Hi!

So, I could shock some of you with last week's developments, mouhaha! I haven't lost my touch. Anna is in serious trouble, and I'm not talking about the bedroom situation here. See for yourselves. I hope you like this one - it's a longer chapter :-)

Lara

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Chapter 40

It was a long, restless night. Sleep must have come, because at some point I awoke – that moment when consciousness snaps into being and dreams evaporate in the back of the mind. A trickle of sound, a stir of something that penetrated and slipped into my mind. I looked up, buried underneath a mountain of silken blankets.

A shaft of artificial light fell into the room and I caught a glimpse of someone moving to the couch. My spine stiffened, elbows digging into the mattress as I righted myself. At second glance the figure started to look like Jack, who by rights should have been sleeping here instead of me.

I'd been contemplating the bed-situation while I was trying to knock myself into unconsciousness with dark theories and even gloomier thoughts. It looked like our hosts, the Cellinis, had either not been expecting two human servants, or had assumed me and Alexander would share bedsheets. Were they to blame for all of this mess?

I watched Jack place something on the armchair before leaving without a glance.

The door closed almost soundlessly. Panels of darkness snapped back into place. Silence deepened and unfolded around me until all I could hear was my own breathing. I lay down again, the rustling of silk like an explosion of sound and noise. Trying not to move turned out to be harder than aniticpated. The resolve lasted for about three seconds.

I turned, aware of that someone beside me, anticipating, straining to hear something. Dammit, no way was I going to get more sleep after this. Go figure.

How much longer was I going to be stuck in this... this mess? I cursed inwardly. I didn't even know how late it was. I took a deep breath and raised the covers in slow motion. The mattress creaked as I inched forward and righted myself until my feet touched the cold floor.

The voice came out of nowhere. "What are you doing?"

I froze in mid motion, hand outstretched in the dark – all things Alexander could probably sense and see in minute detail.

"I'm having a human moment," I lied. "Besides, if you expect me to act like a human servant and look the part, I'll need to take a shower."

The light went on in the same moment I said the last word. I turned and saw him sitting up in bed, crimson blankets falling away from him like a second skin. I forced my eyes back to where they had been, focusing on a spot above the door handle, and asked the last question that had been on my mind.

"What am I supposed to wear this time, anyway? Black leather? Spandex? Or are the Cellinis' tastes a little above vamp standard?"

Soft laughter erupted from behind me. The urge to turn and look at him was overwhelming, but I kept staring at the ornamented wood across from me. It was true that the door was the one way to escape, though.

"Jack left it at the couch," Alexander said.

I stalked over to the glass table and took whatever Alexander's boy wonder Jack had left there, not even looking at it. For some reason all I could think about getting away from the master vampire.

The shower was glorious, the water temperature perfect. Nothing below expectations. Not after I'd gotten a good look at the ridiculously luxurious bathroom. Looked like the Cellinis did some reconstruction after buying the monastery – or conquering it, who knew.

The tiles were black and white squares with red, cross-like patterns here and there. Arranged like a live chessboard. Tasteful. The tub was ornamented with red-painted faucets that looked like oblong drops of blood. Now, that was a little overboard.

I took my time, procrastinating. I'd seen the dress someone, presumably Marco, had gotten me. One thing that bothered me was the color – it was a deep, shocking red that would make maintaining a low profile a sheer impossibility. But that was only where the problems began. The dress was on the tight side and could have dated well back into another century. Layers and layers of cloth and a corsage showing more skin than I liked.

Here was to hoping a plunging neckline wouldn't be my death.

* * *

The sense of wrongness was bitter and harsh, ran though my system like an indigestible drug. I thought I did everything I could to prepare myself for this. I thought it would be a darker, more dangerous version of what I'd witnessed at the Vampire League conference in Pennsylvania.

As we stepped into the hall, I knew how wrong I was.

The lines of columns and white pillars fell away into a cross-shaped nave that had once been the center of a church, but was now something entirely else. Of all things they could have turned this holy place into – they'd morphed it into a ballroom.

Chandeliers – real, with candles and fire that flickered rhythmically, as if tuned to a melody; red banners on walls and ancient statues of what had once to have been saints; curtains that looked like blankets of fresh blood. My eyes glided along their lines, up and up. The archways reached up into the ceiling and met high up above us like an oversized tent set in stone.

I exhaled, feeling lonely and lost. There was a sense of coldness that settled deep into my bones. The temperature was low and I was betting it was from something else than the weather outside. My senses were sharp, static noise blown up in my head like an incessant rhyme. The place was packed with guests – undead silhouettes, forms shape-shifting between candlelight and shadows. Walking among that many of them was like stepping into an oversized, electrified sardine can.

And really, the occasions on which I felt that sense of cold wrongness were rare. I remembered the last time I was in the same room with that many undead. Contrary to the Vampire League conference in Pennsylvania, however, I, no we, were not members of the crowd. Not by far.

The feeling was unmistakable. Hungry, voyeuristic eyes watching our every move. Everyone trying to get a piece of the American master vampire with her witch servant. Not an oddity in itself – not here in Italy. Judging from what I'd seen and sensed so far, I wasn't the only supernatural being with a pulse in this room.

Were they staring at us because we were honored guests invited by Antonio Cellini himself, or was there another, much more dangerous reason?

Was sealing most of my magic a mistake? Now I could only rely on my natural resistance to mind-entering magic. The basics. Like the incessant sound of white noise, static, in my head. I had no idea if it would be enough, but it was all I had.

