“Vampires don’t exist!” She exclaimed, less sure of what she intended to sound.
Chase took her by the shoulders trying to calm her down. Ali still fidgeted restlessly in the place. Her mind was screaming at her: run!
“It's been a long time since I saw them around her” he said with a tortured expression. “Otherwise I'd never have brought you. I am sorry…”
“Hey, sweetie!” A sensual voice purred, impregnated with malice. “Can you introduce me to your boy?”
When turning around she found the red-haired vampire who was soon joined by five more youngsters, including the blue-haired girl.
Dragging her by the arm, Chase began to run toward the brightest streets. Ali could see out of the corner of her eye that the vampires were still standing in the same place with their arms crossed. They were still smiling. They were just giving them an advantage. A horrible chill ran down her spine when she understood it: they were not in a hurry to kill them; they would have fun with them a little first. They had advanced only a few meters when Chase suddenly stopped. Ali turned to the front and suppressed a scream. The redhead vampire was standing in front of them. She was taller than Ali had thought. The others soon arrived, as emerged from the shadows and surrounded them. They were trapped. The vampire took a few steps toward Chase moving with the elegance of a cat but her eyes were fierce as those of a lion about to jump on its prey. However, she did not attack. She just moved closer and closer to him, up to his neck, and then licked him slowly as she watched Ali to provoke her. As the vampire wanted, Ali jumped on her in a rage but the hands of another young man bound her arms behind her back.
“Leave him alone!” Ali yelled. Her intention was to sound aggressive but instead seemed to beg.
The vampire laughed under her breath and then released a hideous laugh.
“I'll give you my blood if you let him go...” Ali offered desperate.
“ Awww!” The redhead mocked and then looked at Chase. “You really don’t deserve her” she said. “Of course I will take your blood!” She continued leaning towards Ali with her hands on her wasp waist: “But first you will see him die slowly and painfully...” The girl dragged the words as if tasting them “Blood full of terror is much more delicious!”
Then the vampire took Chase by the neck...
“No!” Roared Ali and prey to a madness that made her cross the limits of her own strength, she managed to get away from the boy who was holding her.
She ran to the redhead, who smiled complacently as she crouched with claws ready to tear Ali's skin. Then, Chase punched someone quickly and then pushed the vampire out of Ali's path. The blue-haired girl jumped on him, tugging at his hair. Ali did the same with her and the three of them fell on their backs on the rough asphalt like thousands of sandpapers. The other three vampires fell on them struggling and trying to bite her. An unexpected instinct of survival took control of her body and Ali began to throw kicks and fists uncontrollably with her eyes closed. Then she heard a crash and an angry moan. The weight on her eased and she took advantage to escape by rolling on one side. Instantly, she stood up and opened her eyes at just the right moment to see the red-haired vampire moving her jaws at full speed toward Chase's neck.
Suddenly, encouraged by a strange feeling of power, Ali extended her hand towards the vampire as if she could take her by the neck. To her surprise, the vampire released Chase and stood petrified. A moment later, she fell to her knees screaming and trembling at the astonished glances of everyone, even Ali´s, who still held her hand up high, letting all her anger flow to her. The vampire simply burst into flames as she writhed on the ground. Soon, her sculptural body was reduced to black ashes and there was nothing left but dust. The rest of her friends fled in terror except for the blue-haired girl. She remained for a moment to give Ali a fierce look: a promise of revenge. Then, she disappeared as fast as a gust of wind.
“What the hell..?” Chase murmured from the ground while letting out all the air contained in his chest.
The road back home passed into a whirlwind of doubt. Ali had seen what by all accounts looked like real vampires, sinking their terrible fangs into a young man, drinking his blood and moving at a speed and stealth unimaginable to a human being. And then she had seen one of them burn out of nowhere surrounded by a magical fire. She thought then of her father and his long dissertations about the demons and the inhabitants of the night. She thought of the guttural voices that came from the throats of little girls in the exorcisms she had secretly seen. She thought of the fairies and gnomes of innocent tales becoming nightmarish killers. She thought of Heaven and Lucifer, the most beautiful, falling to Earth with a blinding bolt and then rising up in flames with his infernal army on his back. She thought of the angels and the demons and their supposed eternal struggle between good and evil... Were all those real things?
