A Shade of Vampire 84 A Memory of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,86

me speechless. I landed on my back with enough force to knock the air out of my lungs. For a moment, it was nearly impossible to breathe. The explosion covered most of my field of vision with blinding flashes of red and yellow and white. The sound of wood cracking and splintering. Water splashing. Flesh tearing and falling everywhere.

“Hunter!” I cried out.

Once the bang subsided, an eerie silence took over. Even the Visio cicadas had been rendered mute. I heard a grunt and Dream cursing to my right. Nightmare groaned to my left. And Widow’s footsteps crunched in the tall grass as he walked over and pulled me upright with one swift movement.

The whole world shifted around me as I tried to regain my balance. “Hunter!” I shouted again. His voice came through, and relief washed over me like a hot, steaming bath that made every muscle in my body soft and tender.

“I’m okay, honey,” he said. I turned my head and saw him, partly hidden beneath Dream. She’d made quite the leap to get to him in time, but she’d managed to protect him. The forcefield she’d generated had a plethora of sharp nails and black crystal shards embedded in its translucent surface. None had gone through.

“What just happened?” I asked, holding on to Widow for balance. My knees were too weak to hold my weight for the moment.

“A death magic bomb,” Nightmare said, getting up with slow and pained movements. Unlike Dream, he hadn’t protected himself from the blast. There were hundreds of projectiles lodged in his back, each glowing red as they pierced his—for lack of a better word—undead flesh. Widow seemed okay, from what I could tell. “It was directed at us.”

“Oh, really? I’d thought they were aiming for the Reapers we left behind in Roano,” Dream shot back, anger sharpening her voice until she got up and saw his injuries. “Brother!”

Hunter reached me in a single breath and took me in his arms. For a moment, all I could experience was gratitude. We’d survived another incident, though I wasn’t sure how many such free passes we had left, considering the kind of enemy we were dealing with.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice low as he cupped my face and pressed his lips against mine for the briefest, sweetest moment.

“Mm-hm. Dream pulled me and threw me out of harm’s way,” I said. “You?”

“She did the same with me, only the blast projected us both into the ground. She’s heavier than she looks, let me tell you,” he added with a chuckle.

“I heard that!” Dream snapped while she checked Nightmare’s wounds, plucking some of the projectiles from his back. Every extraction made the Reaper whimper and curse under his breath. “Hold still, and it’ll hurt less.”

“A death magic bomb?” I asked. “Seriously? You guys make such contraptions?”

Widow nodded as he surveyed the still waters. There was no sign of the ghouls who’d delivered the cargo or anyone else, so this whole episode didn’t make any sense to me. Had they been sent by Lyriana, in a bid to keep us away from her hideout?

“They’re not easy to manufacture. The boxes are filled with whatever sharp objects one has on hand. The runes on each box help convert them into projectiles that can cross beyond the physical space and cause damage to entities like us,” he said.

“And the dead Aeternae?” I asked. “Their hearts were missing.”

“The hearts were inside the boxes. They’re sacrifices, meant as the actual explosive,” Widow explained. “Think of each heart as a stick of dynamite. In combination with the shrapnel and the runes, they can do a nasty number on Reapers. Given what it takes to build such contraptions, surely you understand why this knowledge is dangerous.”

“Do you know how to build one?” Hunter asked.

Widow shook his head. “I know of them. I know how they work, but I don’t have the words and sub-words to put one together myself. None of the First Tenners do—except, of course, for Spirit. This is definitely within his wretched realm.”

“Then it had to be Lyriana,” I concluded. “She probably knows we’re after her. This bomb took time and planning. I don’t suppose you can just whip one up in a matter of minutes?”

Widow shook his head again.

“Okay. What now?” Nightmare asked. He hissed from pain as his sister extracted the last of the crystal shards and carefully analyzed it.

“This is obsidian. Volcanic material. Odd to come across it in these parts,” she said. “If this is