Kaliel moved his lips to object but regretted it before doing so. Then, he closed his eyes and placed a hand over hers. Little by little, he felt it. The cold in his skin, in the wind that swirled in his hair. The hard stone under him. A chill running all over his body and finally her soft, warm hands on his face.
“Enough. I don’t want to”.
He took her hands off.
“You never do what you want, do you?” She said. “Are you afraid…”
He inspired, trying to regain his sanity, before he could look at her again.
“You'll never know if it's good or bad until you do it” Ali told him. “Let's go! Try it”.
Kaliel hesitated a second before bringing a trembling hand to Ali. She stood still, trying not to show emotion as he passed her hand, slowly, over her hair. She noticed that he held his breath and that, from time to time, he stopped to look at her, perhaps to know if he had gone too far. She didn’t flinch. Suddenly she felt the urgent need to continue. With his finger, Kaliel brushed the hair away from her face, hiding it behind her ear. Ali shuddered. A warm and pleasant tingle ran through her inside. A feeling that she had never known before.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean...”
Kaliel withdrew his hand but she caught it halfway and carried it to her chest so that he too could feel her heart beating wildly. Ali closed her eyes and he imitated her.
“I don’t want to do this...” he murmured with little firmness.
“For once in your life, do whatever you want...”
Kaliel let out all of the air with resignation. Then, he took Ali's face in his hands almost violently. She opened her eyes to feel a small blow on his forehead and saw him there, so close, with his forehead resting against hers and his eyes closed. His expression was of pain.
“You're just making it harder for me” he said with a thin voice.
She couldn’t deny it anymore. She was shaking and her heart seemed like it was going to burst from her chest. She could feel the warmth of his lips so close and an irresistible desire gripped her. Every particle of her being wanted him to kiss her. She had to restrain the impulse to do it herself and she understood that he wouldn’t either. But she couldn’t deny that she had wanted it so hard and that she’d still crave it. All the things that had disturbed her in the last days and all those that had made her happy were all due to the same thing: she liked Kaliel. But she hadn’t wanted to hear her conscience because he made her feel like no one had ever done. He made her feel blind, irrational and dangerously surrendered to him.
“Until the sheep finally left the fold!” celebrated a voice with irony. “I really thought that I’d have to wait longer to see you sunk, rejected”.
Max moved toward the center of the round of stones. Behind him, Zhaira and a horde of vampires watched them with contempt.
“How I missed the cruel delight of the destruction of others!”
Immediately, Kaliel stood up ready to attack.
“Your perdition is the only one you can enjoy as soon as I kill you”.
Max smiled amused and then approached Kaliel walking nonchalantly with his hands clasped behind his back.
“You well know that you no longer have the power to do it...” Max said.
Then, his hand moved so fast that Ali wasn’t able to see it slapping Kaliel until he wasn’t on the floor.
“I'll kill you!” Kaliel screamed.
Kaliel went against Max, knocked him down and started hitting him on the floor. One blow after another, like a deranged person, so fast that Max didn’t have time to escape. Suddenly, he kicked Kaliel away and stood up. His face was intact.
“I wonder what would happen if I kill you now...” Max weighed aloud. “You would die like any other man, sorry, like any other sinner...” He corrected himself with a triumphant smile.
“You are such an idiot...” Kaliel said.
Ali gasped. She felt fear pressing into her throat as if it were going to suffocate it. Would it be true what Max had said?
Again, with superhuman speed, Kaliel and Max resumed the fight. It was so hard to keep up with them that, in his concentration, she hadn’t noticed when the vampires had closed in a circle around her. Then a blow jumped out of the confusion and threw Kaliel back against one of the fallen stones. Ali moaned. He didn’t move.
“That was too easy...” Max pretended to be surprised.
At that moment, he turned to Ali. She took a step back, trembling, but she knew she was cornered.
“And what about you? I really can’t understand why this whole problem because of a simple mortal...” Max said as he crossed his arms. “I also don’t understand why they haven’t been able to catch you until now”.
As if he didn’t see the inconvenience, Max took Ali by the hair and dragged her to himself while she tried to stifle a scream. She couldn’t be weak now, not in front of the enemy. So, even if it didn’t help, Ali started hitting him with all her might. Max watched her unperturbed for a few moments and then took her arm to turn her towards Kaliel, who at that moment raised his face with an expression of fury. A thread of blood red slid from his lips to his neck. Could the angels bleed?
Ali tried to run towards him but Max stopped her by the arm and turned her towards him.
“You still don’t understand how fragile your mortality is?” He said stroking her hair aggressively. Then he grabbed his hair at the nape of his neck, having Ali's face at his mercy. “You can’t escape; you'll do what I say. You’ll do what I want” he said, dragging the words with hatred.
Then, in a split second, he glared defiantly at Kaliel and then pulled Ali's face up and kissed her furiously. Ali writhed uselessly in her arms until she realized that she was actually completely immobilized by Max's supernatural strength. However, she was not fool enough to think that Max wanted her that way too. This was a clear provocation for Kaliel, just as the vampire with the tattooed head had tried. There was something there that clearly everyone, except her, could see. Kaliel's response didn’t wait, and with a blow pushed away Max, who fell dead laughing at a considerable distance, like Ali, who rolled until she hit against one of the rocks.
