Crystal and the Damned - Possession (9 page)

The man was running. He sped along the path in Central Park as fast as his blood-red tunic would allow. If
those
women caught him, he was dead. A single follower of the Dark Clan was useless against two Paladines.

The sole of the man’s shoe slipped in a puddle of water on the path and he felt the macchiato-skinned warrior dangerously close to him. Hesitating no longer, he bounded over the bushes and turned.

Behind thick vegetation, almost insubstantial in the depths of the night, Cornelia stopped. She growled like a wild animal, waiting for Helen.

With horror, the man from the Dark Clan saw the black Paladine join the macchiato-colored one. He hadn’t outdistanced either of them.

Without consulting each other, they leaped over a stand of trees, landing on the other side in perfect synchronization.
Like cats.

The man stumbled back three paces. Her gaze afire with lethal heat, Cornelia pulled her daggers out of her boots and Helen stretched out her palm to cast a spell. In the hope of gaining some time, the Clan warrior spat on the earth. Hitting the
ground, his saliva produced a slight explosion followed by a wall of flames. While the smoke rose up between him and the Paladines, he fled toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The macchiato-colored woman sprang over the fire and the Black one followed her.
Supernatural
. They continued their pursuit through the empty park.

They were right on the man’s heels. He felt the air beating at his temples, the sweat streaming down his skin. He ran past the back of the Museum. The night was cold, and the asphalt shook with the noise of their steps. He had two killers chasing him and he knew that every instant, every movement counted if he wanted to live. A few yards from one of the walls of the venerable old museum, the Clan warrior suddenly veered off to the right to return to Fifth Avenue. Then he saw
her
and he knew that it was over.

Under one of the trees stood the most formidable of the Paladines. In the shade, her blond hair shone with a white brilliance.

For just a second before he fell, the man thought how odd it was that Glory strangely resembled the new head of the Dark Clan.

Dollface snapped her fingers and the warrior was drawn toward her by an invisible string. The point of his shoes grazed the ground with a ridiculous hissing sound.

When he was just a few inches away, Glory slit his throat with the tip of her fingernails, not a single feature on her perfect face moving. He died at her feet.

Cornelia calmly put away her daggers as she neared the corpse. Helen followed, significantly more out of breath.

“Too easy. I was as bored as a dead rat,” Cornelia shouted while Glory took the ring that the Clan warrior wore on his little finger.

“Speak for yourself,” the historian said, “I wasn’t hired to run all over the place.”

Dollface stood up and turned the ring in her fingers.

“A moment of silence, please. This evening we penetrate the headquarters of the Dark Clan.”

Helen and Cornelia had protested, but Glory had her reasons. Personal reasons that she was not ready to reveal.
I have to know
, she had repeated to herself, leading her two friends at a jog toward a subway station a few streets away. The three Paladines had forced open the doors of an apartment building and used the ring to open the door to the apartment on the ground floor. Just as Glory had guessed, the jewel was a passkey enabling them to access one of the hideouts of
the Dark Clan. It was not really an apartment, but rather a shabby room. Three men from the Clan stood guard. Cornelia killed them as she walked in.

Now the Paladines were alone in the dilapidated apartment and they were going round and round in a circle. Cornelia sat down at the table where the three men had started a hand of cards they were never going to finish. She reached for an open package of chips, dug around in it and ate noisily.

“So tell me, Glow… just saying here, but this really doesn’t seem like a headquarters.”

“This room is a relay office,” she answered. “It enables the followers of the Clan to get to their primary hiding place. I’m sure of that much and yet I don’t understand, I don’t know…,” Glory thought aloud, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. “The armoire !” she exclaimed suddenly. “Helen, open that wardrobe !”

Grousing, the historian went to the antique piece of furniture and put her hand on it. The armoire door resisted. The Paladine had to concentrate more and recite a few magic spells.

The door eventually gave way and opened onto a narrow staircase. Dollface gloated.

“I knew it ! The wardrobe gives access to one of the secret meeting places of the Dark Clan.”

“I’m going to let Falada and Miranda know,” Cornelia said, pulling her little magic mirror out of her pocket. “A magic mirror : less expensive than a cell phone, plus you can see who you’re chatting with without paying for Internet access.”

Glory covered the surface of the glass with her hand.

“No. There’s no point in keeping them in the loop. I’d rather do this....”

She interrupted herself, and blanched terribly. A white feather lay on the threshold of the staircase.

“Glow… what’s the matter with you ?” Cornelia probed, putting a friendly hand on Glory’s shoulder.

