A Shade of Vampire 89: A Sanctuary of Foes

by Bella Forrest

  Death didn’t show the slightest twinge of guilt even though her pale skin somehow made every micro-expression more visible. I’d seen all kinds of people lie. Death wasn’t of the living, but her physical form had a body language of its own. I wasn’t very adept at reading it, though I knew my way around her well enough to spot the slight changes in her expressions. And she was firm in her statement now. “I swear to you both, I swear upon everything I hold dear, that I do not remember this man or making a scythe for him or giving him eternal life.”

  “You’re lying!” Unending hissed. “How else do you explain his presence here? Do you realize what you’ve done?! You should’ve at least made him mortal when you left him. The people here think he’s a god, they worship him, and who knows what horrid things he’s done and gotten away with? You’re to blame.”

  Death looked at me. “She’s upset, and I can’t blame her for it. But maybe you can listen to what I’m saying. I don’t know Shezin. I don’t remember him. And I would have no reason to lie about this, not when you clearly know so much already. There is something afoot here. Something has been taken from me, and you must find out what that is. I want the truth as much as you do.”

  “I hate myself for saying this, but I believe you,” I replied with a heavy sigh.

  Unending gave me a confused frown. “What?”

  “As far as I can tell, she’s being truthful,” I told her.

  “Keep working Shezin,” Death suggested. “Get to the bottom of this, please. I must know what is happening there. I must know how Shezin got away with it for so long. I know myself, Tristan. I would never let him wander freely this way.”

  I wasn’t sure that was true. Perhaps Death was deceiving herself and trying to deceive us, too. Unending didn’t buy it. Without another word, she slapped the mirror away. It smashed against the nearest tree, shards falling to the ground. There was anger in that gesture—the kind of anger I hadn’t seen in my beloved since Visio. It worried me, because her pain was mine, and I wanted to do everything possible to secure her happiness and freedom. It was why we’d come all the way here.

  “My love,” I said softly as she shuddered and struggled not to cry. “Let’s find Shezin’s room. We’ll find more answers there, I’m sure of it. He didn’t want the priestesses to hear our conversation, and I’m confident he doesn’t allow them in his most private quarters, either. I’m willing to bet there’s something useful there. Something to shed light on this mystery.”

  Unending looked up at me, galaxies exploding in her black eyes. “Do you really believe her when she says she doesn’t remember him?”

  “I’m not sure. To be honest, I didn’t see any signs of deception, and while I may be better than you are at reading people, like you said, I am no expert. I could be wrong. But we should try to keep an open mind, because if Death is actually telling the truth, then we’ll have to figure out why she doesn’t remember Shezin. He obviously remembers her… Do you think he used the same trick on Death? Made her forget him?”

  “No. This is Death we’re talking about, not some run of the mill Reaper. He wouldn’t have such power. She would never allow it.”

  “Then we must dig deeper into Shezin, since she claims to have no recollection of him whatsoever,” I said.

  She nodded slowly, and we moved away from the small orchard, dusting ourselves off. “You’re right,” Unending said. “We need to find his room.”

  Upon reaching our floor again, Unending wanted to make us both invisible so that we could explore the temple undisturbed. “We’ve got a problem,” she muttered as her scythe flickered white and red—a combination I’d never seen before. It startled her. “The invisibility spell isn’t working. Something is affecting my weapon.”

  “Hence the weird light?”

  “Mhm… I think Shezin put some ancient wards up. The kind that tamper with my blade,” Unending replied. “Son of a…”

  I didn’t want that to stop us, though. “We’ll have to sneak around and be careful, that’s all.”

  “There are fifty priestesses in this place, plus Shezin. What are the odds we won’t get caught?” she asked, giving me a troubled scowl. “You can take an invisibility pill, but it won’t work on me since I’m not of the living.”

  “When did we ever let fifty priestesses and a liar posing as a god stop us?”

  Unending smiled, her cheeks glowing with a pinkish blush. Quiet and light on our feet, we made our way down the hallway first, my ears twitching as I listened to every sound around, above, and below us. We went down the stairs, stopping and checking every level. It took us about an hour, and it didn’t deliver much of a payoff. Luckily, the priestesses were nowhere in sight, so we had that working in our favor. Unfortunately, none of the rooms we’d been through seemed to belong to Shezin—there were fifty that had been assigned to his temple ladies, and plenty more left unoccupied, but none bearing what looked to be his personal effects.

  Unending tried a spell or two to help us locate it, but we soon realized that Shezin had placed additional charms on his room, likely to discourage us from searching for it. He didn’t know us well enough, though, and he’d clearly underestimated Unending. Once we reached the ground floor, we hid behind the altar as the sounds of footsteps grew louder. The priestesses came in carrying candles, followed by Shezin. They hummed a melody as they passed us by and went through another door—one we hadn’t seen before. It had been carved into the wall, meant to be hidden.

  As Shezin went through and the stone slab closed behind him, Unending and I headed the opposite way, retracing the priestesses’ earlier steps. It turned out there were more hallways on the ground floor as well, along with stairs leading to the basement. Eventually, we found the most warded room in the entire temple. “Oh, it’s definitely his,” Unending murmured, her voice strained. “I can feel the sigils on the door. They’re acting as deterrents.”

