Hi!

In case you didn't notice, I changed my cover pics. I hope you like them. Special thanks go to
midnightmvelvet: thanks again for making them. I'm dedicating this chapter to you!

Okay, back to the new chapter: Red Night's Eve has begun - and it's deadly as hell.. I hope you like it :-)

Lara

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Chapter 41

Power swept the room, pushing forward, then retreating like the flow of respiratory current out of a giant's organism. The candles flickered for a moment then stilled into absolute motionlessness. Even in my current state I felt it: the newcomers' entrance changed the whole gravitational power system in the room, turned it upside down from one second to the other.

Sound died to the point of non-existence. Nothing but the sharp clack-clack of high heels penetrating. Two figures appeared in the red-yellow glow of candles. A vampire, tall and slender, followed by a female. What little I had left of my magic resonated with their auras, reacted to the shitloads of power they carried.

Power they carried. The thought gave me pause. I forced my awareness to widen, clawed my way into the world of second sight. I wasn't only witnessing the entrance of a centuries old vampire. My eyes widened. The female, Helèna Bathoryn, wasn't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill human servant. Technically she wasn't even fully human. No, she was a witch too. A powerful one at that.

The expression on her face left no doubt that she was different from any other human servant in the monastery. There wasn't an ounce of fear. Not in her eyes, not in that wide mouth and the set of those red-painted lips. Her blue eyes stayed on the end of the nave, frosty and above anything and anybody, rimmed by wide, thick brows as black as her hair. She had an exotic, cruel beauty - the kind that only drew the attention at second glance, but swallowed the beholder whole once it hit, turning perceived imperfections into something far more beautiful.

My eyes went back to the vampire. Whoever Vladislav II was, he died a long time ago, and he liked being dead. I could see it in his eyes - or rather, I could see nothing in them. Black as onyx, they could only be called dead. There was no forced stiffness or careful blankness. To the contrary, the void seemed to be a natural state. He was a walking unknown.

His black moustache would have looked good, had we been in the fifteen hundreds. As it was it did little to distract from his sharp chin. Long, black hair cascaded down the war uniform he was wearing. If I had two words to sum him up? Hungarian and ancient.

Maybe I should add ridiculously powerful to the mix. Yeah.

What really bothered me was Alexander's reaction. That he reacted alone was alarming enough. Who was Vladislav anyway that the whole congregation of undead had stilled and was watching his descent down the nave like a silent congregation of Greek statues?

I had no idea. Truth was, I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

Conversations picked up again. Formal introductions to the Cellinis were over. In contrast to the rest of the guests, neither Vladislav, nor his human servant bowed in front of the hosts. All Helèna Bathoryn did was show a hint of a curtsey that, really, looked more like a shrug than anything else.

I shot Alexander one or the other look, trying to get some sort of reading on his mood. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't detect anything. There was no way around the impenetrable mask of blandness. Not a hint as to why he showed a reaction when the Hungarian vampire entered.

At some point the incoming stream of guests stopped. The orchestra in the back of the church started playing an eerie piece that reminded me of dead flowers and graveyards. It made the hair on my back stand on end.

Alexander was talking to a vampire named Salvatore Lizzo, head vampire over Sicily, and his second in command, whose name I'd forgotten. I'd tuned out of their conversation a long time ago. Instead I copied the stance of Lizzo's human servant, a middle-aged man with brown, curly hair. I noticed the slight tension in his shoulders and the way his light green eyes traced the floor. He was trying very hard not to be there.

I was standing behind Alexander, head lowered, watching the crowd in the shadows from underneath my eyes. Most vampires had brought second-in-commands and more than one human servant. If there was a distinction of social hierarchy or other power voodoo involved in it, I had no way of knowing.

Certain things were beginning to worry me, like the lack of a festive table. If the vampires were not served blood in the form of soup or in other fairly disgusting ways, it could only mean one thing: They'd drink directly from the vein. Shuddering, I tried to force some more white noise into my head.

Grit your teeth and get to it.

I started this nightmare with the motto, I wasn't going to abandon it now.

Guiding my eyes back to the floor, doing just exactly what Lizzo's human servant was doing, sounded about just right. And I would have, if not for that one glimpse. A scrap of cloth, a profile. A memory. I stopped and stared.

There was a group of vampires at the other side of the room. My eyes stayed on one of them. Brown hair flowing down his back, eyes so dark they were almost black. The way his chin was tilted, the way his thin lips curved into a cruel, cold smile.

The blood in my veins clotted and froze. I knew the face, had seen it in too many nightmares to count.

It was the vampire that murdered my parents.

* * *

The static I'd tried to crank up before exploded into a hissing, wavering noise in my head. There were no words, just that narrow tunnel that let me see my parents' murderer and blocked out the rest.

He was talking to another blond-haired vampire, dressed in an expensive-looking black Venetian tailcoat with gold buttons. I didn't know the blond one, but I knew him. I knew it beyond a doubt.

The image of them talking kept fading, realities - past and present - swapping and switching. I was thrown back to the night sixteen years ago when I'd seen him in a black coat. Scenes of a nightmare. Scenes of a murder. The look on the vampire's face instants before he plunged his hand into my mother's chest repeated itself in an endless loop.

