A Shade of Vampire 79: A Game of Death

by Forrest, Bella

  “With all the crap that’s been happening? I will take a little bit of humor wherever I can find it, and a Reaper losing his pet ghoul is funny as hell,” Taeral said, stifling a chortle.

  Sidyan came up, closing the distance between us, and offered his hand. “Come on. There’s no time to waste,” he said. Reaching out, I quivered from his touch, which sent trillions of tiny electrical pulses through my body. I wasn’t sure what part of me was reacting—the physical, the soul, or the Word itself—but there was something about Sidyan that ignited unknown fires inside me.

  He gripped my hand firmly and yanked me toward him. I glanced back to say goodbye to Taeral, but he was already gone. The entire planet had vanished, in fact, with its red sands and lava and broken lives.

  It was just Sidyan and me, wandering through the depths of space, looking for a runaway teenage ghoul. Hopefully, we’d find her soon, so I’d get to Visio sooner, rather than later. In hindsight, if anyone had ever told me that I would end up in such a peculiar scenario, I would’ve laughed in their face.

  But it was the best way of getting to the truth behind Nethissis’s death. So I took it and mentally prepared for the many unknowns ahead—including this unexpected journey beside a surly Reaper who did not take kindly to blackmail. Not that he’d had a better choice.

  Amal

  The atmosphere of the quarantine area sent shivers through my body. A weight persisted in my chest as I measured the vitals of the infected Aeternae. There were five of them now. The first three were in worse shape than the others, their fevers running high and their veins swollen and black. A thin sheet of sweat covered them from head to toe, seeping into their white linen infirmary gowns.

  Petra stayed back, leaning against one of the thick support pillars that held up the ceiling, wearing gloves and a mask over her nose and mouth. The nurses watched me, also masked and gloved, as I checked the patients’ temperatures next. I took copious notes on my tablet, registering every single figure I’d collected from these people.

  The recent arrivals were awake, more alert than their fellow Aeternae, their gazes following me around as I took out several glass vials from my kit bag, along with slender catheters and sterilized needles. One of them frowned as I approached her.

  “It won’t hurt a bit,” I said, smiling softly. “They’re hypodermic needles. Chances are you won’t even feel a pinch.”

  “What are you doing now?” one of the nurses asked.

  “I’ve got their heartrate, blood pressure, and temperature, so I’m moving on to blood samples,” I replied, without even looking at her as I prepared the catheter and vials for extraction. “I will need blood from all the Rimians and Naloreans who worked with these Aeternae in close quarters. One or more of them might be carriers and not even know it. Based on your accounts of the disease, of course.”

  Petra nodded at the nurses. “You should bring the samples out,” she said, then looked at me. “We collected them earlier, like you advised, Amal.”

  “Thank you.” I gave the first Aeternae patient another reassuring smile. “Okay, now hold out your arm with your palm up and make a fist, squeezing as tightly as you can.” She sighed and did as I asked. The needle pierced her skin, and she barely flinched, quickly surprised by the minimal discomfort that I had caused her. We both watched as the blood was drawn through the catheter and into the vial, which I sealed with its rubbery cap. “There we go… all done!”

  “It didn’t hurt,” she whispered.

  “I told you it wouldn’t,” I replied with a friendly wink. “How are you feeling?”

  The girl shrugged. “Like my whole body is made of molasses. Soft. Heavy. I don’t really feel like moving.”

  “Permanent exhaustion, huh?” I asked.

  “Yes. And whenever I move, I get nauseated. My head hurts. I can’t take two steps without everything spinning around me.”

  I nodded slowly, looking back at Petra. “This is the first stage, isn’t it? The fatigue, the thickening and darkening veins…”

  “It is. They will be like this for a while, and then it will get worse and worse,” Petra said, her voice low and sorrowful. She felt sorry for these people. I could tell from the look in her otherwise cold blue eyes. She sympathized with their suffering, more than the nurses.

