She struck out at the Empress’s throat. But the other woman’s raised hand stopped her as surely as steel. Never such speed, never such strength.... Crystal’s lips quivered. Her stepmother answered her with a venomous smile. She slapped her, not even bothering to put her full strength into the blow, and yet bloody furrows appeared on the young woman’s cheek. She scratched me ; this sick woman scratched me....
“My fingernails are poisoned,” whispered the Empress, making her fingers dance under Crystal’s nose. “You will soon be paralyzed. Have fun, we’ve only just started.”
The young woman shook her head in horror and took a step to the side. She fled at a run. Her stepmother let her go. A greenish glow shone in her eyes. Slowly, with perfect control, she followed her. The hem of her dress brushed the floor with a rustle, and her red fingernails danced in the void, a premonition of death.
Crystal launched herself through the house blindly. She hurtled down the stairs to the second landing. At the top, the Empress leaned over the rail and murmured a spell. An invisible wall kept her from going any farther down. She raised her head and was met by a jet of energy. Barely missing her, it made the floor explode. The detonation deafened Crystal. Three steps collapsed and the carpet ignited. Without waiting, she retraced her steps in the main hall of the second story. Her stepmother’s voice burst out like a peal of thunder. Run, little mouse, your hour has come. Her veins swollen, her neck damp with cold sweat, Crystal locked herself into a room at random. Reflexively she turned on the switch. And then screamed and screamed with all her might.
The bodies of children were piled up on the wall-to-wall carpet. Small lifeless bodies. Their bare skins covered in purplish-blue stains in an inhuman obscenity. Their swollen tongues stuck out of their lips. She screamed and screamed and screamed....
Behind the door – tap, tap, tap – a creaking, a rubbing made the wood ring. Tap, tap, tap.
“I’m here, little girl, I’m waiting for you. Open up. I’m going to give you a hug.”
Crystal was suffocating, tears in her eyes. And then : no, she was not going to end like this. No, she would not let little beings be tortured without fighting.
“They won’t be alone,” the Empress promised viciously behind the wood. “You’re going to join them.”
Crystal gritted her teeth. With all the violence she could muster, she threw the door open again, banging it against her stepmother, who tottered but resisted the shock.
“You killed them,” the young woman bellowed.
“No. It was Dimitri. Your lover. My son ! He was the one who did this. That’s who he is,” the Empress rejoiced, throwing Crystal against the opposite wall. “He cleaned house, I told you. He massacred as many people as possible,” her stepmother burst out laughing, catching her by the hair. “But as for the kids, he just did it to increase his personal power.”
Crystal thrashed wildly and managed to free herself. With a blow of her elbow, she broke three of the Empress’s ribs. The latter jumped back and put her hand on her broken flesh.
“Re-form,” she chanted.
There was a snap and her bones reset themselves. But Crystal was already on top of her. For a moment she seemed to be gaining the advantage in this lethal hand-to-hand combat. It took her stepmother a few moments to turn the situation around. She rose in the air, the spells she cast bouncing all over, illuminating the hall like fireworks. Submerged, her prey was no longer able to block her attacks. Suddenly the Empress seized her by the throat, strangling her. Crystal’s arms churned uselessly in the void. Her skin turned purple. She was smothering....
A shadow leaped at the Empress, forcing her to let go and freeing the young woman. Crystal looked above her and saw Henry – Frankenstein, the butler – standing between her and her stepmother.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” the servant with the burned face said. “I will not let you.”
Furious, frenzied, completely overtaken by madness, the Empress stood up.
“Silence, dog. You have no right, you are nothing. You are subject to me !”
“No, Highness, I belong to your son, not to you.”
The Empress showed her teeth.
“Break in half,” she hissed, pitiless.
A line similar to what a fencing epee would have made drew itself across the butler. For a second Crystal believed that the spell had not had any effect. And then Henry was cut in two. His legs separated from his torso. He fell. Crystal suppressed another scream. He didn’t hate her, he had wanted to save her, and he was dead for that. He died for her... or, well... nausea made her stomach clench : no liquid escaped the sliced body of the servant. He was alive. He was alive.... Oh, my God.
Her stepmother stood over him from her full height.
“Oh yes, he cannot die. I was the one who burned him alive, but Dimitri saved him. More or less. This poor Henry is neither dead nor alive. He will perish only if my son is destroyed. Do you still love black magic, little girl ?”
Crystal made a final attempt to fight, but the Empress’s poison was acting now ; a push from her stepmother was enough to pin her to the floor. The butler wanted to speak but the Empress cast a muting spell on him. He could only be a witness to the young woman’s demise. Satisfied with her cruelty, the All Powerful’s wife went back to her step-daughter.
“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.
The story continues...
Follow the adventures of Crystal, Dimitri, Glory, Falada, Cornelia and the others in volume two of Crystal and the Damned.
Crystal and the Damned - Possession Page 19
