Ex Tenebris: A Dark Fantasy (Nëphyr Book 1)

by Cindy Mezni

  “I’m going to find Ezekiel,” I finally announced.

  “Glad to see you’re making the right decision,” he said, smiling with all his teeth with satisfaction.

  And now we resumed our perfect little comedy as if nothing had happened between us. As if I didn’t wish to see him dead, as if he hadn’t offered me possibilities that were each more horrible than the next and as if he hadn’t been close to killing me.

  “Now I think it’s time for me and my brothers to leave.”

  “I think so, too,” I said without letting my eagerness to see him leave my territory show through. “After all, you have a lot of work in sight . . . and so do I.”

  His smile became sarcastic. He wasn’t fooled, but I didn’t care. That he knew or not that I was looking forward to seeing him disappear was the least of my concerns.

  “My dearest Queen,” he told me as a goodbye before kneeling down and kissing my hand.

  I wanted to tear my skin away with my teeth where his lips had touched me. I wanted nothing on me that belonged to this bastard.

  “Azarius,” I addressed him by obligation.

  He went away while I stayed where I was. The beast in me was wild, it wanted to take it out on somebody or something. My gaze fell on my hand which this moron of a Tracker had soiled. I furiously wiped it against the fabric of my dress while my jaw was transformed due to the anger alive in me. Oh, Satan, I really needed something to let off some steam. And I had everything I needed in stock. The Pyronnaë. I looked at the palm of my left hand and, slowly, flames were born and began to grow more and more. I got ready to throw a burst of flames in the direction of the first object I caught sight of, but I heard the sounds of footsteps coming toward me and I stopped. There was no way I could let somebody see I was in one Hell of a state and used my gift to express my anger. Because, then, the rumors concerning the coming of the Trackers and my reaction following it, deserving of a young Nëphyr barely transformed, would spread like wildfire. And I didn’t need that now given everything that was currently going on.

  “Nemesis?”

  I whirled around, surprised to hear the voice of Xander. If Nathanael had been there, I wouldn’t have been amazed to see him appearing by my side just after the departure of the Trackers. Xander was unexpected as he usually cared about nothing and nobody.

  “What do you want?” I barked in spite of myself.

  He had nothing to do with my situation, yet I couldn’t help myself. I had so much repressed resentment in me it had to show through one way or another.

  “What happened?”

  Ignoring his question, I kept silent. If I had to find Ezekiel, I had to deal with it right now while I had an idea of the place where he was, in other words, in Mexico, near the border of the United States. Knowing him, he wouldn’t take long before moving and as soon as it was done, I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on him anymore. And I would have the choice between spending my eternity suffering or in the bed of Néfrat. What a choice! I thought bitterly.

  “Summon the other Councilors,” I eventually ordered in a harsh tone. “I have to give you and the others the instructions to follow during my absence.”

  17

  Leonemä

  As the dawn slowly showed up, I went out of the residence in secrecy. With the new security team being in position and not wanting anybody to learn about my morning trip, I followed a neighboring alley leading right to a main street devoid of any monitoring cameras in order to climb on the top of a big building and go where I wanted to go using the roofs. At least, that was the plan until I heard behind me:

  “Sneaking out?”

  I stopped and turned around to face the one who’d followed me.

  “What are you doing here, Xander?” I asked tiredly.

  “The question rather is: what are you doing here?”

  “I’m more than seventy years old, Daddy,” I said, highly sarcastic. “I’m too old to owe explanations to anyone.”

  My tirade seemed to amuse him.

  “Let me tell you that for an old woman, you still look hot. Lucky me, I’m not your father or my thoughts would really be inappropriate.”

  I heaved a heavy sigh. I knew where he was going with that.

  “We’re not going to make your dark alley fantasy come true, Xander,” I told him.

  His charming smile appeared. At a different moment, I could have given in to temptation. Not here. Not now. I had to deliver a message urgently before looking for Ezekiel. And I’d already waited too long to leave, the Trackers having come two days before and the trip to Mexico being even older. Sincerely, if I caught Ezekiel in Mexico after so much time, it’d be a real miracle. And it was because it wasn’t very probable for me to still find him over there that I had to make this quick visit before leaving New Hell.

