by Cindy Mezni
After several hours of waiting and an SMS from Xander indicating to Drake which hotel we were in, he eventually arrived.
“Here you are at last,” I groaned while opening the door to let him in. “Feels like we were waiting for an eternity.”
“And you aren’t the only one,” Xander added in a tone as surly as mine.
“I came as fast as I could,” Drake said, his face hard like never before.
I sat down again on the bed, Xander by my side, as Drake took place on the only armchair of the room that was in a pitiful condition.
“Tell me everything.”
“The clan, or at least the few members who were there, stayed all yesterday and today in front of the prison. It was either a safety measure, just in case we showed up, or a trick. I’d rather opt for the second possibility. One thing is certain, at least: Ezekiel and the rest of his clan aren’t there. And I doubt they are nearby. It would confirm the hypothesis of the decoy. They wanted to persuade us until the last moment that they were going to fall into the trap while they’d seen it a mile off. Now, it remains to be seen what hides behind all this. Ezekiel probably has an idea in the back of his mind. But what? I have no a clue.”
I turned things over in my head. Ezekiel had to know of Reynosa now. If a confrontation with me had been what he’d wanted, he would have been here. If there was a fight, he would certainly win because I had only Xander and Drake with me. And he had to know it. So he wasn’t hiding in the shadows by fear. So what? Did he wish to torture me even more before acting? To drive me crazy by dint of waiting for him to do something, then when I didn’t expect it anymore, he would attack? Maybe . . .
“Do you know why he behaves like this?”
It was Drake who asked this and, given his frowned eyebrows, I figured out he was also cogitating a lot.
“Not one that makes sense,” I admitted, annoyed to realize that, once again, Ezekiel was a riddle to me. “I don’t understand his behavior. He’s not the sort to flee a battle, so why doesn’t he show himself?”
“When the Nëmayän and Cäptiarëm want to kill you, you gotta make yourself discreet,” Xander said, shrugging.
He wasn’t wrong. When you were followed by the High Instances and the Trackers, you were forced to keep a low profile. Still, Ezekiel was so sure of himself that I was certain he thought he was sly enough to take the opportunity to face me while avoiding being caught. It couldn’t be cowardice—even if he was a coward in many other ways—which obliged him to act that way. He had to have another plan in mind. Come on, think, Nemesis. What was the thing that Ezekiel desired more than to make me pay for having taken his place? I realized the answer was in my question. I’d taken his place. His throne. And what he’d always wanted more than anything was power. And that, he could get it. I was at more than one thousand and eight hundreds miles from New Hell and my clan had no leader. And the situation was critical. He’d just have to promise them he’d give them unlimited food and blood for my subjects to follow him, as if he were Satan’s appearance in his terrestrial form.
“It’s Caine,” Xander said somberly, handing me his cell I hadn’t even heard ringing, too immersed in my thoughts that I was.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. I’d delegated my powers to Caine and Edenaï, but they’d be no match for Ezekiel and his henchmen. Yet, there was something wrong. If Ezekiel was really there, why the Devil did he give Caine permission to warn me so I could come back earlier? Eager to know what was going on, I grabbed the phone with haste and put it to my ear.
“Nemesis?”
“What’s happening?”
“You have to come back immediately.”
At first, I was surprised, not getting why he said that instead of telling me right away that Ezekiel was here. But I quickly forgot my interrogations. Ezekiel was in New Hell with his exiles and, by the time I would arrive over there, he would have managed to set my clan against me. I wasn’t in a position to win with the few allies I still had. There was no end possible other than death. He was about to be victorious. And the final confrontation was going to take place soon.
“We’re on our way,” I said before squeezing the phone so hard I broke it into several pieces.
Heavy-hearted, I dropped the fragments on the ground.
15
Misunderstanding
“What do you mean ‘Ezekiel isn’t here?’” I asked, trying to grasp what was going on.
