Hi!
Writing this one was a little tricky. What exactly is Anna going through in this chapter? Can you understand why she says what she says and how she reacts? What would you do?
PS: Nominating for the Fiction Awards 2016 is officially open, so in case you have a story you really like (not necessarily one of mine), you can nominate it! There are so many good stories and authors here on wattpad, I think they deserve a larger audience. You can make it happen!
https://www.wattpad.com/276950961-the-fiction-awards-2016-nominations-open
Lara
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Chapter 6
Colors danced behind my eyes, until the world fell into a haze of dark mist. Black fissures of power within arm's reach. Mine.
Magic slammed into me, endless and vast like a tidal wave coming in and crushing over my head. I took it, absorbed it, glutted myself on it because it felt good. No consequences. No pain.
Fingers digging into my arm. Pain.
"The soul can't be destroyed. Your sanity can't be destroyed. As long as you keep boundaries." The disembodied voice pulled me back, made me stop. "Take the power, don't let it take you. Never let it take you. It's yours. Shape it to your own will."
Yes. Mine. I closed my hands around it, began molding it into what I wanted.
"Yes, like that. I want them distracted. See that narrow street between the two buildings? I wanted them cornered into it. Now."
Darkness spread its wings in my head, and I imagined those wings opening up in the air, flapping and tearing down space. I stared at the vast sky above, opened my palms where the fissures nestled and writhed. The air hissed and crackled, power leaping from patches of disturbed particles to the next.
Bolts of electric power shot down, split pavement and concrete in a semi-circle, cutting off half of the witches from the rogues. The building to the left of the alley shook, the sound of stone cracking like distant thunder.
And there was more power to take. I could let myself sink deeper into that place inside of me. Not only was there power, there was no motion inside. No pain.
"Enough," he said from behind. "Stop."
I was plunging into dark waters, sinking. I could taste the power, liquid gold on my tongue. Powerful. It felt so right. No if, no when. No pain.
"Anna, stop!"
Hands grabbed my palms, closed them into fists. I could feel his invasion as he took a hold of the power-flow, influenced and shaped it, took over. Made it into his own.
It was like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. I blinked.
Again.
Medici had pulled me back from the brink of losing control. Again.
I turned my back on the rogue witches standing behind, ran my fingers through my hair. They were shaking. Maybe no one noticed. Yeah. And maybe the Raven didn't realize why I was holding back.
I remembered every incident, every single moment in which I used elements that were not mine to call. I remembered what I felt afterwards. I wasn't myself in those moments afterwards either. Too drunk on power. Too... Just something else. As if there wasn't enough space for both the power and me. I hadn't come out myself, hadn't stopped myself. I didn't control it, the power controlled me.
I eyed Medici from the side. He took over the dark power and neutralized it. Just like the first time it happened â that first moment when I realized that he could take over another rogue witch's power.
Concrete exploded below, followed by a series of screams and yelling. Elemental magic roared beneath us.
"I'm going down. Take her back to the rendezvous point." Medici said it without turning around. "Don't stall."
He opened a portal and vanished, faster than the rest of the Inri Brotherhood members had. That left only me and three rogue witches.
Marley, the one closest, turned to me with a wolfish smile, showing a dimple that I positively hated. Not only that it didn't match his Goth tendencies, the mane of long black hair, and the scar on his forehead, it made him look like a human. Made him look like a nice guy. And that made it so much harder to think of him as a criminal.
"Time to go home, sweetheart," he said in mock falsetto as he grabbed my upper arm.
I gave him a look, but braced myself mentally for the dizzying alleyways of the world in between. Sure as hell he was going to portal us out any second. This time I'd go prepared.
The sensation hit me like a flying, spinning brick. Familiar. Powerful. Dark. I turned my head, searching for something that couldn't be seen or sensed by human eyes. The blood in my veins froze to ice as a feeling of faint familiarity turned into something else.
I grabbed Marley's shirt, fingers digging into the fabric.
"We've got to leave. Now! He's coming," I said.
He laughed. "And who would that be?"
The portal opened. The first tendrils of nothingness reached for me and I heard myself say, "Alexander." The word left my mouth in the same instant a mountain of flesh and steel pummeled into us.
* * *
The portal spit us out like an unwanted parasite, sent us skidding on rough asphalt and cobblestone. Skin scraped, hot and raw on the cold street. Someone jabbed his elbow in my stomach and I cried out in pain, caught in a tangle of limbs on the floor.
The weight was gone from one instant to the other. I rolled onto all fours, pushed myself up in one fluid motion. I erected a wall, molded and knitted air particles together, a reflex that came to me as naturally as breathing.
