“Meh, we’ve got the food part covered,” Grandma chuckled, nodding at the bag she’d left beneath the table.
“Back to your question,” I said. “They’re preparing several teams of Maras, vampires, incubi, and succubi to head out and start clamping down on the cult camps before they do any real damage. Of course, that’s the desired outcome, but not a guarantee that it’ll work. These are sneaky assholes we’re dealing with.”
“Shouldn’t they have some jinn or dragons on each crew? Just to maximize the results?” Grandma asked, eyeing the pencil case. I could tell that she was nervous, but I wasn’t sure why, since Grandpa had assured us that Herbert wouldn’t cause trouble.
“I think they’ll assign one of either or each to the teams, for sure,” I said. “Why are you staring at the box like that? Is something wrong?”
“What? No. No, not at all. I’m just a little concerned about how Herbert will react when he realizes how long he’s been in there,” Grandma Corrine replied. She looked at Grandpa. “Babe, he doesn’t have a clear notion of time in that box, does he?”
Grandpa shook his head, but he didn’t seem as concerned.
“And how fluent are you in ghoulish?” I chuckled, remembering that these once-fallen Reapers didn’t typically use words but rather hissing sounds and whispered growls to communicate, and that Grandpa Ibrahim had been one of the few who actually spoke their odd language.
He pointed a finger at his temple. “It’s all up here, Kale. It never left. It’s the upside of being a warlock with a ridiculously long lifespan. The brain’s built to keep up with all the information we gather over the centuries.”
“And I still forget to turn the coffeemaker off when I leave the house,” I muttered.
With electricity running through Luceria and the bigger cities of Calliope, where wind and sun power could be safely and properly drawn and amplified through magi-tech, Hunter and I had begun sprucing up our apartment within the castle. The coffeemaker and a few more human-world gadgets had become permanent fixtures in our home, because who the heck doesn’t love a hot cup of joe in the morning?
Grandma Corrine laughed lightly. “Darling, these are little things. Our minds aren’t designed to retain the trivial stuff. Ghoulish language, on the other hand, as simple as your grandfather might make it sound, is more complicated than you’d think. Ibrahim spent days trying to teach me a couple of sentences, and I barely made it to ‘Do as I wish or live in a box forever’ without sounding like I was having a stroke.”
The three of us doubled over before Grandpa Ibrahim brought the fun part of our meeting to an end and whispered the unsealing spell required to open the pencil case. My heart was quick to jump in my throat, anticipating about a dozen possible scenarios—despite Grandpa’s confidence, most of them weren’t positive. I was ready to react.
“Ready?” he asked.
Grandma and I nodded. He lifted the lid, and a grayish mist began to pour out and spill over the table. It looked like liquid smoke, and it captured my attention. Before it reached the marbled floor, however, the fluid mist began to shimmer and disappear.
Grandpa Ibrahim let out a short series of clicks and hisses. It sounded articulated enough to form a message to the entity that was beginning to form. The air rippled across the floor until the invisible mass gathered in one spot. It soon rose into a tall and clunky figure that was gradually becoming visible.
Long limbs with black, seven-inch claws on every lanky finger. Thin, pearly gray skin that stretched a little too much over the bones and the oversized joints and made him seem translucent with the way it reflected the little amount of light that was left in the room. The deformed head and big, cue-ball sized eyes. Their pupils were wide and black, making me feel like he was drilling holes into my brain. A short hiss from Grandpa Ibrahim made Herbert shift focus to him.
“Hi, Herbert,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. Creeped out, I took a couple of steps back. He didn’t seem aggressive, but the look in his strange eyes made me want to put some distance between us. My instincts were on full alert.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Grandpa said, while Grandma watched them both closely. He gave Herbert another string of articulated whispers, then bowed slightly, as if to salute him. “It’s been a long time, old friend.”
Herbert could understand us all very well, only he didn’t speak our language anymore. His irregular jaw and the long, curved fangs in his mouth made it difficult to make such sounds, which was why he was reduced to what we called the ghoulish tongue. Grandpa pointed at the bag, which the ghoul was quick to notice. That he was ravenous would’ve been an understatement. In less than a minute, the contents were gone, and Herbert was licking his clawed fingers.
