Bound To Evil

Many eyes filled with hatred, disgust and incomprehension turned to Trevor.

Among those who heard what Lazar had said, a common feeling of indignation emerged and it could expressed itself by the following interrogation; that son of a bitch actually dared to make us believe that?

In Trevor's mind a question of the same kind was arosing...

'How could I have been stupid enough to think it was going to work?' He lamented with self-hatred while staring blankly at his shoes because keeping his head down prevented him from facing the animosity he was being targeted with.

Deep inside of him he had the answer to his question, but even now he preferred to convince himself that it wasn't that stupid, that it was an opportunity he had to seize and that he shouldn't regret what he had done... rather than finally see the truth.

He had been blinded by the power that his role of savior would have given him over the others and all he had to do to realize it was remember how much people's admiration had gone to his head and made him forget the risks he was taking.

But it wasn't a big deal, maybe the negative consequences of the risks he had taken and that he would soon taste would open his eyes... before they close for good.

"PIECE OF SHIT!" That's what Trevor heard before he collapsed under the impact of a punch on the right side of his jaw.

It wasn't a very powerful punch, so right after falling back on his stomach, Trevor raised his head directly to the person who had just hit him and at that moment... he understood that he was surely living the last moments of his life.

The person who had hit him was a young woman who was one head shorter than he was and who had a weak physique, tears were flowing at the corners of her eyes and her lifeless gaze was suggesting that the tragedy caused by the Draugur must have particularly affected her.

It wasn't this girl in herself that Trevor considered as a threat to his life, even though he felt that there was in her a will to hurt him... or worse.

The reason why he thought his life was threatened was that he knew that the death of the Draugur hadn't been enough to calm the rage of everyone and that, like this girl, it was undoubtedly crossing the minds of many other people that hurting him would do them a lot more good than mutilating the bodies of Draugur who anyway couldn't feel an ounce of the pain they had caused them.

"I'm s..." Before Trevor could even begin to apologize and beg to not be harmed, someone stomped on his nose.

A few seconds later, he was surrounded by about two dozens of people who had already dealt him far too many blows to be counted.

'Hmm, a little cruel coming from people like them, but I'm not going to complain.' Lazar thought as he watched Trevor being beaten to death with an eyebrows raised since the cruelty he was referring to wasn't coming from the fact that people were going to kill Trevor as he expected but from the fact that he noticed that no one was using his weapon to hurt him and that he understood that it was unconsciously or not so that the latter wouldn't die too quickly.

'Hmm?' Lazar turned his head successively in two other directions because he was surprised to see that what was happening with Trevor was also happening to two other persons...

It wasn't until he noticed on them the same suspicious Draugur's blood projections which had drawn his attention on Trevor before that he realized that if they were getting beaten up it was because Trevor wasn't alone in his scheme.

While the fervor of the lynching hadn't yet passed, the woman to whom Lazar was talking before came closer to him until she reached a distance of barely 2 meters between her and him, which made him understand that she wanted to have a private conversation.

"Are you satisfied?" She asked in a low voice with a neutral face.

"Be more specific on the subject." Lazar told her with surprise because he didn't really knew what she was talking about.

"Well, now that they know you're their savior, they'll do whatever you want." She answered him with an almost reproachful tone while not including herself in the people Lazar had saved, as if she wouldn't have needed him to survive.

"If you say so." Lazar said lazily, feigning disinterest in what the woman was saying to get her to stop beating around the bush.

"Earlier you said what would happen if we didn't agree to cooperate. Now I would like to know what will happen if we did." She finally asked before staring intensely at Lazar's face, which showed to the latter that she was going to value not only what he was going to say but also his reaction.

He answered her with an impassive face, "I would take with me the students on my list and if some of them are missing, I would pass their pictures around the crowd pretexting that I need testimonials while in the end, I would also take the witnesses with me since a written testimony will not be enough..."

The woman interrupted him by completing his reasoning to show him that she understood why he planned to lie to everyone, "It's also because you want to avoid false witnesses that you don't want them to know that you are going to take them with you since that would more or less mean that they would find themselves under the protection of the army if they bothered to fabricate a credible story."

"Right." Lazar replied promptly, not at all surprised that he hadn't heard any judgment in the woman's tone, since he knew that she had understood the interest of this lie for her survival, something that she was putting above all else.

"But... why have you told me all of this?" The woman asked with an interrogative expression and a hesitant tone.

It was the moment when Lazar was really going to take advantage of this woman's flaws...

"Because you know them better than I do..." He began to say calmly as he handed the woman the file he had in his left hand, "...and that I think you could convince them better than I could."