Crystal and the Damned - Possession (7 page)

The living room gleamed, all the lights on, but she saw only the shadowy corners.

The All Powerful was standing in front of a window with his hands behind his back. His presence seemed strangely unreal. He was too white, too tall. Around him the air appeared to be heavier, and the room seemed to be waiting for him to move to recover its normal atmosphere.
I hate him,
Crystal could not help thinking to herself, before her glance fell on the Empress.

Her stepmother, a black shawl tossed elegantly over her shoulders, was talking to Glory. An animated discussion.

“I have always felt empathy for Sybil,” the Empress said. “Nothing is worse than a mother who cannot save her child. However, her suicide strikes a blow at our power. The Order of Hell and the Dark Clan are going to be delighted about it. I do not think that we can….”

“We will bury her with all the honors due to a Paladine,” the All Powerful cut in without turning toward his wife.

Silently, Glory nodded in agreement.

The Empress glared at her and for the first time Crystal had the feeling that her friend was losing her footing. There was no longer an ounce of arrogance in her.

“If we concentrate on the best strategy to adopt, your Highness, I also think that we have to give Sybil a funeral worthy of the name. We ought to present a united front and show the whole sect that we support our Paladines right to the end,” Dollface justified herself.

“
We
ought to ?” the Empress picked up. “It seems to me that my husband and I have always generously supported your cause. Your errors are not ours, Glory. If you had paid attention, Sybil would still be alive. But perhaps you were not meant to be first Paladine. You have the caliber, but do you have the soul ? Do you have enough empathy ? Or are you still the person you used to be ? Were we wrong at the time ?”

His back still turned, the All Powerful raised a hand.

“Enough. This is no longer subject to discussion. Now, please leave us – my daughter just came in.”

Crystal hunched over when the two women turned their heads to her. Her stepmother cast an inscrutable glance at her but Glory gave her a discreet sign of
friendship that acted like balm on her heart. She pushed herself forward to allow them to leave the room, conscientiously keeping her eyes riveted to the floor. The carpet had never before been the object of such interest.

One second, two seconds. The sound of voices faded away. The silence, unbearable, was like an impassible gulf between the young woman and her father.

“You honor us with your presence,
Daddy
,” she said ironically, in a sharp tone. “Enchanted to know that if I die, you will deign to travel.”

“Don’t talk foolishness. You are my only child. I did not come to settle this sad affair ; my wife will take care of it for me. I came for you. I felt you use your power, the power of our bloodline, and I sensed your fear, your fragility. I did not think anyone else should be involved in this. I came in person. For you.”

Crystal burst out in a sinister laugh.

“So, you took the first excuse that you could lay your hands on just to teach me a lesson : the death of a Paladine. Yes, I used my powers,” she confirmed, “and I have bad news for you,
Daddy
 : against the forces of Evil they don’t measure up.”

“Not yet. They are not sufficiently developed. That is why I would like you to wait to use them.”

Crystal paced up and down the living room with the ferocity of a lion in a cage. The All Powerful obstinately turned his back on her, and that drove her crazy. She felt her anger, too long contained, rise up in her like a storm.

“Why ? You should be happy ; I’m behaving like one of the Damned. That was your goal, wasn’t it ? It was what you wanted to make of me, when you forced your blood down my throat to transform me. Why are you complaining ? You killed my soul so that I would be this kind of creature. That was what you wanted when you violated my humanity !”

“How can you talk that way to your father ?” the All Powerful took offence, wounded. “I have always done what was best for you. I did not raise you so as to not deprive you of your childhood, and you continue to reproach me for it. You are my daughter and you are a Damned One ; I only opened the door for you. Tell me, what do I have to do so that you stop rejecting me ?”

“Look at me ! Look at me when you speak to me !” Crystal exploded. “You aren’t even capable of that.”

Her father whipped around. His features were fraught with the weight of centuries. Centuries of war, of death and betrayal. But his eyes, his oh-so-pale eyes, expressed only enormous pain. His only child wanted nothing to do with him. His chest burned with a painful fire when he looked at his little girl, breathless, her cheeks red, her gaze glistening with tears and hatred. The All Powerful wanted to hold her in his arms and communicate to her the infinite love that she needed. He could feel her despair and her solitude and he could do nothing. He was powerless. He had failed as a father.

