Lost Without You

~22~

Walking to Regent's Park hadn't been my most brilliant idea ever, I realised as soon as I reached its lake, and it started to snow. All of a sudden, huge, heavy snowflakes were fluttering down from the soot-black sky, covering me and the ground as far as I could see in white fluff, like feathers from a ripped pillow.

The best thing to do would be to head towards the nearest tube station and jump on the first train home. But that would mean taking a train of the same line William would be taking from Baker Street. No. I didn't want to risk meeting him again. I had had enough of him, at least for today.

Watching the water of the large lake, placid and unperturbed by the snowfall, while pulling my coat tighter around me, I tried to picture the London's Tube map in my mind. My second best option was to walk for some twenty minutes to Oxford Circus, and take a train from there, changing at least once...

Just great. But it's better than seeing William again.

It took me ages to get back to Hammersmith; when I finally exited the station it was well after seven. I rushed down the road towards my new home, shivering in my damp coat.

The snow kept falling stubbornly, the square was already covered in a thin layer of white slush, turning grey and morphing into water in places where people kept treading on it. Winter had been so much more picturesque in my other world, in the castle surrounded by untouched meadows and the Carpathians, where the snow would remain perfectly white and unblemished for months...

Suddenly I felt the hair on my arms and the back of my neck rise, and it wasn't from the chilly, moist air penetrating my humid clothes. It was the now familiar sign that I wasn't alone. Someone was watching me.

I stopped and looked around slowly, spotting him immediately.

A tall, well-built man was leaning against a brick wall of one of the buildings lining the street that led from the square to Lia's, apparently waiting for someone. You.

He was dressed all in black, nearly indiscernible from the darkness surrounding him, as if he was an inseparable part of the long shadows filling the ill-lit, empty stretch of the street. My only way home.

I wouldn't have noticed him at all if his face wasn't so unnaturally white that it seemed to shine in the dark. So translucent. Waxen, like the faces of the statues in the museum... and vampires.

Shivering again, I looked away from him quickly. Breathe. Calm down. Maybe he's not here for you, you're just being silly. Go home. Fast.

I squared my shoulders and ducked my head, deciding to walk past him, attracting as little attention to myself as I could. I didn't know him. He wasn't waiting for me.

Just that he was.

"Good evening." The figure said in a low, strange, heavily accented half-whisper as I sped by.

I ignored him, increasing my pace even more, getting breathless from the surge of irrational fear I felt as his voice coiled around me again, "Wait. Lady Samara!"

The unexpected honorific shocked me more than the fact that this stranger knew my name. I stopped in my tracks and turned towards him.

"I don't know you." I said, watching him peel away from the wall and draw nearer to me.

"That is of no consequence. I know enough about you to understand that you require answers. So do I. Come with me and we will talk. I can tell you what you want to know." He put one of his hands to my elbow, making me jump.

Even through the sleeve of my coat I felt how very cold he was. This man was like... like Radu, and those of his sort.

"You are a vampire." I whispered, feeling stunned.