't want to do. She was going to pick the dark magic any day, anytime, anywhere over that.

"This city is falling apart. Will you let it die?" Alexander said.

She smiled, flashing teeth. "I said I will handle the Inri Brotherhood."

"And you will die if you try alone," he said. "There is more than one threat to the order and peace in this city."

Her smile faded. Dark power whispered in her mind again. And she listened.

"I don't care," she said.

He stared at her. Something about the way his eyes narrowed stirred something within her core. Made her regret saying those words, even to him.

"Don't even try to threaten or approach me, Alexander. If you do, I won't hold back."

Moments of silence, and he was still looking at her. She knew him well enough to know he was weighing possibilities, calculating with the sharp clarity of a cardiac surgeon.

"Come to me when you change your mind," he said softly.

She blinked, stared into thin air.

He'd vanished. Just like that. And she didn't see it.

Something, an emotion, flared up inside of her. It flattened out and dissipated in a heartbeat. It didn't matter. What mattered was what the head vampire was planning next. Why leave her just like that? Why give her the diary?

For a long moment she simply stood there, listening. Waiting. Anticipating his return, however unlikely. But no. He wasn't coming back. Why?

She blinked, stunned. The pieces fell into place. He saw her use dark magic. Maybe he, like most of New York, had turned his back on her now that he knew what she had become.

Survival. Blood. Power. These were the principles the world operated on. Even more so for someone like the head vampire.

She rolled her shoulders. She would find out why Alexander left and what game he was playing, but first she would retrieve what she really came for.

Alexander thought she came back tonight only because of the diary. He was wrong. There was more she had hidden in the apartment.