by Cindy Mezni
My eyes met those of Nathanael. Although there was concern in them—which annoyed me because it meant he wasn’t fully trusting my abilities—the suspicion was also there. I was planning something and he had an inkling about it. I grinned at him as if to confirm his suspicions. He looked confused by my attitude.
Yegyen caught sight of my expression, too. Before he had time to get what was happening, I kicked him in the groin. The surprise and the power of the impact made him abruptly let go of me. I landed on my feet as he fell to his knees, a hand on his injured parts.
“You bit—”
He couldn’t finish, my knee making contact with his jaw and causing him to fall flat on his back. Not allowing him to recover, I violently grabbed him by the hair and forced him to kneel. Then I bluntly put his arms behind his back, dislocating one of his shoulders in passing. I firmly held him at my mercy.
“You’re gonna pay for this,” he said through gritted teeth.
If his anger was greater than ever, all traces of superiority had disappeared.
“Well, I doubt that.”
I looked at all the Nëphyr in the hall. The excitement and joy had vanished from their features. Most seemed defeated. The others had a mask of impassivity to hide their contrariety.
“Admit your defeat now, Yegyen, and I’ll show you mercy,” I said loud enough for all to hear.
“Mercy?” he repeated, half-amused, half-skeptical.
It was as if he imagined that I would spare him, that I wouldn’t make him pay for his public affront. I wasn’t that clement, unfortunately for him.
“Let’s be clear, you’re going to suffer. A lot. But you won’t die so that’s something.”
“I accept,” he blurted out after a long moment of reflection.
“Admit your defeat in front of them,” I ordered him.
Lips pinched, I saw him clenching his still transformed jaw.
“Before you all, I admit my defeat to our Queen.”
To be on his knees, to be at the mercy of his enemy, it was the utmost humiliation for a Nëphyr, especially if he was a macho male with an over-sized ego. But it was the least he deserved for having tried to kill me.
“I’ve been lenient this time, but, in the future, it won’t be the case. You are members of my clan and you must follow my rules and orders without questioning them. Go against what I decide and you’ll suffer the painful, or even deadly, consequences.”
Heavy silence greeted my words. They understood the message—at least I hoped for their sake. Without any more consideration for Yegyen, I released him and turned around and walked away. I headed for the stage where my Councilors were.
“You were—” Nathanael started, obviously proud of my little public performance.
“Save your breath. We all know what adjectives are constantly going through your mind in the presence of our Queen,” Xander interrupted him, mocking.
Caine cracked a smile. I rolled my eyes. These two loved to say such remarks whenever they could to get on Nathanael’s nerves—or mine when it came to Caine. Too bad for Xander, Nathanael didn’t react. He just continued to stare at me with that same expression. That expression that reminded me of those rare times when Ezekiel had watched me in the same way because I’d surpassed his expectations. I suddenly looked away.
“Xander, get rid of—”
I snapped my mouth shut, a foreboding seizing me as the last combat rule of my creator reminded itself to me. “Never believe an enemy defeated unless his heart or his head is removed and rests in your hands or at your feet.”
The faces in front of me changed, confirming my intuition. I abruptly spun around and, in a split second, I decided to use the Pyronnaë, the gift of fire, to be sure to brand this moment into the memory of every person here. Surprised gasps were heard before Yegyen’s cry of pain and rage took over. He kept rushing toward me, in spite of the flames devouring him. So I ran to him in a roar. His body no more than six steps away from me, I held my right arm forward. A moment later, it passed through his chest. Yegyen howled like a wounded animal. No longer seeing the need to keep this show going, I put an end to his ordeal, my fingers closing around his heart to rip it out his rib cage. With the organ in the palm of my hand, I smashed it up by tightening my fingers around it. Lesson remembered, Ezekiel . . .
“This is how the rebels, the Träditra, end,” I exclaimed, my eyes still glued to the bloody flesh that I was holding in my hand. “And yet his killing was quick. Yours won’t be if you cross the line like he did.”
