Chapter 11
Through the half-closed blinds of the living room window, weak light drew narrow parallel lines on the red Persian rug that covered the polished wooden floor.
Tina, sitting on the edge of the yellow couch closest to the window, stretched out her leg and wiggled her stockinged toes in the light.
“What are you doing?” A small body pounced on Tina.
“Nothing.”
“Will you play hide and seek with me?” The girl’s thin arms wrapped around Tina’s arm.
“Sa --” No, it had to be Remiell, Tina thought, since Sariel was the serious one, with a face more oval and hair just a little shorter that Remiell’s. She patted the white-haired head. “Remiell, why don’t you play with your brother and sister?”
Remiell pressed her cheek against Tina’s shoulder; her blue eyes appealingly gazed up at Tina. “Cause they don’t want to. They are so boring.”
“You shouldn’t be here, you know.” Tina smiled down and ruffled Remiell’s hair. Since the day Prva had called her into her domain and she had crossed paths for the first time with the -- not young, since they were all older than she, but something like old souls in children’s bodies -- Remiell often popped up for a visit. And Remiell being in her lap meant that Michael, the children’s guardian, wasn’t far behind. “What will Prva say when she notices that you are missing?”
“She won’t notice.” Remiell pouted. “She’s too busy with the Elders.”
The doors of the living room opened and a slimmer male version of the first three Numuns strode through them, with Uriel right behind him.
“Remiell. I thought we agreed you wouldn’t stray anymore.” Michael grabbed the child and then when Remiell held on tightly to Tina, pried her fingers one by one from Tina’s arm. “The Elders miss you.”
“I don’t like them. I don’t like them,” Remiell hissed, showing her fangs; her limbs flapped around. “They are always pinching my cheeks and they smell like attics and dust.”
Michael picked her up, not minding the kicks and hits and tucked the child under his arm, holding her like one would a rolled up rug. “I apologize for that.” He gave a smile to Tina.
“It’s okay.” Tina stood up and gave Remiell’s white hair a quick ruffle. “Come back when the Gathering is over and we’ll play hide and seek then, all right?”
As Remiell lifted her head and her lips stretched into a smile, the fangs disappeared. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
“You shouldn’t get too cosy with them,” Uriel said after the door closed behind the two Numuns. He sat down on the couch.
“I’m not getting cosy. I’m just being nice.”
“You shouldn’t be. You have to understand, only a few of the Damned are capable of human warmth, but Numuns crave it, they drink it like water, getting addicted to it, needing more and more of it.” Uriel rested his arm on the back of the couch. “That’s why Prva doesn’t allow them to have Aradmas; in the past they ended up spending too much time with them and started to neglect their duties and Prva.”
“What do you mean, ‘they are not capable of human warmth?’” Tina asked. “Remiell is a very warm child. She’s playful and... she doesn’t lack in warmth.”
“I meant only a few Damned can express it, with Numuns being the one of the few,” Uriel said. “She likes you, and you could probably do her a lot of good, but I don’t want her to get too attached to you. If she does, it will hard for her when we leave.”
“We are going to leave?” Tina sat on the coffee table before Uriel. No more worries about Angelica, her experiments and that she might end up as Angelica’s subject or that Prva might change her mind and decide to make her Prva’s Aradma anyway. A stress-free life -- if that was even possible. She would love that. She leaned forward. “When? Where?”
“I don’t know when, yet.”
“Oh.” Tina’s shoulders slumped. She furrowed her brows together. That hadn’t sounded encouraging. And what about... “But could you really go? What about your bond with Angelica?” As she understood it, Uriel couldn’t get rid of the bond unless Angelica declared it void or broke its conditions, and since, as Haniel explained to her, the only condition on Angelica’s side was that she wield no control over Haniel, Muriel and the ‘things’ they owned and had to leave them alone, Tina doubted that Uriel could get rid of that bond anytime soon.
“I might not go with you.”
“What do you mean? Haniel and Muriel would never leave you.”
“It’s that or...”
“Or?” Tina lifted his eyebrows.
“You won’t like it.”
“Why?”
“Because the other option is to use you to break the bond.”
He was right, that didn’t sound like something she would like, but she asked anyway, “How?”
