A Shade of Vampire 79 A Game of Death - Bella Forrest Page 0,10

my neck.”

“When I find Rudolph and his team, I’ll bring them down here, like we said, but we’ll have to be extremely careful. Zoltan is probably already on the lookout,” I replied, anxiousness spreading through me like a dull but persistent flame.

“You have an advantage in your position,” Seeley said. “Zoltan underestimates your ability to help me. And Death must be told about what’s happening here. We need more than Rudolph’s team if we’re to set things straight on Visio.”

“Especially since we don’t know who else is involved.” I sighed. “Do you think Acheron and Danika are aware?”

“If we’re to follow the simplest logical thread, I’d say yes, since this is their palace. They should know what’s going on, even down here in the dungeons.”

I frowned, noticing his hesitation. “But?”

“But I have seen plenty of instances where the rulers had no idea about what was going on in their own homes, so to speak. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Zoltan has been pulling this off without any other upper-echelon Aeternae knowing. Of course, we won’t know for sure until we figure out what exactly it is that Zoltan is doing here in the first place. I don’t understand the purpose of these dungeons or why he’s keeping ghouls around like this. I’m missing something.”

“The thing that bugs me the most is… where did all the Reapers go? I know I’ve asked this before, but surely you understand why I feel the need to ask again.”

Seeley nodded slowly. “I’m positive it’s got something to do with Zoltan, but again, I can’t think of a reason why. I don’t even know if he’s killing them or keeping them prisoner, like yours truly here.”

“I can check the other cells. There are hundreds down here,” I said.

“After you find Rudolph,” he replied firmly. “Informing him and Death is paramount right now.”

I got up again, stretching my arms. The ghouls snapped their fangs at me, roaring with undying aggravation, but I no longer cared. We had work to do, and I couldn’t let a bunch of hungry soul-and-flesh-eaters get in my way. Besides, they were chained to the wall and confined to this room. All was not yet lost.

“I’ll go up to the library now. Hopefully, Rudolph will already be there,” I said, giving him a soft smile. “I’ll see you soon, Seeley.”

“Whatever you do, stay out of sight and out of trouble,” he warned me. “Zoltan is planning something. We need to figure out what it is before other Reapers get hurt.”

I moved away from him, wishing I could do more to get him out of here. But I was helpless, merely a lost soul, frustrated and alone, with zero supernatural abilities left. I couldn’t even turn on a light or push a glass off the table. Vesta had been able to communicate with Zeriel eventually because she wasn’t dead during that Hermessi debacle, and I remembered Zoltan also mentioning that the veil on Visio was thicker, preventing me from trying to reach out to the living.

Even so, I was determined to bring everything to light. Zoltan’s actions had led to my death, but I was certain that everything he’d done before last night, along with everything he was going to do in the future, would get more people killed. He had access to death magic, the likes of which not even Seeley had come across before. Otherwise, he would’ve set himself loose already.

The little I could still offer, I was ready to give. Whatever was going on in the pits of this palace was unnatural, breaking innumerable laws of the universe and its greatest forces. It was time for it all to stop.

Kelara

We were finally making progress on these blasted seals. Since I’d last seen Seeley, we’d managed to break three dozen. Their difficulty levels varied, thus making it impossible for us to estimate an end date for this endeavor. Some seals took mere minutes, others hours, days, even months and years. Thankfully, the Time Master had helped by stopping time around us—we were able to spend years working on one particularly stubborn seal for five years, while only hours passed in the outside world.

There were perks to having a time-manipulating Reaper handy.

But the work was nowhere near finished, and we knew that reuniting the remaining First Tenners would speed things up significantly. Death had been quite persistent about that. The Spirit Bender’s seals aside, however, I was troubled.

The Soul Crusher, the Widow Maker, the Phantom, the Time Master, the Dream, and