Ex Tenebris: A Dark Fantasy (Nëphyr Book 1)

by Cindy Mezni

  “It seems quite clear to me. I should have done more to help you.”

  I muttered a curse. Could he stop irritating me every two minutes? Apparently not.

  “I got that but what do you mean by ‘more?’ To my knowledge, you didn’t help me at all. So unless I have Alzheimer’s . . . Yeah, no, impossible. Conclusion, you’re a liar.”

  His smile widened. Still, his expression looked fake.

  “Rest assured you have no Alzheimer’s.” I stared at him with haughtiness. Thanks but I already knew that! “You just weren’t in the know.”

  “What?” I blurted out, surprised.

  With his only good arm, he lifted his shirt up and pointed at the scar where a sword that had gone through his stomach when he’d still been human.

  “It wasn’t a sword that did that,” he said with calm. “It was Ezekiel.”

  This time, I stared at him, gaping.

  “How? I mean—we can’t—the scar—”

  I was totally lost. It was impossible and, yet, if he had this mark and if he said that Ezekiel was the cause, it was probably true. Nathanael wouldn’t lie on a subject such as that of the Mëvia.

  “Ezekiel had covered the blade of his dagger with Emenaïd, that’s why the wound didn’t totally heal.”

  “Why?” I said, stupefied. “I mean, why did he coat the blade and why did he stab you?”

  “You can’t guess?”

  I kept silent. If I asked him the question, it was because I didn’t know, right?

  “Because I wanted to help you,” he explained, understanding that I didn’t get it. “One day while he was beating you and I was in the basement, I wanted to put an end to what he was doing to you. Torturing humans, I can accept it because that is a part of what we are. It’s in us, in our nature. But what he did to you, while you were one of ours, I couldn’t tolerate it. Your blood spurting on the walls, your cries resounding tirelessly . . . It was too much. This bastard didn’t stop striking you and you eventually lost consciousness due to the pain and the fact your transformation wasn’t finished yet. So I went in the cell, I grabbed the metal chain with which he was hitting you and I put it around his neck to strangle him. But he managed to use his fucking gift on me and, my body being under his complete control, I released him. He freed me from his influence and flew off the handle. We fought but seeing I was getting the upper hand, he reused his gift before breaking my neck without me being able to stop him from doing it. When I woke up, he was in front of me and was brandishing a dagger with the blade coated with Emenaïd. Word for word, he told me: ‘That’s for playing at heroes.’ I was too weak, he was still using his gift, and I wasn’t able to stop him. He stuck the blade in my stomach. He was about to do it again, this time in the heart, when Efflamm arrived, mad with rage. He forced Ezekiel to release his weapon and stop using his power. Ezekiel complied but warned Efflamm that if I still meddled in things that were none of my concern, he would kill me and nobody would stop him. Efflamm decided I had no business caring about you. And he warned us that if there was another disagreement between Ezekiel and I because of you, he would solve the problem in a definitive way: he would execute you so that the members of his Royal Guard kept sticking together.”

  I swallowed hard. My brain refused to understand Nathanael’s words. He had tried to save me? He had protected me? During almost fifty years, I’d believed he’d behaved like the others and hadn’t reacted to the atrocious treatments that Ezekiel forced on me. And now, he told me it was false? Why hadn’t he told me earlier? Why had he invented the lies? I had so many questions swarming in my head.

  “So why the story of the sword?”

  I remembered this story, which he’d told me when I’d asked him where his scar came from when I’d first seen it, at the beginning of our affair. He let out a long sigh.

  “Ezekiel again. He knew people would ask questions. Afraid that you’d learn it one day, he came up with this explanation and, given that no female in the house had had the opportunity to see me before the scar, nobody would say the opposite as long as I’d continue to tell the same story to every person who would wonder about it.”