“The potion I have been giving you has already marked you as Haniel’s Aradma.” Uriel combed through his bangs. “You remember what the conditions are?” When Tina nodded, he continued, “Now, if Angelica tries to bypass Haniel to get to you, and she will if she finds out who you really are, as soon as she touches you or lures you away, I’m free. It’s that simple.”
Tina frowned. It sounded so easy. Too easy, since there had been plenty of opportunity and... “She already did touch me, and your bond is still here.”
“That’s because Haniel’s mark hadn’t settled in your system yet, hadn’t marked you yet as Haniel’s Aradma, but now it has.”
“I see.”
“But I don’t know if you are strong enough. I could see how painful it was when Angelica just touched your soul and how much energy she managed to draw out of you.” Uriel shifted forward. “Angelica could break you, and if you got hurt because of my scheming Haniel and Muriel would never forgive me. I don’t even know if they would approve of something that would put you in danger.” He put a hand over hers. “They have loved you since the moment they first laid eyes on you.”
Tina looked at her hands, at Uriel’s hand holding hers. Yes, Haniel and Muriel loved her. She had become more and more aware of that fact with each passing day. And she also knew the reason why. Because of Trinity. They all accepted her only because of the presence she carried inside her soul.
And Trinity would want all her children to be free. She would sacrifice her own life for it, and probably Tina’s too.
Tina looked up at those green eyes. “Then, in case we decide to do it, we just won’t tell them.”
#
The noise of voices and sounds of moving furniture over the stone floor echoed between the stone walls of the Prva’s main hall, but it couldn’t drown the voice of the Aradma that, two steps away from Tina, went on and on about her Master and his importance.
Tina stood on the bench, which somebody had pushed against the wall. Decorating the walls were fingernail-sized white stones. The stones together with rich chandeliers illuminated the hall, but their main purpose was restricting supernatural powers, except for Prva’s and those of her personal guard, the Numuns -- or at least that was what the redhead standing beside Tina had mentioned somewhere between her drooling over guys that Tina didn’t know and expressing amazement that one of the Dumes had an Aradma.
“I thought that the Dumes were the same as the Numuns and that's why they didn't have Aradmas. If I had known I was wrong, I would had tried to become Uriel's Aradma. He's so hot.”
Tina turned toward the redhead and wanted to tell her that as Uriel's Aradma she would also belong to Angelica, and she doubted that the girl wanted that, but the redhead had already continued with her monologue.
“But all the Dumes are hot, even that little one -- if you are into that innocent school boy look. I think some of the girls would love to baby that cutey, pretending to be his mother while trying to seduce Uriel or the other one -- what's his name? Ah, it doesn't really matter. As I was saying...”
Tina exchanged glances with the petite blonde, who stood on the other side of the redhead. They slowly inched away.
“Helen doesn't get out a lot,” the blonde, Gillian said, introducing herself. “Her Master prefers solitude, so they mostly spend their time in their rooms; she doesn't even allow Helen to participate in our weekly Aradma meetings.” She looked at Tina. “You don't go to those either. Why? Doesn't Haniel let you?”
“There are Aradma meetings? Haniel didn't mention anything about meetings.” From the bag tied on her belt Tina took a few stones and pressed them into a pattern drawn on the wall, some kind of magic holding them against the rough surface.
At first when Haniel told her that she would have to help with preparing the main hall for the party with the rest of the Aradmas, she hadn’t been thrilled, but she was getting to know a few new people, and learning some new things about the Damned was proving quite interesting. Like that all those small houses on the estate, which she had thought were living quarters, were actually just entrances into the underground that spread over the whole surface of the property. Since she never saw people strolling on the surface, if she hadn’t counted the Numuns, she would have thought that the estate was abandoned or that Prva didn’t have a lot of subjects. She was wrong. According to how many Aradmas buzzed around the hall, the quarters hidden in the ground had to be crowded.
Gillian nodded. “They probably don't even know. Except for Prva and Numuns they don't associate with anybody else, do they? And they even live on light, and Numuns, too. The other Damned can’t. And after becoming their Servants we can’t either.” She pressed the last stones she held in her hand on the wall. “That’s the only thing that I miss. The light.” She looked at Tina over her shoulder. “It’s not that I could go sunbathing on the beach as Lost, but... with sunglasses and high-SPF sun lotion I could walk around like a normal human being. I could pretend...”
