by Cindy Mezni
“No way!” said the most foolhardy man of the group.
And, unfortunately, he should have forgotten his courage and kept quiet because I wanted them to remain silent and not alert the whole residence to their presence. I sent a death stare at him and the others. Then I transmitted to them images with the help of the Illusionaë, those of their deaths if they weren’t silent and discreet. A painful end, which consisted of their bodies being devoured alive by about ten Nëphyr with long teeth and eager for fresh flesh.
“Stop!”
I continued as if the man had said nothing. They had to understand that they had to keep a low profile here. For them, but especially for me, so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the anger of numerous Nëphyr and their attempt to reach the mortals and feed on them. I couldn’t allow that. I had to know where these men and women came from and how they had obtained the information to enter New Hell.
“Please, stop! For pity’s sake—”
I stopped listening to concentrate on the woman who wouldn’t stop yelling. “Pity” wasn’t part of our vocabulary. They had called me a monster so why did they ask for my leniency? Everybody knew monsters had none. And what I was imposing upon them wasn’t related to my nature but to the obligation for them to understand that if they wanted to stay alive, they had to shut up. Seeing that I wasn’t stopping, the woman who’d talked approached the bars of the cell and tried to strike me. I grabbed her by the wrist before she hit my face and twisted it without actually breaking it. I stared at her with furor, the emerald green of my eyes beginning to glow. If she wanted me to have a change of heart regarding their fate, she was on the right track.
“You little bitch!” Xander said as he came toward me, ready to open the cell to take care of this insolent woman.
I freed her wrist and put my hand on Xander’s chest to stop him. He raised his eyes to me.
“Drop it.”
I stopped using the Illusionaë on the humans and stared at them, one after the other.
“I don’t want to hear you anymore, is that clear?” I said in an icy tone. “Because, you see, what I showed you is just a preview of what awaits you if other Nëphyr discover that you’re here. So for your own sake, just shut the Hell up.”
They didn’t nod but I saw in their faces that they’d understood that I was deadly serious. I thought a few instants about the immediate future. The mortals would stay in the residence, but I couldn’t keep them locked up here given the state of the cells. It had nothing to do with compassion but they were frail and none of them would hold a very long time in this basement. They’d freeze to death or die from disease. And those were the most optimistic hypotheses. I didn’t take into account all the Nëphyr who would try to eat them because the rumor of their presence would spread faster than wildfire in spite of my efforts to hide their existence. I was at an impasse. I couldn’t leave them there for obvious reasons but I couldn’t welcome them on one of the upper floors because their life expectancy would be even more reduced than here. I sighed. Think, think . . .
“Parker, go find me Edenaï,” I ordered him as I turned toward him. “Tell her it’s an emergency and that I want to talk to her. But say nothing else. No word about the humans or anything else. Understood?”
He nodded and spun around, ready to go delivering his message.
“Parker?”
He stopped to face me once again.
“If you utter the slightest word about all this upstairs, you’re dead,” I warned him, emotionless.
He gave me a nod again, a little more stiff all of a sudden. He went away in a hurry.
“What’s the use of doing all this?” one of the mortals said with curtness. “You want to protect us? Why? To get some info before killing us when you’ll no longer need us?”
I whirled around to look at the man. I was familiar with the expression on his face; a blend of despair, fury and defiance. I had worn the same twice in my human life and that, during long periods. In spite of the mask of hatred that was totally intended for me, I saw the devastation caused by the recent loss of somebody who meant a lot to him. I knew what it was. He wanted to tell Death to go to Hell. He wanted to tell it he wasn’t afraid of it and was ready to embrace his end. He was mad at everyone because people had done nothing to prevent the tragedy that had happened in his miserable little existence, and they all continued to live without caring about him while he was stuck in the past, incapable of moving forward. A question occurred to me. Was it one of ours who was responsible for his ordeal? If so, it would explain many things, like his coming here. And also his provocative attitude and his anger toward us. But what was the role of his companions in this story?
“No matter what you do, we won’t survive long in a place like this. Whether it’s because of the basement filled with the foul smell of death and blood, of the cold reigning here, or because of your people who will want a snack.”
I repressed a smile. This one had something inside his skull and, for a frail creature on enemy territory, he was rather daring to talk to me as if I hadn’t enough brain to have thought of it myself. I was definitely not used of this kind of behavior coming from a human being. Maybe he behaved like that because dying now didn’t frighten him, contrary to his kin—including the other man who’d brushed me off minutes ago and played the brave man while pissing himself with fear.
“He’s right,” I said, facing Xander and Caine. “We have to move them. Find a place where we can keep the clan members at a distance from them.”
I gave the group a sidelong glance to see the reaction of this audacious man. But my attention was drawn to the injured human. I’d completely forgotten him. His wound didn’t bleed as much as before but if he wasn’t quickly treated, it was obvious he would die from it. And I preferred for it to not happen because he might have useful information concerning their coming here.
“Xander or Caine, I don’t care which one, give him blood so that he survives.”
