by Cindy Mezni
“I hope you have no bad news to announce to me,” I pronounced as I opened the door.
Xander, Caine, Logan and Edenaï were all around the table. None of them seemed worried. A rather good sign. I sat down in my place and Nathanael did the same in his.
“Everything is in order,” Xander assured me, coolness incarnate.
I almost let out a sigh of relief.
“And you, Edenaï?”
“Same as the Reaper,” she answered me. “Even if the humans are still insufferable, they tried nothing and nobody tried to sneak up to them to have a bloody feast.”
“Logan?”
“Nothing to report.”
To believe that, in spite of my efforts, it was my bad luck that attracted the problems to New Hell, because apparently, as soon as I went away, everything went well.
I debriefed them on our trip, announcing to them that several sources of supply had been found but that I hadn’t made my choice yet. I assured them that as soon as I made one, they would all be informed.
“Since everything is in order, I think we can end this Council.”
Without further delay, I got up and went out of the room at an inhuman speed. I had extremely urgent business to be settled, and it was called Venom. I ran down the stairs, in a hurry to go to the basement. As soon as I was in front of Venom’s cell, I opened the door by means of the Illusionaë, creating a fictitious key. I went inside and, still using my gift, I ensured that the jail cell was locked again. Now we were both imprisoned and Venom was sitting on the ground, looking up at me, who was standing. I sincerely wished she had nothing to do with Ezekiel. Because, otherwise, she was going to have the most horrible time of her insignificant existence.
“I have to talk to you, Nemesis.”
It was Shane, in a very close cell, who’d just spoken to me solemnly.
“Later,” I snapped.
“You should really listen to me now, my Queen,” he continued on the same tone.
I ignored him this time. I had no time to lose with him today. Following the example of Shane, the other members of the security team called out to me to draw my attention and plead their cause to escape their pitiful fate. As I didn’t want their squeals as background noises, I created a kind of bubble of silence to include only Venom and me. It was useless for the others to hear what we were going to say.
“Venom,” I said in a very unfriendly voice.
She returned the greetings in the same manner.
“What do you want from me?” she eventually asked me, as weary as possible. “You’re not here to execute me or Xander would be with you.”
Gone was the eccentric Venom, full of vanity and superficiality. She wasn’t more than the shadow of her former self, a broken female. I was well placed to know which radical and devastating effect this austere place could have on somebody. I wasn’t going to pity her for all that. She had deserved her punishment.
“I’m going to get straight to the point: are you under Ezekiel’s orders?”
A spark of life seemed to revive in her eyes.
“The Mëvia?”
I nodded.
“It’s ludicrous. What could I do for him?”
“Collecting important information since you were a member of the Council. And, additionally, trying to cause the end of the clan with a rebellion with the attack of the Reserve.”
She was literally gaping.
“What?”
“You deny?” I questioned her, disregarding her probably feigned surprise.
“Of course I deny! I don’t work for Ezekiel! I had no contact with him for years! Since he was banished, in fact! And for the slave, I knew nothing of his condition! If I’d known, I’d have never brought him here!”
I stared at her with a blatant contempt.
“If what you say is true, the bite marks on the slave’s body didn’t seem suspect to you?”
“Of course not!” she immediately replied, panic gradually perceptible in her voice. “The only moment when I really looked at him, it was when we had sex and I was too busy enjoying it to pay attention to such insignificant things.”
“‘Insignificant?’” I repeated, eyebrow raised.
“Not as insignificant as that, after all,” she said with a grimace.
I sighed loudly. I began to go back and forth in the tiny space in which we were. Too bad I didn’t have the Telepathiaë to judge her sincerity and all the Nëphyr around here who possessed the gift were younger than her, which meant they couldn’t read her mind.
“I’m going to have to opt for torture for you to give in and finally tell me the truth.”
Her eyes went wide. Suddenly frightened as never before, she got up and began to retreat until her back touched the back wall.
“I’m innocent, Nemesis!” she shouted with a look of despair.
I would have liked to believe her but I couldn’t allow myself to. I had to be absolutely sure she was saying the truth. Yet there was only one way for it: to torture . . . or convince her it was going to happen and make her fear it enough for her to tell me what I wanted.
“You know, in your place, I’d speak now. Because when I’ll step beyond the threshold of this cell to fetch Xander, there will be no going back. Xander will be in charge of you and Lucifer knows to what extent I don’t envy what you’re going to endure.”
“But I assure you I have nothing to do with Ezekiel!” she said again
And all of a sudden, I saw it. This unique black tear that flowed from her right eye. It was what assured me she was innocent. She wasn’t the spy under the thumb of the Ezekiel. We could feign many things when we were Nëphyr but tears were the expression of a pure and profound despair or an immeasurable pain.
“I believe you,” I eventually told her.
She seemed stunned, then slowly, she realized what I’d just said.
“You’re not going to call Xander?”
“No.”
“And you’re not going to execute me?” she went on, hopeful.
I’d never seen Venom like this. Not that I appreciated it, she reacted slightly too humanely to my taste, but it was a surprising change.
“Yes,” I let out without emotion.