  “Go back to the residence. It’s an order,” I said with finality.

  He must have understood that the time for jokes was over because he became serious.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s not your business. Now, go away and don’t follow me or I’ll have to take drastic measures… and I don’t want it to get to that point,” I admitted.

  The dissimulation and all the plans I had to set up to avoid for information to filter through, as they would cause a rebellion, seriously were beginning to weigh on me.

  “I don’t know what Azarius told you, nor what you’re going to do now but you have allies, Nemesis. Don’t forget that.”

  I’d had an ally in the person of Nathanael, someone in whom I’d trusted. However, he was gone, without hesitation, without caring about the awful mess in which I was. I’d had doubts about the loyalty of Xander, yet he didn’t stop proving to me I could trust him. If I had an ally, at the moment, it was him. And I was very aware of it.

  “I know, Xander,” I assured him.

  I took a deep breath before deciding to tell him what I intended to do.

  “I’m going to find Leonemä,” I revealed to him.

  “What?”

  He wasn’t believing his ears, obviously.

  “You heard me right,” I said as I spun around, ready to go away and attend to my business.

  “You can’t do that!” Xander exclaimed, categorical, putting his hand on my shoulder to hold me back.

  Wait . . . What? I did an about-face to look at him, extricating myself from his grip.

  “And why is that so?”

  “You know why. We don’t go looking for Leonemä on his own territory. He’ll take it as an attack. It’s always he who comes when he senses there’s a problem. Remember the last time somebody went to him, he—”

  “ . . .he tore Desmond’s arm off before eating it and lacerating a part of his face. I know, thank you very much! But I also remind you that it didn’t kill Desmond and he’s still alive and an ass, even with a nasty face and a missing arm. So you see, there’s no need to worry about me.”

  He breathed out and shook his head, as if I irritated him greatly. Which was the case considering the look he gave me after that.

  “I can’t say anything to change your mind, right?” he asked me, defeatist.

  “No. I have to see him. It’s imperative. You know, I’ve survived until now without you, I’ll still manage to survive some time without your valuable advice. I’m powerful enough to defend myself if Leonemä attacked me. And on that note—”

  “Let me come with you, at least.”

  What did he not understand in my last words?

  “No,” I answered him in a harsh tone. “I’m going there alone.”

  “You—”

  “Enough!” I shouted. “Leonemä is fickle, it’s a well-known fact. And there’s something else which is well-known, too, it’s that he doesn’t let just anybody come to him. I’m his Queen, he’ll let me come close to him because it’s his role to keep me alive and thus, even if he could hurt me, he won’t kill me. That I’m sure of. If you come, there would be only one certainty: the reception will be
bloody. In conclusion, I’m going there alone.”

  Xander remained silent a long moment, scowling at me. He didn’t appreciate my arguments, but I saw in his look he knew I was right. Leonemä had been created for the unique purpose of eradicating any threat to his sovereign. He wouldn’t appreciate seeing me with a stranger, considering he hardly knew me and had seen me only twice before. With decades and then centuries that had passed—without taking into account his blindness—he’d become distrustful and had turned into a killing machine. According to what Efflamm had told me, the gigantic lion had even ended up chained for some time in the past so much he’d become uncontrollable.

  “Watch out,” he eventually said to me.

  “You, watch out. You’re starting to sound like Nathanael,” I told him derisively.

  I obtained the expected reaction: he made a face.

  “Please, don’t compare me to him.”

  “So don’t look like him.”

  Without adding a word, I turned on my heels and disappeared in the darkness to go to Central Park, the place which had become the territory of Leonemä, Panthrä and Tigriä.

