Crystal and the Damned - Possession (4 page)

She looked him right in the eyes, trembling, foaming at the mouth. She spit in his face.

The Empress tensed up, but the All Powerful did not so much as move a muscle. Pain showed on his venerable face, highlighting how old he really was.

Violently Cornelia drew the profaner back and slapped her face. Glory stood between them and took Crystal by the collar.

“You are less than nothing. But we’ll manage. Tomorrow at dawn you will be Damned, willingly or by force. You will submit to a ritual during which you
will drink your father’s blood. You will be ours and I hope you’ll be ashamed of yourself. Tomorrow, everything will change.”

Park Avenue was quiet for a Thursday evening ; as the street emptied of people, only the intermittent, monotonous passing of cars produced a muffled drone.

On the top floor of a handsome building, a wide window opened soundlessly. A young woman appeared, agilely climbed onto the sill and stood up straight, balanced on the narrow guardrail. She stayed still for a few moments, contemplating the abyss of emptiness. Her eyelids closed, she breathed deeply. A breath of wind caressed her face. She threw herself into the void.

And dropped several floors, landing on her feet with a muffled sound.

She heaved a sigh of relief, checked that the heels of her ankle boots weren’t ruined, and surveyed the surrounding area to be sure that she had not been seen. Convinced that everything had gone swimmingly, the young woman quickly distanced herself from the building she had just escaped.

Crystal walked away with a lively, light step. She was no longer the defenseless little girl that she had been ; now she was one of the Damned. Three
years. She had counted the days since her transformation. Damned. Even though she knew it would always hurt, things were starting to get better. She had learned to accept her father as he was. She did not love him, but she put up with him ; she had no choice. After all, she had found herself a family : the Paladines and Falada.
Shit, it was so hard in the beginning
. Crystal sometimes had trouble believing it herself that she could be so fond of them. With them, she felt loved. Naturally she had her favorites. Cornelia, because she was the cool and rebellious girlfriend she had always dreamed about as a teenager. Glory, who was her role model. And finally, Falada, the guy that all the girls in high school dreamed about. The hunk who made you wet your panties and reassured you at the same time, the ideal boyfriend. The one you never had and that you remember all your life. Crystal had fallen in love with him. Madly, crazily in love. And even though she was not sure that he loved her in return, she didn’t give a damn because he was magnificent. Three years earlier, when she was made one of the Damned by force, when her deadbeat father had forced her to drink his blood, her whole body had fought Damnation. For weeks she had stayed in bed, sweating, so sick she vomited three times a day, feeling like she was going to die. And Falada had stayed there, the whole time, near her. He had comforted her, helped her. Then, through love, she had accepted her condition and had survived. The Paladines had trained her. For nearly two years Crystal remained on the island in order to learn to control her new
powers, with the help of the girls. To be completely honest, she was utterly useless. She managed combat techniques so poorly that Miranda refused to even teach her magic. And yet Miranda was the most adorable person she had ever met. A pearl. Nothing like Helen, a real hung-up pretentious bitch, or Sybil, with her gloomy, distant attitude. But in spite of all those problems, Crystal was happy this evening. She had more or less succeeded in remaking her life, in getting to know her new world. Although tonight she had escaped from the apartment that she shared with the Paladines and Falada, she was not running away. She just wanted to have a little fun. It had been nearly six months since she and the girls had moved to New York and about a month since she had discovered the trick with the window, which she used when she needed some freedom. A few days before she had met a human guy who was kind of cute. This evening she was going to his place. Just a one-night stand but it would do her good.

Forcing herself to smile as she entered the building where her lover for the night lived, Crystal did not notice the man who was watching her from the shadow of the sidewalk opposite.

Hidden in the angle formed by the roof over the garage entrance, he was dressed in a strange blood-red tunic. His face was half burned and he was missing an eye, a souvenir of a fight with Prince Dimitri. The man belonged to the Dark
Clan, a group of rebel Damned Ones who gloomily competed with the Order of Hell. The All Powerful and the Empress had not sent the Paladines to New York for no reason. The city had become one of the main centers of activity for the evil Damned Ones. This evening the Clan had decided to get the jump on Dimitri and to temporarily assign some of its warriors to murder Crystal and so put an end to the bloodline of the All Powerful.

