Ex Tenebris: A Dark Fantasy (Nëphyr Book 1)

by Cindy Mezni

  “You don’t want to speak. So be it. As you don’t want to answer my question, I’m going to pay a visit to your friends and kill them one by one and it will be very, very painful. I assure you that you’ll hear their screams from your room. I hope for you that you’re ready to live with the weight of their death on your conscience because, believe me, they’re going to die because of you.”

  I put my glass on the bar and made my way to the exit.

  “Wait! I’m going to tell you everything!” the human said when my hand grabbed the handle of the door.

  My back to him, I smiled, satisfied. When my mask of indifference was in place again, I faced him. A grimace distorted his features, no doubt because it was really hard for him to submit to me and give me what I wished.

  “So let’s start at the beginning. What’s your name?”

  “Kenneth,” he answered me in a sigh.

  “Kenneth, why did you and your friends come here?”

  He seemed miles away for a few seconds before answering me.

  “We came to kill the largest number possible of creatures like you.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. Absurd. Totally absurd. This was his explanation? It couldn’t be true. No mortal bipedal, no matter how idiot he was, would come here to kill us because he had no chance to defeat even just one of us—unless he was equipped with a rocket launcher or powerful explosives.

  “That’s why you came?” I said, my tone clearly showing that I didn’t believe a word he’d pronounced. “You, poor humans devoid of strength, coming here to fight against us, we Nëphyr, creatures capable of breaking your neck with a light slap? It’s utterly ridiculous! What’s the real reason of your intrusion on our territory?”

  “However ridiculous it may seem, we indirectly managed to kill one of yours,” he said, a mocking pout on his face.

  The little runt! If he believed he’d succeeded in doing anything with his intrusion, he was wrong. The member of the security would have been executed, sooner or later. He just died a little prematurely.

  “It had nothing to do with you and your stupid kin,” I retorted with coldness. “He simply broke the rules one time too many and paid a high price for it.”

  “Still, if we hadn’t come, he wouldn’t have died yesterday.”

  He was starting to seriously annoy me with his condescending attitude. I was going to make this little irritating facial expression disappear. I let my jaw transform itself and rushed at him, pinning him roughly to the wall. My blazing, green gaze met his. I became disenchanted. I who’d believed I was going to feel his fear, I didn’t. He wasn’t afraid. Not for his life anyway.

  “Let’s assume for a few moments that the reason you gave me to explain your intrusion was the real one. You had to know that you were going to be captured or killed, and yet, you and your friends came here. If I can understand that you play the failed kamikazes, I don’t understand why you didn’t notice the kid was following you. Or why her sister ran head-first toward death when her little sister was dependent on her.”

  I’d apparently found his weakness because he looked annoyed.

  “I knew nothing of these people before this expedition,” he confided to me with difficulty.

  “Well, Kenneth, if you want to convince me that what you’re telling me is true, you’re going about it the wrong way. You’re trying to make me believe that you came here to commit countless murders but that you don’t know where these people come from? Either you’re kidding me, in which case you better tell me the truth so that I don’t take it out on your companions. Or you don’t lie and all this negligence means that you didn’t care about killing Nëphyr and you just wanted us to help you do what you couldn’t do yourself . . .”

  He pinched his lips. So that was what it was all about. He wasn’t lying to me. Or at least not completely. Yet I had a hard time believing it. Too many things were illogical in this explanation.

  “So there was no vendetta of any kind behind your intrusion. You just wanted to die. You see, if you wished that, I don’t understand why you came accompanied. Especially because I doubt their motivations to come here were the same as yours. I also doubt they considered this expedition could cost them their life. Really, if you’re telling me the truth, well, I congratulate you. It’s deliciously despicable of you to have led them into the lion’s den without warning them of what awaited them. And it’s also exquisitely cowardly of you to surround yourself with innocents to go to the slaughter. If I wasn’t certain you were human, Kenneth, I could believe I have a Creature of Darkness in front of me.”

  “Don’t compare me to you! I’m not a—”

  “Monster?” I interrupted him. “Please face the facts: you are a monster. Whether what you tell me is the truth or not, it’s obvious these people didn’t know what waited for them. You sent them to Hell without any qualms.”

  I backed away from him. For sure, he’d acted with cruelty, but I detected remorse in his gaze. The evidence that there was something wrong in his version of the story.

  “I’m still wondering why you did it. You wanted to die, okay, but I’m certain you didn’t wish the same thing to happen to them. So what was the plan? Do what they had come here to do, killing as many monsters as possible, and at the critical moment, create a diversion to allow them to run away?”

  He gazed at me, looking surprised.

  “Can you . . . read my thoughts or something?” he asked, pointing to his head.

  I burst out laughing. If it was the case, I wouldn’t have asked him any question and would look for the information that interested me in his skull without wasting time to chat uselessly with him. But well, he had an excuse for his stupidity: he was human.

  “No, I can’t. But some of mine can.”

  He seemed confused.

  “Then how did you—”

  “Simply because the functioning of mortals is very easy to understand,” I interrupted him, condescending.

  Now he was pensive.

  “Do you have a—”

  “The fire, the possibility of moving any object by the thought, and the power to create illusions.”

