Breathe Under Water - Shadows of the Night 1

Chapter 33

Hi!

I'm back again with a new chapter. I think most of you didn't expect things woud turn out like this - a lot's going to happen in the next few chapters, hehe... I hope you like it. Let me know if you do! Thanks for making this "journey" with me. Writing this story turned out to be more exciting and amazing than I ever dreamed of!

Lara

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Chapter 33

Another day passed; another day of blatant flatness and restless waiting. Nothing happened – apart from Laura pelting me with questions about what had happened at the banquet and why I looked like the female version of Frankenstein's monster.

I ignored insulting references to my swollen and bruised face as much as humanly possible. Instead I showered Laura with stories about the posh interior of the mansion and the other human servants and vampires. Anything to distract from what really was at the core of my mind.

Recounting the attempted assassination was fun, as long as I left out the dangerous parts about my use of water magic, and the fact that I was close to dying. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe, if she wasn't convinced I was perfectly safe in that mansion, she wouldn't have kept asking questions about Alexander. How was he like, and did I get a feel for how powerful he really was? Oh, and what kind of clothes did he wear for the banquet? I loved that one.

Dodging these questions with one-wordedness didn't work out as well as I thought it would.

And then, there were those details that I couldn't share with her, or anybody else for that matter. The Cellinis and Heron knew that I was more than human. The deal would only be intact as long as nobody knew that I exposed Alexander and my true relationship to him. So I didn't even tell my best friend. How wrong was that?

At least the conference was over, I wouldn't have to walk humbly in front of him – ever again. If I was lucky, I would play bait, we would catch Maria's murderer and whoever had planned the assassination of the Cellinis; and I would walk away from Alexander and be done with it.

Yeah, and pigs fly.

It's not like I didn't think about it. I toyed with the idea of giving Brown an enthralling first-hand account of what really had happened at Heron's mansion, palmed the thought of satisfying my need for payback. The vampire brought me to the conference and shamed me into more obedience than I could take. That also meant he had already fulfilled his part of the bargain. I had the option of not giving a damn and tell tales about what he really did. Then again, I had no way of knowing what Alexander was up to, or what he would do if I did spill the beans. So I did the stupidest thing I could do: I decided to tell neither Brown nor Laura.

Was my choice of secrecy just an excuse to avoid admitting how weak I felt? I truly couldn't figure it out myself. I had shoveled myself a grave of dark secrets big enough for a football team and their cheerleaders.

Once I talked to Brown on the phone shortly, but the Force, whom he had put on the case, hadn't found the Brotherhood's lair yet. That in turn raised questions about how off the mark I really was. Was it not the Inri Brotherhood after all?

Brown evaded answering questions regarding the whereabouts of the corpses we had left on that street in Pennsylvania. I had a hunch that Heron disposed of them, or that someone else had beaten him to it.

Adding insult to injury, my boss denied me further information on the subject, or on the history and background of the Inri Brotherhood, telling me that apart from playing bait in their ploy to catch the organization unawares, the case was closed for me. Officially I was still not part of the Force.