A Shade of Vampire 77 A Fate of Time - Bella Forrest Page 0,70

were from here, I noticed. In fact, most of them seemed foreign, in different shapes and sizes, ranging from gargantuan figures with bulky arms and legs, to little folk with pixie-like wings and long claws. His methods had yet to fully come to light, but I had to assume he'd gathered them from wherever he'd visited. He'd used bits of Reaper objects to amplify them into specters, and he'd bent them all to his will, forcing them to do his bidding.

There were too many. Without the ghouls, we couldn't clear out enough of them to give us an edge against the Spirit Bender. The more the Reapers cut down, the more came from behind, twice as eager and determined to take us all out. I hadn’t had the chance to deal with any of them myself, as I'd focused my efforts on the Reaper who'd brought them all together. From the looks of it, Spirit wanted to keep me to himself, as the specters seemed to avoid me.

"You think you're better than me?!" Spirit said and bolted toward me.

I zapped myself to the side, knowing he'd have his back guarded. I'd spent minutes trying to study and understand his movements. Without Brendel's elemental force, he didn't seem capable of blocking my teleportation abilities, which I found odd.

"I don't think I'm better than anyone," I replied. "I just think you shouldn't punish billions of innocent people simply because you hate your maker."

"At the risk of repeating myself, your mind is simply too small to understand."

Raising Thieron, I let its energy surge through me. It was desperate to cut Spirit down. I could feel it in my bones. "Or maybe yours is too empty to accept reason," I shot back.

He came at me again, and I vanished once more, reappearing closer to Death, for the first time. She spoke beneath the water. I could see her lips moving, but I couldn't hear her. This was my chance. I brought Thieron down against the ice, hoping it might at least help break the Silence seal.

Spirit rammed into me, knocking the air out of my lungs. We wound up sliding across the ice and into a skirmish of specters. In their madness and desperation, they jumped us, cutting and screaming their heads off. I swung Thieron outward, slashing at several specters at once. To my astonishment, they burst into golden sparks.

"What the…" Spirit was shocked as he pulled back and waved the others away.

Kelara swooped in, almost out of nowhere, and tried to take him down. He swatted her like a fly, and she fell, quickly tackled by multiple specters at once. Her screams of agony tore through my heart.

I rushed past the Spirit Bender and used Thieron against Kelara's specter fiends, causing more swirls of golden sparks to explode. Seconds later, I helped her up. She was as surprised as Spirit. "Tae, you can reap them," she said. "Even though you're not a Reaper yet… with Thieron, you can reap them!"

"I'm not done with you yet!" Spirit snarled, and I turned around to face him, while Kelara got busy with more of the incoming specters.

Blocking his scythe with Thieron, I kicked him in the gut and pushed him away. "You've committed so many crimes against the universe, it's downright ridiculous!" I said. "Whatever happens to my world or the others, I promise I won't let you get away with this!"

And I meant it, too. There were maybe minutes left on the cosmic clock, as Aledras grew brighter and more intense with every moment that passed. I knew we didn't have much longer. But even so, I couldn't let the Spirit Bender live to see another day, for everything that he'd done. Justice was needed, now more than ever.

"It'll all be over soon, and you'll be too busy sobbing to bother with me," the Spirit Bender replied, a smirk testing his lips. The certainty in his voice had faded, though. Was his resolve coming down, at last? Had I made him doubt himself, perhaps?

I moved to hit him again before he had another chance to attack, when a crackling sound brought me to a sudden halt. His eyes widened, his mouth drawn into a thin, small line. He knew something I didn't, and it didn't please him at all. On the contrary, it made his jaw clench with rage.

"The wards," Kelara shouted from the side. "Someone broke the ghoul wards!"

As if summoned by the mere mention of their names, hundreds of the former Reapers