A Shade of Vampire 85: A Shard of Soul

by Bella Forrest

  “If you pair that with the rumors of shadows and possible ghosts? Who knows?” Amane muttered, gazing out into the distance. “That is definitely a fire burning. If they’re trying to hide from the Aeternae, they’re not doing a very good job of it.”

  “I don’t see the Aeternae shying away from chasing Rimians through here. Ghosts can’t do anything to them, and the ghouls are trained to stay out of the civilians’ sight. They only hunt runaway spirits,” I said. “They’ll eat flesh in the absence of souls, but without Reapers currently on duty here, the ghouls have plenty of ghosts to still feast on.”

  Hunter smiled. “Okay. So if those are Rimians we’re about to encounter, how are they safe out here? I’m curious.”

  “Let’s find out, shall we? Although I’m ready to go with Kailani’s angle. Too many wandering spirits for the ghouls to lessen their meals with ordinary meat,” Nightmare retorted, visibly bored with our debate. He reached out, and we all linked hands. He teleported us across the dune, and we found ourselves standing on the edge of a small camp. The Rimians nearly jumped out of their skins when they saw us.

  A couple of the men brought out their spears, clearly fearful. I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “Please, don’t be afraid. We’re not here to hurt you,” I said. “We’re looking for someone.”

  “You’re not Aeternae,” one of them said, his thick brows furrowed. His beard had a copper tint and a few streaks of white. He also seemed to be the eldest among his people, tall and strong and fit enough to fight back, if needed.

  “We’re not Aeternae,” I said, smiling. “But we’re looking for some Aeternae. Marios and Silla Levantes. Have you heard of them?”

  The Rimian man cursed under his breath. “Yeah, we know the siblings. Both of them monsters. What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Have you seen them?” Ridan interjected.

  “What’s it to you?” a second Rimian man asked. The first one, the elder, shushed him.

  “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “Sorry, Clay,” he mumbled.

  “And put the weapons down,” Clay said. He seemed to be their leader. “They would’ve killed us by now if they wanted to.”

  “Forgive me for asking, but how do you know that?” Ridan inquired. “I mean, we aren’t going to hurt you, but what makes you so sure we won’t? You’re hiding all the way out here... it would be easy enough to do.”

  Clay smirked, the light from the flickering flames dancing across his tanned face. “You’re here, which means you’re not afraid of the Howlers.”

  “The Howlers?” My blood ran cold. We’d clearly missed some important information prior to setting foot in this desert.

  The Rimians exchanged amused glances before Clay looked at me. “You came all the way here without knowing about the Howlers?”

  “How about you just tell us what they are, buddy?” Nightmare shot back, crossing his arms.

  Clay’s humor faded from his expression as he indulged the Reaper’s request. “They’re the souls of the forgotten. Spirits that have been wandering for too long, unable to move on. We don’t know who they are or why they chose the desert of all places, but they’re strong out here. Strong enough to scare the pants off the Aeternae, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Howlers,” I whispered, trying to dig through my knowledge of ghosts and Reapers. I couldn’t find anything to go with this name, so I looked to Widow and Nightmare for answers. “What is he talking about?”

  The Reapers seemed to know exactly what Clay was talking about. The Rimians too, and they were all on edge. They were a small group of ten men and five women, most of them young and skinny, dark-haired and with rough, sullen features. These were the faces of people who’d experienced true suffering. I could tell.

  “Are they physically violent?” Nightmare asked. “Have you seen or heard them yourselves?”

  Clay nodded. “Just last night. A great black shadow cut through that eastern dune there,” he said, pointing at a tall mound of blue sand. Indeed, it looked as though it had been split in half with a giant knife, pale blue waves bursting over the dark blue, like the spilled filling of a cake. “It rattled our campsite, but it didn’t stay long before moving farther east.”

  “We hear them all the time, especially at night when the winds die down,” one of the women said. “Dozens of people have gone missing in these parts. Merchants, mostly, who sought to take a shortcut into the southeastern cities along the coast and paid dearly. Or so the rumors go, anyway.”