They looked at each other, waiting for the other one to sacrifice himself. Neither of them volunteered.
“Damn it!” I exclaimed, unable to control myself as much as I was annoyed by their childish behavior. “Caine, take care of him. Xander, you watch this part of the basement until further notice.”
They agreed, even if their expression showed they weren’t delighted by the tasks I’d assigned them. Well, power and responsibilities were rarely a walk in the park.
“Oh, and when Edenaï gets here, tell her to put the mortals on the eighth floor and that I’ll join her there in one hour to talk to her.”
Xander nodded again after having closed the cell of the humans where Caine had just gone in. Caine ignored my request, too busy with trying to forcefully make the resisting man drink his blood. The other mortals were hunched in a corner of the reduced space; some of them were fascinated and horrified at the same time, the others were just disgusted. Not wasting anymore time here, I went into the corridor to go back to my apartment, where Nathanael waited for me with the child.
8
A Tiny Part of Humanity
“Why keep these humans alive?” Nathanael asked, giving the child a puzzled look. “And why did you bring the girl here?”
Staring at Ivy, who was having fun in an imaginary world which I created thanks to the Illusionaë so that she would leave us alone, I considered his questions.
I had an answer for the first one. I was keeping the mortals alive to get some information from them. Plus, having civilians close at hand could be a good bargaining chip in case something were to go wrong with the human government; and it wouldn’t take long since the situation of the clan was deteriorating every passing day.
For the second question, I had no real answer. Or maybe I had various hypotheses and some of them didn’t please me at all. The first one was that Ivy and her terrified look had succeeded in reviving an ounce of humanity in me. The second one was that she reminded me of Amber, my little sister who disappeared a long time ago. It w
as this theory which disturbed me the most. The third and last one was that I had principles, even if they were few, and to feed on a child or to hurt them wasn’t one of them; Efflamm himself had forbidden this practice during his reign and I had maintained this law. It was the hypothesis I preferred to favor.
“You didn’t want me to leave her in the basement, did you?” I asked.
Some of us had some personal rules and one of mine was to not touch a child. I might be sadistic but there were acts that weren’t acceptable, even when you were a creature of Hell. Unfortunately, all my people didn’t see things in the same way, even if in my clan, I didn’t tolerate this.
“Of course not,” he retorted with calm. “But what are you going to do? I don’t know how long you plan to keep these humans among us, but if that lasts several days or even more, what are you going to do with her?”
He gestured to Ivy. I glanced at the girl who was having fun quietly, far from imagining that her future was being decided next to her.
“You want a frank answer? I didn’t think about it at all.”
He breathed a tired sigh.
“You didn’t think about it? It’s as simple as that? Damn you, Nemesis! You’re Queen! You can’t make decisions without thinking about it beforehand! I—”
“Oh, keep quiet, Nathanael! You’re really the last person who has the right to lecture me! I remind you that you keep making mindless decisions. You have only to look how many times you change your mind when it comes to me. One minute you tell me to get lost and the very next you’re already trying to get me back in your bed. So you see, you’re hardly in a position to talk about rash decisions. And, by the way, let me tell you that your behavior is starting to get really ridiculous.”
He laughed nervously while I wondered how I came to use that as my line of defense. Well, what was said was said . . .
“Undoubtedly as ridiculous as you and your Reaper, then,” he said, screwing his face up in disgust.
What? What was he talking about? I slowly understood what he meant and it made me smile. Nathanael believed I was sleeping with Xander? Barely one week after he put an end to our affair? Good to know he holds me in such high esteem, I thought sarcastically. For sure, Xander was circling around me—more than usual, I mean—since Nathanael wasn’t my lover anymore, but nothing had happened. Plus, it wasn’t as if I had time to look for a new lover and try him out . . .
“Contrary to what you seem to believe, I didn’t pick him to make you jealous or any other bullshit along the same lines.”
At his look, I figured out he’d misinterpreted my comment. He really thought I’d slept with Xander. My pride didn’t allow me to correct him. He had wanted to get rid of me without thinking twice about it? Well, now he would suffer the—fictitious, though he didn’t know it—consequences.
“You had already slept with him before? When? While you were with Ezekiel? Or when you were with me? When?” he insisted in an increasingly louder tone.
I didn’t understand how he’d come to the conclusion that Xander and I had slept together before he had broken our ‘exchanges of good practices.’ Still, it was pleasant to see him losing his composure because he believed another male had encroached on his territory without him knowing it.
“You and I have never been together,” I simply rectified.
If he didn’t lose it very soon, it would be a real miracle. But he had to understand I owed him nothing and didn’t belong to him. Especially after he’d rejected me without any reason. After all, I’d been clear from the start about the fact that it was only sex between him and me so why did he suddenly want something more between us? The Queen in me murmured I had better things to do than to dedicate an umpteenth discussion to this matter. But, after all, I had to see Edenaï in forty minutes or so, which meant I still had time, even if I also had to think of a solution for the child.
“Don’t trifle with me, Nemesis. I’m not in the mood for that,” he warned me on a harsh tone.