  Looking at the vial I’d just filled, I noticed the blood was a dark red, almost black in color, and strangely thick in consistency. Whatever the disease did, it clearly started with the blood. The thicker it was, the harder and slower it flowed, thus causing exhaustion and muscular weakness. There were bound to be clots, too. The fever was connected to all this, the body’s reaction to a virus that rampaged its insides.

  “Where is my mother?” the Aeternae girl asked, her gaze wandering around, as if she was hoping to see her here. The disappointed look on her pale face nearly broke my heart.

  “I’m sorry, darling, but you know the rules. No other Aeternae are allowed to get close to you, in order to stop the virus from spreading,” Petra said from ten yards away. “You wouldn’t want your mother to get sick, too, would you?”

  The girl shook her head, closing her eyes and taking a deep, ragged breath. She would soon be asleep. I moved to the next, more recent patient, a young male Aeternae with hair kissed by fire. He stared at me as I pointed at his arm. I didn’t have to tell him what he needed to do. He turned his palm up, squeezing it into a fist, and I went ahead with the catheter and the vial.

  He didn’t say much, other than asking me about my world and what it was like. There was a keen sense of curiosity coming off him—a pleasant contrast to the wary looks I’d gotten on my way down here. He genuinely wanted to know more about what went on beyond the hazy spell surrounding Visio, Rimia, and Nalore.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, watching the dark blood drip into the vial. It was slightly thicker than the girl’s, though she had fallen ill before him. Chances were his symptoms would worsen sooner than hers, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it had something to do with his metabolism. “The ocean is endless and turquoise blue. There aren’t any large continents, like you have here, but thousands upon thousands of islands… some lonely and wide, others small and in clusters.”

  “Lots of beaches, then,” he murmured, blinking slowly.

  “Oh, yes. Everywhere you turn, there’s a beach. The sand is almost white, but in some places it’s gold. There are islands around underwater volcanoes that have red and black sand, brought in by the ocean in lazy waves. The beaches there look striped. Red. Black. Red. Black. And then the jungle rises, green and filled with all kinds of interesting creatures.”

  “I would love to go there someday,” he replied, seconds away from falling asleep.

  “Maybe you will. I’ll be more than happy to show you around,” I said, though I knew it was a lie. If we didn’t find a cure within a fortnight, I doubted he’d survive. The disease had a rapid and vicious progression after its incubation period, from what I could tell.

  If I couldn’t save him, I could at least try to save the millions of other Aeternae who were also at risk. It took me another twenty minutes and a little bit of chitchat with the patients during their brief moments of consciousness, but I managed to collect blood samples from all five.

  The nurses returned with the blood they’d gathered from the Rimians and the Naloreans who shared workspaces with these Aeternae, neatly tucked into a small wooden tray, with a soft layer of linen underneath. I slipped my vials into my bag, along with the catheter, and discarded the needles in a trash box in the corner.

  I followed Petra out of the infirmary and into another room of the quarantine, where she’d had some of the medical equipment brought in from upstairs. “You can test the samples here,” she said, pointing at a microscope. “Our servants found another one of these in the fifth study room, so I thought you could use it.”

  “You want me to study the blood down here, and not in my lab?” I asked, slightly surprised, feeling as though she was keen to keep me
in the quarantine area, for some reason.

  “Is that a problem?” Petra replied, one eyebrow arched.

  Shaking my head, I put the bag on the edge of the table, along with the servant samples, and took the Aeternae vials out again. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something about this room that made me feel uneasy. Maybe it had something to do with the absence of natural light, since we were way deep in the basement.

  “No,” I said. “I just thought I’d be allowed to go back up and do my tests there.”

  “You told me what equipment you needed, so I had it delivered to you in this room,” Petra insisted. “The thing is… Amal, if you identify someone as the carrier, I need the gold guards to act as discreetly as possible to bring them down here. The fewer people who see you doing your work on this, the better.”

  It made sense, but it didn’t soothe my bubbling anxiety. I doubted anything could, at least until my sister came here. She was already preparing her own kits and equipment, and I wanted to have as much data for her as possible upon her arrival. I missed Amane, now more than ever. We’d been here for less than a week, but our sibling synergy had always given me a healthier state of mind.