“It’s a dove feather,” the blond Paladine croaked in a reedy voice. A voice her friends did not recognize coming from her. Then, making an effort to control herself :

“We’re going. I don’t want any questions. We have to enter the Clan’s headquarters. It’s necessary. That’s an order.”

Without daring to demand explanations, the historian and the warrior woman started down the pitch-black staircase after her. It appeared endless. A subterranean passage to the end of the world. Glory had taken a crystal ball out of her pocket, which lit up at her touch, projecting a dim light all around the Paladines. Cornelia ran one of her fingers along the walls. She pulled it back immediately and dried it on her pants without thinking about it.

“Yuck ! The walls are covered with blood. Oh crap… and now I’ve gotten Crystal’s pants dirty. Oh well, I’ll tell her it was Miranda with the ketchup.”

Behind her, Helen fidgeted.

“They aren’t the same size, you with the underdeveloped neurons, and where are we going, anyway ?”

“Into one of the unexplored parts of the old subways of New York,” Dollface informed her without batting an eye, before adding for Cornelia’s benefit, “Don’t worry about the blood. You can tell Crystal it was me. We aren’t talking anymore.”

The warrior was on the verge of replying, but Glory stopped her, putting an authoritarian hand to her lips. The crystal ball went out and the Paladines realized that they had arrived at a crossroads. A weak light came from the underground passage on the right. In the corner they heard voices ; a great many voices. The clamor increased as the Paladines moved forward. They found themselves at the entrance to an enormous underground gallery. Before their eyes, twenty of the Dark Clan’s warriors were gathered, seated haphazardly.
Guards protecting one of the entrances to their headquarters.

“There are a lot of them and they’re probably all ignorant and barbaric,” Helen warned them.

“This is going to be a bloodbath,” Corn agreed.

The historian looked at her as if she had gone crazy. But Glory, resolute, advanced into the gallery. Suddenly, there was absolute silence. The warriors of the Dark Clan had all turned toward the Paladine as one. Cornelia followed her lead without hesitation. Irritated by their imprudence, Helen, in spite of herself, started muttering incantations to reduce the power of the warriors.

“By the power of the Ancient Gods, may the enemy fall back, may he writhe, may he moan, the power is immortal and….”

Cornelia and Dollface plunged into battle. For a moment, they seemed engulfed by the crowd of twenty men. Then a space formed around them. The macchiato-colored warrior, who was bleeding, had just sliced off a head while Glory kept the other warriors at a distance to allow her warrior friend to eliminate them one by one.

The fight was raging when two of the Clan men noticed Helen. They left the herd and swept down on her. The historian Paladine, incapable of defending herself with her bare hands, cried out, covering the sounds of the battle.

“Glory !”

Glory turned, herself grappling with four adversaries. She took in her friend’s danger, pushed away her enemies and rushed to her aid. She brought down Helen’s first assailant by breaking his neck and spun around to target the second one when....

A sudden, violent pain pierced her stomach.

Her turquoise eyes widened and became bloodshot. She opened her mouth like a fish out of water trying to breathe.

The blade of a short sword had just pierced right through her and the point was sticking out of her stomach.

Behind her, she heard Cornelia running and shouting something. She saw Helen’s terrified face looking at her. Then the outlines blurred, the noise sounded far away. Glory staggered and felt herself sink into unconsciousness.

Crystal hadn’t been able to fall asleep. Even though she was sulking about Glory, she hated knowing she wasn’t home, especially when Cornelia was also out. The Paladines had talked about a mission ; the young woman didn’t really know anything further about it. After all, it was their job – they often went out at night. But lately Crystal had been sleeping badly. Not just lately, actually. She had continued her lessons in combat and magic and the Paladines were making her work harder and harder. It wasn’t the bruises, the muscle cramps, the shoulders dislocated and reset three times, the ribs and the broken knee that Miranda had managed to patch up only thanks to her healing powers ; it was the magic. The state
of tension the magic lessons created in her kept her awake for entire nights. The more she progressed – and her progress was considerable, even frightening, although she was far from achieving the level of the Paladines – the more she was a bundle of nerves. Not to mention the bloody noses and the migraines that were awful enough to make her want to bash her head against the wall.

At around two in the morning, Crystal had ended up getting out of bed and, still wearing her babydoll nightgown, going into the living room for a drink. She was sitting pensively on the couch when Falada came in.

“You’re not sleeping,” he observed. “Neither am I. I’m supposed to be watching you this evening. That’s what happens whenever the girls leave.”

