Demon mentor. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

He could not share it with anyone else. Because Blaise existed. A girl thirty years younger than him, looking like an angel sculpture from a crypt. And what was so sexy about her? She hasn’t even grown to the end yet. And it will never grow up. He didn’t want to kill her. But she was dead.

      The huge house with many bedrooms, rooms and servants was still completely asleep in the hour before dawn. Even the gardeners in the park below will be a long way off. But someone has already turned on the TV in the next room, opposite his office. Neil got up reluctantly and walked over there. There is no one around. The doors were bolted, but the screen glowed ghostly. The news bulletin was just broadcast. Pretty female reporter talked excitedly about the fire and disfigured bodies. It seems that she has never seen anything like that in her career, as, indeed, did everyone else who arrived at the scene. Neil recognized the facade of the gloomy building, even though it was completely burned. The de Rozier estate was not burned for the first time in the history of their family, but the reporter, of course, did not know about it. She was in a hurry to talk about terrible injuries, about mutilated corpses, and about one young body, on which a huge statue fell, as if embracing it. Angel statue.

      Neil noticed that the caryatids at the entrance were intact. It’s strange. They had to burn. He remembered that they were not there when he left. Maybe it seemed to him?

      The reporter’s annoying voice began to sound like a buzz. She kept talking about the young man’s body, which the doctors cannot free from the embrace of the statue that had fallen on him, because two bodies: a dead human and a half-destroyed marble one seemed to have grown together. She tried to explain this with fire and fire, and much more. It was assumed that some dangerous infection had settled in the building, and now no one would be allowed there. It’s for the best. Neil flinched when the report touched the found female bodies, so mutilated they could not be identified. Someone completely cut off their faces. He wonder who? Who finished that night what he could not? Alistair? Hugh? George? Angelo? Thomas? He went over in his mind had all his friends. Everyone who was now generalized by one secret. But couldn’t find the answer. They all acted in concert with him. How could he overlook something?

      In the field of the cell there were female bodies under the covers, which were taken out of the crumbling house. Neil wondered which of them belonged to Blaise during his lifetime. Perhaps, it is worth finding out to which morgue they will be taken and going there… It is strange who whispered this thought to him. Does he really think so? Is this really what he really wants? Go and kiss her mutilated body with his lips in the last kiss, as Alistair advises the parishioners to kiss the shrines in which he himself does not believe.

      How could he think that? But the thought was already firmly stuck in the brain. Let Blaise forgive him. But did he do it alone? And if he had another chance, he would have pity on her? Of course not.

      Neil was always devoid of any sentimentality. What is done is done. And if he was given a choice, he would repeat everything. No fear, no conscience, no regrets.

      He turned off the TV, not wanting to hear more about the events, and went to his office. It’s time to throw away the candles and hide the book away. However, someone has already done it for him. There were no candles. Bunches of rare herbs for the ceremony too. Only the book remained on the table, still open, but without the page needed for the ritual. It was torn out, leaving only a charred, scorched spine. Who dared?

      Neil was about to call some of the servants, don’t care if you have to wake them up. Let them give a report. Who was here yesterday? But then another strange thing struck him. There was something lying next to the book. He did not immediately recognize this object, although it had previously belonged to him. Just yesterday. But today it was broken. The handle has disappeared somewhere. There was only a broken blade, on its edge the chipped places resembled serifs. Seven. He ran his finger over them and counted again. After all, there were seven of them yesterday, when they were deciding other people’s destinies. In his mind, he repeated the names of his friends. Serif for everyone. What does it mean?

      Destiny? Nonsense. Of course, it was unpleasant for him that this particular knife broke. It was valuable, not only for its value, but also for the fact that it represented the historical heritage of its family. A knife that kills evil spirits. Now a broken knife with a broken blade. The same knife he brought to Blaise’s face yesterday.

      Blaze means blade. The blade that will cut him. But the blade in front of him had already been cut by itself.

      The art of fighting

      Just a stick in her hands. Long and lightweight. The same as his. At first, Blaise thought Damian was joking about her. But his face was serious and in the semi-darkness it seemed somehow unusually focused. They walked in circles in some gloomy room, like an empty hall, and no one dared to strike first.

      «Is it so difficult to fight someone with whom you could make love instead?» as if his eyes were mocking.

      He probably would like something different now. His coldness was only external, behind it could be a fire. But she felt cold in the literal sense of the word. It was as if she had been frozen, and she became like a statue.

      «Stronger hand, but not too strong,» he quietly admonished. «Imagine that the weapon is a part of you, whatever it is.»

      «I can’t,» she meant that she couldn’t do what she personally thought was absurd, but he understood her in his own way.

      «You can do anything, you just need to want.»

      And again a moment of silence. They looked at each other, as if asking prices. Blaise did not slow down in a circle. They walked here like animals in a cage. And each either did not dare to attack first, or gave the other the opportunity to assess the situation.

      For a moment she thought she saw right through Damian. It was a moment of feeling of some kind of absolute power over him, as if he was her puppet, and not a mentor. Everything was decided by the coldness in her. It was he who prevailed over the creature that entered this world to teach her.

      But what about physical strength? Blaise was pretty sure Damian had it huge. But he wants her to defeat him. Not because he can succumb to her, but because in the end she will be stronger. Blaise had no idea how this could be achieved. But she wanted to be strong. Very strong. So strong that no one dared to attack her.

      With her eyes, she appraised the enemy. Blue eyes sparkled dangerously from beneath ash brows, graceful fingers curling around the stick.

      «Anything can be a weapon,» Damian taught her. «Anything you want to use as a weapon.»

      Now it was time to move from words to action. But she did not dare. Although Damian had not for nothing brought her to this gloomy basement hall, where the ceiling, though propped up by a column, was enough free space to feel like on a training arena. Like in the ring. As in a vicious circle.

      Blaise experienced all sensations at the same time. It was both the battlefield and the enchanted ring. Both physical strength and spiritual. Both realism and a fairy tale. She needed to combine two principles in herself to win: the present and the desired.

      Although if the desire is too strong, it conquers everything around, even you. These were also Damian’s words. She wanted him not to be wrong. His parting words became her dark prayer. For a moment. She could no longer pray either to God or to the angels who did not answer her. Only strength.

      «Come on, bolder,» he finally encouraged.

      And she attacked. A couple of hits. The stick clinked on the stick. Blaise suddenly felt the power that even such a simple weapon in her hand gives. Even it can become overwhelming. Damian had explained to her the general techniques of this type of fighting a few minutes ago, and she tried to practice. Pretty good. He praised her mentally. She could almost hear. And she liked the very feeling that she was doing it. Fights! Then at the decisive moment, when her family was being killed, she could not, but now everything worked out. It’s too late. It’s too late. She seemed to rise from the grave to do what she could not before.

      Determination,