Читать книгу Demon mentor. Crypt of the Seven Angels - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 13

She dreamed of evil.

This is not the first time. Everything was repeated almost as in life. Only in dreams did evil become overwhelming. The events that recently took place in reality were supplemented with details, as if drawn by the hand of an unearthly creator. Nothing so incredible could actually happen. But the dreams lived on their own.

In her dreams, she returned to the events of the night when she was deprived of everything. She now had seven patrons and seven enemies. The even numerical ratio was slightly striking.

Only in reality there were only enemies left. And there really were seven of them, not counting those who are in any way connected with them. But there were no patrons. Only something symbolic remained of them – the statues in the crypt. But there were no statues inside the dreams. The angels were alive, hiding in nothingness and persistently inciting her to something. They were present somewhere nearby. You could feel them, hear them, even catch a glimpse of them, but they remained elusive, as if they had nothing to do with her in a dream. In a dream, they were like air, and you know that it is all around you, but you cannot catch it with your hands.

Dreams lined up in an amazing world, like a pyramid. His staircase went up somewhere. And Blaise could almost feel her steps.

Well, one step, one more, almost all the steps of the narrow stone staircase are already behind. Even turning back was scary, but she was not afraid to look down even from a dizzying height. Probably, this was passed on to her from her ancestors – the feeling that the wings of an angel are about to grow behind her back and, as a result, she is absolutely fearless. Well, okay, even if all family legends are a legend, and still she sometimes felt absolute power over the motionless frozen world lying below, all buildings and people will remain forever there chained to the ground, and she seems to be able to take off. Blaise threw her head back and burst out laughing so that her sonorous, hysterical laugh echoed from the stone walls in frightening echoes. If anyone wins the bet, it will be her. After all, there was some kind of bet? What exactly, in a dream she did not remember.

Even before the banquet begins down there in the great hall, she will already be upstairs, in that bastion where you cannot climb, because soon it may collapse. So they said… for many years, and he still stood, dangerously tilted, but so unshakable in his unattainable height. Clock Tower of Angels, Blaise read the name from the battered pages of family chronicles and now called the tower just that. It seemed to her that the title had a meaning. Who if not winged creatures were able to build a building that would surpass even the modern skyscrapers located nearby in the dark ages long ago? And also this tower, as if no one except the rare chosen ones noticed, so they were in no hurry to demolish it, at least Blaise wanted to think so. She wanted to believe in magic in a world in which no one else believes in it. It might not be true that if the tower collapsed, winged creatures would pick her up and pull her out, but she wanted to believe it. And she believed with all her heart.

So self-confident! Yes, she was just that. Why can’t she clench her thin fists and break through even a monolithic wall with them? Isn’t she from the Rosier family? Better yet, consider that she is not one of people, but of angels. In any case, her appearance seemed to confirm it. With such a beauty as hers, it is difficult not to fall ill with megalomania. Botticelli’s paintings faded in front of her truly angelic appearance, living people could not take their eyes off her. And besides, she is also a rich heiress. Rosier’s heirs. Well, does she have little reason to be proud and consider herself invulnerable.

Beauty and innumerable capital, slightly darkened by the shadow of age-old secrets, gold and curse, all this was so inspiring.

But now she was going to prove her courage, climb the tower, signal to the friends who remained below from the very height and return back even before the banquet began. They are already preparing snacks, champagne and some special golden-red wine, the secret of which is known only to Rosier. Today her father is going to tell her and her brother something special, but Blaise did not know for sure whether he would do it right at the banquet or whether there really were those dark secrets in their family that could not be told to anyone except the heirs. Well, in any case, today is the right day, the day of her seventeenth birthday. Her birthday and her beloved brother. And it took it into her head to throw out such tricks on this very day. But when she was offered a bet, she could not resist. She simply had to prove that she was bolder than everyone, bolder than her brother, braver than her father, bolder than those mysterious and clearly hostile people whom her father invited for some reason to this holiday, although she had never seen them before among his acquaintances or partners in business, nor among its competitors.