“Forgive me, Ali...” Chase repeated after a long hug under the window of her room.
She remained silent because of the shock. He kissed her once more, waited for her as she climbed the tree to her room and then he walked quickly away down the sidewalk.
Everything was as she had left it. Ali took off her disguise and hid it under the bed. She made sure the window was locked and drew the curtains. She turned off the music and the light and, wrapped in the gloom, she wrapped herself up in the sheets of her bed trying to pretend that none of that had actually happened. Everything was as she had left it. Ali took off her disguise and hid it under the bed. She made sure the window was locked and drew the curtains. She turned off the music and the light and, wrapped in the gloom, she wrapped herself up in the sheets of her bed trying to pretend that none of that had actually happened. She had the vague hope that a faith strong enough to move mountains would produce the impossible and she would wake up the next day relieved to understand that everything had been a bad dream.
A sound almost imperceptible like a breeze, made her turn to the small bookshelf leaning against the wall in front of the bed. Adjusting her eyes to the poor light that filtered from where the curtains could not touch each other, she could see eyes that watched her from the shadows. Ali pulled the sheets to her head shaking. Suddenly she felt the need to look again to see that it had been nothing but her tortured imagination. Slowly, she let the sheet fall to her neck at the precise moment when two huge black wings, one of them broken, opened across the entire wall.
2
An eternal enemy
“I have a mission for you” Mikah had said as soon as Kaliel put a foot in the library room. He hadn’t even turned around to see him.
“ Great, whom should I kick his ass?” Kaliel smiled arrogantly.
“To nobody”.
Mikah, still with his hands clasped behind his back, came down the steps that separated the fireplace from the huge carved wooden table. He continued without looking at him, an act of disdain that got Kaliel greatly furious. Then he rummaged through some papers with his customary indolence and handed it to the boy. This time he had to look at him but Kaliel turned his gaze to the role in an endless contest of pride.
It was a photo. For a moment, a strange sensation invaded his chest as he watched the girl in the picture. Something in her hair, in her eyes, in her smile seemed familiar. Then, the feeling vanished. A typical déjà vu, maybe.
“Her name and address are written on the back”. Mikah made a brief silence and stared at him as if studying his features. “I need you to find her and watch her... without her discovering you. It is understood?”
“Why?” Kaliel asked. The girl didn’t look like some kind of demon or a dangerous being and he was no bodyguard of little girls.
“ Because I say so”.
“That's not enough reason for me” Kaliel snapped. “Maybe you should look for anyone else...”
Kaliel threw the photo on the desk and turned around, heading for the door.
“These are superior orders. He commands you” Mikah remarked. “Or is carnality suiting you best?”
“She's in great danger...” Mikah had whispered when he passed by him. “You'll like this mission, I know”.
Now, he walked like any mortal, with his hands in his pockets. He then touched the photo and decided to take another look. There was something unsettling in the girl's face, something that caused her deep nostalgia. He had the impression that this was how it felt when a loved one died. It had never happened to him but he knew how it felt to get away indefinitely from what you love. However, she wasn’t dead. He was the dead one, he thought. What if he had known her before, in his old life? He didn’t remember it.
In fact Kaliel remembered few things from those days, before Mikah found him unconscious, but the images he kept of that fateful moment were enough to keep his soul in a continuous torment. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see that mocking smile, the lips of Baaltazhar twitching to one side and his superb look. He was about to destroy the demon. An intense fury invaded him, he didn’t remember why. Then there was a dark lagoon and the next thing that came to his mind was a long fall, engulfed in flames until he touched the ground with a frightening sensation that until then he didn’t know. When he awoke he was different, he felt heavy, weak, his skin was soft and cold but, above all, he could feel pain.
