Hi,

I'm not sure this will make any sense, but I'm going to say it anyway. I think what I can say about this part of the book is this: Anna's memories are painful, but the way in which she deals with them will (re)define who she really is. At the end of the road there is this thing called hope.

Lara

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Chapter 57

Because of you. The words spun in my head, a recurring, fateful boomerang of sound that wouldn't let me go. I shook my head, closing my eyes. And still, the memories kept coming.

He smiles – razor sharp, pointed teeth protruding from his mouth. Then his hand shoots down. My eyes widen when it goes right through my mother's chest. My hand comes up to my mouth and I gasp.

The vampire stills and sniffs the air, his head craned into my direction. His black eyes move like a rotating radar, scanning the room. My eyes water, shivers of hot and cold running down my back, and I start rocking back and forth. I don't understand what's happening. The game never ends this way. It doesn't.

He moves around the room, his feet drawing almost a circle, and stops in front of the cupboard I am hiding in. I watch as he opens the cupboard with a ghostly, white hand, looking down at me with those scary eyes.

"There you are," the vampire says.

"There you are."

The overlay of voices tore me out of the vision. There he was, standing in front of me. Vladislav. Chilling, annihilating black eyes.

You.

"He will be very pleased once I've handed you over to him."

I heard what Ramondo, my parents' killer, said all those years ago. And for the first time I understood the words completely. It was true. My parents died because of me.

And no matter what I did, I couldn't ever change that fact.

Cold hands wrapped around upper my arms behind my back and I got a whiff of the familiar bitter, biting taste of his aura. Even without turning I knew the red-haired, Asian vampire was behind me.

I lifted my eyes to the night sky, shuddering. It was over. Why not let them take me? End it?

Maybe I deserved it. My parents were dead because of me. Maybe I should just ... go.

Vladislav stepped closer. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised his hand, as if to touch my cheek. The air was heavy with the power of the grave and the scent of stale, wasted air, like a heady strong wine on the overripe end of the spectrum. The air carried the scent of ash and the slightest hint of decomposition.

Trapped in a scenario from hell, I stared up at him with the eyes of a child. One moment, one glimpse of those depthless black eyes was enough. Thrown back into a nightmare I had relived too many times to count, my body froze up.

"Raphael was so kind to inform me about your whereabouts. He said you would come here eventually," Vladislav said, letting his hand fall.

I jerked. Medici.

"He said you stole from him, Isabella," Vladislav said. "Shinji will remedy that."

The Asian vampire moved liquid fast. His hand slipped into the pockets of my coat, then out again. Shinji, so the Asian had a name. He pulled at the sleeves of my leather coat until it ripped at the seams, shoved me forward and tore the coat off in one swift move. My teeth clattered when Shinji pulled my back to his front again.

My eyes widened. They knew about the magical artifacts. They knew!

I could barely breathe. The beating power of Vladislav was stifling and suffocating. Almost like a cold disease was trying to slip under my skin and strangle me from the inside.

"Why are you here in New York? What do you want?" The words tore out of me, plea, sigh and prayer.

Vladislav stared at me, hands clasped behind his back.

"Have you the effrontery to pretend you do not know?"

Something in his eyes shifted, like the widening of a black hole that kept pulling me forward, dragging me past an event horizon that would mean certain death. If I just stared at it for too long it would absorb my mind whole and never let me go. I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing hard.

I shook my head, licked my lips and opened my eyes. "I'm not pretending, I really don't know."

Vladislav stared at me without the barest hint of motion, less emotion.

"Titus and Ramondo were found dead in Italy."

I blinked. Titus was dead too? Who-

Vladislav took a step forward and the power of the grave leaped, surged up.

"Adorjàn thinks he can do whatever he pleases, but he is after all just a dog. I am here to remind him of that."

Adorján. Vladislav kept calling Alexander by that name. And he thought Alexander killed both Titus and Ramondo. Which meant it was my fault Vladislav was in the city. I pressed my eyes shut.

"Without Alexander's knowledge, I have infiltrated the city bit by bit," Vladislav said. "By the time Alexander realizes, it will be too late. I have placed trusted vampires of my own throughout the city decades ago. He is sure of their loyalty. They are walking right beside him and he does not even know. By the end of this week, New York will fall. His allies will yield and side with me one after the other."

