Hi!

Chapter 2. Book four. Still feels weird that we're actually on our way into book four! Once again, thank you all for reading and for your fabulous comments. Sometimes I just gape at my laptop, then go back and read them all over again cause I can't believe you guys actually wrote all that! Big thanks to all of you who are sharing their reading experience with me.

I hope you like this one. A word of warning: the cliffhangers keep coming. I know I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I just can't get rid of them ;-)

Lara

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Chapter 2

I turned to look back, making sure Travis was still talking to the blond twenty-something at the bar. Judging from his posture and the number of winks he was shooting at her, he already forgot about me.

Lucky for once.

I put on my leather jacket and headed out the door. I stepped out of the club, hit by the sudden absence of too-loud-noise and banter. The street lamps illuminated the street in the front, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my surroundings were darker than usual, obscure and somehow hostile.

Paranoia had me turning around, watching the entrance to the bar warily. There was an unshakeable pin-prick-sensation at the back of my skull that was trying to convince me someone was watching me. I stared, blinked, stared again. Everything looked normal. Just a bunch of humans stumbling in and out of the establishment – all of them moving without a hint of coordination skills; glutted with liquid intoxicants, among others. I turned back around, cursing under my breath. This was bordering on a quite extreme case of paranoia.

I pushed my hands into my pockets and stared up into the night sky for a long moment. The air was thick with fumes and exhaust gases, a blanket of smog that wrapped around the city night and day. I didn't care. To me breathing felt like a cleansing ritual of another sort. I felt the music of the bar beating against my back and took another long, deep breath, before starting my journey home.

It wasn't until I almost passed him that I noticed. The faceless stranger wasn't a stranger. At all.

Andy was leaning against the wall opposite the bar's entrance, watching me. His arms were crossed in front of him, casual and unobtrusive. He was standing in a shaft of darkness that showed little of his face, or the tone of his muscled arms for that matter. The normal bystander wouldn't have wasted a second look if his life depended on it. I, however, should have noticed. As things were my life did depend on me noticing such things.

My emotions were all over the place. Fatal in the position I was in.

I should have spotted him straight away. I should have been aware of any potential, imminent dangers and walking catastrophes surrounding me. The place was crawling with punks, junkies, and leather clad, self-professed bad boys that kept playing with their jackknives like it was their favorite pastime.

The punch line? Out of the fifty-something people in front of the bar Andy's face was the only one that had the ability to hold my attention and keep it in a death-grip. And that was where the real danger lay.

It had been two weeks since I last saw him – and wasn't that a moment I remembered just too well? It was the day he accused me of having some sort of romantic relationship with Alexander. At least I think he did.

Fact was we had a big fight. I had no idea where we were standing at this point in time. If he was here to ask me where my loyalties were, again, I was going to walk out on him. I wasn't ready for that kind of conversation. If he was going to mention the head vamp, I was going to run screaming. I wasn't ready for that one either.

I cast a cursory glance up and down the narrow street before closing the distance between us tentatively. He watched me from underneath long eyelashes, strands of his blond hair hiding parts of his face. The brown in his eyes looked almost black in the shadow landscape of the street. I came to a halt in front of him, hands fisted in my pockets.

"Been enjoying your date with Holmes?" He said.

"What are you doing here?" I said. My voice sounded thin and breathless, as if someone had squeezed all the air out of my lungs and they'd deflated like a shriveled balloon.

"Funny, I was going to ask you the same question," Andy said in a low voice. "In fact, it's something I've been asking myself for the last few days. What would a witch of the Circle, a witch that is currently under suspension, do in this part of town? Or, for instance, why would someone whose life's being threatened reject Brown's help? He made an offer of protection despite what happened. Only a fool would not take it." His eyes narrowed. "It shouldn't surprise me, though. Turns out that you're quite the regular in the Crimson District. How often did you visit Ryon Club last week? Was it every single night? Was it, Anna?"

There was anger in his voice and I heard it, loud and clear. I stared at him, trying to get a hold of myself and that part of me that still was capable of thinking.

"You've been shadowing me?" I heard the incredulity and that high-pitched scratch in my voice, and I didn't like it. I sounded like a frightened girl. Never mind that I felt like one.

"Took me a while to figure it out." He pushed himself away from the wall, arms falling loosely to his sides. "When I heard Brown offered protection and you declined with most of the Inri Brotherhood wanting you dead, I couldn't explain it to myself."

I looked away. He was right. Brown had offered, and a mentally sane person would have accepted. But accepting was not a luxury I could afford. Not when I was human servant to the head vampire of New York, and not when I didn't want to the Circle to find out.

"At first I thought you'd somehow switched sides," Andy said. "But you haven't, have you? Not really."

I blinked, feeling the cold wind seep into my skin. He knew something. Time was up. Payday. And I wasn't ready to pay.

I turned on my heel and stalked away from him, walking right into the darker shadows of the alleyway.

What in the name of the three witches was he doing here? Why now? Why here?

The sound of my footsteps reverberated from the smudged, dark walls of the alleyway like silver bullets. There was a faint echo behind me, another set of sounds following mine like a second heartbeat. I didn't need to turn around to know that they belonged to Andy.

"Hey! I was talking to you!" He caught up with me and grabbed me by the arm, spinning me around so that I was facing him.

"Well, I wasn't talking to you. And I'm not going to. Not here," I said, gesturing down the mouth of the alleyway and the explosion of brightness and noise.

There was an anthill of movement, color, and noise just waiting at the end of it. Right up there at the center of light, where life burned and bled away in less than a night. Every night. People driven to the edge, breaking rules that were valid during daylight, but meant nothing once it was dark. It was right here.

