Being depressed, crying, having a devastated hope, Vic was wiping away the pentacle from the floor, cleaning the wax traces, hiding the spell which didn’t work. She didn’t want her mother, holder of Habilitation degree in Medicine, to catch any little hint at something supernatural in her daughter’s room.
At 11 am Vic was awakened by the cell calling: Vasilisa was going to walk over the city and she wasn’t going to walk alone but with Victoria.
However hard the girl tried to refuse to walk, Vasilisa wasn’t going to get back off Vic and she had to agree.
The girl felt terribly bad, slept badly and broken. Only Kharon and all that connected to him lived in her head. Like a zombie, Vic, with half closed eyes, went to the bathroom to freshen up in some way. In a half of an hour Victoria appeared at Tverskaya Street, where Vasilisa had been waiting for her.
‘It’s been a long time and finally we’ve met!’ her friend began to speak loudly. ‘Vic, I’m so happy!’ she started embracing her friend in shock and with no stop to chatter eternally about her doings.
‘How did you pass, Vic? You didn’t tell yet!’
‘I got a good mark. There’s a project review left and I’m ready to work… My life has almost stopped. How’re your exams?’
‘Mine? I’m on thin ice. С is on C and C drives on them. But to tell the truth I don’t care. I want it to finish soon.’ Vasilisa closed her eyes. ‘I’m hungry, let’s go to eat something!’
Victoria shrugged her shoulders. She actually didn’t care where and with whom to go. Vasilisa noticed Vic’s indifference later.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it. He’s not the last man on the earth!’ suddenly Vasilisa said.
Victoria looked at her with blank stare.
‘Whom are you speaking about?’
She knew. Where from? The thoughts were running around in her head, awkwardness was coming closer and her consciousness was getting ashamed.
‘About Daniel, whom else! You’re not yourself after you broke up with him. You’re not that Vic that you were! You were energetic, you laughed and lived and now a pale-faced it is sitting before me. Forget him.’
‘Uh… Daniel has nothing to do with this. I didn’t think of him until you remembered that he actually was.’
‘Say it more often to yourself and you’ll really forget him.’
Victoria took a sigh. How was it possible to speak with people who didn’t hear you? They didn’t want to hear you.
‘Well, it seems you’re right…’ Vic thought of Kharon. ‘Maybe I better let him go.’
‘That’s right! You don’t need him! You’re ok now but you’ve been still moping. Vic, you can’t do this. I know what to love means and how it’s difficult when you’re not loved…’
“If you were, this conversation wouldn’t have taken place now…” Victoria bitterly smiled.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it over. But I haven’t tried all…’
‘What do you mean?’ Vasilisa glanced over her friend in surprise.
At that moment Vic understood that she had put her foot on it.
‘Nothing. What about your new boyfriend?’ to change topic that was Vic thought about.
Fortunately, Vasilisa was so ditz even inconsiderate that’s she quickly switched to a new line of topic, completely having forgotten about her friend.
Victoria didn’t listen to Vasilisa, her attention-getting exclamations and yelling. All she could think was why Lucifer hadn’t come? All had been done correct: agreement in any form, blood, seal, text… What had been wrong?
Vic started suspecting her being normal again. Maybe no Lucifer existed at all? Maybe she made up everything that happened to her?
In the evening, having told her mum a beautiful lie, creating a perfect illusion, Victoria went to her room. The door was locked, and all hell broke loose again: pentacles, candles, spells.
Victoria looked up and down all the books, internet and did everything that was written. But nothing happened. Nobody came. Why? Why not? Kharon did appear immediately even when he hadn’t been waited, he stuck into her heart and then he was sitting there and tearing it from inside. Why didn’t Lucifer come?
2
nd
September 2013 (Monday)
The days went by as weeks and months did. Victoria got her project review with an excellent mark and felt down completely in seeking for Lucifer. She looked very bad, she ate almost nothing, just drank, mostly strong coffee. Her eye pits were almost seen, coloured in black by weakness. Her red hair, her flecks once having resemblance to the Sun and giving warmth to others died out and grew dim.
For a long time, Victoria hadn’t slept well. She spent most of her nights for seeking for Lucifer. She tried to get him in any way and that was possible only at nights as all spells talked over.
In the mornings Vic had to pretend to be a healthy, sane person. Her mother was prudish and if she noticed that her daughter wasn’t sure in her own mental health, she would treat her.
Of course, at times when her mum was at work, Vic was sound asleep, setting up, but it wasn’t enough anyway.
In addition, she had to look for a job, to pretend that she was looking for it. Moreover, she had to pretend to live and rejoice that fact. To tell the truth when passion and love settled in heart and soul, the desire for living became almost impossible. Everything that had been done, heard and looked, turned into one continuous suffering.