  As I observed my surroundings, I quietly waited somewhere in Central Park for Leonemä to arrive. Or rather in what had been Central Park, years ago. Now, nature had taken back its rights, and vegetation of all kinds grew almost everywhere, following the example of all the former city of New York which was ours since we’d emerged from shadows. When I thought of it, the name New Hell was fitting. Besides the pun which was of a dubious taste, it laid the cards on the table to the rare humans who tried to venture on our lands but lately, it corresponded to what this place was for me. New Hell degraded slowly and suffered the whims of natural elements. Except for the fact it was a little laziness on our part, it was above all a strategic choice to let this city decline. We Nëphyr didn’t have any problem navigating around here. But humans did. Not that we were afraid of them but it avoided complicating the already delicate situation with the government. And it would make it more difficult for vehicles or tanks to navigate through the streets if the army ever tried to launch an attack by land on the clan. Even though we could feed on the humans the government supplied us, the Cohabitation Treaty forbade us to touch the others, even if they came onto our territory and attacked us. It was one of the things which irritated me the most in the accords we had. Because in the end, even if we’d come out the darkness, the human race always reigned supreme on this damned planet. And even worse, we couldn’t even eat whoever we wanted, wherever we wanted anymore like before, with all the security cameras and the other location devices of Creatures the humans had invented.

  I couldn’t wait for the day when all this would change.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t about to change anytime soon . . . We couldn’t yet take power which was ours by right. Even if we were immortal, having our heart ripped out could be fatal to us if it wasn’t intact when it was put back in its initial place. And being beheaded was irreversible. However weak these damn humans were, they had bombs and missiles whose power could defeat us. As long as we couldn’t find the way to attack them without them having time to use the heavy weaponry, we had to stay wisely where we were.

  A very powerful roar, which caused the ground to slightly tremble under my feet, pulled me out of my thoughts. I spun around. He was here.

  “Leonemä,” I greeted him before coming toward the enormous lion and stretching out my arm in his direction.

  Leonemä was in front of me, towering over me with his size close to that of an elephant, his blind eyes of a luminescent white fixed on me. Such was the custom with Leonemä and the other animal members of the Protegäm. It was necessary to greet a Nëphräm by his name, then let him smell us and bite us. Panthrä and Tigriä almost never bit, to my knowledge, but as Leonemä was blind and was really suspicious since an incident that had cost the life of one of our Kings, several centuries ago, he’d made a habit of biting to make sure he was facing someone he knew in front of him. I appreciated his distrust and the precautions he took. After all, I didn’t really wish to suffer the same fate as the former King. And with gifts like the Illusionaë, it was so easy to mislead somebody about his identity that it was better for Leonemä to only trust the taste of blood—because Nëphyr blood couldn’t be altered by magic. If he didn’t recognize the smell of the blood from the person, he killed him on the spot. And even if Panthrä and Tigriä weren’t as watchful, they did nothing unless Leonemä ordered them to do it, so nothing was to be feared on that side.

  The enormous sharp teeth of Leonemä sank with force into my forearm. I clenched my teeth to refrain from emitting any sound. The slightest noise could make him mad with anger. But by all the damned of Hell, I had a furious need to growl! I’d forgotten how much Leonemä’s bites hurt. When he was done, I watched him licking his chops to know if the smell and taste of the blood which flowed through my veins confirmed my identity. He grumbled before licking the wound he’d inflicted on me, a sign he’d recognized me and tolerated my presence near him. The bloody wound closed almost immediately under his licks. The virtues of immediate cure of wounds from the saliva of animals transformed into Nëphyr were so stunning that even today, it left me with my mouth agape.

  “Na’Bëm Nekä ëyä Kiëk,*” I said while kneeling down and inclining my head as a mark of respect. [* I need your services.]

  Such was the custom when we submitted a request to the Nëphräm. Even if he didn’t see me, he could guess my position and also feel the respect emanating from me. And this last detail was essential if I didn’t wish for my head to end up crushed in his mouth. Leonemä was rather versatile and susceptible. And Nëphräm were empathetic, feeling all the sensations of those who were near them. I admitted this gift was rather disturbing. In a normal animal, I would have cared but in an animal Nëphyr, it was unpleasant. Because usually, animals couldn’t communicate and weren’t endowed with an intelligence equal to that of a Nëphyr. Nëphräm did.

  “Nam Sägëm’na Femä gën’ia Nidäm?*” [* What can I do for you, my Queen?]