  “Can you break them?”

  “A normal Reaper wouldn’t be able to, but Shezin clearly doesn’t know the difference between me and the others,” she replied, taking out her scythe. She scratched off some of the symbols—which I could only see once they were touched by the tip of her blade—each one glowing white before fading away. “Now, let’s see what he’s hiding…”

  I liked things easy sometimes. In my twenty years of traveling with Unending, I’d learned to appreciate the simpler moments. Breaking a sigil and freely sneaking into a false god’s room counted as one such moment, so I decided to make the most of it. “I’ll keep watch,” I said, keeping close to the door while she rummaged through every drawer and opened every closet.

  She was meticulous, putting everything back just the way she’d found it, making sure Shezin wouldn’t realize we’d been here. That meant she’d redo the sigils once we left, too. “There’s nothing noteworthy,” she said about half an hour later, almost exasperated. “Nothing.”

  I looked around, carefully analyzing every inch of this room. The bed was enormous, with a delicate blue velvet canopy. The sheets were soft linen, and a furry black throw had been left draped over the foot. Shezin had been living here for a long time, yet there was nothing personal in here. Nothing specifically his. There were candles and fresh towels in the bathroom. Papers, a quill, and a bottle of ink on the desk. A tray loaded with small bottles of oil for his hair and skin on the nightstand. It looked more like a hotel.

  Yet the stone floor caught my eye, particularly the slab under Unending’s right foot. It seemed loose. “Could you step back?” I asked her. She did, and the slab shifted slightly. She followed my gaze and understood, quickly dropping to her knees.

  Running her fingers over the stone, Unending smiled. “It’s warded.”

  “Go figure,” I replied, half-smiling.

  The scythe was useful once more, as she identified and scratched off the symbols while I kept my ear on the door. The silence beyond was almost disturbing, and I was beginning to wonder where Shezin and his priestesses had gone. But tha
t was a mystery best left for another day. There was only so much Unending and I could do in one night. We had two more days to work with.

  “Oh…” she breathed, drawing my attention.

  The slab revealed a metallic box with death magic runes scribbled across its silvery lid. “What is that?” I asked.

  “It’s Death’s… handwriting, for lack of a better term.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. The galaxies within burst with wonder. “I’d recognize it anywhere. We all have our own way of scribbling the death magic symbols, but hers is unique. Even the scratches are impossible to mistake for something else. They were made with Thieron.”

  “What’s in the box, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, but Death thought it was important enough to ward it herself.”

  “Can you get past it?” I replied, and she nodded slowly.

  “I feel like I’m violating her privacy,” Unending said quietly.

  “Well, she did ask you to investigate. Besides, she’s done way worse to you,” I said.

  “Fair enough.” She shrugged and proceeded to break the charms. Once she was done, Unending removed the lid, revealing dozens of small glass balls. From where I stood, I could only see the faint glow within each of them, but they meant something to Unending. They left her breathless. “Holy crap…”

  A minute went by in absolute silence as she dipped her hands into the myriad of glass balls. They clinked as she moved them around until she picked one and brought it up between her thumb and index. “Holy… crap,” Unending said again.

  “Okay. I’m on the edge of my seat here.”

  “I think I know why Death doesn’t remember anything about Shezin,” Unending said, giving me an illuminated look. Her eyes were big and round, and a smile tested the corners of her mouth. “These are memory keepers. I haven’t seen one in ages. Not since before I went to Visio.”

  “Memory keepers?” I asked.

  Unending took them all out and put them in a pillowcase she fished from one of the drawers, then proceeded to reseal the metal box, placing the lid back on and repairing the wards with her scythe. “Memories can never be truly deleted. Not from a Reaper’s mind, anyway,” she said as she worked on the box, then repositioned the stone slab on top, making sure it wouldn’t stand out upon Shezin’s return. “And certainly not from Death’s mind. We use memory keepers to store the moments we wish to remove from a Reaper. I think Death chose to have her memories removed and stored inside these things. And I think we’ll find the memories of the Reapers who came to Dain in here, too.”

  “Why would Death wipe her own memory about him?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m positive we’ll find the answer in these,” Unending said. “They must be studied, and we can’t do that here,” she added, handing over the full pillowcase. We left Shezin’s room, and Unending resealed its death magic ward before locking the door. Careful as before, we snuck back to the ground floor.

  It was quiet, the priestesses and their master still somewhere beyond that hidden door, most likely. It gave us a clear path back to our room. The return trip didn’t take long, but curiosity had already begun to eat me up on the inside. What memories had Death left behind? Why had she chosen to place them in these memory keepers? And what was Shezin doing with them?

  Tristan

  Back within the safer confines of our room, Unending placed wards on the door to make sure no one would come in. Shezin had protected his room and temple from certain Reaper magic, but that didn’t stop her from casting the same protective magic for her own good. We settled on the floor as Unending took out a few of the glass balls. She pressed her scythe’s blade against one and uttered the spell—a moment later, the small glass bauble glowed and swelled to the size of a football, the images within it becoming clearer and incredibly vivid, like a video recording.

