Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Bellcolor
I park my jeep in the sole parking space I left behind, and hurry to our penthouse elevator. It’s 4 AM and I’m not tired at all. That’s totally understandable given the adrenaline flowing through my veins after tonight’s demented events. I should just go to bed and declare tomorrow a new day in the new life of Belle Fermi. Tonight officially belongs to the past of Bellcolor, or Bella Fermi, who got to live for just one night.
I lift up my cloak, press it as tightly as I can to the elevator ceiling camera, and count the seconds until the elevator finally reaches the penthouse floor. The bell rings, and I’m about to put my cloak back on when the elevator door opens and I see my father waiting for me. No point, then.
Great. A perfect finale to a nightmarish evening that just won’t end.
“Bellcolor,” he pronounces my name in a bloodcurdling tone.
Shit. I know that tone. This is going to be unpleasant.
“Dad,” I smile a phony smile.
“We need to talk,” he says, turning his back to me and marching into the living room.
Okay. I follow him without saying a word. He stands facing the lit fireplace, gesturing to the couch with one hand. Strange, it’s still cool outside but summer has officially begun and there’s no reason for the fireplace to be lit at this time of the year. I decide not to say anything about it, sit down and await my sentencing.
He paces back and forth, calculating his words in his head before letting them out into the world – as he always does with his colleagues – but never with me. I stare into the fire and wonder how I never paid any real attention to it until now.
It’s beautiful. The flames dance without a care, free of worry, breathtaking.
My dad is going to kill me and I’m thinking about these awe-inspiring flames. Finally he stops and turns to me. I hold my breath and prepare for the worst.
I’m an exact copy of him aside from his huge body. He’s wearing an Armani suit tailored to his exact immense proportions. Broad soldiers, a solid and muscled body, black hair slicked back with gel, and deep dark eyes.
“I assume you have questions.” What?
I’d been expecting Where were you? It’s 4 AM! You have an early flight tomorrow! What were you thinking, sneaking out in the middle of the night? You could’ve been killed! Or something like that, you get the idea.
“Um… I do?” Am I answering or asking? I have no idea, I just know I’m extremely confused. He doesn’t respond except to let out a deep-throated grunt meant to prove to me that the innocent little girl act won’t work on him. “Okay, fine! I went out to a party! Are you satisfied?”
“I already know that, Bellcolor. The alarm system goes off when someone leaves. I was surprised to see that it was triggered twice, when Betty was the only one supposed to leave at the end of her shift.”
“Wait,” I interrupt him. “How did you get here so fast? Shouldn’t you be in Tokyo?”
“I wanted to surprise you before you left for Italy. You thought I’d hand you off to a new life without giving you the appropriate guidance?”
“Of course,” I say with a frown.
“That’s not what I mean, Bellcolor. And take those ridiculous contacts out of your eyes, you didn’t really think you’d be able to hide what’s happening here from your father, did you?”
I actually and honestly thought I’d succeed at that, but once again my father proves nothing is hidden from his eagle eyes. I let out a frustrated breath and remove the color contacts, then raise my gaze to him.
“Damn,” he says with amazement, and I’m more confused than ever.
“I can explain,” I hurry to say. Can I?
“It’d better be good, Bellcolor, because you have no idea what you’ve done!” he barks at me, and I turn to stone right where I sit. Suddenly I feel so small on this enormous couch. Why do we even need such a monstrosity when it’s just the two of us? My father’s never invited anyone here, and you can guess for yourselves that I haven’t either.
“There was an incident last night—”
“An incident!” he roars. I shrink into the couch like I’m trying to get away from him. “You mean this?” He whirls around, lifts the trash can from my room, by my desk, and hurls it into the air.
All my suicide notes scatter through the living room. Okay, that’s embarrassing. Seriously.
The furious look in his eyes tells me he’s disappointed. Oh God, first Mom left him and now me. I almost did the same thing to him.