If a tear could have flowed down his withered cheek, it would have flowed then. But he was too old. Without a word he left the room, abandoning, for what she took as the second time, his child.

In the corridor the All Powerful found his wife, the Paladines and Falada joined in a circle in front of Sybil’s door. He made a sign to the Paladin.

Surprised, the Paladin distanced himself from the others and followed him into the library. When they were alone, the All Powerful put his hand on Falada’s shoulder.

“My boy, I would like to ask something of you. You are fond of my daughter, aren’t you ?”

Falada’s expression left him in no doubt of the answer.

“Then watch over her, I beg you. She will accept nothing from me.”

“I will take care of Crystal,” promised the Paladin. “Don’t worry.”

Miranda gazed at the street from her bedroom. She was sitting on the wide, low windowsill, her forehead leaning on the tiles. She had put on pajamas and in her arms she hugged a fat stuffed bear that the girls had given her and which Cornelia had christened “Killer Teddy”.

The sorceress was crying. Without a sound, her head against the window. She had been there for hours. Overwhelmed. After the night, Sybil’s death, the visit by the All Powerful, the day had arrived, gray and dirty. And then the night again. Miranda hadn’t noticed the difference.

Someone knocked on the door. The Paladine didn’t move. Perhaps she hadn’t even heard.

The door opened, letting the noise from the rest of the apartment into the room : the girls and Falada moving around, and other things. Helen walked in and sat down near the sorceress on the sill. Miranda didn’t raise her eyes. She didn’t move an inch. The historian moved closer. Her features were drawn, marked.

“It’s finished.
They
put Sybil’s body in a coffin and took it away. She’s going to be repatriated to the island.”

The sorceress hugged her stuffed bear against her body and leaned her chin on him. This “they” had a name : the Cleaners. The Damned who picked up corpses in the service of the All Powerful. Vultures. As a Paladine, Miranda had had to call upon them far too often.

“I would have liked her body to stay with us a little while longer,” she complained, turning to Sybil. “It would have made me feel like she was still here.”

“Absurd, since she’s dead,” Helen said coldly. “And it’s important to start the process of embalming quickly. Corpses end up rotting and decomposing if you keep them long. I hardly dare imagine the horrible smell that would have stunk up the apartment.”

“Do you even have a heart ?” Miranda responded, offended. “She was our friend ; she was one of us.”

The historian stared at the parquet floor for a long time, then, with a gesture that was anything but self-confident, hesitantly, she crossed the gulf that separated her from the sorceress to pat her hand clumsily.

“I know. But if I start feeling sorry for myself, I’m not sure I’ll be able to recover. A Paladine doesn’t cry.”

“So then why come to comfort me ?” inquired Miranda.

Helen threw her a dark look. She was ill at ease ; she hated to express her emotions. And yet she felt empathy for the sorceress, for her pain. Sometimes the young woman’s character reminded her of her mother’s. A generous and profoundly good woman. A true African Mama who had never understood the hardness with which her eldest daughter faced life. In spite of that, Helen’s mother had never held back with her love. The Paladine despised that kind of person, so naïve… so stupid. And yet, strangely, the sorceress’s sadness upset her deeply.

“You’re daft enough that you’re probably capable of committing suicide as well,” she said to Miranda to repress her compassion. “Someone ought to shake you. Life isn’t one big picnic.”

“You go ahead and keep telling yourself that,” the sorceress smiled. “Deep down you love me, I can see it in your eyes. And that’s normal – we both chose the same camp ; we’re with the good guys.”

Helen vaguely shrugged her shoulders, distant, mysterious.

“Apparently. That being said, weren’t you ever tempted by the forces of Evil ? Didn’t you ever want to follow the dark path just so you weren’t part of the clan of victims anymore ?”

Cornelia put her eighteenth glass of bourbon down on the filthy counter of the bar.
And there, she was completely shit-faced, bingo
 ! In front of the All Powerful and the Empress, she had kept to her role as the good little soldier but as soon as they had turned their backs, she had taken off from the apartment, chain-smoking. She had spent most of her day sitting on a bench on the waterfront, and in the end wound up in this goddam dump of a bar. The hookers that were moving around the bar were depressing and the pervs checking them out were enough to make you want to blow your brains out. One idiot had even tried to hit on her.
Pathetic
. She wanted to punch him in the balls until they turned to pulp, but she had restrained herself. Even wasted, she wasn’t the type to wipe out a human being for no reason.
What stupid morals
 !