Caine had just told me Ezekiel wasn’t in the residence. Yet, it was impossible. He’d called me for that. Now, he claimed the Mëvia wasn’t here? Was he also under Ezekiel’s thumb? Had he told him to play this unhealthy game with me before the coup de grâce was given to me? Was Ezekiel not done with me? Apparently not, because Caine repeated what he’d just said.
“He’s not here.”
Losing the little control remaining in me, I caught him by the collar of his sweater and brought him closer to my face contorted with anger.
“Where is he?” I insisted with my low but aggressive intonations.
“You’re going to release me right now because I have no idea where your Ezekiel is. And if you don’t free me now, he will be the least of your problems when I take care of you.”
I was ready to retort in a virulent way when Edenaï intervened.
“He’s telling you the truth, Nemesis. Ezekiel isn’t here.”
She’d been discreet so far, fearing I would take it out on her, I supposed. I looked at him, then turned my head to observe her again. If I didn’t consider a single word coming out of Caine’s mouth, I was inclined to believe her. Right now, my instinct whispered to me that she wasn’t lying. With reluctance, I released Caine’s collar and took some steps back so as not to be tempted to do it again.
“He was here a few hours ago, wasn’t he?”
“Of course not,” Caine said with tiredness.
“If you didn’t call me for Ezekiel, why did you do it, then? And why did you ask me to come back immediately?”
“Because Venom and Shane came back, and the escape attempt of the humans went wrong . . .”
“What did you just say?” I asked him, not trusting my own ears.
“You heard me right.”
Finding Ezekiel here upon my return suddenly appeared to me preferable to what awaited me now.
“What do you mean by ‘went wrong?’” I questioned Caine.
By Satan, I didn’t even dare imagining what he implied by that . . .
“One of the humans died. He—”
“‘Died?’” I exclaimed, interrupting him.
His jaw stiff, Caine rolled his eyes.
“If you let me finish, you’d know he didn’t remain dead a very long time. He came back to life.”
“How the Devil is that possible?”
“It’s the human who had the wound in his throat. He was attacked by a Nëphyr when he created a diversion so that his companions could run away. He was dead and his body was in a nasty state when we came back with the rest of the vermin we’d succeeded in recapturing. And, as you know, I’d given him my blood. Obviously, I’d given enough to him for him to have a meeting with the Creator, who must have judged he deserved to come back to earth as a Nëphyr.”
I who’d said the clan seemed to do better when I wasn’t around. Obviously, I was wrong and big time. This clan was just cursed. I decided to deal with the most urgent case, that was to say the new Nëphyr. Venom and Shane could wait some more.
“I want to see him,” I said, making my way to the exit.
I walked along the corridor, went to the stairwell and came down to the basement, where it was customary to lock new Nëphyr until they behaved. I discovered him in a jail, motionless in a corner and head buried in his hands. He raised it when he heard me coming.
“The frigid bitch,” he said with bitterness, looking me straight in the eye. “I was wondering when you’d come.”
No doubt, he was cut to be a Nëphyr, as vulgarity was commonplace in our res
idence.
“The frigid bitch greets you, Nëphyr,” I replied with a cold derisive smile on my lips.
Without warning, he got up and rushed at the reinforced steel bars while letting out an inhuman cry, his gaze shining brightly. Surprised, I made one step backward in order to be out of his reach. I could see the guilt in his eyes. Killing was never easy the first time and yet he had just made his first victim or maybe even more. Nëphyr or human, I didn’t know but for his transmutation to be so advanced, he had to have discovered the taste of blood and flesh.
“How many victims to his credit?”
“He only hurt a human and not too seriously. It’s a Nëphyr he succeeded in killing.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said, disbelieving.
“I’d like to be, but no, I’m not kidding you,” Caine retorted.
