Demon mentor. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

me something,» he repeated his strange proposal. «As you wish!»

      One could joke and call him something, so that he was offended and, finally, began to behave normally. But what if he’s really crazy? Then it’s best not to tease him. And who knows what he is capable of. After all, the pursuer who almost attacked her, he easily killed. Only because this person wandered into the territory that he considered his own. Or is it something else? Blaise wondered if she had entered his territory too. More precisely, to the places that this abnormal called his own. But he didn’t kill her.

      He was still walking in circles around her, grinning as if he had found a rare treasure in the rubbish heap. So evil spirits wander next to the circle of light, inside which something priceless is hidden, but you cannot enter it. Otherwise you will burn your own skin.

      There really was something of a demon in him. Probably, she thought so because all insane automatons are considered the property of the devil. Their mind is already in his claws, and the body lives like a puppet, obeying the will of impure forces. For a moment, Blaise was even scared of her new so-called friend.

      But he had proposed to her. Something had to be answered. Familiar names swirled in her head, a whole list: John, Luke, Brad, Billy, Peter, Will, or maybe Jake. All of her old friends bore those names, but none of them suited him.

      Thinking, she just shrugged.

      «Do not know how…»

      «Well, I will find a compromise,» he looked at the corpse, which was already being devoured by rats not far away.

      «Damian,» he said suddenly, and the name sounded somehow more natural than anything she could think of herself.

      «Is that your name?» she was even delighted. It looked like the truth. It is better to start communication with it than with lies or inventions.

      «No,» he said seriously, and nodded slightly back at the corpse. «That was the name of the one I just killed. Given the circumstances, I may well take his name for myself. He doesn’t need it anymore.»

      «His soul has already flown away,» he slightly ran his fingers over Blaise’s bare shoulder under the torn jacket, and she shuddered all over. What a cold hand. He seemed to come out of the crypt. Although she knew for sure that he was not from there. It does not at all look like the creatures that, according to legend, should live there. And for a vagabond who is ready to spend the night on the graves, he is also too cocky.

      «What do you want?»

      «Help you,» such a simple answer, so why did it smell of treachery.

      «I do not need help.»

      «Need! You’re just embarrassed to ask for it. Therefore, I offer it as an offering to Your Highness.»

      «This is all too much of a joke,» she said aloud what she thought. Although she usually did not. But he didn’t laugh.

      «I like to joke with people, but not with you. You are too much like a creature that all the inhabitants of the night must obey. Plus, when it comes to fighting, things get serious. And you have such a power asleep!»

      «Only you can see it.»

      «But I can make others see.»

      Looking at her thin graceful fingers, clenched into fists, she could only laugh at him.

      «You’d better tell me, what is this creature that all the vagabonds in the night obey?»

      «All spirits,» he corrected.

      «Well, okay, spirits,» it’s better not to argue with a madman, Blaise decided judiciously.

      «The one who led them into battle before the first defeat. Our master. Dawn Angel. And the devil is simpler.»

      «Devil,» Blaise smirked dreamily. «If I were him.»

      Then she would take revenge on everyone. Who is stronger than the devil? Who is worse than him? It would not be worth the trouble for him to show strength and invention in order to make revenge cruel and sophisticated.

      «Angel of Dawn.» His whisper burned her ear, his hand slipping through her hair.

      «Fairy tales! All of these are fairy tales.» Blaise pulled away from her fingers, fingering her curls.

      «But your desire for revenge is not a fairy tale. It is so strong that it summoned me. And I just don’t come. I noticed your despair, your dream. We can say that you woke me up. Your desires are so strong.»

      «I want the blood of my enemies, but only in the moral sense of the word.»

      «And I’ll show you how to do it literally.»

      He held out his hand to her, on which a thorn gleamed.

      «But for this I will demand your soul. An agreement is an agreement.»

      She looked into his sea-colored eyes, at the stubble on his skin, like the thorns of roses, then at the strong fingers, squeezing the thorn so that she could not see. Blaise thought for a moment. And she sealed the contract with a handshake.

      «That’s all done,» Damian chuckled so that she was scared.

      She sighed quickly. A beautiful golden-haired girl in the dark, so slender and fragile that she can be mistaken for an illusion and what she does interestingly in a place like this, where it is full of not only insolent rats that scampered almost on her feet, but also of all stripes of criminal types, already out at night to fish. Yes, nothing special, just going to die, because there is no point in living further. Although… even after what happened, there could still be one target. But how can you accomplish it with what you have? Blaise brought her hand up to the far-off light erupting from the boiler room grates, and tightly clenched her elf-like fingers into a fist. Too fragile to take revenge, she concluded, looking down dejectedly so that the only observer could not see the annoyance of defeat in her transparent blue eyes.

      Too fragile to give all her enemies what they deserve, even with the help of the demon, once more, like a sentence, she repeated to herself, too fragile to take revenge.

      But he thought otherwise.

      Dragon inside

      The house was old and abandoned. There was nowhere even to camp. There is almost no furniture left. The empty rooms stretched into the distance in some strange labyrinth, as if going underground.

      Blaise sat down on the edge of something that looked like a chest. Damian took a short break, leaving her to survey the gloomy space. He returned with a bottle of excellent wine. Where did you get it? Stole, perhaps. Blaise has never drank before. She used to feel sick from the very smell of alcohol. But now even he turned out to be not as bitter as the sediment left by life. And she kissed the bottle.

      «This is how friends become enemies, and enemies, on the contrary, become allies?» he looked out the window, as if looking back at the past. Her past. He didn’t seem to have his own. Unless he left him in hell. From where it seems and came. If you believe his words. To the words of a madman.

      «You mean the enemies of the whole human race? Demons? Because I won’t make peace with people.»

      «As, however, they are with you,» he aptly faked.

      «I know.» Her own neck suddenly seemed very vulnerable to her, as if it were about to be cut with a blade. «I hate them! Everyone!»

      It was worth a drink for it, and she took a long gulp.

      «How old are you? Seventeen?»

      «What’s the difference?» she felt one hundred percent. Or rather, she felt dead. After the experience, she simply was gone. The shell remained, but it did not have the same feelings. The cheerful young girl no longer existed. In this world, only a beautiful fragile body continued to exist, as empty inside as the statues from the crypt.

      Blaise took another sip. The alcohol burned like poison. Like dragon fire.