Crystal emerged from her lover’s building at around four o’clock in the morning. She proceeded unhurriedly through the empty streets, savoring the marvelous feeling of lightness that this night of stolen freedom had brought her. The apartment that she shared with the girls wasn’t far now. She would be in bed well before the others woke up.
Mission accomplished
 !

Just as she was getting ready to congratulate herself for pure genius, she caught sight of red shapes materializing from the shadows and blocking the exit of the street she had started down.

She groaned. Obviously this had to happen to her now.

Opposite her stood six men, all in blood-colored tunics. The warriors of the Dark Clan. Without giving her time to think, one of the men advanced toward her.

“Your Paladines haven’t taught you that it’s dangerous to go out walking alone ?”

Crystal felt her heartbeat speed up. No time to dematerialize, and now things were getting real, as Glory and Cornelia had so often repeated to her.

She prayed for a quarter of a second for the girls to be with her. A voice kept repeating incoherently in her head,
I’m not ready to fight yet ; I’m not ready, not ready
….

A punch in the face brought her back to reality.

Forgetting her panic, she let her instincts as a Damned One take over. Or rather, she tried to. Succeeding more or less in driving back her first assailant, she only narrowly managed to avoid three Dark Clan warriors who hurled themselves at her. She leaped over them and fell back to the ground, facing the two remaining men. She grabbed one by the throat and violently threw him against one of his accomplices. But when she turned around, she banged into the others. Two of them grabbed her by the arms while the third one took her by the back of the neck.

Crystal drove her elbows into the sides of the two men holding her and smacked her head against the forehead of the third one who was behind her. She had hoped that they would collapse but they hardly moved. They were too strong.

“Poor little darling. Not so tough without your Paladines, are you ? And to think – you’re the one that kept them from saving your skin. And you can’t imagine how your pretty skin is going to look when we’re done with you. Oh, you’re already quivering….”

“Who wouldn’t quiver in the face of fear ?” came a glacial voice from the street.

The Damned One who was threatening Crystal turned around sharply. At the same time, she felt the pressure of the warriors who were holding her instantly relax.

A man slowly emerged from the darkness. He moved forward with a fearsome calmness. Around her, the young woman sensed the panic overtaking her assailants. They let go of her completely and tried to flee.

In vain. The unknown man raised one hand in their direction and the warriors of the Dark Clan stopped short, held by invisible bonds. In the pupils of the man’s eyes, flames appeared. The warriors caught fire. Human torches. Alive. Screaming.

Crystal widened her eyes, short of breath as the new arrival confronted her. She looked at him, hypnotized.

“Who are you ?”

“Who do you want me to be ?”

The unknown man stood before her, in the privacy of the street. The bodies continued to burn briskly and the flames seemed to radiate over his cold face. Crystal was struck by the wild cut of his features, by his gaze, dark and deep as an abyss.

“Say good evening to Prince Dimitri, your savior and future assassin,” the man swaggered.

She froze, a lump in her throat. Ever since she had been in the sect, the name Dimitri had haunted her worst nightmares.

She watched him approach her, step by step, the noise of his shoes resounding on the ground. She swallowed with difficulty, submerged under an uncontrollable wave of dread. The Dark Prince stopped a few inches away from her. Around them, the world seemed to freeze.

Crystal raised her eyes to him.

His all-consuming gaze met hers and everything else ceased to exist.

Dimitri paced around her.
A lion circling his prey
. Finally, he had her. Helpless, terrified. Twenty-two years of waiting to arrive here. Twenty-two years of fantasizing about this encounter. A simple girl that he was going to smash like a toy.

With a firm hand, he seized the dagger jammed in the leather belt at the small of his back and skimmed her golden hair with its tip, feeling the oh-so-fragile neck under the blade. Crystal merely trembled, waiting for her defeat without resisting. He continued to circle, sliding the metal into her angelic hair, and finally touched the soft skin of her neck. She closed her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Look at me,” the Prince of the Underworld ordered in a hard voice. “You are hoping that your Paladines will be able to save you. But who is protecting you this evening, my darling ? Where are those who claim to love you and defend you ?
There is no one in the world for you. Do you believe that your people will weep for you, or will they be relieved ? To them, you are a burden ; to me, an obstacle. You are nothing. I confess, I’m disappointed, you’re so miserable that your murder won’t even give me any pleasure.”

