A Shade of Vampire 81 A Bringer of Night - Bella Forrest Page 0,65

one another.

There were other nymphs living here. Men and women of various ages, all of them clad in the same natural fabrics, with pointy ears and flowers and leaves braided into their long hair. Some walked around laughing and talking. Others brought water in clay vessels from the nearby spring. A few carried woven baskets filled with heart-shaped fruits and ruby-red berries. It felt like a good day, and I didn’t immediately realize how everything was about to go wrong. Awfully wrong.

A distant boom stopped me in my tracks. I looked up and saw a bright light slashing across the sky. It looked like a massive meteor, the clouds ripping open in its wake. I heard myself shout, telling people to take cover as I watched the large object headed dangerously close to our village. My first thought was to run back to my hut and take my daughters to safety in the lush woods surrounding this land.

But I was hypnotized by the movement in the sky. The light split into two glowing orbs that kept knocking into one another. They landed close to the stream. The impact was devastating, tearing the ground open with an explosion. Sparks flew, and a devastating shockwave followed. The other wood nymphs screamed. Those closest to the river were obliterated, vanishing in the flash.

I managed to duck behind a wall. Most of it came down when the shockwave reached me, and the air got knocked out of my lungs. I prayed to the forest gods to protect me and my children, but the nightmare was only just beginning, and I knew it.

Pulling myself up, I looked back at the crash site. A massive crater had fractured the crystalline stream, and the water was now pouring into the hole. From it, vibrant black smoke emerged. Two figures, bouncing all over, fighting one another.

I recognized them, and the terror was so powerful that I could feel myself slipping away. My host was dying. The shockwave had driven a shard of stone into my back, and I was bleeding out, no longer able to stand.

Jumping back into my own Reaper skin, I went limp, feeling suddenly weak. Soul was there to hold me up, his arms coming around me and tightening slowly. “You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay, Kelara. Take deep breaths, come on.”

“Wow, you’re weirdly more human than I ever was,” I muttered, my head resting on his shoulder. After all, I’d been a human in my living days. The Soul Crusher had belonged to another species prior to becoming one of Death’s first Reapers. I doubted he even remembered those early days.

“What did you see?” Phantom asked.

I took a minute to catch my breath and regain my senses. The weakness that had almost knocked me out had not been mine. I glanced over my shoulder to find Phantom, Widow, and Morning staring at me. Well, at Soul and me. Widow had his head cocked. I wished I could see his expression.

“I was in another wood nymph’s skin,” I said. “And I saw a crash.”

After I gave them all the details, the First Tenners agreed that my quest here was nowhere near over. Soul moved back, giving me room to breathe on my own. “I’m afraid you’ll have to keep touching that stone until you find the Beta element. You and I both know it doesn’t have to be the same piece in which the memories were implanted. Night was much smarter, more cautious than that.”

“I agree,” Morning added. “He gave you the first one easily just to get you started, probably fearing the Spirit Bender might come around and foil his escape attempt.”

“Kelara, you’ve got this.” Phantom encouraged me with a warm smile. “You’re clearly more capable of finding the Night Bringer than all of us put together. You can pull through. I know it.”

“Your confidence is encouraging,” I mumbled, feeling drained of all my energy. A mere glimpse into the past had depleted my spirit, and I still had a long way to go.

Running my hands over the stone again, I found another familiar symbol. This time, the jolt was even more violent. Past the blinding white that swallowed me, Cruor emerged once more. I screamed as a rumble echoed through my village.

Around me, most of the hut had come down during the shockwave blast. My mother was dead, her arm sticking out from beneath a pile of rubble. I was crying, only a twelve-year-old nymph now, my legs shaking as I tried to