A Shade of Vampire 83: A Bender of Spirit

by Forrest, Bella

  While they tried to process this unpleasant reality, I was close to kicking back and asking for a bucket of popcorn. I didn’t get much entertainment inside this cell. All I had were twelve Whips and a hidden little ghoul.

  Derek

  I had to admit, Danika was remarkably calm considering what I’d just told her.

  She simply stared at me, her eyes wide and twinkling with all sorts of probably ominous ideas. The other Whips looked to her for guidance. After all, Danika wasn’t just a Whip. She was also the Lady Supreme of Visio, the ruling monarch and their gateway to a public life.

  “What do we do?” Petra asked her.

  “I need you all to leave this room. Now,” Danika replied. “We’ll meet again later to discuss this. In the meantime, Derek and I will have a chat.”

  Rodique threw me a pitiful smirk. “That’s what you get for being a jerk.”

  The Whips would’ve stuck around longer, but they were too upset. They’d been thrown off balance, and they didn’t know how to cope with news of Spirit’s death. Danika’s composure, however, troubled me. One by one, they left through the iron door.

  Petra gave me one last glance before walking out. I could see the violent promise in her cold blue eyes, and I found myself praying to all the gods that she wouldn’t get anywhere near Sofia or the others.

  “Rodique,” Danika said, stopping the Whip just as she was about to pass through the threshold. “Bring Corbin over here, please.”

  “Shall I come back with him?” Rodique asked.

  Danika gave her a faint nod and a polite smile. “Yes, dear. Your input will be needed.”

  After Rodique was gone, Danika and I spent a few minutes simply looking at each other. I was satisfied with having not only riled them all up, but also with having brought us closer to figuring out what the Darklings’ backup plan was. Excitement tingled my fingertips.

  “I’d normally say I’m sorry for your loss,” I muttered. “But I’m not. I’m glad.”

  Danika didn’t respond, and I found her stillness disturbing. I’d met her as the monarch, the ruler of an empire, the mother of a sweet boy, and the wife of a fundamentally good Aeternae man. She wasn’t really any of those things, though. Not at her core. Danika was simply a Darkling. A resourceful extremist who’d killed her husband. A monster with a beautiful face, clad in expensive silks.

  Corbin came in, and he looked livid. All color had drained from his face, and I knew Rodique had told him about Spirit. The Whip came up beside him, hands behind her back as she waited for the Master of Darkness to say something.

  “Is it true?” he asked Danika.

  She exhaled sharply, her shoulders dropping. “I suppose so. The Spirit Bender should’ve come by now, and Derek would be foolish to lie about such a thing. As much as I dislike him, even I must admit that he’s no fool.”

  Corbin looked at me, and I gave him a shrug in return. “Sorry, buddy,” I said.

  “Your pleasure will be short-lived, Derek,” he replied, then shifted his focus back to Danika. “I gather we’re moving on to the next stage, then?”

  “Yes, Master,” Danika said. She looked at Rodique. “Darling, thank you.”

  “For what? I just brought the Master here,” the Whip mumbled. Corbin scared her, I could tell. She seemed so small standing next to him.

  “For everything,” Danika replied. I didn’t even see the scythe come out. The blade slashed so fast, Rodique didn’t have a single split second to defend herself.

  A gash spread across her throat, splitting wider and wider until her head came off, neatly severed from the rest of her body. I heard myself curse as I took a couple of steps back, my stomach churning, my blood pumping.

  Rodique was dead, and Danika stood over her, crimson drops falling from her scythe.

  “We’ll tell the others she was sent on a mission,” Danika said, her tone calm and even. “I’ll get to them one by one. They’ll have their guards up now. They know what’s coming, and I don’t trust them all to comply. We never expected this to happen.”

  “What the hell?” I managed, unable to take my eyes off Rodique. Her glassy eyes were stuck on me, and I couldn’t look away.

  Danika shot me a cold grin. “Consequences, Derek. I don’t like this any more than you do, but it has to be done. With Spirit gone, we must press forward.”

  “I applaud you for your speed of reasoning,” Corbin said, gazing at Danika. “You didn’t hesitate.”

