A Shade of Vampire 73: A Search for Death

by Forrest, Bella

  “Whoa…” Taeral breathed, finally finding the strength to look at her again. “What… What does that mean for me?”

  “It means you will not pass into the world of the dead until I decide to relieve you of your Reaper duties,” Death said. “It also means that, unlike any other living creature that might touch that scythe you’re holding, you can actually use it to its full potential. You are destined to become a Reaper, and even Yamani’s scythe knows that.”

  “Why do you think you were able to become invisible, even to Reapers?” the Word chimed in. “Why was Baethal so worried about you wielding the scythe against him?”

  “He knew? They all knew?” Taeral asked.

  Death chuckled softly. “You’re smarter than you look, my dear. Yes. Reapers know, deep down, when they meet future Reapers. It’s deeply embedded in their souls. One day, when you ascend into your role, you, too, will be able to recognize them before they even die.”

  “How will this help me?” Taeral asked, his cheeks burning pink. I could only imagine the myriad of thoughts racing through his head, and I would’ve given anything to be able to ease some of the pressure off his shoulders. If there was one thing I’d learned to detest, it was seeing Taeral suffer or struggle like this.

  “I take back my earlier assessment regarding your wits,” Death said, pursing her lips.

  Lumi sighed, her voice still belonging to the Word. “You can use it against the three Reapers that guard the pieces of Thieron, Taeral. As a weapon, as an instrument, as whatever could help you get your hands on Eirexis, Zetos, and Phyla.”

  So, at least we had that going for us, I figured. It was better than nothing, though a little bit more couldn’t have possibly hurt.

  “Mind you, once you bring the pieces together, you will deliver Thieron to me. You will not have the capacity to wield it yourself,” Death warned Taeral. “It’s not your average scythe. It has threads of me in it.”

  “I understand,” Taeral replied, nodding slowly. I could see the idea budding in the back of his head, and I probably wasn’t the only one, but no one else mentioned it again.

  “You should also be aware that, while I may control the four Hermessi outside, I cannot say for sure that at least one of them won’t warn the others about what you’ve just accomplished here,” Death added, further hammering the nails into our future coffins. I hadn’t thought about the Hermessi since we’d set foot in this room. I’d almost forgotten about them. “The Hermessi, and Brendel, in particular, will stop at nothing until the ritual is completed. Right now, you’re the only thing standing between her and that objective. They will come at you with everything they have. It will get harder and bloodier and, while she may not be able to kill the three of you, she will keep you away from Thieron by whatever means necessary. Expect some bad news from home, soon enough, Taeral. But do not let anyone or anything stop you from this mission. I’ve put my trust in you.”

  “Wait, what bad news?” Taeral asked.

  Death, however, didn’t seem willing to explain. “Your friends are waiting for you outside. Go,” she said and snapped her fingers. An invisible force hurled all three of us out of the room. The doors slid wide open just before we would’ve rammed through them. We landed on our backs, sliding farther across the floor, while the screen doors closed, and the four Hermessi resumed their guardian posts.

  Grunting, Taeral managed to get himself back into a seated position. “Wait! What news? What were you talking about?” he shouted at Death, but he couldn’t see her anymore.

  Lumi moaned from the hard landing, blinking several times as I helped her back up. She was back to her old self, the glow completely gone from her. She seemed confused. “What just… What happened? We were in there, weren’t we?” she asked me.

  I understood then that the Word had blocked her from the conversation, though I didn’t know why. Maybe its presence was too powerful in her body to leave any room for her consciousness, since there was no reason why it would keep her in a blackout.

  “She is such a bitch!” Taeral burst as he got up. He quickly brushed aside his anger to focus on Lumi. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think so. I don’t remember anything.”

  “The Word took over. I suppose you were cut off, completely,” Taeral replied.

  The knowledge of this clearly baffled her. “It has been a long time since I’ve felt like this… What happened?” she asked, but a quick glance to her side, at the Hermessi, made her shudder. “You know what? Tell me on the way out. I don’t want to be here another second.”

  “I don’t think we have any other choice, anyway.” Taeral sighed. “She gave us our assignment and kicked us out.”

  We moved back through the hallway, eager to leave the palace and continue the mission. We didn’t have a destination yet, but we had a little more knowledge than before. As we walked, Lumi became more aware of her surroundings and the last thing she remembered.

  “I heard the word ‘sister’ coming out of my mouth,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. Guess you didn’t know that part. Death and the Word are siblings, it seems, and they’re not the only ones,” Taeral replied.

  Lumi’s white irises glistened with surprise, the iris and the blue edges widening momentarily as she looked at Taeral. “Are you serious?”

  “She also said I should expect bad news from home, but kicked us out right afterward, leaving me on the edge of my freaking seat here,” Taeral added, angrily walking toward the first hallway. We could see the gilded doors at the end, getting bigger with each step we took. “I have to say, she’s definitely not my favorite in the cosmic pantheon.”

  “We clearly have a lot to talk about,” Lumi said slowly.

  We most certainly did. Most importantly, we needed to get out of here and reunite with our friends. Death had said they were waiting for us, which meant they were still alive. Perhaps the Reapers and the ghosts had pulled back once they’d noticed we weren’t there.