How could he have killed a Nëphyr, hardly a few hours after his resurrection? For sure, the new Nëphyr were inhabited by so many contradictory feelings, and with brute strength they were forces of nature. Still, it was necessary for their transformation to have ended. And it seemed it’d soon be his case but everything had happened too fast for his mind to have time to assimilate to all these changes. He was a real wild animal. All that because of Caine and the others. Bunch of idiots, I thought with irritation.
“That’s not all. He has a gift. And in all my existence, I’d never seen something like that. It was like lightning was coming out from his hands,” Volker said as he arrived, a vacant expression on his face as if he was reliving the moment. “We were forced to infect his blood with some Emenaïd to overpower him momentarily.”
“Electraë . . .” I murmured, stunned.
I watched the Nëphyr with a fresh eye. The Electraë, a gift which hadn’t been seen for decades and decades. According to the myth, only a human with a fabulous fate saw himself gifted with such a present by Lucifer. I’d been very spoiled from that point of view, a sign that our Creator planned big things for me. But there, it was quite a different category. It was exceptional. Such a Nëphyr was an asset for a clan. In particular given what was looming on the horizon. With him by my side, I had again a chance to defeat Ezekiel.
“He mustn’t be killed, no matter what happens,” I said on a final tone.
“He killed one of ours, Nemesis,” Caine reminded me in a harsh voice.
I focused my attention on him. Definitely, he was the biggest nuisance of the lot.
“The Nëphyr he killed is the one who attacked him?” I questioned him.
“Yes,” Volker said in place of Caine.
“So it’s self-defense,” I declared right away.
I saw the muscles in Caine’s jaw twitch.
“He wasn’t in a duel,” Caine insisted scathingly. “He killed him after his coming back to life, when the other one didn’t expect it. He didn’t defend himself, he took the law into his own hands.”
His insistence got the better of the remaining calm in me. I approached Caine.
“Do you believe the other Nëphyr needed to kill him to control him, considering he was still just a human? No. Yet he did. Poetic justice, then.”
Another unanswerable argument occurred to me. I was persuaded that Caine hadn’t thought of it, as much as he wished to put a spoke in my wheel as usual.
“Also, are you certain you want to see him dead, Caine? You’re his Creätoria. It’s your blood which helped him come back to life, even if it isn’t your blood which finished the transformation. If he dies, you die.”
It was a fundamental rule for Nëphyr. If a Nëphyr creator died, the last Nëphyr he had created also died. And inversely. We didn’t know why it affected only the last one of the lineage of a creator, but it was a known fact.
“Kill me!” the Nëphyr said with his almost desperate intonations and his fingers clinging to the bars of his cell.
“Shut the Hell up!” Caine spat out, rage deforming his face.
“I’ll kill you all!” the Nëphyr screamed with his transformed jaw and shining gaze.
He wanted to die, I had no doubt about it. I came close to him. He tried to bite me. He looked like a rabid animal and it pleased me. If I managed to tame him just a little, he was going to be very helpful to thwart Ezekiel and his plans.
“I’d like to see that,” I provoked him while still coming closer to him in order to see what he was made of.
One of his arms made its way between the bars and he grabbed me by the wrist. He tried to electrocute me. I felt the characteristic tingles of electricity on my skin. Unfortunately for him, apart from the fact that he didn’t know how to control his gift yet, the poison that was the Emenaïd still annihilated a big part of his power. That was why his attempt failed pitifully. I gave him an insolent smile. He roared with bestiality. His nails dug in my skin and sank profoundly into my arm. He pulled my hand closer in order to bring it through the bars and have the opportunity of ripping it. I grumbled a warning in Nëphrä. He didn’t understand its sense, obviously, as he hadn’t still completely accepted his nature. Thus, he still didn’t gain access to Memorä, the collective memory of Nëphyr allowing to speak our language, the Nëphrä, and know the basic rules of our world. As the teeth of the new Nëphyr were about to close on my hand, Xander appeared from nowhere. He brutally took me away from the cell. The Nëphyr locked into his cage continued all the same to stretch out his arm toward me, trying to catch me. Xander took his favorite weapon out and cut the Nëphyr’s hand. A long howl of suffering echoed. I looked at the hand on the floor, then at the Nëphyr at the end of his cell who was doubled up with pain on the ground, moaning and bleeding abundantly. A cold and devastating fury rose in me while I watched Xander, who still held his bloodstained machete. Damn idiot! I needed this Nëphyr in good condition and for him not to vow an unlimited hatred toward me because one of his hands had been severed—even though he’d deserved it.
