Hi!

I'm back. I had a great vacation and am ready to do this! I had problems with the internet today, but finally I got broadband again, wohoo! So here's the next chapter - I hope you like it :-)

Lara

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Chapter 17

"You breached the terms of our agreement! Don't ever come to me again, Varner," Fabrice hissed. "If you do, I will kill you."

The air around Fabrice stirred. Motion that stretched and dwarfed the laws of physics. Vamp speed. He was gone within a heartbeat. The basement, meanwhile, came to life – a behemoth of sound and movement that raised its ugly head. My mother's pendant flared hot against my skin as a shudder rippled through my core. I stilled. My hand went up to my throat, fingering the penchant.

As if it's trying to tell me to take flight.

Andy grabbed my arm. "We've got to get out of here. Now!"

I nodded. There was only one way out: the door Fabrice led us through what had to have been less than fifteen minutes ago. We crept along the wall and up to the entrance. The main room was a mess of spilled glasses and abandoned seats, ashtrays with cigars still smoking. I caught a scrap of movement at the corner of my eye, saw the back of what had to be one of the witches I glimpsed earlier. She disappeared into a secret door at the back wall.

Right in that moment a cacophony of sounds exploded, slicing and dicing their way through the dark halls of the basement. Someone was charging down the stairs.

Adrenaline detonated in my system, racing through my veins like deadly poison. We dashed up to the hidden door and slipped through, trailing the witch's footsteps. Andy wrenched the door closed from the inside and grabbed my hand, pushing me to go faster.

Darkness engulfed us like a dark veil come to life, making it hard to follow wherever this corridor was going to lead us to. The noise of our footsteps got lost in the sound of destruction from behind. Things crashed to the ground, tables were overturned. Then small explosions followed by the sound of glass shattering.

We half ran, half stumbled along the corridor – blind and uncoordinated. The darkness felt like it had substance, like layers of cloth that offered more resistance the more we tried to push through and peel back. Just when I thought I caught a glimpse of something, something other than blinding darkness, it happened: An explosion, deafening and more forceful, more destructive than the rest. The sound waves tore through the corridor, followed by a breeze that made the hair on my neck and arms stand on end.

Crap. They found the hidden door.

Andy shoved me forward and past him without a hint of a warning. I felt his magic flare to life instants before the corridor lit up. A vortex of fire exploded out of Andy's hand, making shadows and light ripple over his face, instants before he sent it towards where we came from.

The fire settled and halted, the flames attaching themselves to the corners of the corridor, eating away at the air until they formed an impenetrable wall. He shoved me forward, forced me into the washed-out darkness in front of us wordlessly, our shadows like oblong puddles shifting in front of us. We stumbled forward and I glimpsed more yellowish-red light when the first screams reached our ears.

Apparently the rogues just walked into Andy's net of flames. It would detain them. The only question was: how long?

The corridor wound to the left, and we were greeted by the first hints of cold, fresh air. We hurried up an old set of stairs, our feet clanking on metal. Instants later we stumbled out into the open.

We'd ended up at the back of the building, in a side alley – a dead end to our right. A brick wall in front of us, the space to our left void of people, but crammed with shadows and garbage cans; niches where enemies could hide and attack without being exposed.

An explosion ripped into the night. My eyes shifted and widened. The danger didn't come from the back alley and the shadow-filled corners! The action was somewhere else. Right there in the middle of the street to our left. Blurs of darkness moving and disappearing.

A trip into second sight? I didn't need it. I knew what I was seeing. A ring of what had to be more than a dozen rogue witches was attacking members of Fabrice's fringe society club, and Fabrice was right in the middle.

Andy took a step forward, eyes poised on the street, hands fisted at his sides. "Go to where we parked the motorcycle and get the hell away from here," he said. "Run!"

I stared at him. What the hell?

A storm of sounds and the mother of all commotions were raging around us, magic and power splattering like drops of blood on pavement. I turned around watching the empty underground tunnel we came from, then faced the blurry fight in front of us.

"Run? What about you?"

"Fabrice. I owe him," Andy said. "Go!"

He didn't look at me, didn't even turn around before he started walking. No, in fact he strode into the street like he owned it. He raised his hand, a ball of flames emerging in his open palm. He released it and the fire fissured out into a spider web of small flames. I watched them close in on the outer circle of rogues.

Something about the sight of him fighting alongside with vampires and creatures the Circle branded as anathema gave me pause. I had no idea why Andy was helping Fabrice – a rogue vampire who demanded his blood (and maybe more) just for fun, for another mind-fuck that served to entertain.

I shook my head. No matter who Fabrice and his group of patchwork-delinquents were, I wasn't going to leave Andy alone in this street.