She did not deign to answer. Since he had dumped her on the Island of the All Powerful to follow Glory, she had refused to talk to him. It had been a week since she had run away, and she still had not addressed a single word to the Paladin. What’s more, she had obstinately refused to say where she had fled to. She wanted to keep at least some freedom. And of course she did not want to broach the subject of “Dimitri.” She had spent only the one evening with him at Juliana’s, but the memory of their conversation, the memory of the man had branded her as if with a hot iron.

In the living room Falada paced back and forth. He was so good-looking. So much himself. He stopped in front of the stereo system and smiled gently at Crystal.

“Are you upset with me, little flower ?”

She quivered at the use of the pet name. God, she loved this guy enough to hang for him. To damn herself for him. Moreover she had done it – become Damned – for love of him. To be in his world, to be near him.

“Why did you leave ? Things were going so well down by the water.”

“Duty,” the Paladin exonerated himself. “Not to mention, if I had stayed with you on that beach, I’m sure I would have ended up....”

“Lost,” Crystal finished his sentence. “Lost like I lost myself for you. But the difference between us is that I’m not afraid.”

Floundering, Falada reached out a hand toward her.

“Just one dance,” he conceded, turning on the music.

Slowly, her eyes shining, she stood up, already enveloped in the sweetness of the slow song he had put on.

As if in a dream, she moved toward him and clumsily slid her hand into his. Cautiously, he put his arm around her slender waist, drawing her toward him.

As if we were making love, since that’s impossible for the two of us
, the Paladin mused, letting Crystal mold his body to her delicate curves. Letting Crystal marry a
part of his soul. Glory still existed, but she was far away. He had the right to dance with the young woman, since there would never be physical love.

Still, she rested her cheek against his and he let her. He kept it there.

They revolved slowly around the living room, glued to each other. Crystal felt as though an endless summer stretched before her closed eyes. And she trembled with absolute happiness ; the happiness of an idyll bathed in the colors of the rising sun.

Her head buried in Falada’s neck, she let her tears flow, and when she raised her face toward him, she believed she saw the same tears of emotion shining in her Paladin’s eyes.

Each night in her dreams Crystal saw him, and now finally she was feeling him. He was no longer far away, he was no longer somewhere else. Falada was there.

Little by little, following the same path as their gaze, their lips drew nearer to each other.
I will always love you
, she thought at the moment when their mouths touched.

She leaned her head back to receive their first kiss. Their first true kiss. One second. For one second the universe was perfect.
The warmth of their lips pressed together
. She opened up to him, parting her lips to let him in, and their tongues brushed against each other. They were on the point of coming together even more closely when....

The front door of the apartment banged open.

Surprised, the Paladin and the young woman separated from each other. They exchanged a look and Crystal saw a flash of guilt in the eyes of the man she loved.

Falada abruptly removed his hands from her. Disappointed, she turned away without a word and made her way into the hall to see what the girls were up to.
Why were they still in the entryway and not coming into the apartment ? Their unexpected return had already ruined everything, in any case !

Entering the hall, Crystal gave a cry of terror.

Helen and Cornelia, covered with blood, were supporting a half-unconscious Glory. An ugly-looking wound gaped in her stomach.

Falada, who had followed the young woman, shoved her out of the way and ran to Glory. The girls released her and he gathered her up in his arms.

“Take her into her room ; we have to wake up Miranda. Right away !” Cornelia yelled.

Petrified, Crystal saw her Paladin carry Glory away. He was acting like a man in love. Shaking off her shock, the young woman crossed the apartment. She woke up the sorceress, who was deeply asleep with Killer Teddy, her teddy bear, in her arms.

“Quickly, Miranda !”

The Paladine woke up completely and when she understood what was happening, jumped out of bed. She pulled Crystal to Glory’s room.

Falada had laid her down. He was holding her hand and caressing her hair.

The dollfaced blonde seemed more dead than alive. Her body shook with slight spasms and she seemed unable to see. She was murmuring incomprehensibly in a foreign language.

Miranda burst in and pushed past Cornelia and Helen, who were huddled in front of the bed. She thrust the Paladin aside, sat down next to the wounded woman and put her hand on her forehead, which was covered with feverish sweat. The little sorceress ordered :

“Everyone out !”

The girls obeyed but Crystal moved closer to Falada. He remained standing there, his face as white as that of a corpse. Torn between jealousy and anguish, she took him by the shoulders and drew him gently out of the room.

“Come. Let Miranda work.”

