A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,34

my gaze wandering back to Hadras. He was slightly taller than his brothers. Perhaps bigger, too, at least in muscle mass. He was still lean and agile, but he carried himself with a certain weight. The air of a champion.

“He dies. I reap him. And we’ll end it there,” Eneas replied dryly. “If you’re to be left a widow, I doubt you’ll wish to help us with Death.”

“And you’re willing to sacrifice that opportunity just for the sake of killing my husband?” I asked, trying to make sense of what was obviously no more than bloodthirsty madness. They’d been here for so long—unsupervised, chaotic, and utterly out of their minds—that this arrangement only made sense for them. But if I was to gain access to the damned book, I’d have to play along. My husband, my soulmate, my eternal love would have to play along.

“What else have we got left?” Fileas replied.

Best to keep things simple. I would trust my husband—he had never steered me wrong. Tristan gave me a smile, quietly reading my mind. He stepped forward and addressed the Ghoul Reapers’ champion. “I’ll take you on, Hadras. I may not be able to kill you, but perhaps I will make you yield.”

“Let’s see what happens,” Hadras chuckled, delighted. “I won’t end you too quickly, I promise. I will give you the opportunity to fight. It’s been a long time since I’ve dueled someone, so I want this to last.”

My heart swelled as I looked at my husband, his loving eyes peering into my weary soul. He reached out a hand, and I gave him my scythe. “I have faith in you,” I told him.

“And I in you, my love,” he replied, fingers closing around the sculpted handle. Tristan looked rather handsome with my scythe. The last time he’d been forced to use it, everything had happened so fast that I’d missed the chance to observe him this closely before.

The Ghoul Reapers were stunned. “What are you doing?” Hadras gasped, his black eyes round as marbles.

“Well, my champion needs a weapon too,” I said, deeply satisfied with their astonishment.

They hadn’t seen this coming, and it made an important difference. They’d hoped my beloved would fight them with only his claws and fangs. That they might play with him like a cat would play with a mouse before breaking its spine. Tristan was, in fact, adequately equipped to fight any one of them. He’d been by my side for two decades. We’d even battled the occasional rogue ghouls together on our journeys throughout the universe.

These were Ghoul Reapers, sure, and probably stronger than Tristan. But Tristan wasn’t an amateur. While he didn’t strike most as a fighter, he had what it would take to duel Hadras. Even so, it didn’t stop me from fearing for his life. We looked at one another in that moment, thinking the same thing: neither of us expected this to be easy.

Unending

“Some might consider this cheating,” Hadras said as he descended the temple’s steps. He didn’t seem to mind this unexpected development, however. Past the initial shock, he seemed genuinely amused, judging by his tentative smirk.

“Cheating is to demand a duel against a non-Reaper,” I replied dryly.

To the casual observer, Tristan often came across as the scholarly type. The passionate anthropologist who seeks reason and sense in everything. He was all that and more, and I was one of the truly fortunate ones to know his other, slightly darker side. My husband was fierce when it came to protecting those he loved. His vampire nature came out in those moments. His claws and fangs had been designed to tear into flesh and to break bones and to spill the blood of those who threatened his family, and he knew how to use them well.

In this case, however, he was fighting to get past the Ghoul Reapers, to get to the truth about the World Crusher. Even though he wasn’t defending my physical safety, he understood how badly this whole thing bothered me. How desperate I was to learn more about her. Death’s lies and secrets had hurt us both, and Tristan saw this as the perfect reason to fight Hadras.

By fighting the Ghoul Reaper, Tristan would also lash out at Death, though only symbolically. Tristan carried my honor into this duel, and I wanted him to prevail. I feared for his safety, of course, but loathed any attempt at coddling him. I’d always be the more powerful in this relationship—that didn’t mean I had any