She frowned with incomprehension.
“But you’ve just said that—”
“ . . .that I believed you when you told me you have nothing to do with Ezekiel. But you still let in the blood slave of a vampire and he enabled the attack of the Reserve with his information. Without your negligence, the clan wouldn’t be in this situation. So you must be punished for that.”
“But—”
“You’re going to die, Venom,” I interrupted her, serious. “But look on the bright side: you just escaped a long and painful private talk with Xander.”
Sitting on my bed, I looked back on what had happened during the day and on the implementation of Drake’s plan. Because Venom wasn’t Ezekiel’s informer, I’d moved into action. I’d taken aside each of my Councilors and spoken to them about different prisons in different cities but always of the same date, that was to say the next day. I’d obviously asked them to keep silent, supposedly for the rumor not to spread and the clan not to begin to hope, in case the agreement would fall through. If everything went according to plan, the informer would hurry to inform Ezekiel. He and his damn exiles would fall into the trap. It was obvious Ezekiel wouldn’t resist the desire to throw a wrench into my works. Of course, the good functioning of all this depended on the mole. He had to give the fake information to Ezekiel today. And, above all, I had to keep an eye on Xander, Caine and Logan—Edenaï was in charge of him—and ensure the trickery last as long as possible.
The date of the next day was false of course. We’d planned our departure for Mexico for the day after tomorrow. The idea was that Ezekiel would solicit the penitentiary the informer had been told about and wait for us there. And when he’d notice nobody was coming, we hoped he would come to meet us. Between the problem of Ezekiel and my worry of p
rovisioning, I would kill two birds with one stone, having the upper hand that way.
Of course, if everything went according to plan, it would be a real miracle.
But what was really preoccupying me was the Mëvia. Knowing Ezekiel had to be there, nearby, to meet his henchman made my blood boil. I felt like killing somebody. The uncontrollable urge was growing bigger in me, and I had more and more difficulty resisting it. I ardently wished to see him today to make him pay, once and for all. It was impossible because I almost had no chance against him. And also because the problem of food was more urgent than my personal vendetta. Even so, the monster in me looked forward to massacring the persons responsible for my problems.
Wanting to clear my head, I turned around to look through the window. The sky was cloudy and dark gray, what augured the arrival of a big thunderstorm. A sign, maybe . . . When I was Anya and I lived in my hometown of Syracuse, I used to look at the sky at sunrise. Anya had always had this little naive superstition about the weather reflecting the day to come. If the atmosphere was gloomy, the day would be difficult. If, on the contrary, the atmosphere was light, then Anya would live this day without any incident. I had a hard time believing I could have been so foolish and innocent in another life. Fortunately and unfortunately, life had made me face reality. Existence didn’t amount to vagaries of the weather. No, that was certain and I had eventually understood it.
Coming from a Polish family that had taken refuge in America during the Second World War, I’d been born during the conflict, so I had no memory of this period. It was only at the age of seventeen that the harsh reality of life had caught up with me. My illusions had been blown into pieces and I’d had to give up the fictitious and idyllic world that my mind had created to avoid seeing the family that I really had. I’d learned at the same time as everybody that my father was unfaithful to my mother for years and he had a child somewhere else in the country. My mother had had a nervous breakdown. She was the kind of woman who only lived for her husband. Knowing he’d gone to see another woman was the proof, according to her, that she’d failed in her wife’s duty. So she’d begun drinking excessively and taking medicine of all kinds to forget. She who had always been a beautiful woman had let herself go to the point of sinking into the dark and merciless streams of depression.
After that, my elder sister, Ava, had decided to leave to find work as far away as possible from our home and our problems. Even if her departure had been painful because we’d always been very close, I’d never been able to blame her for having left me alone with a family in pieces. She hadn’t wanted to go downhill with our mother and it was understandable. I should have done the same. I would have never been here, at this moment, if I’d taken the same decision as Ava. But I’d felt sorry for my mother and more particularly for my little sister, Amber, so I’d stayed. I hadn’t wanted to abandon them. In the end, my decision had changed nothing. During my twentieth year, Amber had died, hit by a car one day when she and my mother had gone for a walk in the park. My mother, as usual, had buried herself in her dark thoughts and hadn’t paid attention. My little sister had wanted to cross the road for a reason that would forever remain unknown, and a car arriving too fast had run her over.
From then on, after my class at the university, I’d begun frequenting disreputable places and people to evade home, its heavy atmosphere, filled with guilt, sadness, and painful memories. I’d reacted that way so as not to witness the slow agony that brought my mother closer to the grave every day. It had lasted more or less three years, until one day I’d met one of Ezekiel’s henchmen who had led me to the small alley where I had believed we were going to have a little fun before going to his place to have sex. Instead, this was where I died before coming back to life as a Nëphyr, a few days later, imprisoned in a damn cell.
“Why do you force me to think about that again, Anya?” I whispered, staring at the black clouds that began to accumulate over New Hell.
It was as if the sky wanted to announce that a major and terrible event would soon take place here.
“You couldn’t take the memories away with you, eh, Anya?”