‘Hi, Vic. Being up long?’ mother’s call was sometimes worse than fire.
‘An hour ago. Eating now. What’s the emergency?’ Vic asked, chewing a miserable cucumber.
‘I’ve forgotten papers on the table. See them? Can I ask you to bring it to me at work? I need them.’
‘Mum…’ Vic sighed.
Vic had planned her day different. She was going to some book stalls near the MRHW. She had no time to rush over hospitals.
‘What mum?’ a severe voice asked. ‘You have no interviews for today. I need those papers.’
‘Fine. Fine! I’m there in an hour and a half.’
‘I’m in resuscitation department. Running the operation room.’
‘Ok, I got it. Order the pass for me.’
‘Already done. I’m waiting.’
Hating the whole world and most of all her mother forgetfulness, Victoria went to the hospital.
Vic hated hospitals and never understood how people could work there. The place was full of pain and desperation. People cried and begged there. A believe in supernatural was born and doctors’ help was forgotten instead. Too much suffering and worries. Her heart hurt too much looking at what was going on there.
Vic was going along the resuscitation department and there were ten or fifteen meters left to get the staffroom, when she heard a weak sound, a voice asking for something unintelligibly.
The girl turned to the open ward and from the first bed something strong got her by the hand. That was an old lady who had a healthy man grasp. Victoria was nervous, trying to free her hand, but the woman was holding it fast. Her whitish eyes, having no life in, pierced into the girl’s face.
‘You will take it. I chose you.’ The crone wheezed in a sepulchral whisper and squeezed her hand stronger, no matter stronger seemed impossible.
‘What’re you talking about? Let me go!’ Victoria was almost fighting with a “weak and ill” old lady.
The crone answered nothing. She lay back on the pillows, closed her eyes, kept on holding the hand.
‘You will take it…’ she repeated again and finally left the numb hand.
The old woman looked peacefully like if she had been sleeping and dreaming of something beautiful.
“Crazy bitch”, Victoria thought and ran out of the ward and made a little distance she turned out in the staffroom.
‘You’re fast’ her mum looked out of the case. ‘Vic, I’m really sorry but I gotta go, I have a planned surgery now. Leave the papers on the table, will you?’
‘No problem.’ The girl sighed in replay.
‘No offence?’ the woman stopped in the doorframe and looked at her daughter. ‘What’s up with you? Are you ill?’
‘No, I’m fine. I’m tired…a little.’
‘Damn it! The most terrible sound for any resuscitationist!’
They both heard an argute sound line, affronting the ear. Olga Vladimirovna jumped out of the staffroom, Victoria followed her.
In the same ward the peacefully sleeping old lady’s heart stopped beating and the apparatus rang about it through the whole department, calling for the doctors to resuscitate.
‘Defibrillator, epinephrine…’ the doctors cries, nurses were rushing near, answering all the orders.
Victoria leaned on the wall, looked and worried about the poor old lady.
‘Time of death is 7 past 7…’ she heard the sentence after that you exactly understood the deepest and, perhaps, the most heartless meaning of the phrase “that’s all”.
The old woman was connected from the apparatus, the data was being written and the doctors were upset.
‘Sveta, call her relatives, they have to call to Pathology lab…’ Vic’s mother ordered to the nurse.
‘Olga Vladimirovna, she had no relatives.’
‘No one?’ The doctor surprised.
‘No one. Then shall I do as usual?’
‘Yes.’ Olga Vladimirovna looked at her daughter, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home. I’ll be at home after dinner. Thanks for bringing the papers.’
The girl took a deep sigh, turned around and left. She was a little bit sad because her mother had made a doctor way in life and she still kept on doing it. It was clear, that she did it successfully and by now she gained a reputation of a God-given doctor. The only pity was that when people did their career, they couldn’t do their family at the same time.
Victoria came back home dropped off to sleep…
In the middle of the night, she opened her eyes and with no understanding why, she started whispering something in unknown language.
Ebenus, opprobrium, conticinium, lacrimose, venetum, abominamentum, reflabriventi, basiator, zodium, horripilato, perfluus, flammosus, universus, gloria, tabifluus, damnatio, martyrium, infidelitas, securitas, necrosis.
As she said the last word, the killing silence came. It was too silent so Victoria could hear her blood stream rushing inside. The breeze was blowing, also silent as well as everything was around. The girl was so much scared that her breathing almost stopped. You shouldn’t be a wiseman to understand that something was going wrong. When everything that had moved in chronical way, suddenly got frozen in a paralytic horror was strange at least.
