A Shade of Vampire 73: A Search for Death

by Forrest, Bella

  The Reapers looked around, genuinely alarmed, until Baethal sighed as he glanced at the palace. “He’s in there, isn’t he?”

  “You’re damn right he is,” Varga said, wearing a most satisfied smirk. I wasn’t sure that was the best attitude to display at this point, but, then again, if this was to be our last moment alive, we might as well go down as snarky as we could be.

  A moment of silence passed, heavily pressing down our shoulders. My instincts were sharp, while my mind processed the flurry of possible scenarios from this point onward. I decided to gamble a bit, for lack of a better choice. “He’ll speak to Death now. There’s no point in trying to stop him,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t be able to stop him, even if we wanted to,” Baethal replied reluctantly. “He’s inside the palace. We’re not allowed past the golden doors.”

  “Oh?” I breathed, feeling my eyebrows arch with genuine surprise.

  Wrik sighed, shaking his head in dismay. “Our entire mission was to stop Taeral from getting in. The rest of you don’t matter.”

  “Whoa. Hurtful!” Fallon grunted as he got up, assisted by Varga and Eva. He grimaced from the pain likely flaring through his ribs.

  “This was all about Taeral, just like he’d said,” I mused. “So, what now, if you’re not allowed in there?” I asked, nodding at the palace.

  Baethal shrugged. “We’ll get severely reprimanded, most likely. And your friend will irritate our boss even more.”

  “Severely reprimanded?” Nethissis replied, not sure whether she understood what that truly meant for a Reaper—a sentiment I shared.

  “You don’t want to know,” Baethal said. “But rest assured, your friend’s mission isn’t going to be as smooth as he might think. Our boss won’t take kindly to him showing up unannounced. There are protocols one needs to go through in order to meet Death.”

  “What protocols? Up until the other day we didn’t even know she existed as an entity.” I sighed.

  Baethal grinned. “Exactly. That’s how impossible it should be to meet her. Man, when she finds out who gave her away, she’ll be so angry…”

  “Hm, yeah, so… what do you say we get out of the hot radius?” Wrik asked him innocently.

  “You know what? Not a bad idea,” Baethal replied.

  Before any of us could react, all the Reapers vanished. It was quiet and still once more, the spirits fading away, unseen by those of us without scythes. It was a clear sign that we were no longer considered a threat, that it was too late for anyone to stop Taeral from what he’d set out to do.

  Only, even as we breathed our collective sigh of relief, I worried. What if Death didn’t like Taeral going in there? What if something were to happen to him?

  “Should we go in?” I asked, glancing at the crew. “After Taeral, I mean.”

  Riza sucked in a breath. “Is it wise? He went in there with Eira and Lumi for a reason.”

  “You’re right,” I conceded, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that gnawed at my insides. Baethal and Wrik had left me with a troubling thought, and it refused to go away.

  Gazing at the palace’s gilded doors, I found myself quivering, my temples throbbing as I pondered whether Taeral, Lumi, and Eira would need our help. I sure as hell didn’t want to go in and spoil everything for them. In the end, all we could do was mend our wounds and wait for them to come back out, alive, in one piece, and hopefully successful.

  Lumi

  Liquid sunshine poured through me, and a sense of tranquility kept my wildest instincts from flaring. As we stood before the four Hermessi, my chest swelled with what I assumed to be determination. Somewhere beyond those double doors, Death awaited, and the whispers pouring in my ears told me that I needed to be there, no matter what.

  “We’ve come to speak to Death,” Taeral said. There was a slight tremor in his voice, which he couldn’t control, but he kept his chin up, unwavering in his resolve.

  Eira was as pale as a ghost, but she, too, kept her cool. The Fire Hermessi was the first to cock his head to the side. “You made it inside,” he said. “That’s a first.”

  “We don’t mean anyone any harm,” Taeral replied. “We simply seek an audience, and I can feel her beyond these doors.”

  “You’re wearing Devil’s Weed.” Air scoffed. “No wonder we couldn’t sense you. That’s a neat trick to pull.”