  I didn’t know why I told him all those things. Maybe because it didn’t represent a threat for my people. After all, he wanted to die and his wish would certainly be fulfilled soon. And I doubted that, even if he stayed alive, he would share our discussion with his government who was still looking for information about my kind. Anyway, if he was freed one day, I would make sure he didn’t remember this conversation.

  “It really looks like you read minds,” he said to me, looking bothered I understood him so well.

  “I told you. You and all yours are easy to decipher. Your expressions, your attitude, your smell . . . All this gives me all I need to understand what goes through your head. And also, you’re all so simple-minded.”

  At my last sentence, he became sullen.

  “Don’t make that face,” I retorted right away. “I only say the truth.”

  “Because it’s well known that monsters tell the truth,” he said with a disgusted expression.

  I couldn’t refrain from giving a little disdainful snort.

  “Lying is a human thing. Monsters, as you say, don’t need to lie because they’re not afraid of hurting their interlocutor or don’t need to protect themselves behind a lie. Only the humans resort to this way because they’re cowardly. When I speak, I tell the truth. Or I say nothing if I don’t want to tell it.”

  This time, he had nothing to retort. Okay, I resorted to lying but only when it was question of the continuity of the clan and life or death of a number of my people. There were things that justified a lie.

  “You’re the perfect example of that,” I went on to drive the point home. “You don’t tell the truth. And I’d like to know why you keep lying to everybody. First to these humans, now to me.”

  I remained silent a moment so that he could mull over my words.

  “You know, your little secrets may cost the
lives of all your companions. Speak and maybe I’ll let them live. Keep silent and what happens will be what happens to all humans who walk into the monsters’ lair.”

  “You’re vile!” he yelled, his eyes wild.

  I gave him my most sardonic grin.

  “You’re the one who put them in this mess, not me,” I said to him. “You’re the one who refuses to speak. If your companions die, it will be your solely fault.”

  “No! I—”

  “Oh yes,” I cut him off curtly. “You’re responsible for what happened and what will happen to them. And because I’m fed up with going round and round in circles, you’re going to tell me the reason why you came here or my offer to spare them will expire. And then, believe me, I’ll make sure that you stay alive so that you can blame yourself for their death every day of the rest of your miserable existence.”

  I left him a few seconds of reflection. He decided very quickly to speak.

  “You killed my brother,” he told me, his features ravaged by the reappearance of his pain because he had to explain this story to me.

  It was clear he didn’t mean I was personally responsible for it but that it was one of my peers who’d done it.

  “Really? When was it? And where?”

  He swallowed hard. He still hadn’t gotten over his brother’s death. I could relate. I’d gone through that, too, even if it was a part of another life now.

  “Three months ago. Somewhere not very far outside this city.”

  My people didn’t go hunting outside our lands. It was strictly forbidden and the penalty was death. It seemed to me all the more improbable because at that time I hadn’t established the current food limitations. So I didn’t see how one of mine could be behind the murder of his brother.

  “Everything is deserted around the city, and that for several miles for ‘security measures’ according to your people, so I don’t see what your brother would have been doing there. And above all, I don’t see what my people would have to do in this story. We have a Reserve and everything we need to feed ourselves.”

  “A Re—”

  “Yes, a Reserve,” I beat him to it. “The Cohabitation Treaty, it doesn’t ring any bell to you? Your government supplies us with the humans we need to avoid that murders like that of your brother occur.”

  He seemed stunned.

  “The government supplies you with humans to—”

  He wasn’t able to finish his sentence. He looked like he was about to vomit.

  “Considering your reaction, I assume your government didn’t tell you that it gives us some of your human rejects like killers and rapists so that we don’t attack the rest of the good and innocent population. It’s good to know,” I added with a mocking smile. “See, it’s exactly like I said. Lying is a human thing.”

  “It’s . . .”

  “Disgusting? Despicable? Evil? Monstrous? Yeah, we know,” I told him, a little bit tired of these perpetual adjectives. “Could we come back to the main subject here, that is why do you believe that your brother was killed by one of my people?”

  “He was . . . in pieces,” he pronounced with difficulty.

  I shrugged.

  “That proves nothing. He could have been attacked by a wild animal roaming around.”

  “A wild animal? I doubt that one remains with you in the area.”

  I saw what he was getting at. Kenneth believed he knew everything about us when he actually knew nothing. And apparently, the government was doing its best to give a more than negative image of my race. Those bastards . . .

  “Contrary to what you seem to believe, we don’t feed on animals. It’s a sacred rule among our kind. They’re like our fellows in some ways, mainly governed by their instinct, too.”

  “Is that a joke?” he exclaimed, looking appalled by what I’d just confided to him. “You prefer to eat humans, what you were before, rather than to eat animals?”

  I came close to him and grasped him by the collar of his shirt. He and his damned human morality seriously began to exasperate me.

  “You see, we consider that animals are better than you, humans, because they’re provided with a certain intelligence and know how to defend themselves. You, you’re weak and you’re so brainless that you try to kill each other until there’s nobody left anymore. You slowly destroy the only place where you can live. Your stupidity drives you to your extinction. So we finally found you a utility: to serve as meals for us.”