Pretend to be normal, that everything was okay... Tina sighed. She could understand that all too well. She had a lot of years of pretending behind her. She was probably pretending that she was okay even now -- lying to herself, because she couldn’t change the situation in which she found herself. Or maybe telling herself that she was better off with the Dumes than being on her own, and, as Damon said, trying to find the silver lining in the isolation of her own making. “Yeah.”
“I think that most Aradmas miss the light, too,” Gillian said.
Tina glanced at the people standing nearby. She could feel their eyes on her back, but when she looked they averted their gazes.
“They are interested in you, you know, the other Aradmas, and they would love for you to join the weekly meetings -- just don’t fool yourself that they are your friends. They are just interested in the Dumes, since there’s not a lot known about them.”
“And you are not interested?”
“I already know a little about them.”
“Hey, you two!” A brunette stepped toward them. “If you are finished, go get tablecloths.”
“From where?” Tina asked.
“I know where they are.” Gillian turned, gestured for Tina to follow her.
They went toward the wall. Gillian pressed something high on the wall and a rip appeared, it widened and revealed a long hallway. Darkness ruled the space, but it wasn’t as if they needed light to see. They stepped into the hallway and went through the third door on the left into a room that reminded Tina of a warehouse. In set rows stood cabinets, presumably containing linens and tableware; long, narrow tables, chairs..., everything one needed for a banquet.
And what was that...? Tina looked closer. Tables with steel hooks and chains attached to the hooks. “What’s that for?”
“Hmmm. What?” Gillian opened one of the cabinets, which had white, crisp linens loaded on its shelves.
Tina pointed at the tables.
“That’s for special occasions. For the Elders’ feedings.”
“Yeah?” What was that supposed to mean? Tina frowned.
“To welcome the Elders, Prva always organizes a banquet for them.” Gillian started to pull the linens out, handing them to Tina.
“Yeah?” Tina repeated. “Why would they need hooks with chains for that?”
“You are either stupid or naive. All Elders are beyond old and most of them like to sink their teeth into flesh just for old times’ sake.”
Tina stared at the ends of the chains that had leather loops just the right sizes for... “Don't tell me, they use...?” No, they couldn't...
“Humans and Deadeaters, what else?” Gillian closed the closet. “And why are you making that face? It’s just Deadeaters -- dead bodies with circulating blood -- it's not as if they are living things like us.” She passed Tina. “And humans... they have always been the Damned’s food. The only difference now is that the Elders are feeding only once a year, either using prisoners on death row or people with death wishes, not every human they cross paths with as they did in the past.”
“You were human once... how can you be so calm about it?”
“Because there's nothing I could do that would change that. And you'll get used to things, you'll see. And besides, it’s just the Elders and it's just once a year. For a regular feeding they use their subordinates like the Lost.”
“Yes, but...” Was it really so naive to think that people, be they Deadeaters or human, shouldn't be treated as meals? But what did she know? She had just become part of the Damned clan -- actually she had become part of the Dumes, not the Damned -- maybe with time, as Gillian said, she would get used to such treatment too, even though a shiver ran through her body at the thought.
“We are all monsters now.” Gillian took half of the linens from Tina and went into the hallway. “We all need blood to survive and animals don’t give the right kind of hemoglobin that our body needs. You know, you are acting like you don't need to suck on blood like the rest of us.”
But she didn't need it. Or at least she thought that she didn't. Following Gillian, Tina stayed silent.
They crossed the hallway and came back to the hall, where they started to spread the linens over the tables lining the wall under the gallery.
Tina could feel the gazes on her again, but not just watching her; they were also watching Gillian. She peeked over her shoulder trying to catch the observer. She froze, the edge of fabric drifted out of her fingers.
This couldn’t be true.
She looked again. A sigh of relief left her throat. No, she was wrong.
“Is something the matter?”
“No, nothing.” Tina took a new tablecloth. But just to be on the safe side, she discreetly moved so that she could glance back without being too obvious and without diverting her eyes. She caught it again. A familiar face, visible just for a second before different features descended over it.
What was he doing here? She furrowed her brows, chewing her lip. She’d have to tell the Dumes about this, and she was willing to bet that Uriel was not going to be pleased to learn that Damon was in the neighbourhood.