A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,68

first there to knock it back. It wasn't our bodies that the spirits were responding to, I quickly realized. It was the steel in our weapons.

I'd gotten myself cut and scratched by these creatures already, but, since they were basically ghosts, kicking and punching had done nothing. The swords, however, those worked!

"Use your blades!" I shouted. "Use your steel! It hurts them!"

In an instant, the balance in this fight changed. We slashed and cut through the specter mess, even as they continued to pile up on us. Raphael's fire helped a lot, as well—not necessarily because it hurt the spirits. It didn't. But it distracted them long enough for us to move in and cut more of them down.

The Reapers got busy thinning the herd. Their scythes transformed every specter they touched into bursts of golden sparks. Kelara, Dream, and Nightmare had clearly done this before. They moved like shadows, vanishing and reappearing around the frosted battlefield. Seeley, Widow, Soul, and Phantom were hard at work, as well. Casting bits of Reaper magic between their hits, they managed to distract entire clusters before cutting them down.

I couldn't see the Time Master anywhere, and the ghouls were missing, too. I'd expected them to show up by now. Reappearing next to Amelia, I quickly analyzed our current odds against Spirit's specter hordes.

"Where the hell are the ghouls?" I asked.

"Damned if I know," Amelia breathed and took down another spirit. She wasn't a Reaper, but the scythe in her hands still caused damage to the ghostly mass. A Reaper always pitched in to finish the job—either Soul, Kelara, or Seeley, for the most part. We were spread thin against too many enemies.

Taeral took on Spirit with everything he had, swinging Thieron expertly while dodging the Reaper's blade. Soul had already advised him not to get cut. We knew that it was how the Spirit Bender controlled his ghosts. All he had to do was cut you once, and you were his. Of course, that usually applied to the dead, but the Soul Crusher had been specifically clear that it did the same to the living, as well.

"You selfish piece of trash!" Taeral shouted and dodged Spirit's scythe. He brought Thieron upward fast, missing the Reaper by only a few inches. It was enough to make Spirit look worried. It became obvious then that he did not want to get hit with Thieron. Chances were it would lead to his permanent death, the irreversible kind. "You've put all the living in mortal danger because you're angry at your mom! Do you not realize how foolish you are?!"

The Spirit Bender chuckled and darted toward Taeral. The prince managed to move out of his way, but the Reaper quickly swerved and came after him again. "Your mind is too small to understand how insignificant you all are. You're mere blips in the fabric of the universe, mine to use however I please! You can't even fathom what it's like to exist like me, for millions of years, unable to escape or move on!"

"Why does your existence matter more than ours?" Taeral asked. He vanished just before Spirit cut through him. The Reaper's reflexes were sharp. Taeral reappeared behind him, but Spirit's scythe was already out to meet Thieron. The blades clashed with a gut-wrenching shriek, the impact causing a tremor across the frozen lake.

"Everything and everyone is disposable to me, as long as it hurts Death," Spirit hissed. "I may not be able to kill her, but I can make her existence miserable, as miserable as she's made mine!"

I moved back from their fight, worried Spirit might spot me. To my left, a couple of specters jumped Varga, their claws and fangs tearing through his leather suit and pale skin. They drew blood, which splotched down on the white ice like scarlet roses. I zapped myself behind him, grabbed his wrist, and teleported him several yards away from his attackers.

"Thanks, Riza," he said and quickly dove back into battle, as more spirits came at him. I released a flurry of phosphorescent sparks, dazzling the specters long enough for Soul and Widow to intervene and start clearing them out.

Looking back at Taeral and Spirit, I worried our guy might end up getting hurt. The Reaper made him run and dodge and move a lot, never tiring. But Taeral's energy was running low, his swings increasingly sluggish. The teleporting didn't help. I, too, felt exhaustion climbing its way back to the top of my consciousness, but at least