  There was still a lot of work to be done, and the quest that Death had thrown us into needed all hands on deck and all the brilliant minds involved. While Taeral, Lumi, and I were marked by Death, the others weren’t, and I wasn’t willing to lose another soul in this fight.

  Lumi

  Taeral brought me up to speed before we even reached the gilded doors of the palace. Needless to say, I was astonished. I’d learned new things about the Word, and I felt a little foolish. The supreme power I’d been serving for so long had kept me in the dark concerning the truth of its own existence and relation to Death. No wonder it had dropped in occasionally to help, when it had thought I might not make it by myself inside Death’s palace on Mortis… It wanted me to find her. It wanted to be there when I did, so it could speak to Death directly.

  “We need to find out where Brendel hid the three pieces of Thieron,” Taeral said.

  I set my concerns about the Word aside and focused on the mission. I’d commune with my maker later, and I’d ask the right questions, this time. I was done serving an entity that wasn’t forthcoming with me. I’d tolerated a lot over the years, including the fact that it had left me stranded with the Exiled Maras and the daemons for millennia, but this… this took the cake. My patience was irreversibly deceased.

  “First and foremost, we need to tell the others everything we’ve learned. Every detail, every single thing we saw in here, too,” I replied.

  We stopped in front of the double doors, and Taeral took Eira and me by the hand, ready to teleport us outside. He didn’t, though, as the doors opened on their own with a sharp squeal—the sound of metal hinges moving for the first time in centuries. Beyond, the entire crew waited, on their own, at the base of the stairs.

  “Thank the universe,” I heard Amelia whisper.

  They rushed up the stairs and met us halfway. We hugged each other, thankful to be alive and able to explain what had happened to us in this peculiar world, on this eerie planet where Death had made herself at home.
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br />   The aggressive spirits were gone, and so were the Reapers that had hounded us before. Despite what I’d just learned from our encounter with Death, I allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “We told Viola where you were,” Amelia said. “They’re waiting for us to let them know when you’re back.”

  “Before that, we all need to talk,” I replied, motioning for everyone to gather round so Taeral, Eira, and I could tell them about our brief encounter with Death and the Word.

  Amelia and Raphael, Riza and Herakles, Varga and Eva, Fallon, Acantha, and Nethissis all listened quietly as we recounted our experience. They learned about Thieron and its three pieces, along with the powerful Reapers that guarded them. They understood the sibling relationship between Death and the Word, though we weren’t sure how to make sense of that. We agreed to refer to that particular cluster as “forces of the universe,” functioning on the assumption that there were others like them, as the Word had said.

  They were made aware of the trouble that lay ahead, and they had to come to terms with what Eira, Taeral, and I had been sworn into, frowning at the sight of our shimmering red wrist tattoos—Death’s mark and promise that our lives wouldn’t end until we delivered Thieron back to her.

  “Oh, wow, she’s a piece of work,” Raphael observed. “You do all the work, and she just flips a switch and stops the Hermessi? Again?”

  “Pretty much. We were in no position to make demands, obviously.” Taeral sighed. “That’s Death for ya. All we can do is take this one surefire chance we have to stop the ritual and follow through until we succeed.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Eva said, “and it’s certainly better than what you went in with. Let’s do something about it, then.”

  Varga smiled. “I’m totally on board, of course.”

  “We all are,” Acantha chimed in, one arm casually resting around Nethissis’s shoulders. Nethissis nodded enthusiastically. I had to admit, I was impressed. As tired and as worn out and terrified as we all were, we’d still found the strength to keep moving, to fight until we saved ourselves and all our worlds. Maybe that’s why the Word left me on Neraka with those monsters. Maybe it wanted me to meet these incredible people and bond with them.

  I had a feeling that the universe didn’t simply work in mysterious ways. That maybe we were all pieces to a grand puzzle, the forces of which functioned to bring us together at precise times and in the right places, to generate the perfect conditions needed to combat aggressive elements such as the Hermessi. It was the only thought that gave me some comfort as to why the Word had never told me about its origins and its bond to Death.

  “First and foremost, we need to get out of here,” Taeral said after a brief pause. “We know what we can do with the pink waters now.”

  “We can’t go back to Calliope, but we can head back to Persea, meet with our people there,” Amelia suggested.

  We linked hands with Taeral, who teleported us back to the pink water cave. I welcomed the darkness and the trickling sound of the primordial fluid, taking a few moments to breathe in and calmly gather my thoughts.

  Eva and Varga checked the supplies and gathered more of the Devil’s Weed, since we’d need it. Amelia reached out to Viola through Telluris and delivered the good news—well, news that was as good as it could get in this situation, anyway. The consensus was as expected. Viola would dispatch a leadership team to Persea to meet with us, while we’d take the pink water route.

  As we jumped in, one after the other, and lit up in different colors as a natural reaction, I couldn’t help but think—this seemed a little too easy and a little too difficult, all at once. Death had turned it all into a mere quest for three objects. We didn’t have a location for them, but we knew we’d have three of Death’s most powerful Reapers to confront once we found Eirexis, Zetos, and Phyla. Taeral had a scythe he could make full use of, but the Hermessi were bound to come after us even harder than before. And the fate of our worlds was dependent upon finding three objects, three needles in a cosmic haystack.