  “Will you let us pass?” I asked.

  Air looked at me, and it didn’t feel like a friendly gaze, though all I could see was the burning white energy of his figure. “Had we known you were coming, we would’ve put together a welcoming committee.”

  That couldn’t possibly have a positive connotation. It made me squirm, as I mentally prepared myself for a potential attack. It didn’t take a scientist to understand that these four elementals had been summoned here to guard the doors for Death. But I did wonder how Death had gotten them involved—as far as we knew, she and the Hermessi didn’t exactly get along. Then again, she was at the top of the godlike entities’ food chain, probably at least one step above the Hermessi. We were nowhere near the top, mere ants for them to squish whenever they felt like throwing a tantrum.

  We were dancing with giants here, and there was always the possibility that we’d get stomped in the process. Therefore, proceeding with care was our wisest option.

  “I don’t think aggression is a solution here,” I said, my tone firm. “At the risk of repeating ourselves, I feel I should reiterate that we do not wish to do any harm.”

  The Hermessi, however, began to swell, their flames burning menacingly brighter in white, emerald, sapphire, and fiery orange. “You cannot pass,” the Water Hermessi replied. “You shouldn’t even be here. How foolish of you to actually believe you could change anything.”

  “‘Desperate’ would be a better choice of word for our mental state right now,” Taeral muttered.

  We stepped back as the Hermessi began to move toward us, but the light inside me shone whiter and more powerful than ever. My ears hummed and my skin tickled all over, as if my entire being was reacting strongly against the elementals’ approach. Now, more than ever, I felt the Word flowing through me.

  “Whatever your desire, you will not take a single step forward,” the Water Hermessi said. “We won’t allow it.”

  For a few seconds, I wondered if that was true. If they could actually stop us. Taeral could try and teleport us past them, after all—emphasis on “try,” since none of the rules of time and space and matter seemed to fully apply to Mortis. Recent examples included the ghosts’ ability to physically hurt us.

  A low female voice vibrated through the hallway, like a steady echo. “Stand down,” she said, bringing the Hermessi to a sudden halt. “It’s time we had a talk, anyway.”

  She sounded so close, yet I knew she was somewhere beyond the double screen doors. I’d heard her inside my head, rippling through the rest of my body and making my limbs tremble, ever so slightly. I exchanged a few worried and equally hopeful glances with Taeral and Eira, while the Hermessi moved back to the side, without saying another word.

  Air moved his hand in a subtle motion, enough to pull the screen doors apart, revealing the next room. I found myself breathless before it—it was massive, a giant hall with tall ceilings made of a single mirror which reflected the black marble floor. This place seemed unrelated to the rest of the palace, the only binding element present in the walls, made entirely from paper screens with black wooden frames. All across the silk paper, an insanely skilled artist had managed to depict a cherry orchard in full blossom, with long-beaked birds flying from one branch to another. It seemed to go on forever, as the hall was in the shape of a perfect circle.

  Smack in the middle, lazily resting in an elegant throne with mother-of-pearl inlays and gilded details, was… Death. By the stars, she was beautiful and eerie and terrifying, all at once. The images we’d seen of her didn’t do her justice. Death’s humanoid manifestation was stunning—the artists had gotten the lon
g black hair, the red lips, and the pale skin right, but they had failed to blend them into their true harmony.

  Her eyes were big and round, perfectly black and filled with stars which twinkled as we walked toward her. There was a pile of ancient scrolls in her lap, and she’d been reading through them, from the looks of it. The dress she wore was voluminous and long and fluttering, made of white silk. It stretched over parts of the throne, cascading toward the black marble floor and spreading outward like pearl-colored quicksilver. It seemed to be alive, every thread in its fabric moving gently with each breath that she took.

  She watched us, half smiling, as we crossed the circular hall. I caught movement in the corner of my eye and turned to see what it was. I heard myself gasp as I saw that the painted cranes were very much alive, moving across the paper canvas as they flew from one cherry tree to another. Pink petals fell like cotton-candy snowflakes, scattered in the soft winds. The walls vibrated with a strange energy, one which set the art in motion, and it was spectacular.

