Crystal and the Damned - Possession (18 page)

“You don’t have anything else to say ? And yet you appear to have such a silver tongue. I imagine that is the weapon you use to bewitch men,” the Empress assumed. “Don’t look at Henry, he can’t do anything more for you !” she
exclaimed, irritated, before continuing her psychotic prattle. “Tell me, little girl, was it your chatter that attracted my son, or was it only the famished opening between your legs ?” Crystal condemned her with a look filled with hatred, and her stepmother slapped her again. “You’re a whore, admit it. As impure as Eve, but you fornicated with the serpent, and you loved it, didn’t you ? That’s all girls like you are looking for. I’m going to give you what you want. You’ll die with something in your mouth,” the Empress threatened, turning away to go get the snake to force it down her stepdaughter’s throat.

Crystal leaped on the opportunity and stretched out her wrist to Henry, who, although he was still immobilized and cut in two, had been appealing to her with his eyes for several minutes. Obviously he knew the power of the bracelet that the Prince had given the young woman. Without hesitating he imprisoned the gold chain between his heavy fingers. She pulled and the chain broke.

The Empress had reached the end of the hallway when Dimitri appeared in a cloud of black smoke. He arrived right in the middle of the scene. His gaze ran down the hall, landing on Crystal and on Henry and finally focusing on his mother.

“Ah, there you are,” she greeted him without embarrassment. “You’re cleaning house, I see. Are you planning to leave ? It is true that amusing yourself with the All Powerful’s daughter could create enemies for you. Better to eliminate the troops before they rebel.”

“Re-form,” the Prince pronounced with indifference upon seeing Henry. Immediately the two halves of the servant reunited. The butler got back on his feet and Dimitri ordered him in a restrained voice : “Leave.” His slave complied without a word. Silence brewed in the hall. Crystal put an end to it. Her stepmother’s poison was acting. Soon her paralysis would be complete ; soon no word would be able to convince her lover to rescue her.

“Dimi, please. Please,” she begged, finally showing her fear.

“Be quiet,” he cut her off with a voice devoid of feeling. He once again fixed his eyes on his mother. No emotion filtered through. He was unfathomable.

“I was going to finish off your girlfriend,” the Empress reported. “By breaking the mirror, you forced me to come here to restore order. In any case, it’s the end of the All Powerful. It’s time to show myself openly and it’s time for you, my son, to govern the cult.”

The Prince joined her unhurriedly. Crystal tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her.

“You thwarted me,
Mom
, and I can’t bear having people thwart me.”

His mother put her hand on his shoulder.

“That’s true, my dear, but you forgot yourself with this child. We have to end it.”

“No !” Crystal wailed, “Dimitri, I beg you, please don’t let her kill me. You promised, you promised to protect me. Please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die... please,” she sobbed.

“No use whining,” her stepmother shouted. “You’re just a girl ; I’m his mother.”

Finally the Prince raised his eyes.

“This evening, the members of the Order of Hell left me because of her. They know. They know that she is my lover. They left me – they will regret it. I put to death all those who lived in the residence and I exterminated some of my supporters. My will is not to be opposed.”

With an unwholesome pride, the Empress smiled at him.

“You are a plague, you are The Plague. Kill this prissy little bitch with me, and everyone will grovel once again. Kill her for me. Kill her for the love of your mother ; this will be our glory.”

The Prince of the Underworld cracked his knuckles while Crystal continued her lamentations as if being skinned alive.

“For love,
Mom
 ? Our glory... who do you take me for ? I Am ; I don’t have anything to prove. Women... you’re all the same. You believe that you will reign through me ? Because you are my mother ? Because you’ve beaten my pretty little princess ? You’re dreaming. I am Evil. No one controls me ; no one tames me.”

“That’s good, my dear. I am fighting for you and she wanted to keep you on a leash. Kill the whore. Kill all those who are obstacles to you.”

“You’re right, Mother.”

With these last words, Crystal closed her eyes. She understood that everything was over, that she no longer had any chance.

The Empress felt a burst of victory when her son whispered :

“I’m sorry. I am sincerely sorry. I would have liked to be able to act differently.”

Crystal opened her eyes again to confront the monster’s soul when he killed her. Dimitri pulled out the dagger jammed into the belt at his back. He passed his tongue over his lips and everything happened very fast. Image by image – in slow motion – and all in a whirlwind at the same time. The blade sparkled as he raised it. And then, abruptly, time restarted.

Prince Dimitri drove the dagger into his mother’s heart.

Crystal gasped as the Empress’s eyes took on a glassy and shocked look. A little blood spurted from her breast and she collapsed, dead.

Dead, irrevocably.

Dimitri had struck.

The young woman felt the wounds on her cheek fade, her stepmother’s magic disappearing as she died. Although the paralysis had left her, Crystal didn’t
dare move. The Prince was speechless. Locked in the same position, blood on his hands, his face bent over the corpse of his mother. He seemed totally unaware of his surroundings.

“I assassinated my father too,” he said without preamble in a voice that surged out of his state of limbo. “I was young.”

Cautiously, Crystal crept next to him. She didn’t know what to add. He was a monster, a demon, the worst of all beings. But he had just sacrificed his own mother for her. To defend her.

“I didn’t eliminate her because of you,” Dimitri clarified, seeming to read her thoughts, as always. “I eliminated her because she rose up against me. That’s what men like me do ; they destroy everything that gets in their way.”

Crystal fastened her beautiful moist eyes on the floor. The Empress’s blood was spreading little by little over the carpet. It seemed to her that she had never seen so deeply. Without turning toward her lover, she took his hand.

“You don’t destroy me.”

The Prince closed his fingers around hers. He cast a glance at her as if to assure himself that she was really there. Crystal gave him a very sweet smile. A silent vow.

“Come, my heart. Let’s get the hell out of here before the whole cult falls upon us,” decided Dimitri, drawing her into the hall.
To hell with remorse. To hell with the rest of the world.

“We’re going to be tracked by your Paladines and by my former servants in the Order,” he reminded her. “Can you handle it, babe ?”

“I’ll be with you,” she summarized, answering all his questions.

The echo of their voices faded as they distanced themselves from the murder scene. Their shadows soon disappeared down the staircase, leaving far behind them the dead bodies that populated the residence and the corpse of the Empress that filled the hall with its extinct, shadowy power.