A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,22

replied. “We don’t need food. Technically speaking, we’re still Reapers, so we don’t need to feed. Our souls just died, so the ghoulish degradation is in a limbo. I assume we’ll become beasts if we eat souls, but we’ve never felt the urge. Of course, by the time World killed us on the inside, the people of Biriane had already been destroyed and were long gone. But I look at you now and I look at your husband, too, and… well, let’s just say I don’t feel peckish. Consider us an anomaly.” The closer he got, the worse I felt. It forced me to take a step back and apologize. “Forgive me, Eneas. It’s too much, even for me.”

“Imagine what it’s like for us!” he hissed, slipping into a sort of fury.

Tristan reached out to me telepathically. Be careful with them. They’re twitchy and volatile, likely a side effect of the World Crusher’s rage. They might seem okay now, but there are micro-expressions I keep seeing, faint signals of alarm. They’re not stable.

I gave my husband a faint nod, then smiled at Eneas. “How can we help?”

“Start by telling us why you’re here,” he replied.

“I wanted to know if it was true, what Anunit told me. How were your conversations with her?” I asked. “She didn’t tell us much.”

Hadras grinned coldly. “We beat the living daylights out of Anunit and sent her away with a promise to do worse if she ever came back. I don’t sense her now, so I assume you two came here alone.”

“We did,” I replied. “Please, allow me to apologize on behalf of our maker. I’m afraid she has left you here to be… forgotten. I wasn’t even supposed to know about you.”

“But you do,” Eneas shot back. “What else do you wish to do here? She’s real, you know that now. So what next?”

I thought about it for a moment, choosing my words carefully. Tristan’s warning persisted in the back of my head. The last thing I needed was to burn this bridge before I could cross it. “Can I see the book where she’s kept? I’d like that very much.”

The Ghoul Reapers exchanged fleeting glances, and Filicore took the lead as he got up. “Unless you can set us free, you will not get past us.” He pointed his half-moon scythe at me for good measure. The dusky light bounced off it in fractured shards of amber and pink that persisted at the corner of my eye for a second or two.

“You want to leave Biriane?” Tristan asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Would Death allow that?”

“Of course not!” Eneas barked, obviously insulted. “She cannot even undo this state we’re in. World’s rage did such a number on us that it’s practically irreversible. Our souls were destroyed without us eating other souls. We got the ghoulishness but without the bad deed that usually leads to it. It’s still ghoulishness. Irreversible, regardless. So, no, Death wouldn’t want us to leave. But Unending here is her precious baby. She knows death magic that we don’t. The kind of death magic she could use to let us leave this wretched place. Don’t you see? Biriane is dead. There is nothing here left to protect. We failed, and Death failed, and the World Crusher will keep rotting away inside that damn book, regardless. We don’t have to share her fate!”

Knowing Death as well as I did, I didn’t dare express certainty in my ability to give them what they wanted. There were several factors to discuss first—there could be repercussions to releasing them. I had no idea how Ghoul Reapers might react once they were free. Where they would go and how I might be able to track them. On top of that, I wasn’t sure if their status depended on the World Crusher’s. Would they leave her rage behind, or would they carry it with them? Would it then infect others beyond this realm?

I couldn’t talk to Death about this. Not without risking her intervention and potential demand to abandon this trial before I uncovered the whole truth. No, I had to keep this between Tristan and me for now.

“I think we should discuss this further,” I suggested.

Filicore sneered, baring his white fangs at me—another sign of the ghoulish nature taking over the former Reaper. “I think we’re done talking.”

That sounded like a threat, which worried me. Were they ready to pounce? Were they so irrational that they would jump us before we could even consider helping