Chapter Ten
“You were supposed to destroy the aircraft.”
Evangeline looked up at the Entity through the tops of her vivid lavender colored eyes. Her gaze narrowed. “I think we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.”
He was silent for a moment before he said, “I could have destroyed it myself.”
“Why didn’t you?”
The Entity slowly turned to face her. White eyes captured hers, no pupil, no iris. Just a vast fog that someone might get lost in.
But she wasn’t afraid. She had never been afraid of him, in fact. It was that stupid stubborn streak she’d inherited from her mother. Plus, she happened to know he was weak right now. She was perceptive enough to figure out that all the chair-hopping he’d been doing with bodies lately, and the number of times they’d died on him… well, it had taken its toll. She could feel it.
“Were you testing me?” She asked. “You know… I don’t test well. It’s one of the many, many reasons I was homeschooled.”
The Entity still didn’t say anything, but now he slipped his hands into his pockets, looked at the floor, and began pacing away from the window he’d been peering through. What was it with supernaturals and their fascination with windows? Eva’d found over the years that they did that a lot, stared out the window. And they almost never booked a room or an office or purchased a home that didn’t have floor-to-ceiling window panes through which to gaze.
“I would caution you, young Legend, against toying with me,” he said. He stopped, pulled his right hand out of his pocket, and looked down at his manicured nails.
The Entity never used her given name. Instead, he referred to her as the “Legend.” That was most likely because she was literally the stuff of legends. It was the secret she’d carried her entire life. And probably, he wanted to remind her as often as possible that he knew that secret. Knowing what she really was meant that he had a certain amount of power over her.
It was bizarre to see a creature as evil as the Entity clothed in the form of a relatively handsome and normal-looking businessman. He was dressed in a tailored suit, his light brown hair had been professionally trimmed, and apparently so had his nails. It was surreal. “This is not a game,” he told her calmly. “And neither am I.”
Eva knee-jerked a response. “I don’t play games. So, no worries there.” She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away from him as ideas and thoughts and doubts began to blossom throughout the gardens of her mind. She put up a strong front, but inside, she was beginning to churn.
“The new queen is wanted by her government now,” he continued, his tone even and emotionless. “Ultimately this will make getting to her more difficult. Your failure has cost me.”
Eva didn’t say anything. What could she say? The Entity had wanted her to capture the new queen, and when the new queen had suddenly freaking vanished mid-flight, he’d wanted her to destroy the plane – and everyone on it.
The request had taken her by surprise, to say the least. It went against all of the reasons she’d decided to help him in the first place. There were some generals who would say, “The sacrifice of the one or few for the many,” or some such nonsense. But that didn’t matter to the individuals being sacrificed.
So… yeah, she’d failed.
“You lack a healthy fear,” the Entity sighed. “It’s a fault of your overall youth, I imagine. But you don’t have to be as old as Lalura Chantelle was for you to meet an end at my hand, Legend.”
“She didn’t ‘meet her end,’ by your hand,” she countered cautiously. There was no point pushing the envelope with him. “It was your lapdog who ultimately carried out your wishes.” She really wished she knew who the Traitor was, who it was that had been doing the Entity’s dirty work. But it was a secret the Entity had kept even from her. “And….” She measured her words, because this question was one she actually wanted an answer to. “What makes you so positive the Traitor was successful?” She looked at him over her shoulder.
At once, his eerie white eyes captured her gaze.
In that moment, something in the room changed. The air grew thick, as thick as the fog in his eyes, and Eva felt as though she couldn’t draw breath without effort. There was a sound, like a buzzing, that hummed low and eerie. It was a warning.
Heat enveloped her, followed by a fast and hard cold. Goosebumps raised across her pale flesh, and beads of sweat broke out along her brow. She exhaled slowly, and steeled her nerves. She didn’t want to show it, but fear had at last found its way into her system.
Maybe he wasn’t as weak as she thought.
The Entity smiled. It was a disturbing smile, as he allowed the corners of his mouth to spread far beyond the normal reaches of a human mouth, encompassing the whole lower half of his face. “You tell me, little Legend,” he said. His voice had become gravelly and laced with something that sounded like poison whispers. “Has the witch come to call recently?”
Eva swallowed, but her throat was dry, and she almost coughed from the effort.
The Entity released her from his dangerous gaze and continued his nonchalant perusal of his fingernails. “By the way,” he said casually. “I didn’t miss the fact that you failed in that job as well. It was your task before it was ‘my lapdog’s,’ as you so elegantly put it.”
Now Eva’s mind began to turn. She searched for excuses, and that alone forced her to admit she was frightened. Only people who were afraid went to the trouble of looking for excuses. “She’s strong for a reason,” she said. That much was true, so it was easy.
“Oh, I agree she was strong,” said the Entity, correcting the tense to push home the fact he believed Chantelle to be dead. “The man who eventually finished the job was permanently injured in the attempt. However….” His voice trailed off, he lowered his hand, and his eyes again found hers. “That isn’t the sole reason you failed. Is it?”
Eva went cold. No. It wasn’t the sole reason.
“I can’t say I blame you, strictly speaking,” he went on. “I can imagine there is some sort of mortality within you that still cherishes the bond between mother and child. And it can’t have been easy being tasked with killing your own mother.”
There was nothing Evangeline could say. All she could do was wonder how long he’d known. And she could only wonder whether he knew everything. That wouldn’t be good.
“Mind you, it isn’t your lineage that troubles me, young Legend. It’s the fact that twice you’ve been tasked with something, and twice you’ve failed me.”
That sensation of something wrong in the room intensified. It seemed to grow darker around them, as if the sun were setting. But it was still early afternoon. In those moments, Eva began to question her own decisions. She doubted her choices. And she had to steadfastly remind herself of why she’d done what she’d done in the first place.
The Entity had made her a promise. If the goddess Amunet was awoken, the hatred on the planet would find a home within her. Like Pandora’s box, it would be contained once more. Religious, racial, and sexual intolerance, war, terrorism, rape, random acts of insane violence… they would end. Amunet would house the negative emotions of an entire world. That’s what he’d told her.
And perhaps like a fool, she’d believed him. She’d believed him because she’d grown up learning that Entities – plural – could not lie. Known by many names, they were ultimate spirits, ageless and timeless, reborn into different races and sexes throughout the annals of time and space. They were good and they were bad. But they were so powerful, they had little to fear and hence no reason to hide their true natures, so they didn’t.
She knew this because she’d grown up with one. Close and personal.
“Not to worry,” the Entity said suddenly. His smile was broad and terrible. The air let up, the wrongness faded just like that, and Eva could easily breathe again.
But that terrible, too-broad smile remained. “I won’t hold it against you. So long as you don’t let it happen again.”
He seemed positively cheery as he issued his ultimatum. And Eva turned away to face the window, finding herself gazing through it and into the distance like all those other supernaturals before her.