Everything had been so fast and only then did she realize what had just happened. Looking down at the overcast gray sky, she could no longer contain the tears. She had lived all this time as if she didn’t matter, as if it didn’t matter what she really felt and with the sole purpose of going out in search of her father, trying to keep no emotion in her way. Trying to deny her own weakness. But now, used and thrown like trash, she felt miserable. She was tired of everyone doing with her as they wanted, one more piece of the game of others, never being able to do anything, before because of being a girl, for being a woman and now for being a simple human. She let out all the rage she felt in a scream and jumped up, wiping away her tears. She could feel that fire running through her body and remembered that Larsen told her that she only had to believe she could do it. Ali looked at the palms of her hands and the fire appeared, swirling over them, as angry and furious as her.
“It's me you've fucked up, idiot!” She yelled at Max. “I’m your problem now!”
“I got this...”
Zhaira stepped between Ali and Max and knocked her away. Kaliel tried to go for her but Max knocked him down and resumed his fight. He couldn’t help Ali. She would have to get rid of Zhaira by herself. She looked at the fire that was still burning in her palms and directed it to Zhaira like two whips. She even tried to avoid it but laughed heartily.
“I come from the fire of hell, silly girl!” She said and then the same fire appeared in her hands too.
A flaming ball flew towards Ali but she avoided it easily, as well as those that followed. The last one made her fall to the ground and then Zhaira took the opportunity to take her by the neck with an impossible strength to resist.
“I got her!” Zhaira added.
Hearing that, Max got rid of Kaliel with a single blow and ordered the retreat. It was her they really wanted.
The vampires closed behind Max while Zhaira dragged Ali to the center of the group.
“Kaliel!” Ali yelled.
It was useless. He lay unconscious on the floor and couldn’t hear her. Or so she thought until, suddenly, the earth and the sky trembled and Kaliel lit up like thunder. He stood up and his broken wings opened. His glowing eyes were able to shake the vampires, who were the first to flee. Then Zhaira moaned, pushed Ali away from her and clutched her arm as if it burned.
“It's not long before you fall!” roared Max.
Finally, the demon moved his hand and a dense dark fog made him disappear next to Zhaira.
Minutes later, when Kaliel entered Mikah's office next to Ali, that celestial glow had vanished. A small sample of the infinite divine mercy that he couldn’t pay. A reminder that He still believed he could do it.
He didn’t wait for the others to leave and as soon as he crossed the doors he said:
“Maxziel and Zhaira have allied with Darry. They have betrayed us. You can’t let them come back”.
Mikah turned with that irritating smug expression that made him want to hit him in the nose.
“I can’t forbid them to enter” he said.
“Why not!?” Ali interjected. “Darry can’t enter here, what's the difference?”
“While they are repentant, I can’t deny them the possibility of their redemption... I am not the one” he remarked “to prevent them from entering the house of the Father”.
“Then you won’t do anything... As usual” - Kaliel said scornfully.
“Not until I see it”.
“Do you think I'm lying!?” Kaliel was outraged.
“Do you think your word is still worth something?”
Mikah passed by her side serenely and left the room as if nothing had happened.
Kaliel punched the wall to vent his anger but when he turned to Ali she realized that this wasn’t what he felt but an impotence that bordered on despair. Nobody could or wanted to protect her. Nobody except him. Was that due to his angelic nature or would there be something else? A feeling disguised as light but born of sin.
“I believe you” said Sharon suddenly.
Just then, Kaliel noticed the other Redentto watching him.
“Max always had one foot inside and one outside” Jared added.
Sabrina went then and took Alanis' hands in hers.
“They are two against you but you have us four with you” she said.
The doors flew open and Annabeth entered with the expression of who brings the bad news.
“The girl didn’t resist the change” she said.
“She died!?” Sharon covered her mouth horrified.
“Yes. They’ll leave her body this afternoon for her family to find her and mourn her. They’ll think it was some pervert who did it but they won’t look for her anymore”.
A shrill whine made everyone in the room turn to Sabrina who had begun to cry inconsolably.
“He has gone very far” she said at last but nobody could understand where she was pointing until, after much hesitation, she managed to calm the trembling of her lips and said: “I know how to kill Darry”.
“And why haven’t you said it before!?” Alanis exclaimed.
The others gave her a meaningful look and she knew she had hurried. But Sabrina didn’t look angry.
“Because Darry is my father...”
24
Connection
“Wait, what?”
For a moment, Ali was sure she had heard wrong.
“It was in 1832, when I was only thirteen years old...” Sabrina said with the absent look of one who is immersed in distant memories.
Annabeth sighed and went to close the doors and then lean against the wall with her arms crossed. The rest sat down again to hear a story they already knew but respected enough to keep quiet. Kaliel, rather exasperated, went to the fireplace and stared at the flames.
“Look, the point is that my father was just a broken man angry with God when...”
“I want to hear the full story” Ali assured her.