Cornelia ran her hand through her auburn mane and nearly collapsed on the bar. A charitable hand gripped her forearm, helping her to straighten up. Through the alcohol fumes she raised her head to see who had helped her.
Fifty-fifty, it was the perv
. But her luck had turned. The charitable hand belonged to a young woman, one of the hookers in the bar that the warrior woman must have missed. She was a babe, a goddess, and with a pretty face to boot.

“Re-done. My breasts are fake,” the brunette said with no further introduction. “Don’t fall on them, please ; I’m always afraid they’ll burst. It’s a phobia.”

“Sweetie, fake or not, you got it going on, but see, it’s not the right night,” Cornelia told her dismissively, making an effort to stay polite.

Ignoring the warrior’s rebuff, the prostitute sat down next to her. She had been watching Cornelia from the other side of the bar and without knowing her, without knowing where she came from, she understood that this splendor worthy of a Tarantino heroine represented the opportunity of a lifetime for her. She radiated something special. The prostitute had seen enough people parading through to realize that. She had to talk to this woman,
she had to
.

“I’m the best, you know. At my job, I mean. All the customers in this rotten nightclub want to screw me. In the figurative sense as well as literally. I know it’s lousy. It’s just a livelihood ; I don’t want to be a waitress or anything like that. What I mean is… I’m only a hooker and you’re a goddess. But I have to try because for the last hour I’ve been drooling watching you. All the lesbians on the planet must want you, you’re so beautiful, but I’m not here just for your body. I look at you, and I tell myself that I can’t let the incarnation of all my fantasies get away. You are my dream. Straight out of a movie. You’re my Dracula.”

“I look like a vampire ?” Cornelia joked, distracted from the nausea that had been twisting her guts since Sybil’s death.

“You look superhuman. A biker going a hundred miles an hour, who drives by, leaving broken hearts in her wake. Bonnie and Clyde wrapped up in one person. I
look at you and I imagine making love to you in the back of your convertible, on a highway in the middle of the American desert after looting a bank.”

Not bad
, Cornelia admitted to herself.
This hooker sees damn clearly. In fact, she really hit the nail on the head
. Rather rare for a human – usually they didn’t see much. But without even knowing the Damned existed, the prostitute had sensed that she was not completely normal. This girl was worth getting to know better.

“I have a motorcycle, not a convertible, and I don’t need to loot a bank to buy you a drink. What’s your name ?”

“Louise. Lou to my friends. For the customers, I make up another name. And I don’t want a drink ; I want to make love to you.”

The Paladin had lit all the candles, the glow of flames softening the furnishings in his luxurious bachelor bedroom. The beige drapes were drawn, and on the ultramodern surround sound stereo system, a romantic old song played in a loop. The smell of sex permeated the room.

Naked in his king-sized bed with the covers pulled back, Falada was making love to the woman he adored. The light played on the muscles on his back, on the silkiness of his tousled black hair, on his olive skin.

The Paladin, stretched out over his mistress’s body, slowed his movements. She wrapped her slender shapely legs around his waist so that he could penetrate her more forcefully. Falada slid his hard, perfect penis sensually into his partner’s vagina.

She cried out under him, and with one hand he caressed her face, leaning his head down to cover her with kisses. He loved her. And each time he found pleasure inside her, each time and in all ways, whether he came in his mistress’s mouth or in her more intimate parts, he felt the certainty of his love rise within him.

She reached orgasm, and he ejaculated, plunging his velvety gaze into the hazy eyes of his partner. He collapsed on top of her, savoring this instant of absolute joy, and wrapped his arms around her.

He loved this woman, and all the times that he had felt on the brink of falling for Crystal did not count. Only this marvelous woman, this exceptional woman who was with him, and who was his, really counted. How could he let himself occasionally go so far as to forget her ?

In the overheated room, the harmonies of the music still resonated. Falada pulled himself up on his forearms and contemplated the sublime face of his beloved.

“I love you, Glory,” he whispered in a voice charged with intensity.

The fashion doll ran her long, polished red nails over her lover’s lips. She smiled at him, relaxed.

“Me, too. If you hadn’t made love to me tonight, I think Sybil’s suicide would have made me forget I’m alive. Seeing the All Powerful and the Empress under those circumstances was hard for me. I’m glad they left ; I really needed to relax.”

