Demon mentor. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

a pity that all the witchcraft remained only in the family chronicles of de Rozier. In life, magic, alas, did not exist. Although if you think about it…

      «Damian,» Blaise called out to him, for the first time using the name that she herself had given him. Well, at least something like that.

      «Would you like another bottle?» A voice from the darkness immediately responded.

      «Do you have a whole cellar here?»

      «Don’t look at how wretched this building is. Inside, in the dark, there is much hidden.»

      She did not expect, of course, that he would now unfold his palm and sparkle on it gems from the dragon treasure hidden in the basements, although given her current financial condition, that would be pretty good. She, the heiress of the family’s immense wealth, was suddenly left penniless. And as soon as she declares the rights to her property, it becomes clear that she survived, and then she will be killed. For sure already. The mysterious friend showed up at the right time. He was a thread of hope in total darkness. Most likely a madman, not a demon. But in his company, the feeling of complete hopelessness suddenly disappeared.

      Maybe she’s going crazy too. Match him. And psychos, they say, are very attracted to each other. So he began to pester her. He felt that she was as crazy as he was. But still…

      «Where did you come from?» Blaise flinched as if she were speaking a forbidden question.

      «Consider that from heaven. Or from hell.» He was as careless as ever.

      Blaise remembered that he had indeed jumped down from somewhere above. Yet the second answer seemed far more truthful.

      «And what do you want from me?» this question she asked, probably for the hundredth time.

      «What do you want yourself?»

      She shrugged her shoulders.

      «Don’t bother yourself with nonsense,» he suddenly said so calmly, as if the whole world around was nonsense.

      «Do you want to light a cigarette?»

      In addition to the battered pack of cigarettes, she noticed in his hands something like an old snuffbox or tinderbox, but stubbornly shook her head.

      «That won’t awaken the dragon inside of you, right?» He grinned guiltily and dismissed both. «Do you feel the strength inside you?»

      «Not?» Blaise remembered a painting that once hung on the wall in her room. A samurai woman, very seductive in a greenish-white kimono, with two swords in her hands: a long one and a short one. Around her was an ornament of frothy cherry blossoms, crumbled over her head. Nice picture. So beautiful that, looking at her, you think more about the charm of the warrior, and not about the danger hidden in the blades of her swords, made for battle.

      To become like her. The woman from that picture. Blaise stared at the empty wall in front of her, as if the image was still hanging there. She really had seen her before her. It was a hallucination, of course, but beautiful. And in her greenish-white tones were filled with bright red.

      Blood! Blaise unfolded her hand. Imagined in it the weight of an ancient sword and the sharpness of the blade. Recently, the blood began to fascinate her. But not so long ago, before the events of that night, when she lost everything, she fainted from one kind of scratch.

      Damian was suddenly there in the dark like a ghost. He seemed to have grown out of the ground near her feet, knelt down in front of her, and their faces were almost level. He did not breathe fire, like a dragon, but his breath, however, like his very appearance seemed somehow unnatural to her. This is probably what a modern demon should look like. There seems to be nothing special about him, but in his presence you feel as if you got inside a fire. It burns you all.

      «There’s a beast inside everyone, you know,» he whispered confidentially, actually just quoting a phrase from some book about psychology and dreams that Blaise had read a long time ago. «It only takes a little human cruelty to awaken this beast.»

      «And then?» she already knew the answer, read it in the same book, but she was curious how Damian would formulate the thought. His answer was unexpected.

      «Then there will be chaos.»

      Internal evil

      The beautiful girl was gone. Neil Jaudet woke up feeling a strange disappointment. That night, even the usual narcotics, which had previously caused pleasant hallucinations, did not help. Blaise disappeared from his visions. Maybe because she was dead.

      This means that his problem is also dead.

      If there are no more heirs from the de Rozier family, then their entire industrial empire goes to business partners. These are the conditions. He will receive the lion’s share. Those who helped him will move away from everything a little bit. From capital, from real estate. Everything except the old family crypt was stipulated in the will. And where this crypt, in fact, no one knew. Perhaps it was long gone. If you believe the family records, then it has existed for centuries. And since then a lot has happened. Wars, revolutions, fires, including several fatal fires, which were listed in de Rozier’s personal chronicles. World history was made every day, its events could have buried the crypt under the rubble of buildings destroyed during the bombing and bygone eras long ago. He has nothing to worry about.

      True, other members of his council felt somewhat differently. But isn’t he the head of the council? This means that the final word will always remain with him.

      Of course, now there was much in common between them. More than ten deaths at once. Blaise’s father, her family, her brother, even a close friend, who happened to be there that night when it was decided to remove the competitors. Preparations for this took a long time, but Rosier turned out to be somehow impenetrable. Don’t do anything against them, but some forces seem to have established some kind of immunity around the members of this family. However, using a knife, this illusion was broken.

      Blaise! She herself was like a knife. He’ve been cutting his thoughts with a knife since he grew up. It is strange that now, at the moment of his triumph, he thought not about having finally removed his sworn enemy, but about his daughter. Blaise! Doesn’t that name mean «blade»? She was the blade. Cold, silent, beautiful. He wanted one of her, like many. Before killing her, he wanted to enjoy her. Just one time. Before a beautiful body becomes a corpse.

      But who would then dare to kill her? So beautiful! At the decisive moment, he thought about this, and oddly enough, instead of using her, he raised a knife to her face. It was only necessary to make a couple of hand movements to make beauty disappear. He would have done it, but something happened that deeply shocked him.

      He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t believe in the supernatural. The book on summoning demons, which the accomplices strongly advised him to hide, remained on the table. Having performed a ritual yesterday and not having summoned anyone except a gust of wind that extinguished the candles, he became convinced that otherworldly forces simply do not exist. And to hell with the family tales that Rosier were sorcerers, like everyone who ever collaborated with them, including his family. Including even those who later took up holy orders, like his friend Alistair. They argued that this did not help them, but only sharpened their perception of otherworldly evil even more. Aloud he did not say anything to them about this, but mentally laughed at them. Personally, he himself considered both religion and divination to be nonsense. Yesterday’s experience helped him to be convinced of this to the end. The demon did not respond. The very demon he summoned to forget about Blaise. It was better to spend on a good dose of narcotic powder than on candles for the ritual.

      After that, however, he had a very strange dream. But aren’t dreams a kind of illusion? In this dream, Blaise was alive and winged like statues from her family’s legendary crypt, and she held a blade in her hand. She sat in the pose of a marble angel on his grave, embittered and beautiful. Bloody tears flowed from her eyes, and her eyes glittered with such hatred. Nemesis, not Blaise.

      His