  “What the hell are Howlers?” I asked Nightmare. He gave me a sneer.

  “Poltergeists, Word witch. So rare they weren’t worth mentioning until now because most Reapers have never even come across one,” he said. “And now I’m hearing there’s a whole desert filled with them.”

  “I swear, the longer I stay on Visio, the more annoyed I become,” Widow grumbled. “Howlers, as our friend here calls them, are not supposed to exist, much like the ghouls. They’re abandoned spirits. They’ve spent thousands of years in solitude and isolation, unreaped and therefore increasingly miserable. Imagine existing in what feels like an eternal limbo. They can’t see other ghosts. They can’t talk to the living, either. It’s a whole other kind of spiritual decay. While the ghouls are Reapers who basically do it to themselves—with the exception of Visio—the Howlers have no say in it whatsoever. There are no Reapers to send them to the afterlife, so they’re stuck here.”

  “And most of the rage they’re exhibiting likely comes after all the running they do from the Knight Ghouls that exist in this world solely to eat them,” Nightmare added. “If they’re capable of cutting through a sand hill like that, I imagine they’re capable of much more, too. They’re strong, which means they’re very old. Hundreds of thousands to millions of years old, and capable of manifesting physically.”

  “And the howls? How do you explain those?” I asked him.

  Nightmare shrugged. “It’s their suffering that these people are hearing. Cries for help. Think of it this way. After existing like this, without moving on and hunted by these horrid ghoulish creatures, the spirits begin to wear themselves down. They end up functioning on behavioral loops. I have only seen a few myself over the eons. One was reliving the moment of his death, like a specter, over and over again. He’d been abandoned inside an old house, unable to leave its premises for some reason—likely he’d been bound to that place in life, emotionally speaking. And anyone who set foot inside would eventually run into the guy falling from the third floor and breaking his neck. On repeat. Another screamed for hours on end, its howls echoing through an entire valley. It scared the villagers until they uprooted and left. I could go on, but I think you understand.”

  “Yeah. That’s just… terrible,” I said, my heart breaking for those poor spirits.

  “What are ghouls?” Clay asked, clearly out of the loop regarding some of Visio’s more crucial aspects. His question made Nightmare laugh.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know. Just do yourselves a favor—if you die and no one comes to reap you, run until they do. If you see gnarly looking creatures with huge eyes and fangs and long limbs and translucent skin, again, run. Run as fast as you can. Seek refuge in this desert here, if you must.”

  His reply only confused Clay and the Rimians, but I understood why Nightmare didn’t want to tell them more about what was happening beyond the veil of life. There was a reason for the secrecy of Reapers. Our intention was to resolve the Visio crisis. Hopefully, that meant Clay and his fellow Rimians would never have to deal with ghouls or Darklings in the hour of their passing.

  “Hold on. If this is a potential ghoul hunting ground, wouldn’t they have resolved the Howler issue by now?” Hunter chimed in, scratching the back of his head. “The Howlers are spirits, after all.”

  Widow shook his head. “Not necessarily. If a poltergeist is strong enough, it can fight a ghoul. I have never seen such a confrontation before, but I almost got my ass hande
d to me by a… Howler, before I was bound to Eirexis. They’re mean and mindless bastards, I’ll tell you that much. And if a ghoul isn’t careful or he’s too hungry to pay attention, the Howler might get the better of him.”

  “Therefore, if this desert is dominated by Howlers, there’s a chance we won’t find any ghouls here, after all, thus rendering the hunting ground theory incorrect,” Nightmare said. “Personally, I don’t mind. At least a Howler can be reaped.”

  “Oh. And if it’s reaped, will it move on into the afterlife?” I asked.

  “Theoretically, yes. We don’t know what shape that soul is in upon its arrival there, unfortunately.” Nightmare sighed deeply. “We’ve only been able to theorize on the subject, hoping that whatever suffering the spirit has endured in death, it will be washed away when entering the afterlife. I’d hate to think we’ve sent psychotic poltergeists in there.”

  Widow chuckled bitterly. “The lasses there would have us flayed.”