  “Master, I live to serve you and the Aeternae. Though, truth be told, Rodique was always the most dimwitted among us. She was easy to take out. The same cannot be said about the others, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes. Petra, in particular, will be a handful,” Corbin replied.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I asked, trying to make sense of what I’d just witnessed. Clearly, Corbin had been right. My moment of pleasure had been short-lived, as I was now staring at a headless Rodique in a spreading puddle of her own blood.

  Danika knelt next to her body and rammed a hand through her chest. The ribs splintered with a spine-tingling crack as she pulled Rodique’s heart out and placed it on the floor. She licked the blood from her fingers, smiling vaguely. “Tastes dimwitted, too,” Danika muttered.

  “I suppose you’ve heard us mention an option B,” Corbin said, looking at me.

  “This is it? Killing your own people?” I asked. “Why?”

  Corbin smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that was meant to add any sort of cheer to the situation. It was the kind of smile that preceded awful things. “To bring the Spirit Bender back.”

  I didn’t immediately register what he’d just said. Danika stood and turned around to face Corbin, cupping his face with both hands. Some of Rodique’s blood smudged across his cheek, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’m quite pleased with you, Lady Supreme,” Corbin said, his voice low. Only then did I notice the simmering chemistry between them. They’d kept it so well hidden. The Master was involved with one of his Whips, a widow of only a few days. My stomach twisted into a painful knot as I understood how much filth dwelled beneath the surface of Visio.

  “And I’m thrilled we get to do this, now,” Danika replied.

  “You two have a lot of explaining to do,” I mumbled, breaking into a cold sweat.

  “Not to you,” Danika retorted. “But I’ll do you a favor anyway.” She moved away from Corbin and knelt before Rodique’s heart again. “You see, the Spirit Bender foresaw the possibility of dying the forever death. He warned us about it through his writings. His gospels, we called them. He left us something important to do, in case such a terrible day arrived.” She paused to look at me. “He made a copy of his soul. A clone of his own spirit, with all his memories, his powers, his knowledge. And he entrusted us with its safety.”

  “To be sure no one would ever be able to get near it or harm it in any way, we split the soul into twelve even pieces, one for each Whip to carry for as long as they lived,” Corbin continued, watching in fascination as Danika set Rodique’s heart on fire. The flames were odd, burning violet, their white tongues lashing at the air around them. “When a new Whip ascended, we’d hold a ceremony to transfer the piece into their hearts, as per our Darkling tradition. This way, the Whips would always carry the Spirit Bender quite literally inside them.”

  As the heart burned, the flesh charring and shrinking, a glimmering shard emerged from the violet flames. A piece of the Spirit Bender’s soul. My heart stopped for a moment.

  “We all knew this day might be upon us,” Danika said, collecting the shard in the palm of her hand. She got up, moving closer to Corbin once more. “The Whips have grown too comfortable with living, however, so drastic measures are required in order to bring Spirit’s soul back together. The shards cannot be removed otherwise, once implanted into an Aeternae’s heart.”

  “Once you bring all twelve pieces together—” I murmured, but she cut me off.

  “The Spirit Bender return
s. We have a ritual. A death magic spell so powerful, it will require at least two hundred ghouls to fuel it.”

  I needed a moment to think, to fully grasp everything they were telling me.

  Corbin pulled Danika closer, admiring the crystal shard nestled in her palm. He kissed her, and I wanted to wretch, thoroughly disgusted by everything I was being forced to witness. I’d wanted to know more about option B, sure, but I’d never thought it would involve something like this.

  “You’re going to die as well, right, Danika?” I asked.

  She gave me a fleeting glance as Corbin gripped her chin between his thumb and index finger, compelling her to look at him. “She’s going to die a hero. But first, she’ll collect the first eleven pieces. Danika is the only one I can trust to do this.”

  Rodique’s words sprang to mind, echoing relentlessly in the back of my head. Corbin—well, this version of Corbin, anyway—was an absolute monster. Remorseless and callous, cold and murderous, he really lived up to the title of Master of Darkness. If Valaine had managed to bring out anything even remotely good inside him, it was all gone now. In its wake, Corbin had arisen, ready to bring the Spirit Bender back and screw us all to hell.

