“The strangest thing happened,” continued Sophie. “My demon sigil started burning brighter than ever, to the point when it became unbearable. I think I lost consciousness for a few seconds… When I came back to my senses, I was on the floor, my back against the wall. The pain… it was too much. It felt like my stomach was on fire, which was weird because my demon sigil had never burned so hard. The Count… he was… lying some feet away from me…” She swallowed heavily. “I couldn’t feel his aura. It was gone. He was gone.” She took a deep breath and held it in for a few seconds. Tears were threatening to fall, and she struggled to keep her emotions under control. There was no way she would start crying in front of so many people.
“That’s how we found her,” said Alexi.
Lilith sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know what to say…” Apparently, the little cambion was more powerful than she had thought, but there was no way she could figure out why.
“That’s not all,” said Sophie. She threw a glance around her to make sure she had everyone’s attention. She hated what was happening, she hated that they had brought her here and made her talk about it, but there was no turning back. She would show them this one last thing and finally get some answers. Sophie reached for the hem of her blouse and lifted it slowly.
Lilith raised an eyebrow, which made everyone who was behind Sophie take a couple of steps forward so they could see what the cambion was doing. At the sight of the new, round and flowery sigil on Sophie’s white skin, Lilith’s eyes grew as wide as saucers, and Ke-sar gasped.
“What. The. Hell.” Hebe was the only one who voiced her surprise. The others were staring at the sigil. They were shocked. Dumbfounded. It was clear they had never seen anything like it. Or… maybe they had, but not on a cambion.
“What is it?” asked Sophie, still holding her blouse up. “Alexi and Kain don’t know. I’ve never seen anything similar in the books I’ve studied. But you have to know. So… what is it?”
Lilith forced herself to look up into Sophie’s eyes. Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something, then the succubus changed her mind and turned to Ke-sar. The blond-haired incubus had his eerie, golden eyes fixed on Anahit. Lilith had a very bad feeling about this. It wasn’t that they didn’t know what the new sigil on Sophie’s stomach was. They did. What they were trying to figure out was how it had ended up on Sophie and why it was circling her first sigil, the demon one.
Anahit took a step back and that was when Sophie noticed her from the corner of her eye. She turned towards the succubus and waited for her response. None came.
“Well? What is it?” she asked. Her patience was wearing down.
Anahit’s faded blue eyes moved from Sophie’s sigil to Ke-sar. The incubus was staring at her insistently, his brows furrowed and his lips pursed. He, too, was waiting for an answer. Everyone was. So, Anahit did the thing they were least expecting: she shook her head, turned around and left the room. Just like that.
Sophie blinked in shock and confusion. She caught the citrus perfume the succubus always left behind, but this time the cold, fresh aura did nothing to her. Sophie was too angry to be affected by anyone’s aura. Her own was currently burning too brightly. If the people around her weren’t demons or part demons themselves, Sophie’s magic would have probably overwhelmed them. She turned back to Lilith and Ke-sar.
“What the hell? She can’t leave us like this!”
Lilith sighed and stood up. She needed to catch up with Anahit and talk some sense into her. Sophie’s new, improved sigil was a clear sign that one of her immortal parents had… well, had an affair with the wrong… supernatural being. Ke-sar’s attitude was proof enough that he wasn’t responsible, while Anahit’s odd behavior condemned her without any doubt.
“We’ll sort things out, Sophie. I’ll talk to her.”
“What is there to talk about?”
By this point, Sophie was boiling with anger and frustration. Her heavy aura expanded and she noticed how Kain and Alexi winced and took a step back. She could feel they both had their shields up, but something told her that if she wanted to, she could strike them down. She could strike everyone in the room down. She had no logical explanation, no real way of knowing, but she could feel her chest vibrating with power, the tips of her fingers tingling with the desire to hurt someone. She tried to calm down, but to no avail.
“You all know what’s going on!” she screamed. “You know, and you won’t tell me!”
“Sophie, baby, calm down…”
That was Alexi’s soothing voice, but she ignored him. She took a step towards Lilith. “You’re hiding something from me. And Anahit is hiding something from everyone, isn’t she?” Her eyes rose to meet Ke-sar’s. This time, the incubus didn’t intimidate her. “What is she hiding, father?” She emphasized the last word and felt even more powerful when she noticed how Ke-sar tensed.
“She’ll come around,” tried Lilith again. She had never seen such a strong and wild cambion before. Sophie’s hard eyes almost scared her. When she saw the girl squeezing her hands into fists at her sides, the succubus found herself worried that she wouldn’t know how to act in case the cambion would decide to show them just how powerful her new sigil was.
“I don’t have time to wait for her to come around,” said Sophie. “I need answers now! And you know what? If you’re not going to do anything about it, I’m going to get them myself.”
She turned around and stormed out of the office, dead set on finding Anahit and making her talk. She heard Kain and Alexi calling her name and running after her, but she had no intention to stop. When she saw the corridor was empty and Anahit was nowhere in sight, she ran down the stairs. On the ground floor, she stopped to catch her breath and look around her. The succubus wasn’t there either. She opened the door that led to the courtyard and stepped into the blinding sun.
“Shit,” she whispered to herself. “She’s a fuckin’ succubus, Sophie. What did you expect?”
She looked up at the cloudless sky and inhaled the fresh scent of spring and nature coming back to life. She heard Kain and Alexi behind her and suddenly decided that she didn’t want to see them. They would try to soothe her, tell her how everything would be all right. They would caress her hair and promise her that it was all over and she only needed to be patient. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want for anyone to attempt to calm her down or convince her that the succubi and incubi were fussy demons and there was nothing she could do about it.
“I’m so tired of all this bullshit,” she said and started walking towards the front gate.
“Sophie, wait!” Kain called after her. “Where are you going?”
She ignored him and started running. If she couldn’t find Anahit and squeeze the truth out of her, then she wanted to be alone.
?
The light in Erah’s office was dim, and Sophie appreciated the intimacy. It wasn’t the first time she was seeing the Academy’s therapist, so she felt comfortable in the presence of the blue-haired incubus. He had been silent for a couple of minutes now, waiting for Sophie to answer his question. She looked at the heavy curtains covering the window and sighed.