“Ah…” I try to say something, but the words won’t leave my mouth.
“And you mean this?” He picks up my empty pill bottle. Fuck, why couldn’t I die? I’d do anything to die right now. “You really want to die?” Did he just read my mind? Great, Bell, you’re a real idiot. The scattered evidence of your plan is pretty conclusive.
My father seems to smile for a moment, but if that happened, he hides it very quickly.
“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” I lower my head in submission. My father resumes pacing across the room angrily, and I catch it, my leg starting to bounce with disquiet. “Are you going to punish me?” I break the irritating silence.
“Even if I wanted to, I have no idea how,” he admits, and stops in place.
He has a point. I’m not a typical teenager. There’s nothing he could take from me that would actually be a punishment, and grounding me is hardly punishment either because I’ve never been anywhere except the mandatory affairs in the schedule he built for me.
He shakes his head as if wishing to empty his mind, walks towards me and finally sits down next to me on the enormous couch.
“Tonight was planned down to the smallest detail, it was supposed to go so differently.” I notice his effort to remain calm.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I have nothing else to tell him.
“You have no idea how sorry you should be, Bellcolor. This jeopardizes all the plans regarding sending you to Italy, given what’s happened.”
I immediately raise my head. Of course it endangers them, he’s afraid I’ll do a similar stunt when I’m far from him.
“Oh, no, Dad!” I plead. “Without meaning to, Betty had slipped a bit of wisdom into my head. She’d said it was my chance for a fresh start, a new life, and I truly believe I can use it! I promise I won’t try to do it again. I’ve learned my lesson! It was so horrible I have no desire to repeat it!” I grab the sleeve of his suit, rocking his arm forcefully and begging for him not to take my possible future away.
“You don’t understand, Bellcolor, it really was supposed to be your new life!” He shakes my hand off and I want to weep. I really, truly want to cry, but the stupid tears won’t leave my eyes. A daughter’s tears are meant to break a father’s spirit, aren’t they? So why the hell can’t I cry?
“Chances are it would’ve worked, but you can’t,” my father says, and I turn to stone at once. Did I ask that out loud? “No, Bellcolor, I can hear you,” he sighs. My mouth hangs open, but nothing comes out.
Are you telling me you can hear my thoughts? I ask in my head without meaning to, because nothing can make its way out through my mouth.
“Yes, Bellcolor, I can hear your thoughts.” His eyes meet mine. My mouth’s still hanging open, and I think my jaw’s locked and will never return to its place.
How? I ask in my mind.
“Because you’re my daughter. We share a bond of blood,” he answers my thoughts aloud. Yes, my thoughts! “I think we’ve covered the fact that I can hear your thoughts. Stop shouting,” he reprimands me.
I was yelling?
“Yes, you were yelling,” he again answers my thoughts, and now I’m really screaming aloud because the pain in my throat is very real.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?!” I scream again, and my father’s face darkens.
“Keep your language clean, Bellcolor Umbra Fermi!” he reprimands me, and I shrink back and shut my mouth.
Yes, my middle name is Umbra, and if Dad’s using it that means he’s furious. My father straightens up, gets to his feet and continues anxiously pacing the room. Great, we’re not getting anywhere.
“Bellcolor, listen to me, and listen well.” His voice is sharp and piercing, and his expression is dead-serious. “The world we live in is full of secrets I’m about to reveal to you. I’m afraid that in light of your foolish impulsiveness, things won’t go smoothly from now on, and I have no choice but to follow the Council’s demands.”
“The Council? What council? Your company board? What do they have to do with this, or me to be precise?”
“No, Bellcolor, the Council.”
“Okay, what Council?” I imitate him because I don’t understand a single thing that’s happened in the last day.
“As a Fermi, you belong to the world of what humans call demons. We live our lives under the laws of the Council.”
“Demons? What are you talking about?!” I explode at him. Oh God, no wonder they called me Fermi the psycho, I really am crazy!