I shook my head and eventually went to lie down on my bed. All these stories annoyed me. Ezekiel, Anya, Nathanael, Xander, Venom, Caine, Drake, Logan . . . I was fed up. I closed my eyes wishing to fall into a deep sleep or oblivion. But neither of them were going to come. All this because I was a monster and because my mind was obsessed with this damn trap. Even if I’d told Nathanael I had faith in Drake’s idea, I had some doubts. What if the informer knew that I knew? What if Ezekiel had planned the fact that I would discover the truth sooner or later? What if all this was only a diversion to better trap me? I had thousands of questions swarming in my head. And as long as all these problems had no end, as long as the situation of my clan wouldn’t get back to normal, as long as Ezekiel wouldn’t be dead and I wouldn’t hold his bloodstained heart in my hands, I would never be in peace. I sighed before jumping to my feet silently. I went up to my wardrobe to get changed. I stopped dead when I realized I had to go to the Reserve. I’d severely tested my resistance the last time and I’d seen the result. I didn’t intend to repeat the same stupid mistake. There was no point in getting changed right now because I was going to get dirty soon. So I turned around, ready to take off in order to feed myself when my sight became blurred. The outlines of furniture and the room became hazy. I had a sudden feeling that the ground was moving under my feet. It was like the world had been turned upside down. I staggered, leaned against the wall for support. A few seconds later, I fell down and lost consciousness.
My eyes opened with difficulty. I had to try several times to keep my eyes open. I had the feeling of having slept many hours while also having the sensation of not having rested for days. I looked around me. I noticed quickly I was lying down. What the—? I sat up in a quick motion when I became aware of what was around me. I was still in New Hell but a good layer of snow covered the area around me. If being stretched out in the snow and soaked in the middle of winter didn’t trouble me, given that as a creature of Hell my physical temperature turned around 113 °F, it was the deserted street where I was that disturbed me. I’d already been here. Once. It was Barclay Street, near the One World Trade Center. I recognized the St. Peter Roman Catholic Church or at least the vestiges that were left of it. I’d fainted earlier in my room—impossible thing for a Nëphyr—and now I found myself here at my waking. What was this madness? What was I doing here?
“Nemesis . . .”
In a fraction of a second, I stood up, turned in the direction where my name came from and ready to attack the one who’d pronounced it. Even if it was only a murmur, I would have recognized this voice among the applause of a raving crowd. Ezekiel. The problem was that he wasn’t here. The street was deserted, except for me.
“Nemesis . . .”
I spun around. My name came from just behind me. But once again, nobody in sight. I began to lose patience slowly but surely.
“You’re hiding, bastard?” I said, my voice echoing all around me. “Silly me! That is all you have done for years. Coward as you are, it doesn’t surprise me!”
No one answered me. I looked everywhere, sniffed at the air to locate his smell, which I knew by heart. No sign of any presence near me. This was definitely not normal. Where did his voice come from? And how the Devil had I ended up here? Then I noticed what was wrong in this moment. My dress. It was pristine white. Yet, I was wearing a black one minutes ago. So it wasn’t reality. Was it the fruit of my imagination, more exactly that of the Illusionaë, or did it come from somebody else? The first possibility was rather unlikely, I wasn’t as starving as the last time when my gift had manifested itself. The only option remaining was that a person was manipulating me. Except that Ezekiel and I were the only ones to know this moment of my past. Images came back to me in snippets. I looked carefully at the piece of clothing I was wearing. As I suspected, it was the exact replica of the one I’d worn that day. There wa
s no doubt anymore, it was either the product of my mind or that of Ezekiel. If it was him, I didn’t know how he was doing it. He didn’t have the powers to be able to do this.
“Show yourself!” I shouted while turning round to see if I distinguished a sign of his presence somewhere.
Still nothing. I was going to get mad. What was the use of this if he didn’t reveal himself and nothing happened?
“Say it,” I heard him say in an authoritarian voice.
My anger went up a notch. What gave him the right to order me to do anything? I wanted to tell him to fuck off but, after a moment of reflection, I decided to go about it in a different way.
“What do you want me to say?” I forced myself to say.
Silence. He was seriously getting on my nerves. If I saw him, I killed him.
“Ezekiel!” I said, not knowing what he wanted.
I felt his presence at my back, and particularly, the aura of power emanating from him. He was here. So his name was what he’d wished me to say. I whirled around and had the displeasure to see his satisfied and arrogant expression. He could be proud, he’d obtained what he wanted from me. It was like in the good old days, I thought with bitterness.
“You see, it wasn’t so hard,” he said with this haughty tone that only he was capable of.
“Go screw yourself!”
Only his presence managed to make me furious. Ezekiel was my personal poison. Looking at him with attention, I noticed he wore exactly the same clothes as in my memory. It was really him or me that were behind all this. If it was my doing, I hoped I was going to end it as soon as possible. He came up to me, the same expression still on his damn face, which was the male epitome of handsomeness and perfection.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk . . .” he said, staring at me with a mixture of amusement and disapproval. “Don’t use this so delicious mouth to say such things. It can do so much better.”
He laughed. I pictured very well which kind of “better” he was speaking about. Asshole.