Akràv

Alexandria's heart began to beat with such force that for a moment she feared it could pop out of the rib cage, and the more she tried to perceive any noise, the more the throb in her chest seemed to become deafening. It had been years since she had felt such anxiety, yet the ghost of a threat, or a disappointment, was enough to bend her in that way. Was it possible she had softened so much?

Of course, there were many possibilities that there was no one inside the building, given the conditions in which it was located, but there were just as many that it was a Cultus trap; after all, she knew exactly how scrupulous and inferior those guys were, but getting to fear them to such a point seemed ridiculous.

Although it was a centenary sect, certainly older than her, only once it had managed to get the better of them and, to be completely honest, it had not even been a desired occurrence: she doubted strongly that after the vicissitudes and corpses they had amassed, the intent of that group of fools was simply to kill Solomon. Indeed, as far as they knew, it was exactly the opposite. The Cultus Sanguinis desired the King for his knowledge of the Ars, to understand how it was possible, from death, to give birth to the Chimeras and, of course, to achieve immortality.

They were alchemists, or so they liked to define themselves, but they had never reached the greatness of the Sovereign of Israel; and to refute that truth there was the innumerable succession of failures that had marked the existence of their lodge. What sense would it have been, otherwise, to hunt down their family if they could control such magic alone?

Over the years Z'év had often wondered, as she stained her hands with the blood of those poor idiots, for what reason they could not get what they so much wanted, but every time she asked Solomon, the answer had been vague, different. Maybe he didn't really know it either, so he tried to wade his thoughts. On the first occasion he had said "ignorance, I believe", "lack of ambition" the next. Once he had even whispered to her that "Ars chooses its children, not the other way around" - and he was proof of this, Levi and all his brothers the other sects. That, perhaps, had been the most sensible answer, but after thirty years she would no longer be able to say how much she still believed in it; after all, what were so special in her? She couldn't imagine it, yet she had managed to survive both the Délet-b Ge'henom and that body. Not everyone could say the same.

Taking a deep breath, the Countess tried to find her lost calm. Tachycardia had not stopped pestering her for a single moment since the brother had knocked, a pity that in such a situation she could in no way let herself be overwhelmed by the human self.

Although in three hundred years she had killed, accomplished unspeakable impiety and let the Chimera take control over her will several times, even feeling a satisfying pleasure, what had been Alexandria Orsòlya Varadi had never really been devoured by it. The wolf's jaws had tightened around her like a cage, but they had not allowed themselves to tear her soul from her, even though she had believed on several occasions that she was about to be torn to pieces. In her, as it must have been for the other creatures of the King, a strange game of full and empty spaces had been created between the two entities - and it was perhaps for this reason that their bodies had never completely transformed, maintaining for the majority a semblance that could be defined as... normal.

Levi looked at her doubtfully, and she returned the same way. Neither of them could understand what was going on, least of all what was best - it was the first time in a long one that they found themselves in such a situation.

Z'év then turned towards the end of the calla, looking at nothing and reflecting on some strategy, but just when her lips parted to say something, a strange annoyance made her pinch the scar on the mouth of the stomach.

Wrinkling her nose, she brought her fingers up to the Seal, trying somehow to understand what was happening to her. The last time she had felt it shiver was when, on tiptoe, she had run away from the house she had shared with her family - the same one that Nakhaš was now trying to put back together.

The girl frowned, as if the gesture could help her clear the ideas, pity that her thoughts were soon interrupted by the husky voice of her brother who, completely off guard, tapped a palm on the door: "Akh! Lemmas!" she heard him rant against whoever was at home - always if there was someone.

Patience was slowly abandoning both, or perhaps it would have been better to say that anxiety was having on their psyche; after all, simply being together, out in the open, and in a city no longer so familiar, made them easy prey, despite both being ruthless predators.

Biting her lip, Alex couldn't help thinking that, like her, the brother also sensed the electricity of two equally lethal enemies in the air: Cultus and time. Yes, because every minute of waiting was a beat less than their now fragile hearts, muscles that without Solomon would soon have stopped working. It was only thanks to him if their bodies had not rotted with the passing of the days, and to prevent that possibility to appear earlier than necessary, they had to hurry to find him - but if Zenas was not there then it meant that the hours spent in the fetid railway wagon, which had brought them from Milan to Venice, they had only been in vain, a delay which would have been better not to accumulate.