Mikah was there when he opened his eyes and helped him up. He saw the blood gushing from his mouth and from that moment on he only knew that he hated Baaltazhar with all his being and that he would dedicate his life to deporting demonic asses to hell until he found him again. But he would not send Baaltazhar to the abyss but would erase his name from this and all the worlds.
Finally he reached the address indicated on the back of the photo. It was a house of the most common but something wasn’t right and he noticed right away. He could feel the four protective amulets buried in the corners of the property and wondered what they would hide inside that might interest the demons so much. As if that were not enough, as he got closer, he found dozens of different amulets, whose usefulness bordered on the ridiculous, hanging on every door and window of the house. Who lived there must be dead of fear or, on the contrary, should have very good reasons for wanting to ward off the forces of evil. Either way, he wouldn’t be affected at all.
Two jumps were enough to reach the top of the tree that led to a very bright side window. He wasn’t afraid; if he didn’t want to be seen, nobody would do it. Mikah could miss his recommendations in his southernmost cavities. The room was empty but just as he was about to enter, someone opened the door. Agile as a cat, Kaliel hid again in the shadows and then saw her. It was her, the girl in the photo, but... For some reason, he suddenly felt paralyzed. He had that feeling of knowing everything about her again even though he knew she was a complete stranger and suddenly felt the urge to go up to talk to her. The thought of seeing her turning to him with a sweet smile appeared in his mind out of nowhere and his hand moved involuntarily to the glass as if he could reach her. He immediately stopped feeling absurd. Then, the girl started to get rid of her clothes. Kaliel realized that peeping out the window wasn’t his best decision and he climbed higher.
After recovering from that strange impression, he managed to catch a strange presence hovering. Minutes later, another boy arrived and started throwing stones at the window. Surely, he was not the "great danger" that Mikah had told him about, unless he had been sent to protect the girl's virginity. The scene that followed was ridiculous: she leaned out the window as if it were the balcony of Romeo and Juliet and tried in vain to disguise her stupid expression of love. Meanwhile, the boy waited with a half arrogant smile, as if he were the most attractive and cheesy of all the blue princes and, in fact, he was disguised as such. As if all that wasn’t exasperating enough, the girl decided to escape through the window for her beloved to hold her in his arms. Kaliel was about to get out of there when she pulled her body out the window and stepped on the nearest branch of the tree. Kaliel remained silent, motionless, hidden in the darkness. He had never seen anything like that, not even in those night bars for demonic hybrids where feminine sensuality bordered on the erotic. The curve of her bare legs continued with delicate harmony until it got lost in a short skirt and resurfaced again in her small corset waist. Finally, a pair of protruding breasts and full lips, red as blood, crowned it. “No!” Kaliel looked away irritably. He already understood what the real intentions of Mikah's cretin were: to make him fall to the bottom, to tempt him, to plunge him into eternal damnation.
A crack attracted his attention back to her. One of the branches broke under the weight of the girl's boots. She was going to fall to a high-altitude blow and Kaliel rushed towards her without thinking but stopped instantly. Fortunately, the boy below played his role as savior prince and took her by the waist before she hit the ground. However, for a thousandth of a second, he’d have sworn that she had seen him. Paralyzed and confused, he watched them walk away for a long time until he regained his composure. Then he noticed it.
This new presence was not human. Someone watched them even though he couldn’t find his location. Kaliel’s perception was failing in an unusual way but not so much so as not to realize that it was a very strong demonic entity. He waited until the couple was out of sight and then he jumped down. His knee hurt when he hit the ground and he understood everything. Between complaints and curses, he decided to follow the girl. It was clear that something wasn’t right about her.