I could feel his wrath increasing second after second.
“So?” he spat out with contempt. “When did it happen?”
“It’s none of your business,” I answered him with my most controlled intonations.
To believe we’d swapped our personalities. He became short-tempered in my presence and I became peace incarnate. The proof that this discussion was going wrong, slowly but surely.
“Don’t force me to do something I’d regret . . .”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, guessing that the desire to insult me (or even more) had to torment him immensely. “You won’t have time to blame yourself. Xander will cut your head off before you’ll have the slightest remorse. So, really, don’t worry about that.”
He raised his eyes to heaven and ran his hand nervously through his golden hair.
“You’re insufferable,” he grumbled, more for himself than for me. “Answer.”
I snorted disdainfully. He was in no position to talk about who was annoying or not.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Don’t answer my question with another question, Nemesis!”
Obviously, the Nathanael I was used to was absent. And this version of him was worse than the original version. His obsessive jealousy and his male pride were real pains in the ass.
“You want answers, I’m going to give them to you.” He seemed a little relieved. He was shortly going to become disillusioned. “But first, I want you to answer my previous question.”
He hadn’t believed he had manipulated me so easily, had he? Given how irritated he looked, he’d believed it. And he kept claiming he knew me . . .
“In your opinion? Why the Hell would I want to know?”
I observed him without blinking. I knew perfectly why. I wanted him to say it clearly to show him how ridiculous he was to feel that for me. Especially because contrary to what he believed, he knew nothing of me and there was absolutely nothing to love in me.
“You don’t want to answer, right?” he continued when he understood I wasn’t going to speak. “Why? Are you afraid that what you’re suspecting is in fact true?”
Exceeded, I shook my head.
“You know what?” I said, tired of this oral ping-pong. “Don’t say it, I don’t care. You wanted answers, I’m going to give them to you. You can stop wracking your brain by imagining I am more slutty than I actually am. I didn’t sleep with him while you and me . . . we . . . during our agreement. And nothing has ever happened with him, even if you told me to look for another male.”
Seeing his expression and the way he looked at me, it was more than obvious he bitterly regretted his last hasty decision.
“You enjoy torturing me, right?”
A drawn out sigh escaped me. He was so far from the truth. I finally had the opportunity to make him realize he was completely wrong about me and what existed between us.
“You think you know everything about me but, actually, you know nothing, Nathanael. You only see the person you’d like me to be and it distorts everything. And it annoys me. That’s why I always try to get this damned idyllic image of me out of your head. The one who disgusts you, the one who disappoints you, the one you hate is me. The real me. The one I’ve always been and will always be. The only thing real in what you feel for me is your attraction. That and nothing else. Thus, the faster you get that, the better it will be for everyone.”
His face was unreadable. Totally unreadable. For the first time of my existence, I wondered what he felt and the answer really mattered to me. But I would never get this answer, even if I’d wished it more than anything else right now.
This whole complicated story with him reminded me of Ezekiel. It reminded me of my past with this damn traitor. Nathanael was the Nemesis I’d been with Ezekiel and I was the monster Ezekiel had been in our relationship. Ezekiel had treated me as somebody of a lower rank; he’d played with me as if I’d been just a puppet and inflicted many atrocious treatments and humiliations on me. And, at th
is moment, I admitted to myself that I’d been doing the same thing with Nathanael for years. For sure, I did it in a less sly, depraved and rough way than Ezekiel, but I did it all the same.
“Are we done with this discussion?” I asked calmly.
His eyes, empty of any feeling, were on me a few moments before he looked away.
“Yes.”
“You know where the door is, then.”
I observed him with attention and I realized: he was like me. It was my exact reflection I was seeing; a hollow mortal coil, devoid of any desire, at the mercy of the hazards of fate, continuing to function only because Lucifer had made us almost indestructible. The only thing which distinguished us was that where, for me, the deathblow had been my meeting Ezekiel, for him, it had been his meeting me. Or more exactly, the real deathblow had been when, in spite of himself, he had become aware of what I really was. An unpleasant feeling, something akin to guilt—at least, the memory I had of it—took form in me. In order to hold back this unwanted emotion, I refocused my attention on Ivy so I wouldn’t look at Nathanael anymore. The door slammed a few seconds later. He’d left. And my guilt had too. At least, I hoped so . . .
Sitting on the internal ledge of the unique window of my room, I observed the desolation reigning over our city while discreetly glancing from time to time at the child. She was on the bed and watched some cartoon on the flat screen what was outmoded, technologically speaking. The girl was captivated by the TV, forgetting all about my existence, even though this time I hadn’t used any of my gifts. The absurdity of the situation was blatant. I was one of the most dangerous creatures of this world and this child stayed by my side without paying attention to me, although in the blink of an eye I could kill her with a flick. As if she’d heard my thoughts, the girl turned her head to stare at me. It lasted only a few seconds, but when she looked at her cartoon again, a little smile played on her lips. Indeed, it was definitively aberrant that she was so trusting with a monster near her.