Passive, the Paladin let himself be led into the hall. Crystal closed the door behind them, and clumsily clutched his sleeve to keep a mental link with him. But he didn’t even see her. Jealousy assailed her once again, immediately followed by a wave of disgust for her own thoughts. How could she be envious of the affection that Falada had for Glory when she seemed at the gates of death ? Only Glow was important. Only the fact that she was alive.... At that last thought, Crystal felt her
throat contract as tears came to her eyes.
Glory can’t die. Not her. Anything you want, but not her. Please, not her.

At the young woman’s side, Cornelia, engulfed by vertigo, leaned against the wall. Helen, overcome by an irrepressible need to talk, said in a monologue :

“We don’t know where Glory got her information, but she pinpointed the headquarters of the Dark Clan. They’re hiding in the old subway tunnels. We came upon twenty men. I’m not a warrior... I couldn’t defend myself, I... Glory came to save me and then, she....”

“She caught a bitch of a sword through her torso,” the warrior said briefly. “We got her out of that shithole as fast as we could and brought her here. If we weren’t fast enough, if Miranda can’t heal her, I think....” Unable to continue, Cornelia lowered her head.

They fell back into silence and waited in the hall in front of their friend and guide’s room.

Several hours trickled by before Miranda emerged from the room, looking totally exhausted. After having closed the door again, she saw them : Crystal, Falada, Cornelia and Helen. They were all there, their faces closed and anguished. The little redhead felt her heart contract before this silent union. She smiled at them before saying in a low voice, “Glory is out of danger.”

The following night, Crystal strolled through Battery Park, near the water. Even though Miranda had succeeded in saving Glory, she was still very weak. She would have to stay in bed for at least a week.

The sorceress had forbidden the entire band from entering her room with the savagery of a tiger. Which had disconcerted Crystal quite a bit : gentle Miranda was apparently not as gentle as all that.
She’s in a really vile mood, alright...
, Cornelia had said, not mincing her words. The young woman could not blame the sorceress. She was spending night and day at Glory’s bedside, murmuring spells and laying her hands on Dollface’s wound.

Needless to say, she was not sleeping.

Crystal sighed, seeing a bum dozing on a park bench.

Unlike Miranda, who wasn’t sleeping, Cornelia and Helen had spent the last few hours nearly comatose in their beds. And Falada remained prostrate on the sofa in the white living room gulping down Cognac ; no one could get a word out of him.

Crystal continued to wander aimlessly through the park. Now that she was sure that Glory would be all right, all her day-to-day problems had come back to haunt her. Falada’s illogical and unbearable attitude toward her was at the top of the list, of course. But there was something else, too.

She had been depressed since she returned from running away. Her life just seemed dreary to her.
How about if I tried Prozac ? Ten to one it doesn’t work worth a damn on a Damned One.

“Great,” she groaned out aloud, “I’m starting to make jokes to myself and they aren’t even funny, that’s really bad....”

“Even worse than you think !”

Crystal blinked her eyes and turned around. Behind her stood six Damned Ones masked and veiled in red. The Dark Clan. One of the Damned moved toward her, brandishing a tapered dagger.

“It’s time for some payback. You are going to die !” he declaimed.

She shrugged her shoulders, mockingly. A little action wouldn’t hurt. She moved into combat position to defend herself against the Clan warriors. The first threw himself at her and she was preparing to pull the new secret weapon that Cornelia had just taught her on him when all of a sudden, Prince Dimitri sprang out of nowhere and stepped between Crystal and her enemies.

He didn’t even have time to burn them alive ; the warriors took off running without looking back. Dimitri turned toward her.

“Did you see that ? I don’t even get to incinerate them anymore ; the pussy brigade splits first. Well, you might say I got here just in time.”

“That’s great, Batman. But I didn’t need your help. And besides that, I don’t need you !” Crystal sent him packing, heading in the opposite direction. Without really knowing why, she had a sudden crazy urge to leap at his throat. At that moment the hatred returned to her.

Confronted with so much anger, the Prince remained frozen in place ; then, internally cursing the moodiness of women, he caught up with her.

“But kitten....”

“No,” she said, annoyed. “I’m fed up with you and our little encounters. Since you aren’t going to kill me, leave me alone,” Crystal roared, passing away into the night.

Dimitri followed her slender silhouette with his eyes, perplexed. When she had vanished into the darkness, he felt frustration growing within him. This little creature was starting to drive him crazy. The little girl with barrettes in her golden hair, her little pouts
.... I ought to kill her. No… no. What I need to do is fuck her to get rid of this screwed up desire for her once and for all !