This was the place where they could forget about invisible shackles of morality, of a sense of decorum – action patterns they felt were necessary. During nighttime it seemed like no one really knew where these patterns came from anyway. Why not shake them off, even if it was only for a single night?

But it wasn't the people or the freak show I was afraid of most. The danger lay in those silent niches and nooks that promised peace and quiet. There was an onslaught of things that crawled and lingered in the darkness – vampires above all – that could hurt me worse than any prying human ears could.

I had no idea where Andy was going with this, and I wasn't sure I wanted to find out, but if I had to talk to him I wasn't going to do it in the middle of the Crimson District. Chances that a vamp or another witch happened to pass by were too great to even risk mentioning my relationship to Alexander. Over the last few weeks I'd made enough enemies to form a mob the size of a village. No matter how many, there were enough out there just waiting to sink their teeth into information that could compromise me.

Andy raised an eyebrow. "Afraid that someone's gonna listen in?" He shook his head. "And just who would that be, Anna? The rogue witches? Or maybe the vamps?" His hand tightened on my arm painfully. "Whom and what exactly did you betray the Circle for?"

My eyes widened at the harsh tone in his voice. Never mind that he was hurting me. He thought I was capable of double-crossing the Circle, and that hurt worse than any physical pain he could have inflicted on me. I might have lied to Brown, but I would never do anything to harm the Circle on purpose. I was doing my damnedest to set things right, dammit!

"I didn't betray anyone. Let me go, Andy. Now."

The instant he loosened his hold I took a step back.

Flight or fight? I hesitated.

For a moment it looked like I was ready for neither. I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. I turned on my heel and started marching on wordlessly.

I heard Andy's angry voice behind me. "Maybe lying to your boss and the whole Circle doesn't count as betrayal in your book, but it does in mine. And what for Anna? Are you gonna tell me it was to save Ryan and Laura?"

I ignored him and fastened my pace. The cloud of noise and the first hints of movement, of life, were looming in front of me. We were almost at the corner to the next intersection of alleyways. Once I reached it, all I had to do was round the corner and we'd be closer to the next main street with dozens of witnesses.

Let's see if he's going to repeat his accusations out there.

"No, I don't believe you," Andy said from behind me. "Did you do it for him?"

I stopped dead in my tracks and felt my hands cramp into two hard fists. We both knew whom he was talking about. Alexander. And I didn't get it. Did he really think I had something going on with the head vampire? A blind man with a stick could see that I felt nothing but contempt for that walking, sly unholiness impersonated. It was thanks to that nightmare in white that my life went downhill in the first place.

Me and Alexander? Not in this lifetime.

"No. I did it to save Laura and Ryan." I turned to him and stabbed a finger in his direction. "I didn't like lying to you or the Circle for that matter, but I had no choice, and I don't give a damn if you believe me or not."

He stopped, staring at my finger before he raised his eyes, watching me for a long moment. Something passed over them. A motion of a sort.

"You're not lying this time, are you?" He said, eyes narrowing. "Just what does he have on you, Anna?"

I froze. Of all the questions he could have thrown at me – why did he have to choose one I couldn't answer sincerely? The situation called for a red herring the world hadn't seen yet.

"What are you doing here, Andy? Why have you been following me?"

He shrugged. The motion was lazy and almost made me believe he wasn't ready to grab me if I tried making a run for it. I wasn't fooled that easily. I'd seen Andy in action.

"I had time on my hands. You're not the only one who's under suspension," he said.

I knew that my boss had put Andy on suspension as well. No wonder after what we pulled in the Red Zone. What did surprise me was that the suspension was still in effect.

Andy came closer, watching me. "There have been attacks all over the city and you were touring through the Crimson District as if it was your new favorite hobby."

Of course Andy would know about the Inri Brotherhood's doings. I did a mental headshake. As if anyone with a hint of common sense wouldn't recognize the changes in New York. The patrolling. The tension that lingered within the city, waiting like a predator ready to strike.

"So what? I went out in the Crimson District," I said. "What do you want Andy? No matter what happened, you know me well enough to know where I draw the lines. Do you think I liked doing what I did?"

He came to a halt in front of me, absorbing my face for another long moment. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it from an unpleasant thought that had just occurred to him. His jaw worked, muscles contracted and moved under his skin.

He drew me into his arms. I stiffened an instant before I felt myself relax against him. The motion was unexpected, tried to throw me back a few years in time. It spit me out on a beach a few days before my graduation. Back then when all I had to worry about was making the finals and getting a job. Andy smelled of leather and soap, underneath a faint trace of smoke. The embrace was tight and felt warm. There was an undercurrent of stabbing pain in my chest, but I ignored it. Just lingered in the moment – a time when my life wasn't in constant jeopardy.

"Look at us," he said against my ear. "I know that this person isn't you. You wouldn't go back on the Circle and what you believe in. At least not without a good reason." He grabbed my upper arms with his hands and drew back, encircling them lightly. "Is he blackmailing you?"

I took in a sharp breath, looked at him, doing my damnedest to not let my eyes widen. The moment of peace was gone, whooshed out of my system like a dying breath. Instead there was a freight-train of emotions going off in my head and if I didn't do something about it, I was in danger of being run over.

I should have known, or at least suspected that he'd somehow guess. I had been intending to call him a dozen times in the last two weeks. Hadn't it been for the fact that I was busy meeting the head vamp's ridiculous demands for attention and the fact that I had no idea what to say to Andy anyway, I probably would have done it. Big mistake.

"Tell me and I'm gonna help you out of this... before it's too late," he said in a low voice.

The words and their meaning sunk in. I stared at him blankly, voice low.

"What do you mean, before it's too late?"