For a moment I reveled in the joy of having used my element, relieved the power did come. Then I saw the streaks of electricity, fissures of dark power running along the walls like angry teardrops. Felt the dark current in the core of my magical powerhouse.
"Fulfilling your own destructive desires?" Alexander said from behind.
I whirled around. A figure looming a few feet in front of me. Familiar. I knew I was going to have to face him from the moment I sensed him. Staring at him was another matter. For reasons beyond my understanding, I was afraid to look at his face.
He was a mountain of shadow, blocking the exit of the small side street we'd landed in. Tall. Powerful. Beautiful.
He looked at me for a long moment, piercingly blue eyes that missed nothing and could strip me, naked to the core before I knew it. If I thought I could stare him in the eye without the baggage of past memory I was wrong. In that night I'd become more intimate with him than with any other man before.
The alabaster skin on his chest shimmered in the moonlight, a hard relief of muscles I'd felt on my own skin. Those hands that could kill within less than an instant, and yet could be so... My breathing quickened. My retinas were bombarded with graphic details of what we did, my skin burning with the memory of his fingers, touching, caressing.
The ghost of a conversation that never really happened, but had replayed itself in my head over and over again, rose in my mind. Only the words would not come.
That night when I left him, I panicked. I was too scared to think rationally. Hah! There wasn't a rational bone left in my body. The want, the need to tell him why I left was burning on the tip on my tongue. For some reason, I wanted him to understand.
And then the craziest thought of all: I wanted him to tell me it was okay. That I wasn't slowly, but surely losing my mind.
But then I remembered. Weeks had passed and he'd done nothing to save me, even though he could. Through our bond, he could sense my presence in New York. He could have pin-pointed my location with ease. Only, for some reason he didn't.
I stared at this face, waiting for some sort of emotion, a hint that anything had changed between us.
I got absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. If possible at all his face was even more unreadable than it had been before.
I fed my shields with more power.
"It is no use. You could not stop me if I wanted to break through this wall," he said. His voice was silken. Cold. Dangerous.
Words that I might once have said, that might have come to me after a kind word from him, they faded into nothing. For a small, fleeting moment, I thought he finally came to my rescue. Thought he came because he was concerned for my safety, because he actually, in a weird and twisted way, cared for me.
Stupid.
Whatever happened between us that night, it didn't mean anything to him. For reasons unknown to me, Alexander thought it was time to come for his human servant. Something was up.
"Really, little witch, I expected better from you."
He circled me with the soft-footedness of a predator on the hunt. Swift and noiseless in the night. No stealth attack, no silent approach from the back. This was a full front assault. And I was going to parry it with one of my own. Steel fused with the bones in my back as I sent the avalanche of emotions away, stuffed them into the black box deep inside of myself.
The smile slid into place, felt good on my face. It was smug and way too cold to reach my eyes. Using human expressions like a weapon was something I learned from the head vamp himself. And I was going to use it, dammit.
"Sloppy, Alexander," I said, circling with him, holding his stare with my own. "You missed a small significant detail. I can leave via portal, any time I like. The only reason why I'm still here is because I'm curious about why you went to so much trouble to talk to me. Say what you have to say and I'll leave. You want me to listen, you won't even try breaking these walls. If you do, I'll leave straightaway."
It was a bluff, a bad one at that. I couldn't portal out just like that. Not on my own and definitely not without Marley in tow â for two reasons. One, I needed the rogue's amulet to open a portal to begin with. Two, if I somehow managed to portal out on my own and Alexander got his hands on Marley, he could squeeze out whatever information he liked without even trying.
The problem was the rogue was outside my walls of air â knocked out cold a few feet beside Alexander. I couldn't just leave him there.
A slow smile crept onto the head vampire's face. Inviting and slightly seductive. The kind of smile that he used instants before one of his traps fell shut.
"Funny that you should mention it. Leaving is something you are good at, little witch. When we last saw each other, you left as well. Not only that, you left without writing as much as a simple note of farewell."
I didn't want to have this conversation now. I never wanted to have this conversation. Why was he tormenting me with this?
"Tell me why you're here, Alexander," I said evenly.
Hiding my impatience, suppressing the feeling I was tethering on the edge of a dangerous cliff that lead to surrender â it was getting harder. I was on my last legs. Something Alexander couldn't know. If he saw a chink in my armor, he was going to drive a clinically sharp-placed suggestion or mental coercion in and rip me apart from the inside.
"I know your secret."
I froze, staring at the top of his head like my life depended on it. My secret. I had a full bag of secrets, and I doubted Alexander even knew half of them. I didn't even know what he was talking about. The thought made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
So, the big question was, what particular secret was Alexander talking about?