  “Lasses?” I asked, and Widow abruptly tilted his head toward me. I didn’t need to see his face beneath that gimp mask to know he was alarmed. He’d just let slip something I wasn’t supposed to know about as a living creature, and his frame was suddenly so stiff and tense that I bet I could break a chair against his back and he wouldn’t even budge.

  “You said you know of Marios and Silla Levantes,” Nightmare cut in, focusing his attention on Clay. I knew he was trying to deflect from Widow’s slip of the tongue, and I didn’t pursue it, since neither would tell us more about the afterlife. “Have you seen them around recently?”

  Clay sat in front of the fire, the rest of his people already settled and eating fruits that looked like figs—likely collected from a nearby bush or from the edge of the desert, where I’d last seen fruit trees growing in rocky soil.

  “If you go north for another hundred miles, you’ll reach the heart of this desert. There’s a large oasis there, but because of the sand and the Howlers, very few are able to reach it,” Clay said. “It’s where you’ll find the Levantes brothers.”

  “How do you know?” Amane asked, taking out a map she’d gotten from Kalla to check our position on it. “I don’t see it marked on the map.”

  “It’s not recorded anywhere. Only those of us who’ve seen it know about it,” Clay said, looking up at her.

  “Okay, but how do you know the Levantes siblings are there?” I repeated Amane’s question, and Clay let out a heavy sigh. His companions were all gloomy and avoiding eye contact.

  “It was our safe haven until a couple of nights ago,” he finally said. “The Levantes bastards drove us out. They tried to hold us down to drink our blood, but there were two of them and more of us. Plus, I think there were at least a couple of Howlers who really didn’t like them.”

  “Explain,” Nightmare said, obviously intrigued.

  “Well, we couldn’t kill Marios and Silla, but we were able to run from them. We were moving through the desert as fast as we could in the middle of a freezing night. I remember the icy sand crackling beneath my boots. The Levantes siblings came after us, their persistence genuinely frightening, if I’m honest.”

  “We weren’t sure we’d make it all the way here,” another Rimian woman added, shaking her head at the memory. I could only imagine the terror they must have felt during that run, the thoughts that must’ve gone through her head as she fled to save herself.

  “Thing is, at one point the Levantes bastards were getting close. Until a few Howlers intervened. They knocked us over, and for a moment, I thought they would hurt us more, but they didn’t. They were completely focused on Marios and Silla. The bloodsuckers had to run away because the Howlers kept ramming into them, tossing them around like rag dolls.”

  “And that’s why you’re out here, closer to the edge,” I concluded. “Doesn’t that put you at risk of being seen by any Aeternae patrolling around the desert?”

  Clay smiled. “Lady, this place has been known to be cursed and haunted for a long time. No one dares to come in unless they’re fools or they’re out of other, saner options.”

  Ridan sucked in a breath, his gaze wandering around. “Well, at least we know where to find those Whip suckers.”

  The night had settled over the dunes, the moon rising and revealing flecks of stardust in the blue sand. It looked amazing, despite the persistently dropping temperatures. Chills ran down my spine, and I wasn’t sure they were all caused by the cold. The winds had become muted, barely raising a strand of sapphire dust here and there, but the darkness of the night echoed with distant wails—the Howlers, I assumed. They were definitely present but not too close.

  We left Clay with his people by the small fire. I hoped it would be safe for them going forward, at least until we finished what we’d come to Visio for. If the Unending was freed, chances were good she’d take back the Aeternae’s immortality as punishment for what they had done—and that was literally their best-case scenario. It would render the Rimians’ and the Naloreans’ blood useless, too. And perhaps that, in turn, would lead to the people’s liberation.

  This world had everything its inhabitants needed to live on their own, without the Aeternae feeding off the Rimian and the Nalorean resources.

  “What should we expect from the Levantes siblings?” Hunter asked, looking my way. “If they’re running from Danika, do you think we’ll have an easier time taking them down?”

  “Based on our previous experience with Ramus Malfas, I highly doubt it,” Amane said. “He, too, was thought to have fled the city to keep himself alive. Look at how that one turned out.”