Fierce, resigned or stolid expressions surrounded me.
“What you saw today is nothing compared to what I’m capable of. You’ve been warned,” I concluded.
I dropped the remains of Yegyen’s heart on his still burning body.
“Xander, Caine, execute the prisoners in the basement. And get rid of all the bodies in this house. Shemyan is officially over.”
“But the feast . . .?” an idiot in the crowd asked.
“There will be no feast today!” I thundered. “The feasts are for celebrations. There’s nothing to celebrate tonight. Absolutely nothing. And, starting now, the access to the Reserve will be more restricted than ever and I don’t want to hear any complaining about it.”
I gave them a withering, last look as they digested my announcement before I left the room, eager to be as far away as possible from my own people.
3
Fire and Ice
Standing in front of the unique window of my apartment, I was looking outside. My mind wandered from one subject to another without any logic. Yet, something always came back to the front of my mind.
Hunger.
A terrible hunger that tormented my body and my mind. This need was such that it became my only concern when I had important matters to address. I could use all my strength, have all the will in the world, and this damn appetite rumbling in me wouldn’t leave me alone for a second. At least, it wouldn’t as long as I wouldn’t have satisfied it.
The problem was that I couldn’t feed myself. Not yet, given the restrictions I’d decreed. I had to control myself for a few more days. If my body risked nothing, I wasn’t sure that my mental health would resist the deprivation. It wasn’t the first time that I had to wait before going to the Reserve, though. But, unlike the other times, I had the feeling that if I didn’t swallow a morsel of flesh or some blood very soon, I’d become mad. Or I’d be in a very bad mood—more than I usually was, I meant. Or perhaps I’d be both and it would be a disaster. I could only hope that Drake, a solitary Nëphyr who acted as a spy and a mercenary for some clans, would soon succeed in his mission to find a new source of supply and the situation would be sorted out.
“Fucking hunger,” I muttered.
Right now, I was cursing myself like never before for having set up these new rules of rationing during Shemyan, a few days ago. Of course, it was needed but if it was an ordeal for me, I didn’t dare to imagine what my people were going through. At this rate, craziness would probably take hold of a few and they would commit an irredeemable act like hunting outside our lands, which would cause the end of the Cohabitation Treaty with the mortals and the start of a war. Not to mention the arrival of the High Instances and the Trackers in order to eradicate my clan, who would be considered deviant.
Still, a great part of me wasn’t able to refrain from finding the idea of a confrontation with the humans deliciously attractive. Flesh and even more flesh, torrents of hemoglobin… In short, human beings by the shovelful like an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was all I could dream about right now. To Hell with deprivation, my throne and everything else! My jaw began to change at the thought. My dentition began to take the form of that of the predator that I was, all my teeth stretching out like fangs so that they could sink into the body of my prey and allow me to rip it apart with ease. But there would be no meal for me before some time, and this unwanted transformation was a sign that my control was slipping.
Irritated, I began to think about
a way to entertain myself. Well, entertaining was too strong of a word. I was more looking for a way to put my hunger aside for a few moments in order to not completely lose my mind.
My first idea was to meet Nathanael. I couldn’t do more for my clan at the moment and he would probably keep me busy for some hours. Except that sooner or later, this chronic pain in the ass would get on my nerves. And there was no doubt: a multiplied tenfold appetite was less dangerous to me than Nathanael.
This option forgotten, I tried to think of another one. But to no avail. I went back to the window, a little tired but mainly exasperated. It really couldn’t get worse . . .
But I quickly found out that I was wrong. It could get much worse. I could think even more about the hunger. I could imagine the delicious sensation a little blood taken from a live body would bring me. I could also imagine the indescribable pleasure that savoring a good bite of fresh flesh would give me. My mind was a jumble of a thousand images, each more temping than the next.