  I didn’t like the fact that Ridan wasn’t allowed to join her. I would’ve felt a lot more comfortable knowing we had a dragon handy, but hey… their planet, their rules. Besides, what was there for me to worry about so much as to need a dragon? Ridan’s fire could do nothing to heal the Black Fever. As for the Darklings, our crew was more than capable of taking them out, once they learned more about them… once they identified the ringleader.

  “Do you need any help?” Petra asked, watching as I dripped a bit of blood on several glass squares, marking them with specific numbers so I wouldn’t lose track of whom they belonged to.

  “No, thank you. Perhaps just the company. This room feels so empty and cold.”

  I slipped the first glass under the microscope lens, my notebook and pen ready for conclusions. My hand moved quickly, jotting down first impressions, as the molecules struggled in blackness before my very eyes. On a microscopic level, the Aeternae blood looked even worse. No wonder their brains were so poorly oxygenated. It was as thick and as cluttered as black oil pumped straight out of the bowels of the earth.

  “It has always been imbued with death,” Petra replied, settling into a chair close to me. “This whole place has seen so much suffering. So many lives lost… I suppose the trauma remains, long after the trouble is gone. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.”

  “Don’t you feel it?” I asked, checking several Rimian and Nalorean blood samples next.

  She sighed deeply. “I suppose. But I’ve experienced this dreadfulness so many times, I’m beginning to think I’ve developed some sort of immunity to it. It doesn’t hurt as much. Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it.”

  “Oh, snap,” I whispered, noticing a cluster of small black dots attached to the edge of a Rimian molecule. Making a note of it, along with the servant’s name and assigned location, it began to make sense.

  “What is it?” Petra replied, visibly alarmed.

  “I think I’ve found a carrier: Leila Baridis. Do you know her?”

  The blood drained from her cheeks. “She’s one of the kitchen girls, I think. You mean to tell me the carrier is in the kitchen? The kitchen. The perfect breeding ground for the Black Fever?!”

  “Hold on, it’s not her fault. She probably doesn’t even know she has it,” I said.

  Petra shot to her feet and called out to the nurses. “Take a couple of gold guards with you and bring Leila Baridis from the kitchen down here!” she shouted. “Have her quarantined in one of the white cells, and make sure it’s all done with as little noise as possible.”

  “Yes, High Priestess,” one of the Aeternae nurses replied, and I could hear their footsteps shuffling across the floor. I couldn’t see them from where I sat, but I didn’t have to in order to understand the urgency of the situation.

  “What will happen to her?” I asked, throwing the glass plates into a clear bag for later cleaning. Petra looked at me and offered a dry half-smile.

  “Relax, we’re not going to hurt her. Like you said, she’s an innocent carrier. But I must keep her away from the others,” she replied. “Have you checked other servants? Is anyone else like Leila?”

  I shook my head. “She is the only one.”

  “Then hopefully it will not spread far.”

  “You’ll have to run another palace-wide test. Blood samples from every single Aeternae. All the shifts, all the personnel… even the Lord and Lady Supreme and anyone else who has set foot in this place over the past couple of weeks. If Leila has been working in the kitchen, then chances are there might be others infected, who are not yet aware of it.”

  A sense of urgency washed over me, sending liquid fire flowing through my veins. Petra seemed equally concerned, though she did the best she could to stay calm. Her hands were shaking.

  “That’s a lot of people,” she mumbled, almost staring through me.

  “It must be done, to stop it before it spreads,” I said.

  “Take your things. Let’s get you back into the study room upstairs, in the meantime. I suppose you still have work on your desired day-walking protein,” Petra replied after a long pause.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. After wanting me down here for a while longer, she was now in a rush to send me back up into the palace. The levels of hot and cold with this woman were intriguing.

  She’d gotten what she’d wanted from me, so she didn’t feel like babysitting me in the basement infirmary anymore. “Let’s go,” she said. “Pack your things. Come on.”