“Get out,” I ordered in a sharp voice to Caine, Volker, Edenaï and Xander. “I don’t want anyone here.”
“Nemesis, you—” Xander began as he walked toward me and the others left.
I rushed at him and grabbed his weapon without him being able to do anything. I turned it on him by pressing it against his throat.
“You get out,” I pronounced very clearly and menacingly. “And you never do what you’ve just done again. If I need your services, I’ll tell you. You don’t decide by yourself to intervene. Is that clear?”
He snatched his machete from my hands and walked away. Saying he was furious would be an understatement. But it was the least of my worries. It wasn’t he who would make the difference in front of Ezekiel. He had no gift, except the one of cutting off a head skillfully. No, my only chance to win was this Nëphyr with the chopped off hand. But at the last moment, I remembered Xander wasn’t totally useless to me.
“Xander!” I shouted as he was halfway down the corridor.
Grudgingly, he stopped. He looked aggressive as ever.
“Go watch Shane’s cell . . . please,” I added when I saw he wasn’t going to obey me.
My “please,” had to convince him of the seriousness of the situation because he frowned.
“What—”
“The Mëvia,” I said, and he immediately understood he was linked to Ezekiel.
He nodded and left. I could be sure nobody would be able to go near Shane, and thus, nobody would help him escape again. This time, he was here and he would stay here.
Focusing my attention on the new Nëphyr, I picked up his cut and bloodstained appendage and went to the cell to open it. As I didn’t have the key, I did it by using the Illusionaë to materialize the key in the lock and entered. Carefully, I approached the injured Nëphyr who was still lying on the ground in a pool of ebony blood. Of course, the wound hadn’t regenerated because his body felt that something was missing. One of the advantages of our race. It saved us from having to reopen a stub in order to put back the missing piece in place. The catch here, because there always was one, was that in
the meantime he was a real fountain of blood.
“Don’t come any closer, bitch,” he said through pinched lips.
I rolled my eyes. Could he not use vocabulary a little more elaborate than that?
“If you prefer to suffer rather than to obtain my help, so be it. Here’s your hand,” I said to him lightly, throwing it in his direction.
It ended up in the big puddle of hemoglobin on the ground and splashed his owner. The image was horribly pathetic. He had lot of potential but it would be necessary to shape him into a real Nëphyr because he was far from being one. I settled down on the floor, near the bars of the cell, where the floor had no bloodstains.
“I who have already gone through that can tell you that your agony is going to last for a very long time,” I told him as I looked at my nails like they were more interesting than him. “If you want it to stop, you have to place your severed hand against your wound so both parts of the bone can mend and the regeneration can start. Of course, given your tremors, it’s going to be complicated to do it right. You run the risk of placing your hand incorrectly. The pain will stop but, afterward, we’ll be forced to cut your hand again to replace it correctly. And here we go again with the pain.”
“Are you . . . done?” he grumbled with difficulty as he turned his face contorted in agony toward me
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, refocusing on my nails.
His litany of whining continued. I appreciated seeing people suffering; only here, it exasperated me. The pain he pointlessly imposed upon himself was ridiculous. In addition to that, I was losing precious time I could have used to get information from Shane.
“You know, if you believe you’re going to achieve your ends, in other words to die, you’re mistaken,” I went on, wanting to resolve this problem as soon as possible. “Wounds of this kind are only weakening to us. They don’t kill us.”