“You’re not crazy, Bellcolor,” my father growls. “The pills you took weren’t mood stabilizers, they were pills engineered by my company, designed to protect you in your human form. At least until the Council decides to end your life and add you to our ranks.”
“End my life?” I look at my father the way everyone’s looked at me all my life – like a fucking lunatic.
“Will you keep your thoughts to yourself for a moment? I’m trying to tell you the whole truth and you keep interrupting me over and over. I knew it was a mistake to choose an American offspring.”
“Choose an American offspring? What do you mean, ‘choose’? How can you choose your daughter, your own flesh and blood?”
My father shakes his head and lets out another breath. I immediately do the same to prove that of the two of us he’s the frustrating one, and that I’m not the one carrying all the blame here. He gives me a petrifying look that causes all the hair on my body to stand on end, and I decide to shut up and listen to him.
“We share blood, but you’re not my flesh and blood, Bellcolor. Unlike humans, some of your blood flows through my veins, not the other way around, and that is only meant to bind us together so I can read your thoughts.”
The man in front of me, Othello Fermi, isn’t my biological father? Was my mother my biological mother?
“No, Naomi Fermi wasn’t your biological mother either, but she was my wife.”
Fuck.
“Yes, ‘fuck,’” my father says, making air quotes with his fingers.
An involuntary laugh slips out of my mouth. I’ve never heard my father swear, He always seemed so cold, so distant and calculating. He’s exposing a whole other side to me tonight. Too bad I hadn’t met this version of him sooner…
My heart turns sour as I think about the life he wished for me being the absolute opposite of everything I wanted. It was so miserable I preferred death.
My father’s eyes soften as he – I can’t believe I’m admitting this – reads my thoughts. He clears his throat and continues his story. “Every few years, the Devil marks a few humans emerging into the world as being destined to serve as vessels for incarnating demons. We demons claim the children for ourselves and take them under our wing. I had no choice but to watch you carefully. Circumstances obliged me to do so.”
I examine my hands and feet, looking for the mark my father’s referring to, but I don’t recall having any birthmarks on my body.
“The mark is internal, you won’t find it on your body,” my father clarifies. “Not all the Marked become demons, some are claimed by our enemies or end their lives, and their souls return to…” He gestures to the air with his hand, and I don’t know what he means.
“To the void?” I ask.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. And last night, when you decided to take your own life using these pills, something happened. Something we didn’t even know was possible. You see, Bellcolor, your suicide attempt didn’t fail. Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’? How can one ‘not exactly’ die?”
“The hypothesis is that you’re not alive. You’ve become a demon. But because of the overdose, you weren’t able to complete the change and incarnate. I suspect the pills will eventually wear off, because the pigmentation in your eyes is spreading, but not those senses typical of demons which haven’t yet awoken in you. You’re in limbo, if one can call it that.”
“What?!” I yell, getting to my feet and hurrying to the mirror in the foyer. I closely examine my irises and see that my father is right. The white pigmentation in my black eyes is spreading, but what does that mean?
“We don’t need contact lenses, Bellcolor,” my father says. “We can change the color of our eyes at will. But all demons have white eyes.” His eyes flash, and a white color replaces the black. I jump back, hitting the mirror behind me, and it shatters.
“Goddammit!” I shout. Damn, that hurt.
“I’m sorry.” His gaze expresses sincere concern, and he immediately shifts his eyes back to black. The change makes me leap back again. I wasn’t expecting it the second time either. Shit, shit, shit.
“What are we, exactly? What am I?” I ask with trembling lips, completely ignoring the shards of the broken mirror at my feet.
God, what a mess.
“Demons,” he answers as if it’s obvious.
“I get that, but what does that mean?”
“Well, some symptoms may have started appearing already. First, we’re not alive, so we don’t age. Second, we don’t need sleep, breath or anything related to that—”
“Wait!” I lift my hand to stop him. I breathe in and out. “I’m breathing.”