  Ezekiel always planned everything. Nothing was left to chance. The recent confessions of Nathanael strengthened the hatred that I felt toward the bastard. One day, he would pay. For me, for the one I’d been, and for the rest. Yet, a detail still disturbed me. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t told me the truth after the departure of Ezekiel or when we’d begun sleeping together.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “What would it have changed? I couldn’t tell you the truth when Ezekiel was there otherwise he’d have killed me or Efflamm would have killed you. When he . . . left, I didn’t see the interest in dwelling on the past. He wasn’t here anymore and I was. And I finally had a chance for you to belong to me. If I’d told you the truth, it would only have served me badly.”

  I released his arm and retreated slowly. He didn’t groan when I did, so I deducted his fracture had been reabsorbed. I shook my head. He didn’t get it.

  “Everything,” I murmured softly. “It would have changed everything . . .”

  It started again. Like in the cell where Ezekiel had locked me up for so much time. All my certainties, my whole existence, everything was questioned. Why did he do this to me now? I looked into his eyes. He was totally lost. I was too.

  “I—”

  “Do you want to tell me anything else while we’re at it?” I shouted, irked.

  And now the irascible Nemesis made a reappearance. Nathanael didn’t say a word for a long moment.

  “Once, you told me you thought you were responsible for what had happened to Efflamm and Mischa. You were wrong . . . but I didn’t dare say it to you. If I’d told you the truth, I was persuaded you would have given up everything to chase after Ezekiel. That is why I kept silent.”

  “Come to the point!” I said with vehemence, having no more patience left.

  “Ezekiel killed Efflamm because he’d promised him his place after his death and because he was tired of waiting. The problem was that Ezekiel didn’t know that Efflamm had informed the High Instances that, at his death, you’d inherit his throne and not him.”

  I’d always believed Ezekiel had gotten all worked up by himself. He didn’t. Everything made sense now. Before his murder and that of Mischa, Efflamm had expressly asked me to keep quiet when he’d announced to me that the Ameïan clan would be mine when he died. Had he guessed what Ezekiel plotted? If so, why hadn’t he stopped him from doing it? There were many questions and no answers. So many events could have been avoided if I’d been informed about certain things. Never would I have become Queen if I’d known the whole story. Never would I have become the person I was right now if I’d known Nathanael had tried to help me. I would never have ceded in front of Ezekiel. I would have never pandered to his every whim, and I would have never become like him.

  I’d always believed that everything that had brought me up to here had been inevitable. In reality, everything could have been different . . .

  But it didn’t matter now because it was too late. In the end, this conversation had been of no use, except to keep harping on bad memories and make me discover secrets I would have preferred to ignore.

  “You say nothing?”

  “What would it change if I said something? Absolutely nothing. Now it’s over. Maybe things would have been different for me if I’d known this, years ago. For us, too . . .”

  I paused and meditated on my last words. What would it have changed for he and I? Not much, in the end.

  “In fact, no,” I rectified, my voice showing none of my feelings. “It would have changed nothing for you and me. Even if it isn’t enough for you, I’ve nothing more to give you. Believe me or not, but I gave you everything I was capable of. Nobody obtained so much. Not even Ezekiel.”

  His gaze impenetrable and face expressionless, he got closer to me. It reminded me of the times when I’d
observed him hunting. He always acted like this. Discreet, slow but effective. For a brief moment, it seemed to me he was about to treat me as one of his prey, in other words by breaking their neck before feeding on them. “To avoid any useless suffering and screams,” as he liked repeating to me every time I’d asked him why he didn’t leave his victims alive a moment before he killed them. This impression disappeared as fast as it had come when I read the curiosity on his features.

  “And what more did I get that he didn’t?”

  “My complete trust,” I should have answered him. I had never trusted someone as much as him. Neither in my human life, nor in my life as a Nëphyr. I might have done everything Ezekiel had dictated to me but I’d never given him my trust. Nathanael might irritate me or make me mad sometimes, but I had such faith in him that I wouldn’t hesitate to put my life in his hands if it was needed. He would never betray me. I was convinced of it. Yet, the words I eventually spoke didn’t reflect my thoughts at all .

  “The right to stay in my bed after having made love to me,” I retorted with frivolity. “You’re the only one to whom I granted this immense honor.”