I was sure I’d reached the ultimate level of torture . . . but I was so very wrong.
Down there, outside, there suddenly were rivers of blood on the concrete. So much blood . . . And flesh. A lot of flesh. Oh Lucifer . . . I was certain nothing was in this street a few seconds ago. Even if I was floors away from the pools of hemoglobin and the corpses, I felt like I could smell the various scents of this exquisite banquet that had appeared out of nowhere. Impossible. Even so, this sensation seemed too real and tempting to ignore. I whirled around without realizing it, wanting to go out to eat my fill.
But in a blink of an eye, everything disappeared.
“The Illusionaë,” I observed in a breath, at a loss.
Perplexity was quickly replaced by annoyance. My own mind, obsessed by hunger, had played a trick on me by using my gift to give life to what I craved. Only it was an even more terrible torture because it was an illusion. As if acting on its own will, my hand crashed into the brick wall. It suddenly dawned on me that I was behaving as the Nëphyr that Ezekiel had taught me to be and my arm fell limply to my side. I closed my eyes, cursing my incapacity to control myself right now. I eventually reopened my eyes and discovered that the brick wall was in perfect condition. My eyebrows furrowed. They weren’t the same bricks, those being brown instead of being the gray ones of my room. I looked away and understood the reason of this change. I wasn’t in the same place; I was at the entrance of a dimly-lit alley. A prostrated silhouette was at the end of it. Feeling the predator in me roar with joy and impatience, I walked toward them slowly. My future victim didn’t move an inch despite the strong fragrance of terror emanating from him. I knew that. That resignation in the face of death. I’d already felt it myself, more than a half-century ago. I forced my prey to look up by violently taking hold of his chin. With a moan or a sigh, I didn’t really know, he met my eyes.
Or I should have said she. My blood froze in my veins. Rare were the times when the Illusionaë had deceived me—yet it happened twice today. It had always occurred when I’d been very weakened mentally and physically. This gift might be very useful, but when it tricked me, I didn’t appreciate it. Because then, human memories took form. Memories I wished to leave behind me, in this other mortal life that belonged to a time long gone.
Right now, my power was showing me an image of my past self, my human self. A former self that the one I was now viscerally hated. Because this young woman, on her knees, weak and looking devastated, had my features but allowed herself things (feeling fear, crying) that I was unable to express or feel now. And even if I’d been capable of it, I couldn’t have allowed myself to do so. Being Queen of Nëphyr required to be strong, insensible, and willing to do anything to stay in place.
The message of my subconscious was crystal-clear. I had to eradicate the weakness in my being because it was human, like the illusion in front of me, and not Nëphyrian. The hunger was nothing. The same went for pain and madness. I could endure anything.
On the spur of the moment, I pounced on my former self in order to tear to pieces the representation of all my flaws.
The alley suddenly took the shape of the avenue where I’d been killed, as if to remind me of one of the most terrible instants of my two existences. However, I didn’t stop. I continued the massacre, having the sensation that as my fury became greater, my hunger was diminishing until it almost vanished. I took advantage of this moment of respite, feeling myself regaining my strength as if I was really feeding myself. As long as the illusion would continue, this impression would remain. I wished for nothing else.
“Feel like sharing?”
I turned around as the scene became blurred. The true decor took back its place. I sighed mentally as I got up. All good things must come to an end. The temporary rest I’d felt disappeared to only leave a feeling of irritation behind due to Nathanael’s interruption. He was staring at me with an annoying smile, his fists on his hips. I figured out he hadn’t had the time to see on whom I was taking it out. Which was a good thing. I didn’t need a long and moralizing speech today. Nor did I need anything else except food, actually.
“Obviously, you needed to externalize someth—” he said, gesturing to the hole in the wall with his hand.
“I could do without your comments,” I interrupted him, my tone as sharp as a razor blade.
