Hi,

I hope you had a great week and a merry christmas! Okay guys, last update for this year. I hope you like it! It's on the long side! :-)

Lara

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Chapter 47

"Where are you going?"

I froze, stopped dead in my tracks. As if the voice had the power to disable limbs and feet, maybe even something in my core. I knew the voice, knew its texture more than I liked.

Why wasn't he still out there? The image of him and Helèna, the way she went soft in his arms, flashed in front of my eyes.

I fisted my hands and resumed my walk. I had no time for these thoughts. I had no business having them.

Fluid seconds. A breath and a hitch. Alexander's hand was on my arm, fingers wrapped around my elbow, before I made it a wimpy two feet closer to where I needed to go. My head tilted, eyes turned to him on their own.

Alexander was looking at me with the same look of indifference he used the first time we met. Only that something was different. Secrets, dark and sinister, were rolling behind his eyes – unasked questions and threats. Lies.

What was he doing here, dammit?

I tried to shake his hand off. It was like trying to break steel chains.

The sound of clapping made me look up and away. My eyes focused on a form at the end of the corridor. Vladislav II was standing right where I had been headed to.

"Well done. You have been holding out on me, Adorjàn." He smiled, dropping his hands and moving forward slowly. He came to a halt less than ten feet in front of us. "It seems you were lucky, for once in your life. Then again, how does the saying go? Fortune favors fools."

He was talking over my head, clearly addressing Alexander. Not that I cared. I was too busy reeling.

It couldn't be. The vampire who'd torn into my mind – was it Vladislav himself?

"You always had a penchant for dramatics, Vladislav – among other things." Glass splinters, grinding, and steel in Alexander's voice made me look at him. There wasn't an ounce of emotion on his face. "Fact is that I won the tournament. Your human servant's blood was," he closed his eyes, "delicious."

Something in my stomach twisted and moved. The sound of his voice was far from the kind of tone he used to tell another half-truth or lie. It sounded real. Did Alexander mean it? Did he enjoy drinking from Helèna Barthoryn?

Vladislav's eyes narrowed. "For the sake of the festivities I will let this go. Get out of my sight before I change my mind."

I froze. Change his mind? About what? Was he talking about what he most certainly perceived as a huge insult from his former protégé?

Then I made the connection. A connection that could mean death. A life wire pushed and pulled at my heart, halting it for the barest of seconds. Was Vladislav talking about what he saw in my head? Was he there?

Reality was distorted, my vision hissing in front of my eyes. And then Vladislav was gone. Thin air where seconds before one of the greatest monsters I ever met occupied space.

It left me alone with Alexander.

"Anna." It was a soft sound, a gentle command that should have made me look at him.

It didn't. Tendrils of trauma and stress syndrome fused and blended as tables turned inside my head. Nothing was as it was before. There was this sick, twisted certainty that someone had been in my mind, and that he learned one or the other thing. That he learned the one thing he couldn't know: Who I was. The only question that remained: Was it Alexander's master, or someone else?

My hands spasmed with more rushed intakes of breath. Fingers twisted the fabric of my dress, gripped it as if it was my last life line. There was something else. Far more dangerous than my birth name and identity. The Lumenis. I didn't know the exact location of their village. No city names or maps. But I'd seen it. Did whoever was in my head learn enough to know where to find them?

"Anna."

I didn't look at Alexander. Couldn't look at his face.

My feet moved on their own, rushing towards that point Vladislav came from, another corridor that would lead me into a no-man's-land of greater proportions. A pendulum was swinging in front of my eyes, playing out things that happened only in nightmares – a vision of the future as it could be.

This was probably the most important moment in my life. Everything depended on me doing this right. If I didn't, and if the premonition I had was more than just that, it could end in a bloodbath, and the only thing coming close to a family I ever had would be gone. Dead. Because of me. No matter what they thought of me, or how they treated me, I couldn't let that happen.

I made it as far as to the corner. Alexander was there all of a sudden, cold fingers wrapping around my upper arms from behind – too quick for me to sidestep; too firm to shake them off. He drew my back to him. My teeth clacked together as the back of my head collided with his rock-hard chest.

"What in the name of God are you doing?"

Goose bumps blossomed in the wake of Alexander's voice, the cold touch of his breath as it rasped along the shell of my ear and down to my neck. His voice was too soft, and he was too close.

I grew very still, forced white void into my head until nothing existed but the violent hum hum of static sound. There were things I needed to do, figure out. Other things. More important than this.

I licked my lips. "When you were out there with Helèna Bathoryn, did Vladislav watch?"

"Why are you asking me this, little witch?" The pressure on my skin grew as his hands tightened to the point of pain. He called me little witch. Was that a sign that he'd lost part of his eternal self-composure? Was the mask slipping away?

"Did you ... watch?" He said.

I sucked in a hot breath. Knew what he was talking about without him saying it. I was not going to give him an answer to that. I was never going to give him an answer to that.

"Was he there? How long?" I said.

"I did not see. I was preoccupied with other things."

Like drinking Helèna Bathoryn's blood.

"We need to get back to the ballroom." My voice sounded too steady for the turmoil in my heart. It didn't transmit the urgency I felt burning in every cell of my system.

"In these walls we do not need to do anything until I decide it. Never forget that." His fingers dug into my skin until it bordered on pain. A silent, subtle reminder of where we were and who was in control. "You haven't answered my question."

Anger bristled, rearing up on its hind legs, braving the storm of despair and fear inside of me. If it weren't for him, all of this wouldn't even have happened, dammit.

