Prologue part II - nightshade

Nightshade

The quiet, regular whirring of the hotel's neon advertising reverberates in the otherwise quiet alley and makes the gloomy surroundings resemble the backdrop of an old gangster thriller. With a slight shiver, she brushes a strand of her blond, curly hair behind her ear and turns her back to the worn entrance door to quickly find a bar or club. She is actually not used to run-down areas like this, and that's why she finds it difficult to get nervous to suppress this queasy feeling that is constricting her throat. But she has learned in the last few weeks that the secrecy and anonymity of the underground offers her not only a few relatively small disadvantages, but also a certain amount of protection. Other people would surely claim that she is putting herself in danger, that she could be robbed, or raped, or worse ... But she is well aware of these dangers, and yet she has chosen to face them and do worse escape. After all, other people don't know that the things that are normally feared seem almost ridiculous to them compared to the nightmares that have been their reality for several weeks. With a slight shudder, she turns into a wider street and breathes a sigh of relief as she steps into the bright glow of one of the lanterns. The rapid clacking of her heels echoes in small waves over the gray asphalt and is finally swallowed in the dark corners of the house entrances on both sides. A little lost, her blue eyes search her surroundings for signs or other people, but unsuccessfully. The silent loneliness around her speeds up her heartbeat a little and stirs up the uncomfortable feeling inside ... and directs her thoughts back to the moment at the train station a few hours earlier. With a vigorous shake of her head, she tries to banish her memories to the last corner of her consciousness. At this late hour she had rushed out into the city at night just to stop thinking about it. She just couldn't stand it any longer in the tiny hotel room in which she had locked herself in with her thoughts. Get some fresh air, mingle with people, try to be perfectly normal for a few hours ... she had to do that now to clear her head again. But the fact that this small suburb is so deadly quiet and deserted before her thwarts her plan. With a low sigh, she slows down her steps and pauses briefly. A gentle breeze blows around them and carries, barely audible, the monotonous rattle of a tram, which is probably entering the nearby train station, to your ear. She bows her head, clenching her teeth uncomfortably. Immediately the image of the dark-haired young man with the black jacket and the pitch-black sunglasses flickered in front of her mind.Those sunglasses that he wore when they first met, even though the city was shrouded in the gray veil of a summer thunderstorm on that dreary afternoon ... She believed that it was just a coincidence that she had been out again and again in the last few days Seemed to catch a glimpse of this idiosyncratic person in the corner of her eye, sometimes her eyes grazed him as she crossed a zebra crossing, sometimes she thought she saw him walking past when she looked up from a long novel in a bookstore, but now she was sure not just suffering from paranoia. The way he'd stared at her when they suddenly faced each other on the platform ... And then that fleeting hand gesture, like an automatic reflex, that made his opaque sunglasses, which were already part of his face for her, disappear ... ... and so enabled her to see the most unusual pair of eyes she had ever seen ... eyes as bright red as fresh blood, seemingly flickering like the flames of a blazing fire. Eyes as you have already encountered in the lines of dozens of books ... but always described as the eyes of demons, monsters and other beings, such as hell itself could spit on the earth of the living. And yet ... in the brief moment in which he stood in front of her, before she jerked around and almost quickly left the station, she felt no fear ... It only started minutes later when she began to think about everything, and when everything she had read and picked up so far began to poison her mind with dark visions of messengers from hell ...
Even if a tiny part of her said otherwise, her logic and caution-bound brain told her to be afraid. Afraid because he had apparently followed her all these days ... Afraid of what his reasons were ... Afraid of who or what he actually was and of what he might do to her ... Because one thing is clear: It is not one of the things normal people should fear ... it is one of their nightmares that only exist in their reality ...
The faint echoes of voices and laughter startle her out of her mind. Almost stormy, she turns around and searches for the starting point of the noises. In a narrow side street, a warm light falls on the sidewalk, but disappears again, as soon as she has turned her head in that direction, and with the thud of a heavy wooden door that falls on its hinges, the street is again in darkness. She carefully steps a little closer and discovers the entrance sign of a bar. "Zur Brückenschänke" proclaims the crooked, yellowed sign in old-fashioned letters, and she wonders how the shop got that name, after all, she can't find anyone anywhere Discovered a bridge, and doesn't even remember having passed one on her way here.A deep laugh, accompanied by the unnaturally loud sounding footsteps of two pairs of shoes, makes its way through the darkness in front of her until the light of the lanterns on the main street catches the faces of two young men who, swaying slightly and grinning, start a conversation deepened, approaching them. Almost reflexively she turns her back to the two of them, but before she can take another step, she already feels the uncomfortable pressure of a hand on her shoulder. She instantly freezes to ice and a feeling that is all too well known twitches through her body, which suddenly no longer seems to obey her and simply ignores the screams in her head that urge her to run away. She can feel that the man who is holding her back so gently but firmly is no longer the man who just a few seconds ago stumbled across the sidewalk with his friend, laughing. The whole situation seems like a gruesome déjà vu that seems to have repeated itself almost a dozen times since her 18th birthday. Shivering, she dares a look over her shoulder, which, however, quickly turns her fears into cold truth. The man's empty pale blue eyes seem to stare through her, but behind this doll-like facade she can see the insidious twinkle that she has met several times. That seedy glitter that betrays the presence of a being whose invisible, greedy claws undeniably reach for her soul ... She can now see such a being in the eyes of the man behind her. At least until he pulls his hand off her shoulder without warning, instead grabs her hair and uses rough force to push her head back into her neck. Out of the corner of her eye, she can make out another movement that reminds her that the guy wasn't alone. She desperately tries to get an overview of what is happening, but can only deduce from a metallic, clanking noise that the second man probably pulled something out of the mountain of bulky waste and tin cans on the roadside. With a heavy gasp, she gasps for air to call for help, but as is so often the case in situations like this, her voice fails miserably at this crucial moment. A painful jerk on her head expands her field of vision so far that she can just snap open how her tormentor catches an object with a quick arm movement that has just been thrown to him. When the ice-cold touch of smooth metal on her neck makes her body shudder, every further glance to assess the situation becomes superfluous for her. While the pressure of the sharp object on her throat slowly increases and even makes it impossible for her to swallow, she closes her eyes in resignation in anticipation of a quick end ...
The end of her life-threatening situation comes quickly, however ... but differently than she would have expected.Just as she can already feel warm blood flowing down her throat in her mind, she is knocked to the ground by an abrupt push. Before she has a chance to lift her gaze from the dark asphalt, she hears a pained cry, followed by the thud of a body right next to her. Her eyes only manage to catch the action a few meters away when another body sighs and sinks to its knees and finally comes to a standstill on the street. After that, for a moment, her racing heartbeat is the only thing that reminds her that time has not suddenly come to a standstill. Because when finally some strength returns to her arms and she manages to straighten up with difficulty, the first thing that stab her in the eyes are two red-hot points, which stand out in the gloomy surroundings like the glow of a cigarette. Gasping slightly, the figure in front of her raises a hand and lets his menacing eyes disappear behind the black glasses of his sunglasses. Without saying another word to her, he turns his back on her. And its dark silhouette merges with the impenetrable black of the nocturnal shadows after just a few steps ...