Looking away from the destroyed wall, I focused my attention on him. As much as he was sometimes indispensable, at other moments, I wondered why I hadn’t already sent him back to Hell. I was currently asking myself what was stopping me from jumping at his throat. Ah yes, right . . . I knew all too well how it would end. In a hot fuck session on the ground. I couldn’t help it, my attraction to him was so strong that any rapprochement would inevitably end like that.
“Some of us have a good time while the others starve. A shame we don’t all possess the Illusionaë. It’d be useful, given the present circumstances.”
I sighed, tired or even more angry, I had no idea. If Nathanael hadn’t inherited a Nëphyrian power, he at least had the ability of knowing how to get under my skin.
“What do you want me to say? Looks like the Nëphyrian laws are unfair. But, well, in these dark times, I have to find a way to grant myself some pleasure.”
I turned away to rest my gaze on the window. I wished I could be far away from here, far away from him. I could sense a stormy conversation coming a mile off and I didn’t have it in me at the moment to face it.
“I thought I was the one you called when you wanted ‘some pleasure,’” he told me, one eyebrow raised when I spun around to look at him.
He wasn’t a tiny bit annoyed by what his words suggested. I’d have been offended if I was him. But no, he almost always remained calm, contrary to the rest of the Nëphyrian race that was only constant fury, thirst for violence, flesh, blood and sex. We were the very definition of instability. And even if Nathanael had taught me to rein in my primal instincts and my mood swings, my bestial and uncontrollable side still caught me unaware from time to time. That was why his self-control was always able to get a rise out of me. Because he remained unmoved in the face of—almost—anything and I was incapable of doing the same when I should have been able to.
“I’ll let you put two and two together,” I eventually said.
His electric blue eyes focused on mine, he slowly approached me. Like a predator coming up to his prey who knew that it wouldn’t even try to escape. Except that I was no longer prey. I was a monster, too. A monster at his mercy, just like he was at mine. Well, at the mercy of this damn attraction between the two of us. He stopped a few inches from me. I could already feel the excitement flooding my body and, more exactly, my slit. By Satan! Why did he have those irresistible blue-gray eyes, that golden hair—my little weakness—and this body that was a real call to sin? And why could we never speak without obscene thoughts coming to my mind? Since that cursed day when I’d given in to temptation and we’d slept together for the first time, we’d never been able to finish
a conversation without it ending horizontally.
“Yet, last time, when you were screaming my name, I didn’t have the impression you were bored. Quite the opposite, in fact . . .”
His Olympian calm and haughty expression almost brought out the bestial side in me, but I fought against that with all my strength.
I was fire, with my unstable temperament and my half-century of Nëphyrian life—and twenty years or so of human life. He was ice, with his unfailing composure and his almost three centuries of existence. Assuredly, we could only be incompatible in view of our differences, so the only way for us to get along was when we both shut up to fuck. Lovely . . .
“It never came to your mind that I may have faked it to not . . . hurt you?” I deliberately provoked him.
“So you were faking . . .” he said as he walked toward me until our bodies were pressed together.
I was a Nëphyr and, yet, at that moment, I had the impression of being a real teenager with her raging hormones. This despicable behavior was in no way worthy of me. Even if I kept thinking that, I still remained intoxicated by his closeness when he, though I had no doubts about his desire for me, was calm personified.
“So, when I do this,” he murmured suavely as he licked, then nibbled the tender skin of my neck, “you feel absolutely nothing.”
Oh, how much I would have wished to be able to say no to him. Or to get away from him and take great delight in his crestfallen expression, looking at him with my most sardonic smile. I would have wished to do so many things, but I did only one. I shivered because this damn mortal coil was unable to resist to his.
I felt one of his hands getting under my dress and slowly moving up my thighs. I couldn’t refrain from closing my eyelids and putting my hands on his shoulders, my mind having trouble fighting as my body was already prepared to surrender. I wanted to feel him in me. To bite him. To hear him groaning like a beast as he—