Competitors, Blaise scoffed at her, barely remembering that word. She herself was out of competition. When she inherits her share in family affairs, she will have no rivals. She just won’t let them show up. In addition, she is absolutely sure that no one living on earth can compete with her, just as she is sure that only she alone had the recklessness to climb a crumbling tower. Today, here in the height among the ancient stone walls and stairs there is only one, and also the proximity of the collapse and the memory of the past. Not a single living creature can be here.

Perhaps she should have turned back when she heard voices.

However, Blaise did not turn. On the contrary, it rushed upward with such speed that it stumbled over a step and almost flew downward. She was able to hold on and restore balance. And death was so close, as if someone whispered in her ear, but there was certainly no one behind her, only somewhere above, around the turn of the stairs, other people’s voices sounded more and more insistently. Is it possible that someone other than her dared to climb up here.

The answer was obvious, and yet worth checking. According to rumors, a ghost can also be found in the tower. The voices were indeed muffled, conspiratorial and mysterious. She stepped higher and stopped abruptly. Now she could hear well, and she was alarmed by the words spoken somewhere above.

She lingered in the flight of the stairs, it seems, she knew who was speaking, although she did not see their faces.

«Beautiful as elves, they have no place on earth,» said a vaguely familiar voice, as if it had escaped from her childhood dream.

«But to let down the most reliable partners…» objected another, not too confidently.

«And to become twice, no, hundreds of times richer than we are,» finished the thought of the first, it seems, the most advantageous turn, at least convincing. «Kindness is not a business concept, sympathy, too, but even if it were, then it would be wiser to show it to people, I mean, to normal people, and these are all their damned clan… Yes, you just have to look at them, that’s all immediately becomes clear. Such filth is cleaned from the ground. As in a fairy tale, all the gold should be combed out of the elf’s hair and destroyed. Today is the right day. Just.»

She stayed where she was, but instinctively she wanted to step back. Dimly, as if through a haze of sleep, snatches of phrases could still be heard to her: «all orders have already been given,» «soon down there …", «no one would have suspected us,» and finally, the ticking of the clock with a quiet sigh is time.

Blaise scrambled and ran before she could fully understand what had happened. For so long and with difficulty, she climbed up, and now, without fear of stumbling, she rushed back down. It’s easy to break your neck, but it didn’t bother her now. If she got it right, her neck would be broken in one way or another today. And not only her.

Beautiful, like elves… this phrase defined everything, only one people were called that. And she was from their family. Evening. Banquet. Her birthday. The day of his birth, her brother, who is even more beautiful than an elf. Their father’s proposal. She rushed headlong along the narrow high steps, but never stumbled. Maybe fear helps to mobilize all strength and dexterity. One fear overshadows the eyes of another. Now she was afraid not to fall down and get hurt, or perhaps to survive and understand that no one else had survived except her.

And so it happened. If she had known earlier. But she found out only now, and a few hours after the incident, she no longer wanted to remember it. She didn’t want to remember anything at all. But memory, as if painfully shrank around the same events. Here is the banquet hall, here is the entrance, the open doors, in front of which she stops indecisively and realizes that the worst has already happened.

Blood, confusion, broken objects, dead bodies, evidence of violence and devastation.

She came too late. She was no longer expected. Probably, the intruders thought that one of their allies had twisted her thin neck on the way here, and therefore she did not appear. However, her arrival was a pleasant surprise for them. Someone grabbed her. She remembered the pain, the breath of fire, and her hope that the statues would help her. She saw the statues of angels in front of her. But they remained motionless. They could do anything with her: beat, kill, rape, and the statues would not even interfere. No otherworldly force intervened until Neil Jaudet brought the knife right to her face. He could hold this very knife over her throat, and the statues would remain motionless. But the fact that he wanted to disfigure her had an unexpected effect on them. One of the statue fell, crushing everyone who was nearby with its weight and fragments, except for the escaped Blaise. At the same time, an all-destructive fire broke out. For some reason they were afraid for her face.