  “It took you a while,” Death said, her long and delicate fingers rolling a scroll back up and tying the silk ribbon around its stem. She scooped them all from her lap and tossed them to the side. They vanished in a puff of white dust as soon as they hit the black marble floor. We stopped, confused by what we’d just seen, and Death shrugged. “They’re back in storage.”

  Despite her diaphanous appearance and the peculiar behavior of her silken dress, Death’s voice was deep and strong and downright bewildering. For a moment, I was under the impression that all this was merely an elaborate dream. That I was back on Calliope, wrapped up in my woolen blankets… that none of this was real. But her voice was my anchor to reality. This was happening.

  Taeral inhaled sharply. “Telluris, Viola,” he whispered.

  Death snapped her fingers, and Taeral grunted, a pained look settling beneath his eyebrows. “No need to let your friends know where you are or what you’re doing,” Death said, a smirk trying the corner of her mouth. “While you’re here, I would appreciate your full attention.”

  I had to admit, this was scary. I had never been in this position before. I’d never thought I would ever stand in a place like this, with Death looking at me. Amazingly, I couldn’t even take my eyes off her. She was entrancing, not only through her appearance but through the titanic energy that rippled out of her in tidal waves, each of them hitting me harder as the distance between us shortened. It didn’t hurt, but it rattled me on the inside—and the Word seemed extremely reactive to it, as well, buzzing through my veins.

  “I apologize,” Taeral said. “It’s just that our friends, our worlds, depend on us finding you. I simply thought they should know.”

  “There’s a saying on Earth,” Death replied. “I like it a lot. It goes, ‘Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched.’ Do you understand what it means?”

  Taeral nodded.

  “Forgive us for dropping by unannoun—” I started, but she abruptly cut me off.

  “Oh, honey. You were anything but that,” she replied, clearly amused. “The Hermessi may not have felt you because of that Devil’s Weed on you, but I… I knew the moment your pretty little heads pierced the pink water.”

  That was an unsettling revelation. Not that it should’ve come as a surprise, since Death was omnipresent and likely omnipotent. But still. She’d known about our presence here all along, yet she’d let us wander around, dazed and confused. She let us struggle against her Reapers and murderous ghosts and even the Hermessi she’d planted outside her door.

  In that moment, I understood that the conversation we were about to have would be anything but easy and fruitful. The playful glimmer in her midnight eyes confirmed my suspicions. No matter how many eggshells we walked on around her, there was a chance we’d walk out of here empty-handed—or worse, we wouldn’t walk, but rather be carried out, our bodies lifeless and our souls swiftly sent into the next world.

  Death was capricious and unpredictable. That much I could tell from what I’d seen and heard so far. And both Taeral and Eira were too young and unprepared for this encounter. That being said, it was too late to turn around now. “We might as well get this show on the road,” I said quietly to myself.

  “So. What do you want?” Death asked, her tone rather clipped, as if we’d disturbed her from an important and time-consuming task.

  I had to give her credit. She sure knew how to set a crippling mood.

  Vesta

  Exhaustion was setting in after my brief “ghostly” chat with Zeriel. I’d had some minutes all to myself, with Seeley gone for a bit. The “bit” turned into an hour, eventually. He’d only briefly excused himself before vanishing—he’d seen something in the sanctuary, something that had troubled him, but I was too worn out and tired to ask him anything about it. Frankly, I was more focused on finding a way to give Zeriel more complex messages, but I needed a fresher state of mind.

  In the meantime, however, I allowed myself to smile more, as Derek and Sofia had come in bearing some good news, along with some that was anything but. Harper was back in her body, delivered by Herbert, whom Ibrahim had released from his bond. I wasn’t sure whether they were worried about the ghoul being out there on his own, but I figured we had much bigger issues to deal with, for the time being. It had been my understanding that Herbert was remarkably well behaved, unlike others from his unnatural species. While I was thrilled to know Harper was safe and soon to deliver new information she’d picked up from Herbert, I didn’t like the thought of what had happened with Ramin.

