A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,24

laugh. "I really hope you're not pulling a slew of last confessions on me, Sherus. I am not ready to say goodbye to you yet."

"No, no, nothing like that, I promise. There's no Reaper in sight to take me away. And I'm still hoping Taeral finds Death before my expiration date as a ghost."

I would've given anything to be able to hug him, to kiss him and feel his arms around me. To take a deep breath and inhale his spicy, masculine scent. Sherus was the only creature who'd stirred me beyond repair. If I were to lose him for good in this war, I doubted I'd ever be able to find someone who'd make me feel the way Sherus did. And to think I'd barely given him a second thought when we'd first met…

"Tell me, then," I said. "What is it that you want to be honest about?" I stifled a smile as he straightened his back, perking up like a proud papa bear.

"I'm over the moon that our Tae is going to be a Reaper when his time is up in this world," he said. "I'm not sure what kind of afterlife the rest of us are looking at… whether we'll ever see our loved ones again over there—wherever 'there' is. But I know our son will make a fine Reaper."

I nodded slowly, finding myself in agreement with him on this. It was an honor, though I'd yet to figure out exactly how random the Reaper selection system was. There was hardly any time to discuss such details now, in the midst of the hell we were dealing with, but I did hope to find out more about the Reapers and their existence once this was all over.

How this would all end, I did not yet know.

But I shared my husband's thread of relief, comforting myself with the thought that, regardless of whatever came next and how many of us died, our son would still live. The more I thought about it, in fact, the better I understood why Sherus was so upbeat about everything. It was the love for our son that kept him going. The thought that Taeral would survive this, one way or another.

Taeral

With Amal, Amane, and the others in our Stravian GASP division back in The Shade, my team and I were left with Kelara, Dream, and Nightmare in the Faulty twins' laboratory. I felt sorry for all those who'd been left behind, but I maintained a teeny drop of hope that the Perfects might survive the apocalypse, should it come to pass. Their species was, by far, the most resilient. Maybe they'd get lucky, somehow.

I shook that thought away quickly, refusing to consider such an ending. I was not ready to admit defeat and to watch billions of innocent creatures die. On the contrary, I was all the more determined to make a plan and organize an effective search for Death.

We'd spent the past hour going over possible routes and places to visit, assuming two scenarios were possible: that Death left Mortis on her own, which was highly unlikely, or that she was drawn or taken away from it by someone else, like the Spirit Bender, who was now our main suspect as the traitor who had been working with Brendel since Thieron had first gotten stolen.

"We need to get organized," Seeley said.

Amelia was reading through the constant stream of incoming messages from GASP, which confirmed the return of our troops to The Shade from all over the federation. None of us felt good about this, but we did understand and accept the judgment of our superiors. If the worst did come to happen, we'd all have to focus our forces on protecting the Earthly Dimension.

Until then, however, Seeley made a point. "I'm all for organizing," I replied. "But we need a premise on which to function. If we assume Death left by herself, we'll have to search places where she might've gone to… I don't know, hide? Like Phantom mentioned before, planets where she's settled in the past."

"Amelia was right about this. Surely Death would’ve left a message or something if she’d taken off on her own. If we assume that the Spirit Bender had a hand in her disappearance, however, we'll have to think more like him, not like Death." Varga completed my train of thought, almost down to the last word.

"Good point." I nodded and shifted focus back to Seeley. "We only have one interplanetary spell left to use. So