Falada furtively kissed the Paladine’s hand and rolled over on his back. Side by side, sprawled on the bed, they contemplated the ceiling in silence. Without moving, Glory groped on the nightstand for her package of Vogues. She lit a cigarette. In the dim light, the reddish glow of the tobacco plunged her back into her memories….

Several years ago.

A sky on fire. The sun set over Bangkok in an oven-like blaze. In the helicopter, Glory cast a glance outside before once again burying herself in her files. The other Paladines had arrived several days before her to mark out the terrain. The Order of Hell reigned supreme in Thailand, abducting humans, God only knew why….

Glory shivered. For an instant, she prayed that she would not find herself facing Dimitri in person, then, pulling herself together and swearing at herself, she returned her attention to the landing strip.

She saw the silhouette of the man who had orders to wait for her. Alone on the airstrip, pacing back and forth nonchalantly. A masculine shape imprisoned in an elegant off-white suit.

She screwed up her eyes – this was the new Paladin then ? The famous Falada. The arrogant Don Juan kicking it with the All Powerful. Which was surely how he had risen to become the number one Paladin, Glory mused to herself. People said he was brilliant, however. And appealing. A first-class womanizer who made all the gals fall for him. There were plenty of rumors about Falada. He charmed the chicks, slept with them, let them dream for a night or two, and dumped them.
I’m going to make short work of him
, she thought.

Glory’s red dress blew in the sunset as she descended the last few steps of the helicopter. With a smile full of self-confidence, Falada came toward her.

Love at first sight. Their stare was magnetic and they knew that they had found each other. The passion of that first look. They had not even taken time for dinner. For three days and three nights they had forgotten the cult, their respective positions, the Paladines and the worries that the Order of Hell were causing them. They had made love in a white hotel room in the humid heat of Bangkok.

Glory had fallen in love, Falada had not left her. He loved her, too. In spite of all the Paladine’s adventures, he was the first man to truly love her. The first to break
down the barriers she had erected around herself. The first man who was virile enough to hold his own against the most fatal of the Damned women.

“What are you thinking about, Glow ?”

The Paladin’s voice brought her abruptly back to the present. Thailand faded from her mind. She was in New York, Park Avenue, and Sybil was dead.

“Does it bother you to keep lying about it ? Do you have a problem with us hiding our relationship from everyone ?” she said, alarmed for no apparent reason.

Falada tousled his hair with one hand.

“No. We agreed from the start. With the life we lead, it’s better not to expose our private life. Besides, I’ve gotten used to it, you know. Because of that, I can have the most beautiful woman on the planet and officially keep my status as sexy single guy,” the Paladin said mockingly.

Glory pouted, and curled up against him sulkily.

“If you take advantage of your single status, I’ll emasculate you. And kill you afterwards.”

“You’ve got it all planned out, my darling,” Falada joked.

The doll-like woman raised herself slightly, her heavy breasts grazed across her lover’s chest. She stared into his eyes.

“I’m serious. If you cheat on me, I’ll cut off your – ”

“Whoa, my dangerous tigress,” the Paladin flirted, gripping her by the waist to lay her flat against himself. “You bite, huh ? At least, I want to bite, my goddess,” he amended amorously, holding her firmly and nibbling on her neck.

She struggled, laughing.

“Stop ! Stop, Falada, I’m not kidding. Stop, you’re tickling me !”

“Then stop a little yourself. Why would I cheat on you ? Where did you get such an idea ?”

Glory pursed her lips.

“I don’t know. Maybe from Cornelia. She doesn’t know that we’re together, so she talks to me a lot about you and your flirting lately.”

“What flirting ?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Cornelia is always grumbling because Crystal wears her out talking about you. Crystal is crazy about you, she says that you’re always charming her, she says you like her, and she tells all this to Cornelia, who then tells it to me….”

Falada whistled between his teeth.

“Quite the drama, it seems to me. What’s really nice when you live in the midst of a group of girls is that you have the eternal feeling of being at nursery school even when death strikes. Sybil committed suicide yesterday and your only problem is keeping up with the day’s gossip !”

“Don’t change the subject,” Glory said coldly, detaching herself from him. “If you do, I’ll end up thinking I’m right to be worried about your supposed crush on Crystal.”