I detached myself from the wall, about to plunge into the fight, when a trickle of sound penetrated my ears. I turned around. It was coming from the tunnel behind me.

Crap.

I couldn't see them yet, but I knew it from the sound of their footsteps. The rogue witches broke through Andy's firewall and were in the middle of making their way out. I lifted my arms and palmed air. I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed pushed pushed. The magic flared to life like a spark kindled to a forest fire. A blast of wind whipped against the entrance, spinning down and into the tunnel.

I fortified my shields, working the air in front of me. Pulling at the disturbed particles in front of me, I shoved bits and pieces away. If those rogues wanted out, they were going to have to get through empty space that would make their blood boil.

Their advance was not only something I heard. The feel of them, the dark roll of magic that tainted the air around them like overused, bitter cologne hit me head on. Then there were the sounds. Feet trampling on the shabby metal of the staircase. Angry shouts.

They exploded out into the open night air, or tried to. Their bodies slowed and stilled. Five rogues, caught in mid-motion, hands clawing at their throats.

I was too caught up in watching, waiting for the first one to faint and fall. The noise came out of nowhere, penetrated and registered in my mind instants too late. I turned and saw it. Too late.

A vortex of electricity bit through the night air like a bullet and grazed my shoulder. I was thrown back and landed with my back thudding on the ground. Stars exploded behind my retinas. The metallic tang of blood settled in my mouth. My shoulder felt cold to the point of numbness, but I ignored it.

I righted myself and got to my feet, my vision tunneled and shaky, only to find that one of the rogues fighting in the street had spotted me. My eyes darted to my right. The sphere of emptiness was still intact. Whoever tried to walk through that was going to be out cold for a while. I had to focus on what was going on outside. The real danger lay in the brick wall behind me. It offered zero escape routes – a dead end in the narrowest sense of the word. I was a sitting duck if I remained in here.

Without thinking I sprinted out of the side alley, going directly for the rogue. If one of his power-bolts hit home, I was toast. The sounds of fighting around us blurred with the sound of my footsteps, perception dulled by the wild gushing blood in my ears.

Then it happened: The air in front of me rippled, a charge released. I was going so fast, I couldn't swerve and avoid what had just portaled into my way. I slammed into another rogue witch's chest and felt hands close in on my shoulders. The second they made contact, dark power sizzled along my skin. Pain perforated my pores and body, drilled deep into my system.

I screamed and tried to push away, reaching down into my core – desperate for power. The particles between us stilled for a second, hovering in mid-air. Power flipped in on itself and backfired. Air exploded in front of me, an orb of power.

Next thing I knew I was flying through thin air, hurled backwards like a malfunctioning boomerang. I landed with a hard thud, breath whooshing out of my lungs for the second time in five minutes. I blinked into dizzying darkness and saw the rogue who'd been holding me on the street. Twenty feet away from where he'd been standing. Out cold.

Whatever I did hit us both, but it hit him harder.

I scrambled to my feet and turned around. The rogue witches were scattered among the street like leaves torn and shredded in the wind. My eyes stopped and hovered over Fabrice, who was evading one of the rogues' bolts of electricity. He rushed one of them, hand latching on his opponent's neck. He pushed him back with the speed of lightning until they both crashed into a window pane on the opposite side of the street.

Watching it knocked the breath out of me. I'd just seen Fabrice in full force. Vamped out to the core. Even without stepping into second sight I could sense that his dark aura was all over the place, drops of black blood oozing and slithering. He was damned powerful. Too powerful for my liking. I couldn't decide if I was happy about the fact that I hadn't felt his power back in the basement, or not.

I squinted, trying to locate the one person I was looking for: Andy. I didn't necessarily want to get involved in this fight, but I was not going to leave him alone. Besides, there was a not so small chance these rogues were only here because of-

I never finished the thought. In the middle of me making up my mind about how to enter the fight best, the fight came to me. Two of the rogues fighting spotted me.

"She's over there!"

Crap. Looked like the rogues did come for me.

A handful of rogues tore away from their attackers only to charge in my direction. My pulse sped up. I raised my hand and reached out to the magic and the particles in front me. I focused on the space the rogue witches were charging through, bending physical laws to my will. The particles stilled and steadied as I forced them into complete motionlessness. My attackers slowed down, then stopped moving altogether. I was holding them prisoner in a wall of solidified air.

Just when I thought things worked the way I wanted them to, for once, a patch of air stirred and rippled. One of the rogues portaled out and vanished. I cursed, spinning around. The space behind me was empty. Keeping a hold of the stilled air in front of me, I turned around again. And screamed.

I was face to face with the rogue witch that just portaled out.