  “Really?” he said half-amused, half-suspicious.

  Had he understood I wanted to say something else? I wasn’t certain of it. My avoidance was preferable for everybody. If I’d confided this to him, he would have gotten worked up. He would have really believed in his absurd idea that he and I could be together and I would have shown a weakness there, something I didn’t want. If I wanted to survive in the near future, I should be strong and unfailing. “Be strong or be dead.” Such was my motto when Ezekiel had put me in that damned cell. It was time for it to become topical again.

  “Really,” I agreed.

  “So you see me immensely honored.”

  How could we have passed so quickly from a subject so critical as Ezekiel and the death of Efflamm and Mischa to something as insignificant as this one? Ah yes, we were monsters. Decency wasn’t something for us. His deliciously attractive smirk reappeared. To see him acting this way didn’t bode well, because every time he was like that, what followed turned to my disadvantage.

  “What?” I said, suspicious.

  “Nothing,” he answered me calmly. “I simply note that you said and I quote you: ‘having made love to me.’”

  What did I say? Always to my disadvantage…

  “A slip of the tongue,” I tried to rectify while shrugging casually.

  He began to laugh.

  “I call it a Freudian slip but if you want to be in denial, please yourself. You’ll have to face the truth soon enough and, as it might be hard for you, I’ll leave you alone for now.”

  He was kidding me, it wasn’t possible otherwise. I refused to listen to more nonsense.

  “Let’s go,” I said on a final tone. “And we hurry because we already dawdled long enough as it is.”

  I turned around, ready to leave without him because I knew he was going to say something stupid to keep us from leaving now.

  “Okay. But first, put your clothes back.”

  I did an about-face. What?

  “In case you didn’t notice it, I’m dressed,” I answered with sarcasm.

  “I’ve noticed, thank you very much. I meant put your jacket and shoes back on. You’ll draw enough attention like that, no need to get yourself noticed even more by revealing your cleavage and walking around barefoot.”

  I listened to his advice and went to get my things back. I bent to pick the shoes up when I heard Nathanael’s whistle.

  “Mmmh . . . I love the view,” he said with appreciation, his eyes focused on my ass for sure.

  I rolled my eyes while straightening up after having put the heels back on. I went to retrieve the leather jacket and put it back on. Ready to set off again, I turned around to face him.

  “Let’s hit the road, perv,” I said on a jeering tone and then, we began to run.

  11

  Back to Civilization

  Sitting at a table at the back of the bar, I observed the people all around me. I had nothing else to do while waiting for Drake. And since Nathanael wasn’t here, I was alone until the arrival of the mercenary.

  Nathanael had stayed with his contact in Macon instead of accompanying me to this rendezvous. Apparently, he had other mysterious requests—of which I knew nothing—for his hacker. His human was a prodigy. Although he didn’t look special, the skinny man was in fact an exceptionally gifted geek capable of “cracking” any government database. It had been useful for us to know that there was no mission in progress regarding us. Even if I still had had time to go to Birmingham, where my appointment with Drake took place, I had quickly left the home of Mister Geek-Probably-Still-A-Virgin. Indeed, I’d been fast fed up with his little lustful smiles—he had almost begun drooling, at one moment—and his looks without ambiguity. On several occasions, Nathanael had had to emit an intimidating growl for the human to pull himself together and do his work instead of gazing at my décolleté. I’d opted to leave before Nathanael—or I, most probably—twisted the little runt’s neck whose sexual excitement could be smelled for miles around.

  That was why I was in this bar and was early for my appointment with Drake. Black sunglasses on my nose—people had looked at me strangely when I’d gone in without taking them off—to avoid hysteria if my eyes began to shine inadvertently, I was observing for a moment all these insignificant beings. It’d been several years since I’d seen so many mortals gathered in a human place and, especially, so many different and ordinary people. There was a little bit of everything. Small, repulsive, obese, thin, and attractive people… No selection according to criteria here. Just like vampires or lycanthropes that transformed any human being, even though he was ordinary.

