A Shade of Vampire 84 A Memory of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,52

for a moment before offering a shrug in response. “I have no idea. My mind keeps bouncing off these old walls. What was this place? I get that it’s from Eliana’s lifetime, but what happened here?”

“I see traces of violence,” I chimed in, and Phantom nodded once.

“This is where Eliana was first attacked by Darklings, upon Endymion’s order. She was almost ten thousand years old, and she’d come to feed the poor. It was a favorite pastime of hers. She’d go into the imperial city’s market and fill up a cart with vegetables, grains and fresh milk in glass jugs, and she’d push it all the way to the south side, where the poorest Rimians and Naloreans lived, many of them children,” Phantom said. “This little house belonged to a former palace servant, a disgraced Rimian who’d died of a terrible infection. His children were left behind, starving and crying for days on end. When she heard about their situation, Eliana came to help them.”

The details began to form around us, materializing out of thin air. Broken bottles of milk. Fruits and vegetables fallen from their sacks. Bread and oil on a shelf above the splintered table. And blood, so much blood, congealed across the wooden floorboards.

“Are you putting on a show here?” I asked Phantom, bile rising in my throat as the bodies of dead Rimian children appeared in the corner. They’d died violent deaths, and it pained me to see them. Valaine was even worse, shuddering as tears gathered in her eyes.

Phantom shook her head. “No. The more clearly Valaine remembers this place, the easier it is for me to render it. I’m able to show you this because of her.”

“Is that true?” I asked Valaine, and she gave me a faint nod.

“Okay, so we’re onto something,” Morning declared. “If you’re able to visualize these past memories, it means we’re ready to dig into another, more ancient life.”

Suddenly, Kalon appeared between us. He was asleep, on his back, black veins drawn down his neck and around his eyes. Valaine gasped, no longer able to control herself. She started to cry, and I moved to comfort her, but Morning placed her hand over mine.

“Don’t. Leave her be. She needs to be able to clear her head without your help,” Morning whispered. I hesitated but eventually accepted her point. We were in here for a reason.

“She’s remembering Kalon,” I said.

“Yes. Her memories are blending,” Phantom replied.

Eliana appeared next, flown across the room. She hit the wall hard, landing on her side. Coughing and wheezing, she forced herself back up just as two Darklings passed through us, crossing the room, determined to kill her. They’d already killed the children.

“Eliana was in the middle of feeding the Rimian boy and girl when two Darklings stormed the house. They didn’t stand a chance, and Eliana wasn’t fast enough. She’d never been taught to fight because her parents hadn’t yet figured out who and what she really was. She’d been raised as a lady of the court. She had her Aeternae reflexes and instincts, but they were useless against trained Darklings,” Phantom continued.

I watched as Eliana tried to fight the Darklings off using her claws and fangs. She was fast and agile, but she couldn’t foresee the attacks. More than once, her opponents got the better of her, knocking her down.

Valaine looked only at me, tears streaming down her cheeks as Kalon’s sleeping figure began to dissolve and disappear. “I remember,” she murmured. “They beat me until the darkness took over, and the Unending awakened…”

Eliana was on the floor. One of the Darklings was about to chop her head off with an axe, but she caught it by the blade, blood trickling down her forearm. Black veins burst around her eyes, followed by a smoky pulse. Charcoal tendrils lingered in the air as it shot outward and cast the Darklings away.

She got up for the last time, the air thickening and darkening around her, as if her very being was gradually eating up all the light in the room. The Darklings managed to stand and tried to attack her once more, but she raised her hands and shot two balls of black smoke at them. Each of the peculiar projectiles went right through the Darklings, and they collapsed, bleeding black blood as their insides liquefied. They died in agony, writhing on the floor as Eliana watched with a blank stare.

Chills ran down my spine when I realized she’d killed them with the purest form