Hi!

I hope you had a great weekend! Mine was, but as always it was over too soon. Anyway, it's not Monday yet, and it's time for another update. It was fun writing this one, hope you like it. I loved reading your theories about what was going to happen - some of them were very good and damn close to the real thing! Thank you all for reading :-)

Lara

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Chapter 11

The screams tore into my consciousness, rocked me out of a daze of greater proportions. Sickness. Faintness. The twisted feeling of reverted freefall and disorientation. My body tidal-washed and segmented.

I righted myself, fighting the urge to lie back down again and simply close my eyes. I stopped and stared. Blinked.

My vision was disintegrating. Fading particles of blue, threads that came from heaven and made their way to the ground with unmatched speed. I blinked again and the threads turned into rain. Reality, in all its terrifying beauty, crashed and pummeled into me, knocking my mind back and forth.

The rogue witch who attacked me before was lying on the asphalt ten feet beside me, coughing and sputtering water. He looked like a drowning victim come back to life. The realization came while I watched him vomit water onto the street.

This was my doing. I used the element of water. Again.

The ring of rogues was still there, shadowed faces watching in silence. Staring at me.

"He was right," thin-and-gangly said in voice so low, it barely broke into my consciousness. He was watching the rogue I'd hurt with narrowed eyes. Until his gaze went back to me. "You're gonna pay for this." He jerked his neck, a vague motion pointing towards me. "Take her."

I pushed myself from the ground. The world spun and turned like a defective, dizzying carousel. My stomach heaved and lurched forward as if it had been caught and swept up in a wild tide, a boat rocking back and forth in a deadly sea storm. Pain whirled in my system, raging and raving.

I fisted my hands at my sides, focused on the ring of rogue witches until the world righted itself. I wasn't going to come with them willingly. I was going to fight them. Even if it meant going back into that dark place again.

I would have done so. But sometimes a small flap of a butterfly can cause death and destruction in another place and another time. Sometimes, when chance meets fate, one situation can turn into something else within the blink of an eye. The unexpected happened. Nothing the rogue witches or I anticipated.

A change on a cellular level. From one moment to the other something in that rain-drenched street shifted. A dark force stirred and moved in like an unstoppable, natural force. A cataclysm in the making. Until I realized just what it was, three rogue witches were already on the ground. A shadow moved through the curtain of rain like a sleek bullet. Swift and inhumanly fast.

I turned and watched the fourth rogue fall. I turned again and peered into the dark shadows behind me. There was nothing my eyes could detect, just that feeling I couldn't put a name on.

"Regroup," one of the rogue witches shouted.

The remaining Inri Brotherhood members formed a circle, back to back. They scanned the darkness around them, splaying their fingers wide. Blue-tinged electricity spread from one finger to the other, a tide of power rising like a bewitching singsong.

The shadow moved, a blur in the landscape of rain, and plunged right into the circle of rogues. I blinked. There were only two left. Whatever had torn into their formation took two rogues with it.

There was a small moment, seconds in which I saw it on their faces: perfect understanding. Whatever was out there was scarier than a whole group of rogues united. And they knew it.

Motion, whispered words, hands going to their chests. I felt the flare of magic, instants before they vanished in front of my eyes, escaping through a portal.

Threads of water cascaded around me, heavy rain drumming on the pavement incessantly. I turned again. There in that alley behind me, something moved. Could it be Marrok? Could a shape shifter even move that fast?

I didn't want to find out.

It wasn't a question of fight or flight. I broke into a run, shed layers of my protective walls, using power to slice and dice the water-soaked air in front of me. I was going into the opposite direction I'd been coming from and I had no idea where I was going. I didn't care. There was one thing I was sure of: Whatever scared the rogues away had to be bigger and badder than my opponents.

Water splashed where my footsteps slammed into puddles of rain. Strands of hair fell into my eyes along with the angry rain that kept coming and practically made me blind. I veered to the right, skidding on wet asphalt, as I moved into a narrow alley.

The hand came out of nowhere, slammed into my chest only to draw me back against a solid, rock-hard something of a surface. For a moment my heart stopped beating altogether.

"What do you think you are doing?"

The voice slipped into my skin, slithered underneath layers of flesh and muscle. It was soft, menacing, and cold. And very familiar.

One of Alexander's arms was pressed against my lower stomach, holding tightly, the other one drawn around my shoulders. Both of them were bloody. His face was directly beside mine, our bodies plastered together like two fitting magnets. The rain kept pouring down, a cascade of cold water against my flushed cheeks and skin.

The violent tremble rumbled through me, made my knees go weak. For the barest of seconds the feeling stole over me: Familiarity. Relief. Safety. I felt myself go limp in his arms, melt into his back like it was a pillar I could rest and lean against for support. It was because of him that I didn't have to go back to that cold and dark place inside of me, face one of the things I feared most.

