A Shade of Vampire 79 A Game of Death - Bella Forrest Page 0,95

Trev intently. For a moment, I worried they might ask him questions… until one of them raised a hand and revealed the black-and-white thread around his wrist. My stomach sank. These two were Darklings, currently working in the palace. How many more were there? How many had slipped past Corbin’s interviews and raids?

“Trev Blayne?” the first guard asked, his voice low.

“Yes.”

“Show us your sign,” the guard replied. Trev brought his hand up, showing off his own black-and-white leather strings, and the gold soldiers nodded their acceptance. “Come with us. The Scholar is expecting you.”

They turned around and headed back down the path toward the palace, and Trev followed. I stayed close, careful of where I stepped so as not to make any noise. My nerves were stretched to a maximum, but this was it. This was as close as I would ever get to the upper ranks of the Darklings. My opportunity to deliver some justice.

The guards took us through a servants’ entrance and a couple of tight corridors. We reached a door at the end, hidden behind a wall-mounted velvet curtain, for which the guards had a key. Trev looked understandably nervous, but he kept calm along the way.

“Thank you for accompanying me,” he said. “Will there be more trials for me?”

“That’s up to the Scholar,” the second gold guard replied.

We went through the door, which they made sure to lock behind them, and down a long, spiraling staircase. The deeper we went, the colder it got. The walls became black, made of dark limestone, like the floor and the steps. Once we reached the bottom, we moved through a small maze of corridors, until we reached another locked door. There was a key for this, too.

Yet more stairs, until shivers began to trickle down my spine. The walls were wet down here, and flames barely burned in the mounted torches, but I could still see clearly. It looked like a different world altogether, the complete opposite of the opulence and stylish extravagance of the palace above.

This was a secret dimension, in a chilling sense. Nothing but black stone and puddles of water and whispers traveling and snaking through the hallways. And we weren’t alone here. I could feel it in my bones. Whatever this place was… it wasn’t normal. Did the Lord and Lady Supreme know about this? Did they know it was being used by the Darklings? A dozen difficult questions bounced through my head, but there were no answers.

My only shot at getting some clarity here was to keep following Trev, which I did. He was led through a series of corridors, turning left and right several times, and eventually brought before a room with a massive iron door. My blood ran cold as I noticed the symbols carved into its padlock—they seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I just knew that I’d seen them somewhere outside Visio… so what were they doing here, on this particular padlock?

The guards opened the door and motioned for Trev to go in. “This is where we leave you,” the first guard said. “We’ll see you around.”

I backed myself against the wall so they wouldn’t bump into me as they brushed past and headed back out. Holding my breath, I looked at Trev, who stood in the open doorway with wide eyes, his lips slowly parting. Whatever he was seeing inside that room, it had shocked him.

Moving around so I could see what he saw, I felt my breath abandoning me in a long and muted exhale. There was a long table in the middle of the room, with high-back chairs. Everything was made from the same black stone as the walls. Five Darklings were present, standing close to the chairs, but the sixth one, seated at the head of the table and eyeing Trev curiously, stunned me.

“Zoltan Shatal,” Trev murmured, recognizing him.

What in the world?!

Zoltan smirked and got up, pointing at the small gold key hanging around his neck. “Scholar Shatal, to you,” he replied.

Holy crap.

Once again, I wondered: Did Danika and Acheron know about him? Petra? Kalon? Corbin Crimson? Did any one of the people who were so devoted to catching the Darklings even suspect that Zoltan Shatal was one of them? Were there more like him in the higher echelon of Visio’s society? If I’d been baffled before by the mere presence of this underground realm, well… I was downright blank in the head now, trying to understand what the hell was going