  The flames had gone out on Neraka, much like on Cerix when Brann had been destroyed. It seemed reasonable to assume that Ramin had suffered a similar fate, given his brazen rebellion, but it still hurt. He was one ally we simply couldn’t afford to lose. The details of how that had come to pass had yet to come through, and I hoped Harper would be able to fill in the gaps. Derek had said that his great-granddaughter needed an hour to recover, to feed, and to get reacquainted with her body, and that Phoenix was in constant contact with her, recording all the information she’d come back with.

  We’d also learned that Taeral and his crew had been on Mortis all along, without even knowing it. That had made their reunion with Varga’s team all the sweeter. I remembered breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of that group finally back together, though we weren’t sure where they stood with their mission to find Death. No one had been able to speak to them over the past thirty minutes, but River was with Viola now, on Calliope, keeping an eye on the comms line, while the Daughter listened carefully to her Telluris link.

  As always, the universe gave us servings of hot and cold in such contrasting snippets that it made our teeth and our souls hurt. On one hand, we rejoiced that Taeral and his band were inching closer to their meeting with Death. On the other, more fae were falling under the Hermessi’s influence, our allies were gradually incapacitated, and the elementals grew stronger with every hour that passed. We’d taken more damage than we could bear, but we were still standing. I thought it was nothing short of a miracle, certainly better than nothing.

  Glancing at my soul-chain, I shuddered. Another link had gone black. Only three healthy glowing ones remained, and dread was once again gnawing its way through my stomach. Death had to come through for us; otherwise, I was inevitably screwed. Zeriel had gone back to the Calliope base on Mount Zur to catch up with the rest of that division—he was better off out there, hunting cultists or protecting that fae sanctuary, than here. I knew he’d be back in a few hours, which gave me some time to rest before I tried to talk to him again.

  “What’s up?” Seeley’s voice snapped me from my thoughts. He’d materialized right in front of me, but I hadn’t noticed him. Fortunately, his sudden appearances no longer startled me.

  “Nothing much. Counting the links on my life-chain,” I replied, noticing his sullen expression. It made me frown. “What’s wrong? Also, where did you go? You’ve been gone for an hour. Not that I
didn’t enjoy the silence.”

  He scoffed. “Sorry about that, I needed some time to just think. As for what’s wrong… Where should I begin?”

  “Oh, you are pissed off,” I said, eyes wide and ears ready to listen. “Talk to me.”

  Seeley shook his head slowly. “I hate the fact that you’re right. I think that’s what irks me the most.”

  “Now you’re talking in riddles. Care to elaborate?”

  “Well, none of this is okay. It’s not natural!” he snapped, pinching the smooth bridge of his nose. “Vesta, I’ve been doing this job for a long time, never doubting when someone’s time was up. But a few things have come to light, developments I hadn’t even thought possible, and… dammit, you were right.”

  I thought about it for a moment, unable to stop myself from smiling. “I guess I should be more pleased with hearing those words come out of your mouth, but I’m not. Can you tell me about these… developments you mentioned?”

  He paused, looking at me as if he’d only now realized he’d said more than he should’ve. “No, not yet,” he replied. “I have to take it up directly with Death, first. She’s the only one who can clarify a few things for me, including what rules are valid, given these unnatural circumstances.”

  I blinked rapidly, trying to process my own response. “Do you know they found her?” I asked, and Seeley seemed surprised. “Mm-hm. They found her. She’s on Mortis. Phoenix has the astral map back on Mount Zur. Turns out Taeral was already—”

  “Phoenix has the astral map,” he interrupted me, suddenly focused on what I assumed was his most important mission. I doubted he’d even listen to anything else I’d have to say. He’d locked on to Mortis, already. Everything unrelated simply faded from his consciousness. “Vesta, I need to go for a little while.”

  “Okay,” I said, shrugging. “It’s not like I can do much while you’re out. I’ll be here.”