"Is this what you do when I give you time off, little witch?" He said against my ear. There was a streak of anger mixed with a subtle threat in the texture of his voice, and it was enough to tear me out of my state of shock. Someone dropped a dump-truckful of ice over my head and knocked me right back into my senses.

I broke free of his hold, and the three great witches be damned, I knew that I could only do so because he let me. I spun around to face him. An instant later I wished I hadn't.

Tendrils of dark hair wound themselves around his face and were plastered to his skin. Raindrops poured down his cheeks and forehead, made the head vampire's chiseled features even more otherworldly. The white shirt he was wearing was soaked to the skin, almost see-through. It gave me an unadulterated view of a relief of defined muscles I knew damn well to be capable of working. The blood on his hands was a stark contrast to his white skin, looked like a henna tattoo come to life in the rain.

The expression on his face had lost some of its usual neutrality. In the past I always wanted to be able to read his face, gauge his intentions and thoughts by his expression alone. Not so now. Whatever outlines and maps I was staring at, whatever compass I was reading - it was pointing to a vengeful, dark South.

Avenging angel, nightmare, god of death - he was all in one.

"I will not repeat myself again, little witch. What the deuce do you think you are doing?"

Since I had no satisfying answer to that, I went for the obvious diversionary tactics.

"I could ask you the same question. Was studying your papers not enough this night? Guess you're getting a little bored with vamp business. Is that why you had to come in person? Make sure your human servant's still on your oh-so-tight leash?" I crossed my arms in front of me. "Or were you just looking for an excuse to go on a killing spree?"

He stilled. Something in his eyes stretched and darkened. "No, little witch. In contrast to rogues and other criminals, I only kill if I must. I do not enjoy it." He looked at me. "Your answer."

I averted my eyes, simply because I couldn't look anymore. He saved me, granted, but why did he have to come at this point in time? Why now? Why here? I took a long, shallow breath. I felt sick to my stomach, and the only thing that kept me from slumping to the wall behind me was pride. Showing weakness in front of the head vampire of New York wasn't something I could afford.

"I wasn't doing something that went against your orders. I just," I hesitated. "I came here to help someone, okay?"

"Must I remind you of what you are?" He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You are my human servant, little witch. As such you are one of my subjects. Do you even know what a meeting with the head of a shape shifter pack implies?"

My head jerked up on its own. He knew about the meeting with Marrok?

A slow smile crept into his face and lingered on his mouth. "Yes, little witch. I know. I have received reports of you trying to evade subjects I sent for your protection. I was curious as to what you could have been trying to hide from me. You, who vowed to only speak the truth in front of me. What could have been so important that you would risk your safety in favor of hiding it from me?" He took a step closer, and I instinctively backed away. My back bumped into the rough wetness of a wall.

Thoughts ripped into and out of my mind. Did he know about my meeting with the half-witches too? Hell, had I managed to get rid of his bloodhounds even once? Then again, saying that he was curious about what I had been trying to hide implied I had been successful at least once.

He mirrored my motions, then stopped in front of me, way too far in my personal space. "Why did you go to Marrok, and what did he want?" he said.

Dammit, was I just going to stand there, acting like the rest of his sheep of faithful subjects? No matter how long I had to play this game and pretend to be his human servant - I was going to do it my way. If he wanted to play chicken, fine. I was ready.

"It's got nothing to do with you, or me being your human servant. This is personal. I'm here because I wanted to help a friend," I said, raising my chin.

He stared into my eyes and brought his hand up to my cheek. I stilled as cold fingers spread over my skin. I couldn't move. All I could do was stare back into those eyes.

"All this time, and still you learned nothing about the nature of the bond we share. Whatever is personal for you, is personal for me, little witch."

I brushed his hand away and pushed myself away from the wall to move past him. "Don't act like you give a damn about me and my life, Alexander. You already got what you wanted. I'm your human servant. That's all you need to know for now."

He grabbed my arm and spun me around, hands on my shoulders. There was less than a hairbreadth between our faces and I couldn't stop staring into his eyes. He was breathing hard, the fabric of his voice an intricate web of silence and the faintest trace of anger. Human motions and expressions he must have, at some point, relearned - only to show them in the rarest of moments and only if they gained him some sort of advantage.

"I do not care what you think our bond is, little witch. But, yes, you are right. You are my human servant. You will tell me why you came here and what happened in this alley, and you will do so instantly."

I looked away. If I looked any longer his stare would burn me, fry all those brain cells I had left. I had to tell him the truth without revealing too much about what I and Andy had been doing and why I went to Marrok. I wasn't going to give him more than absolutely necessary.