  “Abomination!” he said before spitting in my face.

  Big mistake. I took several deep breaths to remain calm. Then I wiped the spit off. Don’t kill him, Nemesis, I reasoned with myself to keep me from breaking his neck. Forcing myself to moderate my strength, I made him fly through the room. He crashed into the wall and collapsed on the floor, stunned and out of breath. I couldn’t kill him but there was no way I would let this vermin insult me.

  “It’s your government which supplies us our food, sacrifices some of your people to protect the largest number. It’s your people who lead wars against their own race and let millions of people die of hunger, with no remorse. So don’t make me laugh by calling me a monster while you led these humans, including a child, straight into Hell. Dare to repeat now that I’m the abomination.”

  He remained silent, a hand held behind his head, certainly where it’d struck the wall. I sincerely hoped he had an awful headache.

  “You and your kind, you’re all the same. You call us monsters because you can’t bear what we are, the fact that we’re stronger than you and that we totally accept our nature, our way of functioning. You can’t bear the image we send back to you, the exact reflection of the dark side which hides in every one of you; a side that you try to hide with great difficulty from others. You can’t bear the fact that you, humans, are no longer at the top of this dear food chain you like so much. You’re like these animals that you hunt: you’re the prey, not the hunters anymore. After so much time spent thinking that you were the masters of the world, it must be difficult to accept it isn’t the case anymore. That’s why you want to eradicate us, but, believe me, we’ll be the victors. You’re way out of your league.”

  I kept quiet a few moments. The human seemed impassive. But he wasn’t. His smell had a light scent of fear. There was also something else but I couldn’t manage to put my finger on what it was.

  “In the end, if you weren’t so narrow-minded and accepted change, we could maybe find a way to . . . cohabit. It’s a pity . . . or not, actually,” I rectified finally, shrugging. “After all, you’re the ones who’ll pay the high price for your stubbornness.”

  I gave a last glance to the human who was still lying on the ground and turned away to settle down on one of the loveseats of the room. I wanted to test a hypothesis.

  “I’d like to know something about your brother.”

  A little bit recalcitrant, he eventually nodded to tell me I could go on.

  “Was his heart whole?” I inquired.

  “Excuse me?”

  I couldn’t refrain from looking heavenward. Was he that stupid?

  “Was his heart eaten or intact?” I said, articulating as if he was half-witted—which he was, obviously.

  He thought about it for a moment.

  “I think . . . I think it was intact.”

  I smiled without caring about offending him.

  “If you’d done some research instead of drawing hasty conclusions just because according to you, we’re the monsters, you’d have understood that my people didn’t murder your brother. If they had, the heart wouldn’t have been left. It’s one of the first things we eat from our victims.” He seemed about to throw up. “If the body was torn apart, the heart would have been at least be in pieces, too, or gone. You got the wrong ‘monster.’ You should have focused on vampires, it looks like their doing.”

  “But vampires . . .” he began, shaken by my speech.

  He paused to pull himself together.

  “Vampires drink blood,” he continu
ed, rejecting the idea that he’d been wrong all along. “Unlike you, who eat flesh, too.”

  “I grant you that but it doesn’t prevent them from being incredibly sadistic. It’s their thing, to torture their victims for hours before finishing them. It seems that a very slow agony gives a delicious taste to the blood.”

  His eyes met mine. Besides the disgust he was feeling, I could see clearly that he had no idea what to do or believe. I almost could have felt sorry for him. Almost.

  “There must be—”

  “A mistake? I don’t think so. My clan has rules and it respects them.” At least, it respected them in the past, I corrected mentally for myself. “And there are no other Nëphyr nearby. So it wasn’t one of mine that killed your brother.”

  “But he said you were responsible for his death,” he said in a toneless voice.

  I frowned. He? Impatience overcame me. Obviously, the mortal hadn’t told me everything.

  “You’re going to tell me about whom you speak, everything you know about him, and how you and the others were able to find your way about in our territory,” I ordered him with firmness, pressing.

  Sensing that this time, if he didn’t talk, things would turn out badly, Kenneth confided to me all that he knew, in other words: not much. He didn’t know who the—white, small and shaved-headed, according to his description—man was, nor if he was a human or a Creature of Darkness. But now I knew that this stranger had something against Nëphyr and had chosen those humans because the news had spoken about them after the disappearance or murder of their relatives that was attributed to Creatures. An absurd thing in which they should have refused to participate, by the way. Using their pain and thirst for vengeance, this stranger had succeeded in convincing Kenneth and the other humans to go to New Hell and go on a punitive raid by assuring them that he knew that Nëphyr were responsible of their loss and supplying them with ridiculous weapons like sub-machine guns and the likes.

  I wasn’t certain it was another plan of the vampires who bore a grudge against us. These humans weren’t blood slaves. And I didn’t see why they would have recruited average humans when they had slaves willing to do anything they would ask them to do. The thing was that, though my clan had hordes of enemies of different races, the most probable hypothesis was that it was their doing again. And I had to hurry to find the identity of these blood suckers who wanted our downfall in order to settle accounts with them before they struck again.