  For our race, every transformation had to be thought through, and the one who was about to be transformed had to have beauty, intelligence or the charisma of a leader. And if he had the three, it was preferable—for him. There was a legend or rather a deep-rooted belief among my kind. Nëphyr thought that Satan chose who came back to life as a Nëphyr or not. When the chosen mortal had been subjected to the exchange of blood and the recitation of the sacred words as the ceremony wanted it, he was killed and his soul had to face the great Lucifer in person. The Devil subjected the human to many and many tortures to see if he had what was required to be a Nëphyr. If I translated what was said in the Nëphraï—a book telling the story of the Nëphyrian world and which was kept by the first Nëphyr, the Guardian, who also had the duty to transcribe in it any major event of our world—we called it the ‘Infernal Judgment.’ If the mortal endured the Infernal Judgment without having begged him to have mercy or to end him, Lucifer sent him back on earth as a Nëphyr with a damned soul, which would return to Lucifer when he died, and in his human’s body, apart from a few differences. According to Nëphyrian belief, his human blood was replaced by black blood, blood of all the damned, which were underground and suffering for the eternity in the fires of Hell. From time to time, his jaw became that of the predator, which was a part of him now. His eyes shined, as if the flames of Hell were hiding behind them, when he was transformed, in other words when he hunted or fought. Sometimes, for a reason that we ignored, the irises of a Nëphyr also began to glitter when he was in the dark. Even if I believed in the existence of Satan but not really in this legend, it seemed normal to me for a race to want the best to represent it.

  Bored to death, I caught myself imagining what would happen if I took my shades off and let the beast I was appear. One of them would soon see the monster that I was. A few seconds later, screams would certainly come from everywhere while everybody would try to get out to escape me. I would remain motionless and quiet, waiting for the last one of them to step across the threshold of the door to start my pursuit of the fugitives. I would kill several prolifically, only for the pleasure and to remember the golden age where I could rip throats and pull hearts out without holding my drives back or caring about leaving enough f
or the next time I would be hungry. It would be widespread panic in the streets. Everybody would yell and run as far as possible from me. Police and the army wouldn’t take long to show up. They would shoot on sight because it was the orders. I would grimace with pain at every bullet that would perforate my body. Because, yes, it wasn’t pleasant, even if that wasn’t fatal for me. Bullets would whistle all around me but I would continue my massacre because I would want to. And above all because no human had the right to give me orders or to prevent me from doing what I wished to do. Bodies would begin to pile in, like a mass grave, and—

  “What would you like?” a waitress asked kindly while holding a notebook in her hand to take my order.

  What a nuisance. She’d interrupted me just when my bloody and barbaric thoughts were taking an interesting turn.

  “Miss? Are you all right?”

  I sighed, tired. It would be much better if I could leave this place . . . or order a drink coming straight from her jugular.

  “An iced tea,” I finally said while the young woman stared at me as if she was worrying about my mental state.

  She jumped, certainly not expecting I would speak to her so curtly. Well, I wasn’t known for my kindness.

  “I’ll bring you that in a minute,” she declared with haste.

  Given the appetizing scent I smelled when she left, she was afraid. Suddenly she became much more sympathetic to me.

  “Here’s your iced tea,” she said while putting the glass in front of me.

  She went away as fast as she’d brought me my order.

  “Hello.”

  I raised my eyes, which were on my iced tea. A male. A man, actually, as it wasn’t Drake. Damn human . . . I let out a loud sigh, not caring about the person near me. Nathanael had warned me before I left the house of his hacker. ‘Be careful,’ he’d told me. ‘Your dress is going to draw the attention of more than a man in rut.’ I’d immediately offered him my middle finger before reminding him I risked nothing, in case he would have forgotten it. He’d laughed and told me that he wasn’t worried about me. And Nathanael hadn’t been wrong. This human was the typical womanizer, taking women for objects, means to relieve the tension which reigned below his belt. I spoke from experience, having had many opportunities to meet this kind of men during my human life, a little less than twenty years after the Second World War and before Ezekiel had crossed my path.