"Why should I? You didn't even have the grace to give me enough intel to survive this evening. Vladislav was your maker? Really? I thought your sire died in World War II. One might think this was something I should know."

A blink of the eye and the bruising grip turned into something else. Softer.

"I did not know he would be present. Vladislav gave me to Renus as a present, which in fact made Renus my sire as well. Two sires."

The words were soft. Too soft for their meaning and significance. As if he was not even concerned by them. The pressure around my wrists deflated until his fingers were resting on my skin in what could have been a caress, a reassuring gesture.

"Master Alexander!"

I looked up. Marco was hurrying towards us in quick, long strides. He must have rounded the corner instants after Alexander changed his posture – no, after he changed it to what he wanted Marco to see. Not a caress. Nothing reassuring about it. Only an act.

Marco stopped in front of us, eyes going from me to Alexander's and staying there for a long moment. If he was surprised at what he was seeing, he was good at hiding it. Discreetness, courtesy to years and years of servitude that had carved and shaped him into the perfect servant.

"Your presence is requested, Master Alexander. The climax of the feast is about to begin."

* * *

The ballroom was as we left it. The eerie glow of candles and the stillness of the undead was a lingering blanket covering whatever shitloads of power were crawling underneath.

I took a deep breath, froze. I was wrong. First impressions were deceiving. Something in the atmosphere had changed. Anticipation was thick in the air, left a faint, bitter taste on the tip of my tongue. I could sense it even in the state I was in. On our way to the ballroom I went back to how I was, confining whatever additional magic I needed to win the tournament. Just your friendly neighborhood half-witch. Right.

Keeping my wits around me was one of the few weapons I had left. I had to know if it was Vladislav the II who broke through my mental shields or not. And I needed to know what whoever did learned.

Easier said than done. The attention was on us, dozens of undead heads turned our way. Watching. Still. Deadly. The weight of centuries on my shoulders, the pinprick-sensation at my nape; an icy anthill marching on bare skin.

Above all the one sensation I couldn't ignore. Alexander's eyes were on me, had been ever since we began our walk to the heart of the monastery a few minutes ago. He hadn't said a single thing, just walked beside me like a side-thrown shadow come to life. He was probably having one of his fits because his investment, his human servant – for that was what I was to him, – hadn't behaved the way she should.

I followed Marco to the center of the church, unknowingly where he was leading us to, until I saw the open doors at the other end of the aisle. Old, dark wood that had braved the wheels of time, lines and lines of cracks in the black oak that did little to harm its beauty.

Vampires were drifting toward that one place, as if drawn to it by an invisible, magical hand. It wasn't until I saw them gather and form two lines, a cordon of another sort, that I made the connection. The Cellinis would pass through them, walk out into the open and meet whoever was waiting outside. Was it a group of villagers, humans, willingly going to slaughter?

No. I did a mental headshake. The Cellinis didn't need to act and hide in secret. Whatever Antonio Cellini was, he wasn't the kind of king that enjoyed blood baths.

Stillness settled into the crowd of vampires after they assumed their position. My eyes flew over the heads, searching. No trace of Vladislav. I didn't see Titus, and I didn't see Ramondo either. I tilted my head, turned it backwards, collecting impressions of the vacant room behind us. And there, somewhere in the corner, I saw something. Movement. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and lifted.

I turned my head again, grabbing Marco's arm.

"Marco, where's Vladislav II? Is he not attending?"

His eyes widened. Silence beat down around us like a mute storm in the making. The look on his face turned from surprise to helplessness. He raised his eyes at a spot above my head. Even without turning around I knew that he was looking at Alexander. The master vampire was behind me. Close. Too close. I'd felt his sizzling electricity brushing against my back the whole time. Another constant messing with my system, and my judgment.

"Missing me already, little servant?"

The blood in my veins stagnated to a stuttering halt. Cold prickled all over my skin. I knew the voice. No need to turn around and look.

I did it anyway, turned in slow motion, watched Vladislav approach us with half-lidded, lowered eyes. Helèna Bathoryn was walking behind him, her eyes boring into mine with unhidden interest, and a little satisfaction.

If Helèna showed interest in me, her master did the complete opposite. He turned to Alexander.

"Adorjàn, it seems your servant has overstepped yet another line. Teach her manners, and better do it fast." The corners of his mouth lifted. It was chilling – more teeth than smile. "Then again, you never had any to begin with."

My fingers curled inward, meeting flesh. I kept Vladislav in my line of vision as he walked past us slowly.

Was it him? And if yes, what did he see? I took a step forward, about to follow him, throttle him if it was what it took to get the information.

I didn't make even one step, felt the cold hand of someone descend on my shoulder, holding me in place in a bruising grip.

"Do not move." The words were barely above the threshold of a whisper, but carried a violence I didn't miss. Alexander was beyond mad.

I stiffened, stilled, forced myself back into that part that could pretend I was calm.

Clothes swished. The sound of subdued banter ebbed until it died in my ears. Anticipation in the air, thick and wild, like poisonous powder that made it hard to breathe. Whatever was going to happen, it was going to happen soon.

"I will leave you here." Marco bowed, turned, and vanished behind burgundy skirts and dark blue waistcoats.

As if pulled by a rubber-band, a secret force tugging against something in my core, my eyes moved to where he was standing. Vladislav.

My surroundings, color and noise, withered and died. Pushed and measured against the sound of blood pounding in my ears they were nothing. Then it all came rushing back, a wave breaking on white chalk cliffs that drowned out everything with a deafening roar.

Vladislav the II was watching us from the other side of the corridor. He was smiling.