"What do you want from me?" My voice was low, but steady. "Alexander's not going to-"

"He did not come for Alexander tonight," Shinji said from behind me. "Didn't you ever wonder why Ramondo kept you alive all those years ago? This night we came for you."

Vladislav stepped into my line of vision.

"I am-", he halted.

The soft tip tip of feet, air displacement. My head whipped to the side. I saw motion and a figure blurring into thin air. Time unhinged and it threw itself against the vampire. Vladislav took a step back, evading the attack with unearthly ease. The vampire's head turned, the motion one of a wooden puppet. His eyes, the one of an emotionless killer.

I followed his gaze. And froze.

Blaze was standing on the walkway in wolf form. Sleek brown pelt, glistening in the street light, teeth bared.

The air around him trembled, a shift in power that bled into the elemental set-up of his environment. Time exploded into shatters, bits and pieces that were seconds, a series of frozen images that didn't make sense. Blaze was going to go against Vladislav.

No.

"Blaze, no!" I screamed.

I tried to move, anything to stop him. Shinji's hand pressed down into my neck, cutting of air. Hurting.

"No!" The word barely traveled past my lips – half croak, half gasp, half prayer. The pressure increased and I was suffocating.

My vision darkened. Another shred of time that slipped through my fingers.

I opened my eyes.

Blaze was circling Vladislav, soft-footed and with the intention of a skilled hunter. I'd never seen Blaze like this. Not as a wolf on the hunt. His paws lifted and he blurred through the air with a growl. Vladislav faded into nothing, moving in vamp speed.

They were moving too fast for me to see. I blinked.

A yelp shredded the night. Another whirlwind of motion. Then stillness.

Vladislav's arm was buried in Blaze's body, blood dripping down the vampire's arm like red rain.

"Blaze!" I jerked, trashed in The Asian vampire's hands. I tore forward, twisting until my shoulder was bursting with pain. "Let me go!"

My vision blurred with the stinging wetness in my eyes.

Vladislav drew back his arm and the wolf slammed to the street, body limp. Unmoving. My struggles abated with the white noise in my head. The street moved in front of my eyes. I could see the blood on the pelt – at first clinically sharp. Then the outlines of the unmoving wolf blurred.

Sound. Vision. Perception dulled and withered in the wake of the hurtful pounding in my chest.

First my parents. Then Maria. Now Blaze.

You.

It was you. He came because of you. They died because of you.

The cold of the grave came closer, seeping into my skin. It was numbing, dulling whatever was tearing up inside of me. And I accepted it.

Vladislav walked up to me. The cloth of his dark-blue military tailcoat didn't as much as wrinkle, less move with the motion. A whiff of dust and rottenness. The air was packed with the kind of smells that reminded me of a mausoleum: old, weird, and heavy with a hint of decomposition. Vladislav had swapped the traditional black war uniform from Red Night's Eve for a blue tailcoat. Up close I could see that the material was high quality. It was the last detail that stuck.

His eyes captured mine. It was the darkest black I'd ever seen. Chilling. Annihilating. A void that could swallow me whole.

Vladislav leaned into me. Then sharp pain on the side of my neck, a twinge of cold, long teeth. My pulse slowed, sounds dying with every stagnating beat. A sense of weightlessness gripped my body, a reversed perverse fall in a black whole with no end and no beginning.

Maria. Was this how it felt? Was I dying?

I wanted to call out, but the words didn't make it past my lips, choked up by that clawing fear in the pit of my stomach. I blinked. Something was wrong with my vision, like I was looking through broken, frosted glass.

Alexander. Andy. Where are you?

No answer. There was no one. I was alone in this.

My vision flickered in and out. Shadows hunted one another, darkness chased away by the dark yellow glow of fire in the distance. I might as well have been walking through Dante's Inferno. I followed the end of a dark tunnel, stumbled finally into light and opened my eyes. Blood rushed in my ears.

I was back in the street, caught in Vladislav's arms.

"My my, Adorjàn has made a lucky find, has he not? I understand why he kept you. Your blood is ... delicious," Vladislav said. Black, void eyes. Widening. "You will serve me."

No.

I tasted bile on my tongue. Vladislav wasn't going to kill me. He was going to make me his human servant.

Vladislav bit his wrist, pressed it to my mouth.

No. Please no.

I thrashed in Shinji's deadly grip. He pulled my arms back until I thought my shoulders would snap out of their sockets. Pain.

I screamed. That was when the first drops of blood entered my system.