With a brutal gesture, he grabbed her by the throat and raised her off the ground like a puppet, his victim’s feet scraping the wet sidewalk. She did not cry out, her eyes wide with terror, petrified. Almost delicately, Dimitri traced the contour of the proffered neck with his dagger and slid it up the length of her cheek.

“Your death could be excruciating,” he whispered.

Crystal closed her eyes again, by reflex, trying to push away the fear that was crushing her. The Prince rested the tip of the dagger on her face, near the corner of her eye. The blade ran along the tender skin and tore it, leaving a bloody streak.

The pain felt like an electrical shock to the young woman ; she opened her eyes and tried to struggle. With a furious motion, Dimitri threw her to the ground a few yards away and moved toward her.

Prostrate on the sidewalk, Crystal watched with despair as the Prince walked toward her, but suddenly he stopped. Turning his head abruptly, he inhaled the air, on the lookout.

“This is just the beginning,” he growled at her before uttering a phrase and vanishing, trailing a screen of black smoke.

Dimitri had dematerialized. A miracle.

Crystal stayed slumped over for a moment, trembling like a leaf, then got up with difficulty, hearing the noise of heels on the asphalt. Glory, Cornelia, and Falada appeared. Glimpsing her, her cappuccino-colored friend ran to her and pulled her into her arms hard enough to suffocate her.

“All the fucked-up gods be praised, you’re alive.”

“Brilliant, sweetie,” Glory marveled, lowering her black glasses, “You wiped out all these Dark Clan brutes !”

Cornelia relaxed her embrace and looked around herself in turn, astounded. But, miserable, Crystal lost no time in setting them straight :

“Don’t go giving me any medals just yet. I didn’t do anything. Prince Dimitri burned them. And if you hadn’t arrived, I would already be dead. He sensed you coming and took off. I don’t know by what miracle you found me, but I can promise you that I thank heaven for it.”

“Yeah, you’d better, you crazy little pain in the neck ! Luckily we realized you had disappeared in time. Give us the slip again and I’m the one who’ll waste you !” Cornelia exclaimed in annoyance.

“Calm down, Corn,” Falada intervened, taking Crystal by the shoulder. “She’s already shook up enough.”

The girl snuggled up against the Paladin. He led her away, leaving Glory and Cornelia behind.

They moved slowly, Falada’s arm around her waist as she leaned her head against his shoulder. Behind them, they vaguely heard Cornelia grumbling to herself. She had been terribly afraid for the girl.

Crystal knew this perfectly well and, her own terror having passed, she was very angry with herself. But then, at the moment, she was cuddled against Falada and she felt too happy and relieved to feel guilty. In his arms she felt like she was home. Nice and warm and protected.

The Paladin decided to break the silence.

“I don’t want to lecture you, but don’t go out without warning us, please. If you need some air, let me know ; I’ll go with you. When I celebrated your birthday with you, that went well, didn’t it ?”

“And if I need to see boys ? You know, the kind that you sleep with,” the girl teased him, taking him by the hand. “Are you going to play bodyguard and wait in front of the door ?”

“No. I’ll send Cornelia ; that way I’ll be sure that the guy takes to his heels before he has the time to so much as touch you,” the Paladin shot back. Then, more seriously : “Why do you do it ? Why sleep with men you don’t love ? You’re polluting yourself, you know.”

“Maybe because the one that I do love isn’t sleeping with me ?” she replied mutinously.

Falada gently separated their hands.

“You should kind of stop chasing me, I think.”

“Are you that afraid that I’ll catch you ?”

The night was still dark, but dawn was approaching when they returned home. The apartment, a magnificent one, occupied the top floor of a luxurious old building. There were ten bedrooms with bathrooms, two living rooms, high ceilings decorated with gilding, heavy drapes and thick carpets, an impressive library, a room for training, and another one for meditation.

The three girls and Falada crossed the entry hall and followed a series of corridors to the library.

Helen was sitting there, lost in the middle of a pile of grimoires and other books that were strewn over the round table in the center of the room.

“You’re grinding away at this hour ? What, did you miss your calling as a librarian on the verge of a nervous breakdown ?” Cornelia attacked with her usual friendliness.