“Well...” Sabrina paused while searching for the words. “It was 1832, as I said. My mother had died of cholera that same year and my father devoted himself to working in the family workshop. That made it possible for the business to survive the Industrial Revolution and the enormous competition and for him to not lose his mind. Darry Collins then became a businessman and soon his workshop became a factory with more than a hundred employees. He was a respected bourgeois but, soon too, envied. Until one night, Edgar Wellington, his main rival in business, paid some men very well to set fire to my father's workshop.
«That's how my father lost everything overnight. In the house there was hardly enough to eat and, soon, the same people who used to invite us to parties or eat at our table, began to turn their backs when they saw us on the street. My father fell into a deep depression and spent six months locked up, drinking. He only went out to try something stronger, during the nights and it was there, in the alleys of opium that he met Samael. He offered my father immortality, power and revenge. And he accepted.
«At that time, I innocently believed that Samael had helped him with money. My father left me with my old wet nurse and went to China. When he returned, five years later, he was another man. A man immensely rich, powerful, who inspired something closer to terror than respect. He was someone ruthless and he didn’t take long to prove it.
«He was in charge of fulfilling all the atrocities that Samael asked him, in cold blood. But then Samael asked him for something he couldn’t fulfill. A very obvious trap that would guarantee that my father would never get his freedom. Then my father told me that the only way to free him from the pact that forced him to be a slave of Samael was stealing the dagger that had stripped him of his mortal life since this was the only thing capable of killing him again.
«He convinced me to become immortal to go and look for the dagger. I did it for him. We all did it. And when I was in front of Samael, he laughed and told me to tell my father that he had asked for a half-blood daughter but that he didn’t need a human being like me. Samael wanted my father to have a daughter with a human. He had asked him to give him his daughter and he’d been willing to give me to Samael...”
The silence in the room became even deeper. Alanis scanned the faces of those present and confirmed with horror that everyone was as surprised as she was. Except for Annabeth who had her eyes fixed on the ground and frowned as if she had noticed something that the others had not. Then, her gaze suddenly fixed on Ali, producing her a chill that went down her back.
“Yes” Annabeth murmured at last, addressing Sabrina. “That's what he was talking to Samael's envoy when I heard them. He offered him something in exchange for a supposed jade dagger...”
Chase knew it.
Alanis stepped back to stand on a column while remembering with astonishment those drawings she had found in his house and his surprise at seeing that dagger in the antique house. Would he also have some reason to want to kill Darry? Was it the dagger that she gave him the real one or did they just look alike? Jared's voice interrupted her thoughts.
“That is, we don’t need to kill Darry to stop him” he said. “If we have the dagger he’ll have to obey us”.
“And if he don’t do it?” Sabrina teased. “We’d have no choice but...” her voice broke.
“He will” Kaliel interjected. “The fear of death is the only thing that forces him to obey Samael. If he dies he’d lose all his might and become an unfortunate soul rotting in hell, where I dare to believe that he has even more enemies waiting for him than here...”
“But Samael has the dagger” said Sharon. “Does that mean that to stop Darry we have to face something much worse than him?”
“No, we'll make an exchange” Ali said. “We’ll give him what he wants in exchange for the dagger... Me”.
“No” said Kaliel. “What would be the difference with surrendering to Darry?”
Kaliel narrowed his eyes. Perhaps he suspected that her real plan wasn’t to kill Darry but to make a deal with Samael for the freedom of her father. And if she could also get the jade dagger it would be a perfect plan.
“Maybe there is a way to face Samael” said Annabeth. “The book…”
“The Maleficat!” Sabrina exclaimed with a triumphant expression.
Jared and Sharon exchanged glances. Ali was so focused on Annabeth that she didn’t notice how close Kaliel had come until she backed up and collided with him. She turned immediately and found that his eyes were staring at her gravely.
“So she'll just be a decoy until we steal the dagger?” Sharon asked.
“Of course we won’t hand her over!” Sabrina said. “So we must first find the book and be prepared. Even then, it’s very risky...”
Suddenly, the four Redentto, including Annabeth, looked at Ali for confirmation. Kaliel's hand clutched her arm in warning but Ali got rid of him and took a step forward.
“Count on me” she said. “We have a plan, then”.
Sabrina went to her and extended a hand.
“I won’t abandon you” she promised while her eyes said thank you.
“Nor will I”. Sharon placed her hand over Ali and Sabrina's, as a sort of pact. “Only dead will I allow Samael to catch you”.
Jared also approached the circle with a smile. There was hope in his voice.
“You also have my word” he said. Then, he looked at Annabeth.
The former vampire remained motionless with her arms folded but, after a few moments, rolled her eyes and approached.
“You have my word too” she said reluctantly touching the other hands. “Until Darry pays”. Then she withdrew it.
Could she really trust Annabeth? In fact, could she trust someone when she were in front of Samael?
“And I’ll make sure to break into pieces anyone who breaks their promise” Kaliel muttered behind Ali.
Ali turned to face him.
“You know there's no other choice but to stop Darry on our own. You said it yourself...”
Dark Temptation Page 19