A Shade of Vampire 80 A Veil of Dark - Bella Forrest Page 0,8

already moving, something audibly crushing between their teeth. “Stop them! They’ve got some kind of poison capsules in their mouths!”

“Won’t that hurt us, too?” one of the Crimson guards asked, seemingly on the fence about intervening, given these unexpected circumstances.

Corbin fell, and Valaine knelt next to him, using a silk handkerchief to help clean his bloodied hand. He was as white as a sheet of paper, blinking slowly as he tried to make sense of what was going on.

“Father, please, look at me,” Valaine cried out, wiping the blood from his fingers.

I fumbled through my pockets and produced several healing pellets, courtesy of our Nethissis. There were enough of these on our shuttle to cure an entire army of Aeternae, so I could spare a handful for Corbin. “Here, give him these. They’ll help fight whatever toxin just went into his bloodstream.”

“Thank you,” Valaine replied and popped all the capsules in her father’s mouth, moving his jaw to help him chew on them. “What kind of poison kills an Aeternae? I don’t get it! It doesn’t make any sense!”

“I don’t know, but it’s clearly effective,” I said, troubled, as the fifth Darkling died.

The Crimson guards stared at me in disbelief, their eyes bulging with shock and fury. One of them carefully checked the mouth of a Darkling, removing pieces of glass. I crouched next to the dead fella and closely inspected the shards, noticing a dark fluid smudge on most of them.

“Whatever this is… it looks an awful lot like how Black Fever victims are described. You know, the thick black blood and so on,” I said, pinching a shard between my thumb and index finger. I held it up, sniffing it. It smelled like blood, too. The odor was faint but awfully familiar. I remembered it from my visit to the palace’s quarantine area. I looked at Corbin, whose cheeks were finally starting to regain their healthy blush. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

“I… I think so…”

He looked at his hand. His small cuts were already healing.

“I don’t think any of the black stuff got into your bloodstream,” Valaine said to him. “I reckon your paleness came with the idea of it getting into your bloodstream.”

“I take it I lost some color in my cheeks, huh.” Corbin sighed, shaking his head slowly, while I nodded. “I could’ve died. The mere thought was enough to terrify me. Wow.”

“What the hell is this?” Valaine asked me.

“I’ll have Amal and Amane study these fragments, but I’d say the Darklings have found a way to weaponize the Black Fever. Using it as poison. If this is what I think it is, we’re talking about capsules filled with late-stage-infected Aeternae blood. Once it’s ingested, I imagine it kills much faster than a naturally progressing Black Fever,” I said. “These guys must’ve slipped them into their mouths before their hands were bound. They must’ve smelled something was about to go down. I’ve seen this tactic used on Earth by spies.”

“They would rather die than rat on their Darkling buddies.” Corbin scoffed, pulling himself back to his feet. Within seconds, he was flanked by two of his Crimson guards, each of them giving him a concerned look. It made him mutter a curse under his breath. “I’m fine. Relax.”

“We’ll have to quarantine these bodies,” Valaine said, then looked at one of the guards. “Get the Faulty twins, Petra, and some of the nurses down here. If this really is suicide by Black Fever, then we’re all at risk of infection.”

We moved away from the bodies. The remaining gold guards scattered, as well. The more we dug into this mess, the deeper and dirtier it got, with fewer answers reaching the surface. My head hurt, already fogged with additional questions.

“This is insane,” I muttered as we made our way up the stairs. “They’re determined to kill you because they think it’ll stop the Black Fever. Yet they use it like spies use cyanide capsules back on my home planet whenever they’re caught, just so they won’t give away any of their secrets.”

“They’re highly organized,” Corbin replied. “And so deeply indoctrinated that they will willingly die in order to protect the other Darklings.”

We reached the palace entrance. Soldiers rushed past us to get Amal, Amane, Petra, and the nurses, while the rest of Corbin’s guards stayed a safe distance away from the Darkling bodies.

I knew they were all worried that they might’ve caught the Black Fever, Valaine and Corbin included, but I also knew that they were truly