  “What about Leila?”

  “She’s going into quarantine. I told you that already!”

  Slipping the tagged vials into my kit bag, I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “But will she be safe? Can the nurses be trusted? Or the gold guards? Especially considering what happened last night… and what happened to Nethissis…” My voice faded, the grief rushing back with a vengeance.

  Petra’s gaze darkened to a navy blue. “What happened to your friend was most likely an unfortunate accident. She wouldn’t be the first to die because of those foxes. As for Leila, she’s under my protection. No one would dare to hurt the girl. As long as she is quarantined, she will be left alone.”

  I had to make do with this rationalization. I didn’t have to like it, but I had to accept it, at least for the time being. Collecting the rest of my things and zipping my bag up, I followed Petra back out into the main infirmary hall.

  Minutes later, we were already on the ground floor. Passing by the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of two guards waiting in the wide doorway, while the nurses talked to a Rimian girl—I assumed that was Leila. They spoke in hushed tones, but her expression told me everything I needed to know.

  Leila was terrified but compliant. I worried about her, now more than ever.

  Petra might’ve gotten me out of the infirmary, but I was already determined to go back there tonight, ideally under an invisibility spell, so I could see for myself exactly what Leila’s conditions would be.

  Again, I found myself thinking that something didn’t feel right, but my instinct was not a precise tool, especially not without Amane by my side. I’d figure it out, sooner or later… this missing puzzle piece that made everything feel so disconnected and muted, yet dangerous.

  Esme

  When Kalon came to, he was partially submerged in the cold-water tub on the first floor of the Nalorean woman’s house. Her name, I’d learned, was Fifelle. The Rimian faction member was also awake but tied up and unable to move or speak—only groaning and moaning in protest, as he squirmed and repeatedly failed to free himself.

  Kalon sucked in a loud breath, sitting up from the ice-water shock. Having been so deeply asleep until now, he hadn’t realized the sort of frozen hell he was coming back to. Fifteen minutes had passed since he’d fallen, and I needed us out of here as qu
ickly as possible.

  Fifelle had brought all the ice she’d been able to scrape off the box in her kitchen, and I’d used towels soaked in cold water to rub Kalon’s face, hoping to wake him up quickly.

  “What in the ever-living—”

  “You were out.” I cut him off, avoiding a string of profane words. I’d heard him curse before, during other violent encounters. Kalon could easily get a Potty Mouth Trophy without much effort.

  He sprang to his feet, clothes soaked in cold water, his skin pale but his cheeks red, trying to make sense of everything. It was very hard not to laugh, but focusing on the urgency helped a lot. I handed him a dry towel.

  “Come on, we need to get this guy out of here,” I said. He patted his face and rubbed his head with the towel, taking deep breaths in the process.

  “What happened?” Kalon asked, looking at me, then at the Rimian, whom I’d dragged into the bathroom to keep an eye on while I’d waited for Sleeping Beauty over here to wake up.

  “You got darted.” I snorted a chuckle, fiery blush spreading through my cheeks. I’d have hoped for more charming-sounding laughter, but it was hard, considering the unintended humor of this situation.

  He stepped out of the tub, his legs still a little shaky. Water dripped from his clothes, the fabric molded onto every curve and line of his athletic body. My mouth became dry, yet another reaction I had no control over. Kalon was too busy feeling embarrassed to even notice my juvenile awkwardness or my hungry gawking—I could see the shape of his muscles through the shirt and even the velvety vest: his rock-hard abs and carved thighs, his sculpted shoulders and strong arms. My temperature, otherwise graveyard-cool, was rising.

  “My head hurts,” Kalon muttered, scowling at the Rimian. “He’s the one who got me, isn’t he?” He looked at me, and I pressed my lips into a thin line in order to stop myself from grinning again. I shook my head, and he shifted his focus back to the Rimian. “Okay. Either way, we’re gonna talk, the three of us. I owe one of your colleagues for that dart, but since I can’t collect from them, well… I’ve got you.”