Alexander kept ignoring me. He hadn't even looked at me when I stepped out of the bathroom, fully dressed and groomed. I'd left my hair down – not because it was the way he liked it, but because I didn't have it in me to make an effort. Yeah, dolling up for what could well end up in the biggest mess I'd ever gotten myself into didn't sound promising. This was not a banquet or ball. This was a tactical, real-life chess match that could get me killed real fast.

I trudged behind him, focusing at his back with my eyes glued to the black fabric of his jacket. Not because I'd gotten into my role as subservient bootlicker, but because I still hadn't figured out how to get through this – I needed all the time I could get.

Time I didn't have.

I looked up, hesitatingly, and caught a glimpse of what was awaiting us at the end of the nave. Antonio Cellini, sitting on a throne-like chair, raised on a dais and surrounded by the other royal members of the family. He was watching our silent approach. His eyes caught mine.

I amped up the static, let white noise flush and wash over my mind like a mountain torrent and held his gaze. He smiled and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"Alexander, master vampire and head vampire over New York, with his human servant." The voice came out of nowhere, carried through the church as if amplified by a collection of sound systems the world hadn't seen yet.

The collective attention shifted and sharpened with the weight of everyone's stares on my shoulders.

Antonio Cellini lifted his hand, smiling. "Come closer. Welcome to Italy, Alexander. I am happy that you could come."

Alexander came to a halt in front of the throne, bowing gracefully.

"It is a great honor, your highness."

He beckoned to me with an elegant raise of his hand, palm up. Swallowing, I took a step forward until I was beside him. I made a slow curtsey, lowering my head wordlessly. All movements according to what Alexander had drilled into me the night before, and still it felt wrong in the truest sense of the word.

My pulse sped up. Eyes on me, everywhere. No matter from where, I could feel prying attention drift into something else – a slow pressure at the back part of my mind. We'd raised the interest of ancient-old-minds, and they were trying to get a read of me.

I fisted my hands, fortifying my mind with walls – not of air, but walls that were built of my raw, bare will to remain alone inside my head. I amped up the static, the white noise in my head, transformed everything into white noise until nothing else was left.

"You may rise." Antonio's voice slipped through my perception like a set of sharp needles.

Ever so slowly I raised my head, giving him a blank stare that could have meant whatever he wanted it to be. There was a moment when our eyes connected and it was all I could do not to gasp. The expression on Antonio Cellini's face wasn't what I expected. At all.

Not the careful neutrality, the dark void I'd often glimpsed on Alexander. There was a kind of reassurance and benevolence in there I had rarely seen on a vampire of his age. Not that I had seen many others as old as him.

"I am glad that you have come." He smiled, before turning his attention back to Alexander. "Enjoy the festivities. I am hoping you will join us for the climax of the celebration later this night. The ignition of the bonfire will mark the end of Red Night's Eve."

Alexander bowed again. "It is a great honor, your majesty."

I rose in the same moment Alexander did, attuned to his motions like the bottom part of a forceful duet, and together we turned from the Cellinis. I followed him back to where we had come from, didn't falter in my steps until he stopped in a far corner of the room.

Someone came to us with a tray, offering drinks that might or might not have been pure blood. At my hesitancy, Alexander picked a light red one and handed it to me wordlessly. I stared at it for a moment, hoping that it wasn't spiked.

It wasn't until I felt Alexander's hand at the small of my back that I looked up.

He was looking down on me, staring right into my eyes with his usual blankness. His gaze was ridden of its destructiveness, radiated a calmness and a self-assurance I'd rarely seen in someone else. Had I simply never noticed before? Or, was it merely the realization that I was relying heavily upon him, more than ever?

There was no emotion, no give-away in the way he looked at me, but I saw the way his eyes moved from my dress back to my face. Slowly, ever so slowly.

I opened my mouth, unsure of what exactly I was going to say, of what I was supposed to say, given that everyone not only could, but would listen in to our conversation.

The decision was plucked out of my hands when the first guests approached us. Vampires who were born and raised on the continent centuries ago. Members of an undead faction that had seen empires rise and fall with calm, emotionless eyes. What must we have looked like? A head vampire coming from New York of all places with a witch as a human servant in tow?

I guided my eyes to the floor, but caught Alexander's expression before. He'd put on his bland smile again, the one he usually reserved for dealing with political opponents he couldn't insult openly. I narrowed my eyes, targeting the stone floor. Did Alexander see those vampires as a threat? Or, was it part of the show, some sort of bon ton among the really old ones?

My reaction time was human, and so I didn't realize until everyone else had (other human servants included): The murmurs had died away and morphed into a ripple of low whispers. Fits of pin drop quiet engulfed us like a cold sheet, adding to the cold I'd felt settling in my bones ever since we stepped into the church. I raised my head, shivering.

I felt more than saw Alexander stiffen. It was there for the barest of seconds, a change on an atomic level – insignificant and small. I would have missed it, hadn't I been standing right next to him. Cards shifted and his face smoothed into the impenetrable void he usually maintained.

What was going on?

Everyone was looking towards the entrance. Small, insignificant whispers arose and ghosted through the room, reverberating from stone walls and fleur-de-lis windows.

"He did come. I didn't think he would."

"Why is he here?"

"Was he invited?"

I followed the line of pale, stoic faces, got caught on the astonished, shocked faces of human servants, and turned towards the entrance.

A knock echoed up and down the nave and aisles as the announcer spoke, breaking up the flow of whispers.

"Vladislav II, sovereign of Hungary and his human servant, Helèna Bathoryn."