A Search for Death (A Shade of Vampire #73) - Bella Forrest Page 0,56

watching me and laughing, eager to have a friend to hunt with. Naturally, I felt betrayed. I couldn’t turn back, either. I’d committed the unforgivable sin. I’d disgraced myself. Every Reaper out there would be eager to drive their scythe through me and obliterate me. So, I ran. I ran from the ghoul, I ran from the world I was only just beginning to know.”

So, that was the tale of Herbert, of how he’d become a ghoul in the first place. My sympathy for him only grew. I felt sorry for him.

“Don’t,” he replied. “I’m good. I was in a bad place for a long time, fighting against my ghoulish, primary instincts. Until the witches found me. I was both thrilled and terrified back then. But, you see, once they starve you properly and you devolve into this form of mine… carcasses are good enough to give you some sustenance. At least, like this, I didn’t touch the living. It was difficult to resist the miasma of a soul, of course, but while I was in the witches’ care, I got meat and bones to feast on. I was fine.”

“Why did you demand your freedom, then?” I asked.

Herbert let out hissing laughter. “After decades spent in that wretched pencil box? It was obvious that my time with Ibrahim had come to an end. He no longer had use for me. Neglected me. I don’t hold it against him, but I certainly don’t plan to live out the rest of my existence inside that tiny thing. No, thank you. It was simply time for him to let me go.”

“What do you plan to do, once you’re finished with me?”

“I… I’m not sure yet. I’ll stop by a graveyard, somewhere, first. I will dig up the freshest corpse I can find. I will eat. And then? I suppose I’ll wander through these worlds of the In-Between. I’m positive I’ll have a lot to see.”

I couldn’t disagree with him there. “The In-Between is beautiful, indeed. Lots of worlds to explore. But aren’t you worried you’ll come across a ghost and not be able to resist?”

“I don’t know. I’m not eating you, am I? Perhaps my self-control is stronger than we both thought,” he quipped.

Glancing around, I saw the cosmic landscape change, gradually. The stars were bigger and brighter. Up ahead, still at least a million light-years away, was the triple-star system of Neraka. Strings of violet-and-bright-green space debris crisscrossed the glimmering field we had to cross in order to reach Neraka’s solar system.

This felt odd. Only an hour ago, we were falling off the cliff on Calliope.

“I told you,” Herbert said, picking up on my thoughts. “We’re taking some shortcuts. Space to me… it’s a pile of fabric, with trillions of little holes that’ll get you from A to B without you even realizing it.”

“It’s still weird,” I replied. “Amazing, obviously, but weird. Also, it’s scary, knowing that all the other ghouls can move around like this.”

“There were never too many ghouls, to begin with. Their numbers dwindled down further when the witches started nabbing them and enslaving them in the Sanctuary. Perhaps the In-Between still has a few hundred, scattered across,” Herbert said.

“I take it that the Earthly and Supernatural Dimensions were more or less cleaned up,” I said.

“Yes. Of course, other Reapers will fall and become ghouls, but I imagine they’ve learned a few tricks by now. They know to stay away from GASP-populated areas, first and foremost. They will likely try not to draw attention to themselves. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about them. There will never be enough ghouls to pose a serious threat. Especially if your friends succeed with Death.”

“Wait, what do you mean?”

Herbert stifled a chuckle as he slipped through another of those “fabric holes” he’d mentioned. Suddenly, Neraka’s solar system was significantly closer. I didn’t even feel the shift, but I could clearly see that we’d covered about five hundred thousand miles in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, only ghouls and Reapers had access to these strange shortcuts in space.

“Don’t be mad, but I withheld some information from Ibrahim during that download,” he said.

“What… What did you do?!” I sounded understandably alarmed.

“Relax! It’s nothing bad,” he groaned. “I just wanted to talk to them myself. I wouldn’t want witches and warlocks creeping up on them and killing them. They’re decent fellas.”

My confusion wasn’t subsiding. On the contrary. “Herbert.”

“There is a congregation of ghouls I knew. Original ghouls. They eat souls, yes, but they