If they had not hurried the zman would have reduced them to ashes, as the Holy Scriptures narrated.

Z'év came even closer. She felt the nerves strain with every new blow, with any call from the Chimera next to her, yet she had no idea how to solve the problem.

"I'll try to break it down" she said suddenly, without really thinking about that plane.

"Forget it."

Confused, she turned to stare at him. In the huge dark lenses she could see herself reflected, a pale and anything but threatening little thing to which Levi, without words, pointed out the stupidity of that statement: "You are almost half of me, how could you think you are going to knock down a door who has practically survived to this day?"

In fact, she admitted to herself, if not even the high tides had managed to rot it, it should not have been so frangible: how did she think she could be more resistant, given the limbs she had? But there didn't seem to be who knows how many other solutions - either they let it go, or they tried with strong manners.

Shrugging, Alex tried to assert herself: "It costs me nothing to try, doesn't it? The worst it could go, I will be bounced back" but in pretending indifference she realized that, if that door had not yielded, her body would have made her pay it bitterly - hadn't already proved it at home, going to bump into the kitchen?

"Z'èv..." still visibly reluctant to the idea, Levi tried to call her in the vague attempt to make her come to her senses; unfortunately for him, stubbornness was a gift that Solomon had taken care of was intrinsic to all his Chimeras, from first to last, so Alexandria took a few steps back.

Releasing the tension in the upper part of the body, the girl carefully studied the door in front of her. She had to find the point that, being hit, would allow the lock to yield and, when she finally convinced herself that she had found it, she prepared for the impact.

"You are not seriuos, ar-?" but before the brother could finish the sentence, her feet parted from the floor.

One, two, three.

Too bad that there was nothing to stop her run.

The Wolf-Chimera found herself crossing the threshold with a momentum that was anything but expected, even ending up stumbling in the void of an unexpected difference in height and feeling the emptiness filling her stomach. It took her a few moments to realize that she would soon hit the face against the floor, bowing to such violence that it certainly would not leave her unharmed, so she narrowed her eyes in the hope of feeling less pain. In a last and desperate gesture, which she knew well it would never have been sudden enough, she brought her arms in front of the face, but strangely these arrived before the impact.

What she felt had nothing to do with the backlash she had imagined, it was rather a strong pressure in the stomach, a sickening squeezing of a rigid object against the guts.

And then a presence. A chilling feeling of danger that made her eyes widen again.

Her heart stopped in the throat, panic took her breath away, and when in the twilight of that place she saw the dark reflections of an immense sting pointed at the back of her neck, she felt the urge to shout, but unfortunately it was impossible.

"At..." she heard whispering from a blind spot beyond her back before being released without warning. She fell to the ground and the pain did not reveal itself as she had expected, but the fear seemed not to abandon her for a single moment.

With her eyes wide and trudging on the frozen floor, the girl tried to put distance between herself and that immense animal limb, a weapon so lethal that even she found herself almost paralyzed in front of that presence.

It was the tail of a scorpion.

Zenas' mutation.

Akràv, the second Chimera.

Yet before she could really realize it, another figure peered into her field of vision. Levi hurled himself like a fury at his brother, grabbing him abruptly for any garment he was wearing and pulling him away from her, perhaps worried about the idea that his claw could stick into hier flesh and kill her.

"Hamessakenn! Tagezim zott Z'èv!" Shouted the General completely at the mercy of emotions. And how can someone blame him? Even she would have killed anyone who attempted his life, defending each other after all had been the mantra of their family for centuries.

Zenas did not oppose this attack, rather he raised his hands and let himself be yanked. With dark eyes turned towards her, he allowed his brother to scream at him, to move him in weight and to be mistreated in an evident admission of guilt. He knew he had made a mistake, that he had almost committed an unspeakable murder; he was admitting it and, Alexandria thought, just because he hadn't recognized her.