Victoria was in her bed and kept her eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling, with no idea what was going on. She was afraid of even moving.
‘Within two months and a half…’ she heard a heavy man voice, throwing out imperturbable power.
Despite of its heaviness and powerfulness the voice was hypnotically attractive and so pleasant as if it had touched a back with silky flaps. One could listen to that voice for hours, could fall in love with it and lose mind. But Victoria, on top of every sweet feeling, had an animal fear: the voice had nothing to do with Kharon.
‘Yes, for two months and a half,’ the man confirmed, ‘I’ve been listening to you summoning me.’
Victoria finally pulled herself together and lifted up her head to look at the guest. The man silhouette was sitting at her computer table.
‘So, I am here!’ the man sharply bounced out of the chair and rushed to the scared to death girl. Victoria gave a start and covered herself with the blanket. A second silence and a laugh could be heard. The girl closed her eyes and whispered the same pray, the only one she knew.
‘That’s funny… “hallowed be thy name…”’
The voice was under her blanket. Victoria understood that it didn’t come under the cloth, but she was sure for 380 percent that whom voice belonged to, was with her under the blanket.
Victoria screamed with all her might, flew out of the bed and tried to run out of the room. Near the door in thick darkness she bumped into a tall man and fell with crash on the floor.
‘No, please!’ the girl closed her eyes, trying to calm down the starting hysteria.
She’d never been so scared in her entire life. Even that first time when Kharon came to her she hadn’t been scared so much.
Suddenly, through her closed eyes, Victoria felt the room getting lightened. It was not like during the day, but it wasn’t so dark that you could hardly see your hand before you.
Praying, crossing herself, begging not to touch her, Vic opened her eyes at her own risk. Too close to her face she saw a man face. In surprise she stepped back, asking her heart beating not so fast. The green-brown eyes with barely noticed burgundy were staring at her.
Victoria saw nothing but those terribly beautiful eyes. About two minutes later the girl dared to range her eyes round the guest: light-brown hair was on his eyes, scarcely noticeable squint, his lips were curled in an engaged smirk, straight nose like if it was artificial. His face was too ideal.
The stranger was burning the girl away with his heavy staring.
Victoria was silent, hypnotized by his piercing stare. The drop-in creature was silent, too, carefully examining the girl’s freckled face.
The man moved and Victoria shivered, before she could bat an eye his hand was touching her hear.
‘What an unusual ginger colour…’ he whispered seeing the strand of hair in his hand. ‘A setting of a dying sun… He was good to create such beauty… Why have you stopped whispering your funny pray?’
The man shifted his gaze at the girl, at her eyes. She didn’t move, still sitting on the floor with bated breath.
‘You…’ she said under her breath, ‘Are you an incubus?’
The man smiled, shifted his gaze at her quivering lips.
‘No, Sunshine, I am not. Have you been waiting for an incubus, while your lips have been whispering my name? Do you know my name?’ he bended his body closer to her.
Victoria smelled something pleasant and tender like if there had been no threat and nothing of supernatural. It was a smell of blooming nature, a subtle aroma of cedar fir-needles, making heavier the composition: the main one made Vic understand that the man in front of her wasn’t just a man.
The stranger moved to her at maximum distance, looking at her burning cheeks.
Victoria wasn’t breathing. Each move of the guest made her completely forget about her own physiology. She just got frozen and gazed at the man.
‘…Lucifer…’ she whispered gravel-voiced.
The man smirked and raised up. He looked around the room, doubled down on the chair near the table. Having grasped the one he settled in near the bed, where the scared the hell Victoria was sitting near.
‘Why are you so surprised, Sunshine?’ he asked, setting his ring on his left hand.
It was a big signet-ring with some patterns. But they weren’t just patterns. Even Victoria who knew nothing of runes, recognized that there were ancient, maybe unknown sings and symbols on the ring.
‘It’s stuffy here,’ the man looked round again and undid two buttons of his shirt. ‘Like in hell… Kidding. That is you, people, who think it’s an eternal sizzler there.’
‘Is that not so?’ suddenly the girl asked.
‘An eternal sizzler is on the Sun… But I’m not sure about eternal. We have a normal, stable conception of nature and natural science.’
‘You mean that you don’t fry anyone on the frying-pan with pitchforks?’ Vic allowed her to smile.
Lucifer gave her a rapid smile and came down to the girl on the floor, closer to her olive eyes.
‘Deuces have a lot of work,’ he whispered, staring at her neck, ‘there are pitchforks and frying-pans… Putting it in a metaphorical way, of course.’
He was so close to her ear that his lips were almost touching her earlaps. Victoria closed her eyes, for the nth time having forgotten of the oxygen.