  Yes, we had some First Tenners on our side, but Spirit had played them before. With Death still in chains, I had no idea how we might fare if the Darklings actually succeeded in bringing him back. Our problem had just gotten bigger and infinitely worse.

  This wasn’t just unexpected. It was far beyond any worst-case scenario we might’ve imagined prior to my capture.

  Esme

  While the crew prepared for the Dieffen incursion, Kalon and I spent some time with Ansel, Tudyk, and Moore. The kids were held in a separate room with locks on the door and sealed windows. They could’ve tried to escape, given their Aeternae abilities, but they didn’t. I had a feeling they knew they wouldn’t get far.

  “Neither one has said a word since we got here,” Ansel said, sitting on the bed.

  “Ah, so they’re still mad at us,” I replied.

  Tudyk and Moore glared at me as if I’d killed their favorite pet. Kalon wasn’t impressed. “Well, they can either keep sulking or they can come to terms with the fact that our mother is on the wrong side of history.”

  “The Darklings have been preserving the Aeternae species since the dawn of time!” Tudyk spat, baring his fangs.

  Kalon smiled. “Not since the dawn of time, but okay. And that’s not what the Darklings have really been doing. They’ve actually been keeping an ancient Reaper trapped inside a curse. The Black Fever is the result of that imprisonment. It’s her reaction to all the suffering they’ve been putting her through.”

  Moore waved his brother away. “Nonsense. The Black Fever returns every ten thousand years through a specific carrier. All we have to do is find the carrier and kill them. There’s no Reaper involved.”

  “Actually, there is,” I said. “If your path as Darklings was so righteous, why have you all been hiding in the shadows for so long? Why wouldn’t the empire simply legalize your organization? Because your Master knows that what you’re doing is wrong. Because you’re all perpetuating the Unending’s suffering. She doesn’t deserve this. In fact, she’s probably the one who gave you your immortality.”

  Tudyk and Moore froze, their eyes wide as they gawked at me. Even Kalon and Ansel were intrigued by my statement, but based on everything we’d learned from Night regarding Cruor and the way he’d recognized Unending’s trail on the Aeternae-turned-Elders, it wasn’t much of a stretch. Especially since we all knew what Unending’s power was and that she’d given immortality to someone before.

  The issue here was that most of this knowledge had been limited to the Master, the Whips, and probably some of the higher-ranking Darklings. Lower level faction members like Kalon’s brothers didn’t have access to this information. They only knew what they’d been told. Their role was to follow orders and protect the Aeternae from the Black Fever.

  “You lie,” Moore mumbled.

  “You want it to be a lie, I know. It would probably make you feel better about your choices,” I said. “But I’m afraid it’s the truth. The Reapers who took over Laramis and killed your brother and uncle? They’re Unending’s siblings, the first of their kind. What would you have done if someone had trapped one of your brothers like that?”

  “It’s time to set the record straight here,” Kalon added. “I may not have seen the signs of our mother’s influence on you, but I’ve always felt like the Darklings were the wrong party to hang with. Balance is missing from the universe, and the Darklings are to blame. The longer Unending stays bound to this world, the worse it’ll be.”

  Ansel let out a heavy sigh and scooted closer to one of the windows. “I wonder… why didn’t the Darklings just let Unending go?”

  “I don’t think they have the power to do that. I think the Spirit Bender fed them all kinds of lies and convinced them to do his bidding. To keep her here, like this,” I replied.

  “What will happen if she’s set free?” Moore asked, finally stepping out of his bubble. He didn’t take off the grouchy look, but he was certainly asking the right questions.

  “We don’t know. But you’ll all want to be in her good graces, Moore,” I said. “Think about it. One way or another, we will set the Unending free. When that happens, would you rather be part of the crew that made it happen or part of the Darklings, who did everything in their power to keep her down? Who do you think she’ll look kindly upon?”