“It’s a habit most of us can’t ditch. And while we walk on earth among humans, it’s not something we should give up either...”
“Or people will suspect us,” I complete his sentence, and he nods. “What else?” I ask.
“Well, third, we don’t feed like humans, we subsist on blood.”
“Blood?!” I cover my mouth with my hands.
“Yes, we feed off human blood. Our company provides, among other things, blood for all the other demons walking among us. We’re a medical company after all, and we’ve managed to create artificially-engineered blood. It’s actually a replication of the blood we get from real donations.”
“No, no, no…” I shake my head and start to wander around the room. “We’re vampires?” The symptoms are too similar to the vampires you see in horror movies.
“If you want to call it that, but it’s a private joke among demons. I’m not sure who started those rumors, but they made their way to humans and somehow a mountain grew out of a molehill. Some of the superstitions are rather ridiculous, I must say.”
“Like what?” I demand to know. I’m really curious to know what’s more ridiculous than everything he’s told me so far.
“You won’t die from anything humans can do to you. You know, all that nonsense about garlic, silver, the light of the sun, et cetera. In fact, you can’t die at all. The only thing that can remove us from this world is our creator: the Devil. Even God can’t make us disappear, so that ‘light overcoming darkness’ tale doesn’t work either.”
“God is real?” My eyes almost bug out of my head.
“Of course,” he answers, and I feel my head spinning.
“God saved me from Trent and his friends?” I ask.
“No, that was me.”
“You’re God?” I furrow my brow.
He laughs. “Oh, no, no, I’m a demon just like the rest of them, albeit older and stronger. When I got the alarm that you’d left I followed you via the satellite tracker in your car. I’m glad I made it to you in time, before those bastards could hurt you.”
“What happened to them?”
“The bottom line is that their memories have been wiped. As far as everyone at the party is concerned, you were never there.”
Great, I’m back to being as invisible as I was all through high school. I don’t even spare them a thought; they’re not fucking worth it.
“And that’s what happened to Mom? The Devil took her back?”
“Yes…” he whispers, and avoids my stare. Seems like the loss of a loved one stays forever fresh for an immortal. His reaction makes me regret my question, so I decide to stop prying into past wounds. “Now, thanks to you, the whole Council is abuzz over what it means. But ultimately they’re as much in the dark as we are.”
“So what happens now? What exactly is going to happen to me?”
“I was supposed to take your life tonight, so you could go to Demon University, where you’d learn all about your new life and receive the new role the Devil has planned for you, but your body didn’t complete the transformation. I was obligated to inform the Council, and they insisted you couldn’t keep wandering the human world unsupervised, when we know nothing about your exceptional situation. So you must report to them in order for them to determine whether you can begin your studies anyway. If my guess turns out to be correct, and I very much hope it is, your human remnants should be cleansed from your body and the transformation process will be completed at some point.”
“ If your guess turns out to be correct?” I ask. “And if it doesn’t? What’ll happen to me?”
“The Council will have to decide about that.”
“My whole life now depends on people – sorry, demons – I’ve never met and who I didn’t even know existed?”
“That’s how we live, Bellcolor, don’t disrespect our way of life.”
“Holy shit…” I blurt out, and immediately regret it. ‘Holy’ is the wrong choice of word given what I am, kind of…
“But the good news is you’ll get to meet the Council members. It’s a very great honor. Few demons are considered worthy of an audience with the council.”
“Lucky me,” I hiss, and my father shoots me a look that could kill.
Shit, I did it again. I have to start choosing my words carefully. “W-will you come with me?” It’s more a plea than a question. I’m terrified of meeting them alone.
“Of course, you’re my daughter, my responsibility. And I promise, you have nothing to fear from the Council.”
He says the words, but for some reason they can’t penetrate the layer of fear enveloping me.