  This time, we all knew to stay away from the crystal eggs growing along the walls—by now, we’d learned they grew in all the pink water caves, though only Calliope’s made Daughters; the ones on Strava, beneath the Lemnos Woods, had birthed Shills, and while we weren’t sure what was growing in these, we didn’t want to wait around and find out. Then again, Calliope’s had made Shills, too, which had been sent after Ramin and Harper upon their arrival, even though Mount Agrith had been destroyed. The pink waters had been sealed off from our use, not the Hermessi’s—that had been the general consensus, and the only thing that could explain the Shills’ presence on Calliope.

  We made our way to the bottom, white light opening up before us, ready to suck us into the great unknown, while our thoughts carried us all the way to Persea.

  This new stage of our mission had startled us all; I could see it in their eyes as they swam toward the white light. They were all thinking the same thing, and Varga was the first to voice it.

  “How the heck are we going to find those pieces before the ritual, when we don’t even know where to start looking? You know, since we can’t use the pink waters to find them... Just when I thought we’d caught a lucky, clear break with them.” He sighed.

  On one hand, hope had revitalized us, now that we knew what we had to do. On the other, the gargantuan size of our mission was simply overwhelming, and all I could do was keep moving until we reached the finish line.

  The pink water trembled, tickling my skin in a way that made me want to glance back. As soon as I saw them, I shouted into my water filtration mask: “The Hermessi!”

  The rest of the crew, likewise equipped for this underwater trip, followed my horrified gaze. Hermessi were coming through the cave and into the water, pouring in like large drops of elemental energy. I counted at least six of them, shapeless and glowing orange, white, green, and blue, and eager to get to us.

  “They must’ve followed us down here,” Fallon gasped. He was the fastest swimmer in our group and was already the first to slip through the narrowing tunnel, toward the source of the white light. “We can’t fight them. We need to get out of here.”

  The temperature rose, the pink water almost burning my skin for a moment. But the primordial liquid seemed quick to remember its acceptance of pure hearts. It healed my burning skin quickly, but it didn’t seem able to hurt or push the invading Hermessi out.

  They don’t have hearts…

  Fallon was right. Our only way out was through the white light. We scrambled downward, frantically swimming and squeezing through the tunnel after the vampire fae, while the colored lights above us grew brighter and more menacing.

  I’d worried about this being a little too easy for all the wrong reasons. Serves me right. Death wouldn’t allow Taeral, Eira, or me to die, but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of our crew. We were in this together, and, as my heart swelled, pumped with fear and unexpected bursts of adrenaline, I reminded myself that we all had to survive.

  No matter what.

  Amelia

  “We can’t go to Persea now,” I said as we pushed our way through the white, endless space.

  We lingered in it, floating slowly as we moved our limbs, trying to make it out to the other side. Fortunately, the comms devices in our breathing masks still worked. “What do you suggest?” Taeral asked.

  Behind us, the Hermessi—eight of them, now—spilled into the pristine vacuum. Like us, they were subject to the absence of physics in this place, but they were bound to reach us sooner or later. We were hanging by the tiniest of threads, and we knew it.

  Persea’s pink water hole opened up about a hundred yards in front of us, and we kept moving, as best as we could, desperate to reach it. The Hermessi back at Death’s palace must have warned the others about us. Death had mentioned it might happen, and clearly, it had. Those creeps must have also given them our location, since they’d been so quick to come after us, even with t
he Devil’s Weed on our bodies.

  We all hurtled to a soft stop as more Hermessi came out from Persea.

  “Not only that, but they heard us!” Taeral croaked, his eyes bulging as he watched more elementals pouring in from what should’ve been our way out. “Those sons of bitches were probably eavesdropping on us back at the palace. They must’ve told the Hermessi where we were going.”

  “Wow, they were quick,” Varga said.

  “Death said it would get more difficult from here on out,” Eira reminded us.

  We hovered in the water, with Hermessi coming at us from both sides. Horror crippled me, clutching my throat and squeezing so hard, I was dangerously close to passing out. I felt Raphael’s hand find me, gripping my shoulder as he pulled me closer.

  The elementals were in their fiery humanoid forms, making use of their limbs to move toward us. Something was strange, here… They were coming after us physically. There were no tools of nature to use against us in this void, and the pink water had not allowed them to hurt us. They were at odds with these little loopholes of the universe.

  I gasped. “Guys, they can’t attack us unless they touch us,” I shouted. “We can get away from here before that!”

  Lumi looked at me. “How do you suppose we do that?”

  “You people should really stop fighting the inevitable,” a strange feminine voice came through. We followed the source and found Fallon frozen, his eyes wide and burning orange, his lips moving against his will. A Fire Hermessi had a hand through his back, speaking through him.

  “Who… Who are you?” Taeral asked, his voice muffled by the breathing mask. It didn’t matter, though. These bastards could see and hear us, anyway, and one of them had gotten too close to Fallon.