Minutes later, Kaliel was in a nightclub for teenagers with pathetic Halloween costumes. He just leaned against a wall and watched from the corner. He could ignore the parade of idiots trying to look scary. A new sensation kept him intrigued and didn’t allow him to take his eyes off the girl. All the way to the place he had sensed that demonic presence behind them, bristling the hair of his neck like a frozen breath. But it extinguished when crossing the door. Beyond that, he was surprised to find minor demons mixed among the people. It would have been very easy for him to get rid of them but he couldn’t contravene the pact, unfortunately, unless they started the offensive. So nobody did anything: he could see them and they could see him too.
“Hey, buddy! And what's your costume?” Laughed a stocky and very drunk boy. He was dressed as a lumberjack, as were his friends.
Kaliel tried to ignore him but it was useless. The boy approached him and challenged him again, this time putting a giant hand on Kaliel's small shoulder.
“You must have a costume to be here tonight” the boy mumbled with difficulty to separate the words. His friends laughed.
“Well, I came in disguise of myself” snapped Kaliel without taking his eyes off the girl who was now dancing near the bar.
“Well, it's a pathetic costume!” The drunk boy let out a guttural laugh and his friends followed him but, this time, Kaliel noticed a certain fear in their reactions. Clearly he was the group's bully. “Come on! We could say that it is an attempt to... something else... You know, that way I won’t have to expel you. Let's say you're one of those sissy vampires...”
Again, his friends laughed, now louder. Kaliel was getting tired.
“What about Death, huh? It wears black too...” he said mordantly and this time he looked at the boy, defiantly. “Your death, if you don’t leave me fucking alone”. Then, he looked back at the girl.
“Oh yes?” The boy leaned forward imposing his huge chest. He had obtained the fight he was looking for and was smiling. “So you have the balls to talk to me like that? No, look at that yellow hair ... you're a sad, wet chicken! Po-po-po-po-po! Come on, say it! What are you? A chicken! What are you?”
In that last scream, the boy spat saliva on Kaliel's face and it was enough to blow him up.
“I'm a demon!” Kaliel hissed as he made his green eyes turn red as the flames of hell. Then he squeezed the lumberjack's muscular arm so hard it almost broke, as it made his palm burn. The boy contorted trying to break free and then his eyes filled
with tears of pain.
“Let me go! I'm sorry!” He begged. “You are a demon, ok, perfect!”
A dreadful burn was marked on the lumberjack boy's arm when Kaliel released him. Instantly, the bully and his entourage of idiots —as he called them—disappeared.
By the time he looked back at the bar, the girl was gone.
“Damn it!”
After a quick search, he decided to appeal to his sixth sense and left the club. He couldn’t see the girl but there was that presence again, incredibly disturbing, absolutely dark. He just needed to follow it.
He passed by the most crowded bars, those that were fashionable and to which every teenager wanted to go, but she wasn’t there. The pursuit took him to a shady alley, away from the bustle of the city.
It couldn’t be... Yes, it was the only option: The Black Viper, a club for Creatures of the Night. What would that girl do in a place like that? The thing was getting more and more strange. Maybe she didn’t know it and had been tricked... to be the bloody feast of those disgusting bloodsuckers! Of course! Mikah had already warned him that she was in great danger. How did he not realize this before? A fulminating anger seized him and he walked determinedly towards that den.
“You can’t enter here” the man at the door said.
“Why not? Officially, I am one of you now...”
“No fights then, total neutrality” he warned Kaliel as he let him in.
Kaliel felt disgust and a deep contempt. The temptation to send everyone to hell with included covenant was huge, but he wasn’t there for that. Among flashing lights he saw dozens of vampires, hybrids and sorcerers gathered in their gloomy coven. The girl was nowhere to be found. He was going to leave when a revolt broke out. Surely it was just a trap: there in the midst of all that confusion, who could testify that it was not he who broke the covenant first? Involving him would be easy. Of course none of those despicable idiots had the strength to kill him but to prove it meant breaking the pact and that was what interested him the least. The best thing would be to get out of there soon. But breaking through a brawl of demons without them believing that he was pushing them to attack was the most difficult and also irritating. Resisting the temptation to kick more than a hundred infernal asses at one time was even more so.
Dark Temptation Page 2