  In it, I could see Death from millions of years ago as she gazed into a reflective surface. Her black hair flowed down her back like liquid silk. Her eyes were like the home of the entire universe, her skin as delicate as the surface of a freshwater pearl. She wore a white lace dress that glazed her body and accentuated her delicate curves, tied around the waist with black satin ribbon. She was staring at her own reflection, I realized, before a tall mirror.

  “Well, let’s see what this tells us,” Unending murmured as we watched the memory unfold inside the glass ball.

  “Look, there’s Shezin,” I said.

  He entered the room, and we could see him in the mirror. Death smiled and turned around. We lost sight of her, but we witnessed everything through her eyes as Shezin approached her. They kissed, and I looked away for a second because it was unbearably weird. Unending nudged me gently when I could resume my viewing.

  It was a simple memory. A moment of love and tranquility in a house Shezin had built for them on a stony ridge. Unending opened another memory, and then another. They weren’t in a particular order, but we were able to figure out the timeline of what had happened, and how, eventually.

  Just like Shezin had said, his home world was dying when Death found him. She spent days just watching him, utterly enamored. She didn’t dare say anything for a while, postponing his demise with every hour that passed. Unending explained that when the universe sets us an expiration date, it’s damn near impossible to prevent it. Death had gone to great lengths to keep Shezin alive.

  Finally, one day she gathered enough courage to reveal herself to him. Upon seeing her, Shezin’s first instinct was to run. That made for amusing viewing until Death tracked him down and assured him that she wasn’t there to harm him. “She was there to reap him,” Unending muttered during that particular replay.

  From where we stood, Death and Shezin had a long and happy relationship. At first, of course, he was fascinated by who she was. To have the affection of such a universal force wasn’t just an honor, it was an overwhelming experience for a living creature like him. In time, especially after Death made him immortal, Shezin adjusted to it all. That was the difference between them. It became obvious over the centuries. His mind and manners could change.

  His ideas and aspirations could shift. His heart could spin and beat in a different rhythm, while Death remained forever the same. Indeed, her love for Shezin was eternal. Once the gold chain grew between their hearts, her end never withered or faded. But he wasn’t as stationary, nor had he been made to withstand such a long time in the same position—not physically, mentally, or emotionally.

  We saw details of their time together. Sweet moments when nothing else mattered. Bitter moments when Death returned from her travels and found an increasingly disinterested lover waiting. Until one day he wasn’t even there anymore. “Where were you?” Death asked Shezin when she found him by a nearby river.

  “I forgot,” he replied, eyebrows raised with surprise.

  “You forgot I was coming to see you?”

  “I was bored. I never see anything new. I can’t leave this world. I’ve traveled its mountains and its valleys. I’ve sailed its oceans and seas. Truthfully, I lost track of time and forgot that you were due to return today. Forgive me,” he said, though he didn’t even reach out to hold her.

  Unending and I agreed it was then that things truly began to break down between them. But the split was one sided, because Death still loved Shezin with the same intensity as in the beginning. For her, nothing had changed. For him, everything kept changing on a daily basis. His concept of time passing was incredibly sensitive and thorough. He felt the days and the months, the years and the decades that went by, while for Death, it was all the same. Winters on Dain were like a single breath of cold air, while summers were a split second of scorching sunshine.

  “They would not have lasted,” Unending sighed, sorrow dripping from her voice. I realized the same verdict could’ve applied to her and Erethiel had he still lived… or to us. A painful pang stabbed my heart, and I refused to even consider that possibility.

  “His mind changed. His heart song faded,
” I told her. “You can’t predict how a man will feel later down the line. I know you’re probably thinking the same thing would’ve happened to you and Erethiel. Or that the same thing will happen to us, but don’t worry. Death… she’s different. She is truly eternal. The rest of us are mere wisps of existence by comparison. Specks of cosmic dust.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “You’ll love me forever, then?”

  “I hope I will,” I replied. “I want to, yes. Just like I want you to love me forever. But we can’t predict what the future holds. So, if you’re feeling in any way discouraged by what you just saw… don’t. We barely have two decades together. I’ve enjoyed our time together so far, and I don’t wish for it to end.” I paused to carefully analyze her expression. “Do you?” She shook her head, so I kissed her deeply. “Good…”

  I couldn’t promise an eternity. Neither could she. But we could make the most of what we had and hope for the best. We could cherish every moment we had together, and we could make sure there was a future ahead for us to look forward to. Eternity was a big word, and only someone like Death or the Word or Order—three of the universe’s driving forces—could truly comprehend it.

  As we sifted through more of Death’s memories, the sun rose outside, its pinkish light pouring through the window and warming my back. We’d reached the end of the line. Shezin had come to Death with a sad look on his face, his brows drawn into a heavy, dark frown. “Forgive me,” he told her as they held hands. “It would not be fair to lie to you. But my heart… it doesn’t belong to you anymore.” As he spoke those words, Death saw the end of his gold chain breaking. It left her alone, links hanging from her chest, love broken and shattered. “I can’t love you anymore. I want to, but… I can’t. I just can’t.”