I took a step forward, fingers curling into fists at my sides. Stilled.

Alexander's hand was on my elbow. His grip was firm, but not bruising. I followed the line of his arm and raised my eyes up to his face. He'd stopped talking to Lizzo, focusing his whole attention on me. There was an unvoiced question in his face - readable and accessible to me, for once.

"Is everything alright, Anna?"

I gazed back at him. Couldn't answer. Couldn't explain.

Not only that he didn't know about that particular detail of my past, we were surrounded by vampires that heard better than a bunch of steroid-pumped owls. How could I possibly communicate to him who and what I just saw? What it entailed. What it meant for my presence here.

My gaze drifted, unfocused and blurry - back to the floor. And what I was about to do?

I didn't notice I was shaking until Alexander squeezed my arm, willing me to look at him with more than his touch. There was a connection between us, a thick thread that couldn't be cut by magic or mental walls. I felt it stir and move inside of me. It was like walking down a well-known path, memories you associated with it that made you feel ... not alone. Yeah, that was it. It felt like I was not alone. Like he really cared about my well-being. The illusion was good. In fact, it was so close to real, I had trouble seeing it for what it was.

Did Alexander do it on purpose? Or had I just never felt it before? Was this another mind game, or part of the bond a master and human servant shared?

"What do we have here?"

Alexander's grip tightened on my wrist. I looked up at the voice coming out of nowhere and stiffened.

Vladislav II of Hungaria was standing in front of us, black eyes on Alexander's hand on my arm. He didn't raise them slowly, like a human would have done. One moment they were on my elbow, the next they were on Alexander. Then, another heartbeat later, they were drilling into me.

It was a single moment. I caught a mere glimpse of his eyes. It was enough. The window to this soul was a floodgate to death and destruction. This was a void that knew no light or motion. Just dead silence and the absence of life.

My eyes shifted, unable to hold the piercing gaze. Helèna Bathoryn was right behind Vladislav II, an unmoving statue glued to her masters back like a walking, wordless shadow. Her frosty blue eyes were trained on me, didn't give or budge and inch. She was the complete opposite of Lizzo's human servant. And me.

Whatever willpower I had left, whatever sanity I possessed, it helped me do the one thing I could do. I lowered my head to the floor in a gesture of submission. Static and white noise rushed in my ears along with the dull sound of blood pumping.

A whiff of dust and rottenness. The air was packed with the kind of smells you got in a mausoleum: old, weird, and heavy with a hint of decomposition.

"Vladislav," Alexander said.

The tone of his voice gave nothing away - flat to the point of dead. There was no polished fake-blandness, not an ounce of the well-mannerisms I watched him use ever since we stepped into this church.

"What brings you here to this place?" Alexander said.

"Have you the effrontery to ask me why I am here?" The sound of Vladislav's voice slithered through the air, low and terrible, cutting my mind like shards of glass. "Vain and insufferable, just as I remember you. More than five centuries and still you have learned nothing. A dog may disguise himself in a wolf's pelt, but he can never change the fact that he is a dog, Adorjàn."

Alexander's grip on my elbow tightened to the point of being painful. The invisible cord between Alexander and me stretched, clenched. Motion, dark and ancient, inside of Alexander. I looked up. There wasn't a single spark of emotion in his face. It was the complete antithesis to the reading I got through our bond.

And: Why did Vladislav call Alexander Adorjàn?

Looking up was a mistake. Without me noticing, Vladislav's full attention had settled on me. Something told me the Hungarian vampire didn't like what he saw.

"You have not even trained your human servant properly." His eyes did an ocular shiver down my body before focusing on my face again. "A witch she might be, but she is weak."

A change. A ripple in my awareness. I shifted my eyes and looked at Alexander.

He was smiling. It was a smile full of reassurance only someone who felt completely in charge of the situation could possess.

"Perceived weaknesses can be turned into strengths, Vladislav. Besides, even a dog in a wolf's pelt can run with a pack of wolves. You may find out that he can even lead them wherever he pleases."

Vladislav's expression morphed into something that reeked of cold death and razor blades, instants before his eyes focused on me again.

"If you may excuse us. My human servant and I have important business to attend to," Alexander said, tugging on my elbow slightly.

Together we turned, walking away from the Hungarian vampire. A vampire that was a walking cataclysm.

The slight pressure between my shoulder blades told me that Vladislav was still watching us. I wondered why.

Alexander walked me through rows and rows of still vampires silently without looking back. Whispers lingered in our footsteps, carefully bland glances wherever we passed.

Alexander probably wanted to take me somewhere private, a place where we could talk openly. Not that I really cared where we were going to. I was too busy scanning the room for the one vampire I caught mere glimpses of - the vampire that killed my parents. That I was violating one of the golden rules of human servants 101 didn't matter.

We didn't even make it as far as to the entrance when we crossed paths with Marco. Apparently the Cellinis' human servant was looking for us.

"Excuse me, Master Alexander, the royal family would like to have a word with you."

Clearly Marco was addressing Alexander. However, for the barest of seconds his eyes shifted to me. I couldn't shake the feeling the invitation was meant as much for me as it was for 'my master'.

A reunion with the Cellinis it was.