  I held back a grimace. Oh, how I hated this language. Under normal circumstances, hearing it or speaking it was bearable but when it resounded within my skull, with the powerful and grave voice of Leonemä, it was a thousand times worse. If only our Nëphräm could speak, instead of expressing themselves as they did by getting inside our heads.

  “Na’Bëm Nekä ëyä Pretca’ia Tigriä yunä Panthrä*.” [* I need your protection and that of Tigriä and Panthrä.]

  “Dënkam?*” I heard him say in my mind. [* A mission?]

  I smiled. It was like he read my thoughts and already knew my projects.

  “Kema*,” I agreed. [* Yes]

  “Nem jiem yunä anaktena?*” [* What, where and when?]

  I thought about the simplest and clearest way of explaining the facts and telling him what his mission and that of the two other Nëphräm was.

  “Wëgun num. Fen’Yenssä Miesche Pregieä New Hell. Diek fen’Hekmë Gelimä nim Shashiem’Xëmrë Terrïa nien’Tëra. Yunä diek Niekmen Mënka Frëm Yenssä Anemä Xander. Nen’Giäei’fen Pregmem.*” [* Starting now. You’ll have to watch New Hell. If you smell intruders who try to infiltrate our territory, kill them. And if the alarm is set off, visit Xander. He’ll give you the orders.]

  He didn’t know Xander but I had no doubt he would find him if he had to. Leonemä opened his mouth to roar in sign of agreement when he turned his enormous head away to stare with its milky gaze at the woods near us. Smelling danger, he began to grumble weakly and his eyes started to shine. I didn’t even have time to sniff at the air to identify the threat Leonemä had detected when it appeared from nowhere with lightning speed. As the danger rushed at us, I grabbed my dagger, let my jaw take the shape of the predator that I was and turned around to welcome properly what was coming in our direction. In a bestial scream, I cut the throat of my assailant as he leaped toward me. He fell on the ground before getting a chance to reach me. With a delay
, I realized the so-called menace wasn’t one. At least, not for me. Streams of red blood, close to that of human blood, were flowing from the gaping wound. The miserable creature, crudely looking like a man but not one, was dying. Its members lashed the air in all directions. Gurgling sounds were coming from its mouth with sharp and very visible teeth. Apparently, it was so starving that in spite of the menace emanating from this place, it had ventured to come here in order to find some food. I took a step toward the Ferä to finish it. Leonemä didn’t give me time to do it and rushed at me. He pushed me aside from the threat that the newcomer represented—according to him—and ripped it to prevent it from hurting me. No sooner said than done, the enormous lion had tore the Ferä to pieces and the grass around us had become reddish.

  I didn’t know how the creature had managed to penetrate here as the fence had been repaired all around New Hell. However, it wasn’t what disturbed me the most. My concern was that, if a Ferä with no intellect had succeeded in coming into our lands without standing out, Ezekiel and his exiles would succeed in doing the same without any difficulty if they weren’t in Mexico anymore.

  “Nemesis!” Xander yelled far away.

  He had to have heard me to call out at the time of the Ferä attack. But at the moment, it was he who was spotted because two powerful roars were heard in the distance. Panthrä and Tigriä. The idiot! I was at the same time offended by his stupidity and annoyed because now he was about to be massacred.

  “Yenssä Lekmië’nen. Dasëm nen’Tëra humä.*” [* Go and get him. Don’t kill him.]

  Leonemä, who was on the lookout since he’d heard Xander, left at a run. Again, Panthrä and Tigriä roared as one. They were getting closer. If Leonemä didn’t find him before they did, the death sentence of Xander was signed. No Nëphyr, no matter how powerful, could face two Nëphräm. The minutes passed, only broken by screams, here and there, some from Xander, others from the Nëphräm. Leonemä had to try to prevent his fellows from tearing to pieces this fool. The silence eventually took back its rights and I really thought Xander had been killed. I swore it: if he’d died, I would find a way to bring him back to life—even if he was in a thousand pieces—just to kill him with my own hands. I finally saw Leonemä arriving, dragging Xander by a leg. At first sight, I noticed he wasn’t missing any limbs. Even so, he wasn’t moving. I’d told him not to come here, damn it! I hurried to go toward him.