  Moore and Tudyk exchanged wary glances. Maybe I was finally getting through to them. A child’s mind was more malleable. It could be changed. Kalon sat on the edge of the bed, closing the distance between him and his youngest brothers.

  “There are too many Reapers present here for the Darklings to make it go away. Death has been made aware of the issue, as well,” he said. “This isn’t something they can sweep under the rug. Besides, think about this, too… all the ghouls that the Darklings have? They’re all innocent Reapers forced to eat souls. Enslaved by the Darklings. When we die, our souls are guided into the next world. What do we do when our Reapers are gone? When there’s no one there to tell us that everything is going to be okay?”

  “We’re immortal,” Tudyk mumbled.

  “We can still be killed, so no, we’re not,” Kalon replied. “Whatever Unending gave us, it’s not immortality in its purest form, but it’s the best we could hope for. Even then, however… who are we to disrupt the natural order of things? To torture Reapers into becoming ghouls? To have them feed on the souls of the many innocents in our world? Think about it this way: none of the people on Visio, Rimia, or Nalore have moved on since we evolved, since the Darklings were founded. Every soul deserving of an afterlife is being eaten. Disregarded. Destroyed. How is that fair and noble, if it only serves to keep our dirty little secret away from Death herself?”

  “Because that’s what this is really all about,” I added. “The Darklings have been doing this because they were told it would keep the Aeternae alive. They’ve been hiding atrocities, millions of years’ worth of atrocities from Death. If your survival comes on the backs of others who’ve done you no harm, then it’s not natural, and it certainly isn’t worth it.”

  Silence weighed on the boys’ shoulders, but I could almost hear their mindsets shifting, ever so slowly, as they began to understand the greater picture.

  “Have you heard from Mother yet?” Tudyk asked Kalon. He didn’t sound combative, so it looked like we were making progress. I didn’t expect the boys to just agree with everything we’d just told them, but at least they weren’t contradicting us anymore.

  Kalon shook his head. “She’s looking for us. But she won’t win this. I can’t let her take you.”

  “She’s our mother!” Moore shouted, his face red with anger.

  “And she got Simmon and Aganon killed!” Ansel replied, equally furious. “Don’t you see?! You almost died, as well, simply because you followed her into this
madness. I, for one, am grateful I got caught sooner rather than later. Otherwise I would’ve died, too. And for what? For a lie!”

  “What do we do, then? Do we just forget our mother?” Tudyk asked, clearly displeased.

  “I don’t know,” Kalon said. “For now, we keep our distance. We learn the whole truth about Unending and her imprisonment on Visio. We figure out what will happen when she’s free, and we make sure no more innocent people are killed over this horrible scheme. The Darklings cannot win this, or we’ll be plunged into darkness—the kind from which we may never escape.”

  “Let me put things in perspective here,” I chimed in. “Death will come to Visio someday, likely someday soon. And when she does, nothing will stand in her way. Not the Darklings, not the Aeternae, and certainly not the Spirit Bender, the Darklings’ founder. He was destroyed a year ago.”

  The boys didn’t see that coming.

  “What?” Tudyk breathed.

  “Visio isn’t the only place where the Spirit Bender messed around,” I said, then shared the whole story of the Hermessi debacle, which Unending’s imprisonment eventually tied into. Once I was done, beads of sweat had blossomed on Tudyk and Moore’s temples. For the first time, they knew everything their mother knew, everything that had been withheld from them while they blindly followed orders.

  “I feel so stupid,” Moore managed, covering his face with his palms. He slumped forward, breaking down, but Kalon pulled him up and held him tight in his arms as the boy shuddered and cried.

  We could’ve told them everything from the very beginning, but first we’d needed to shake their core beliefs; otherwise, they would’ve branded us as liars. That was the downside of radicalization. It skewed perceptions, making abnormal views appear perfectly normal, even necessary. Healing broken minds required more than the truth. Fortunately, Kalon and I had managed to steer the boys away from the edge of the pit. Ansel had been surprisingly helpful, though he’d also been shaken by learning the story of the Spirit Bender and his attacks on the other First Tenners.