  Ridan grunted as we climbed the tallest sand dune. As I reached the top, my breath was taken away by the incomparable beauty surrounding us. The desert was a sea of pulverized gemstones, remnants of a massive crystal deposit. The hues of blue darkened beneath the night sky, but the moon’s delicate light still brought out dazzling shimmers everywhere I looked.

  “I don’t know what the chances are of us running into Danika again,” the dragon muttered. “I fixed her up pretty good the last time we saw her.”

  “Ugh, I think I can still smell her burning flesh,” I said, fighting a gag reflex.

  “Personally, I reveled in it,” Hunter replied, still very much amused by that particular moment. It made Amane laugh.

  “The fried chicken. Right…”

  “Point is, Ridan might be onto something,” I said before we teleported again across several short distances. A few minutes later and about ten miles ahead, a massive oasis rose in the middle of the desert. It was shaped like a teardrop, lush greenery and oversized flowers growing around the clear body of water. I could see remnants of tents and even an old hut by the shore. Someone had definitely lived here before. Judging by the size of the settlement, it wasn’t just Clay’s group, either. “Danika is currently healing from one hell of a burn. Soul and Kelara are tracking Corbin, and they’re nowhere near this region. Which means that if we are to walk into another trap, it’s not of their doing,” I continued.

  “Should we find some comfort in that?” Widow asked, his tone dripping with doubt.

  “Not at all. But I admit, I’m slightly less scared because we’re not going to deal with Danika or Corbin. Those two terrify me,” I replied.

  “There’s no movement from what I can tell,” Nightmare said, his starry eyes analyzing the encampment, along with the rest of the oasis.

  Giant palm trees sprang from the blue sand. Their leaves were a strange mixture of azure and violet, most likely from feeding off the mineral soil. The rest of the underbrush was a crude green, littered with huge flowers that had wide, waxy petals ranging from yellow to orange and a frenzied pink. It was truly a sight to behold. Such a shame that it had become home to two of the Aeternae’s most despicable characters.

  I took out a handful of invisibility pellets and handed some over to Hunter, Ridan, and Amane. With our red garnet glasses on, we consumed the magic and disappeared from sight. The Reapers followed suit, returni
ng to their subtle forms yet allowing us to still see them, as we carefully descended the dune and headed toward the oasis.

  We approached with caution, keeping our conversation to a minimum and our voices down. Our collective experience demanded it. Even as we drew closer, however, I still couldn’t see signs of movement—only the occasional breeze that made the waterside tents tremble.

  “What are the odds that they’re still there?” Hunter whispered.

  Nightmare walked faster, getting ahead of us. “Let me find out. I might—” He froze, and we all heard the click under his bare feet. “Crap.”

  We stilled, eyeing him nervously. “Go on,” I said, barely above a whisper.

  “You might all want to step back a couple dozen yards,” Nightmare replied dryly.

  “I’ve got this.” Widow grabbed my shoulder. Hunter, Amane, and Ridan were quick to touch him, and he teleported us farther back.

  Nightmare gave us an okay sign before he disappeared. A split second later, an explosion tore through the blue sand, and we all ducked for cover. Nightmare appeared in front of us and produced a protective shield able to resist the ensuing ripples of death magic energy. The air shimmered black, and I held my breath as Nightmare’s shield kept us alive.

  The problem quickly became apparent, as another explosion rocked the sand, followed by another, then another. Blast after blast, death magic charges were detonated in a wide circle around the oasis, sending out waves of fatal energies designed to kill anyone who dared get close to this place.

  Nightmare couldn’t hold it all back on his own, so Widow joined him to double the defenses. I counted eight explosions, and they weren’t stopping anytime soon. The night was illuminated by white flames and yellow sparks. I could barely see the oasis at this point, but I knew I couldn’t let the Levantes Whips win this one.

  I sprang to my feet, the Word lighting me up from the inside, and gripped our Reapers by their shoulders, my lips moving as I allowed my magic to manifest. Electrifying glimmers moved from my hands into the Reapers, powering them up until their protection shield began to glow amber.