“There we go. Better, right?” Grandpa murmured, and Herbert nodded faintly.
“Shall we get cracking on the questions?” I asked.
Herbert shot me a glance I could only describe as sullen. How am I pissing you off?
“He’s a little moody,” Grandpa Ibrahim replied, his smile slightly strained. “It’s unlike him, but then again, he’s been locked up for more than four decades, if not more. I can’t remember the last time we spoke.” He spoke to Herbert next, in their whispery dialect.
The ghoul shook his head slowly, then settled on the floor, crossing his bony legs. Once more, he looked at me, and I felt like I was in one of those bad dreams where my clothes were gone and I was in front of a massive crowd. I braced myself for the roaring laughter, but it never came. A troubling sensation tickled my brain, though, as if someone was picking through it with their bare fingers.
My pulse spiked. “Grandpa, I think he’s doing something to me,” I said in alarm.
“Don’t be afraid or resist,” he replied. “Herbert is just curious. He’ll only go as far as you let him. He simply wants to get to know you.”
“Last time you two met, we didn’t even have Arwen. Not to mention such a spunky granddaughter,” Grandma Corrine chimed in, visibly amused. Her expression changed for a moment, as Herbert sets his sights on her next. Grandpa was right: as soon as I rejected that nagging feeling, it went away. This was as close to a trained ghoul as anyone would ever get. These were primal creatures, curious and deceitful, and there was only so much control one could exert on them in exchange for good behavior. The witches’ rough punishments made sense for those who didn’t obey.
Herbert, or any other ghoul, for that matter, was basically like a shark or a tiger on a leash. There were limits to the control one could put on them. Their nature would never truly vanish.
“He’s a little out of it,” Grandpa said. “He’s adjusting to this new time, to the idea that he’s been locked up for so long. I’ll have to reward him later with some fresh meat.”
In part, I realized that ghouls and the Eritopian shape-shifters were physically similar. The same tall and wiry frame, ashen skin, and killer instincts. Only, the ghouls could make themselves disappear, moving between the planes of the living and the dead as they wished. In that sense, I had a feeling they were one level over the jinni and the fae, whose invisibility abilities were slightly more physical, tied to the world of the living. Speaking of, it had been a while since I’d seen Serena’s “pets,” the four shape-shifters that Viola had tamed during the war with Azazel. I made a mental note to ask about them the next time I saw her.
“So, what, we give him a few minutes to take it all in?” Grandma replied, offering Herbert a most sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry you were in that box for all these years, Herbert. It’s just that… we don’t really use ghouls in the Sanctuary anymore, but we don’t let them loose, either. I hope you’ll forgive us.”
Herbert whispered something and glanced at Grandpa Ibrahim, who, in return, gave him a brief nod. “I promise you, I won’t keep you locked in there for years on end ever again,” he said. I understood that the ghoul was genuinely upset and worried he’d be pencil-boxed once more, after we’d finished this uncanny meeting.
&
nbsp; They exchanged a few more ghoulish words, and it seemed like a rather heated conversation. It wasn’t often that I saw Grandpa Ibrahim’s temple vein swell like that. I had a feeling this wasn’t going in the desired direction.
“What’s wrong?” Grandma asked, frowning.
“I want him to tell us about Reapers and Death,” Grandpa said. “He seemed surprised to learn that we know about them, but he’s trying to set conditions before he speaks.”
“Conditions?” I replied, somewhat startled. Nothing good could come out of a ghoul setting the terms in a discussion such as this.
“I’d thought I’d allow him out of the box more often, going forward, in exchange for his cooperation. But he won’t have it,” Grandpa said, while the ghoul’s eyes darted from me to him and to Grandma and back. “He doesn’t want to be a prisoner anymore.”
Grandma Corrine grinned at Herbert. “You do realize I could just take you back to the Sanctuary and have you severely punished for this, right?”
The ghoul whispered his thread of unintelligible words, narrowing his beady eyes at her. Grandpa Ibrahim sighed. “He says they can do whatever they want to him. It’s better than being cooped up in that pencil box. Either way, unless he’s granted freedom, he won’t help us.”
“Then we’ll just get another ghoul to tell us,” Grandma shot back, standing firmly against the ghoul’s demand.
Herbert replied, and Grandpa translated. “He says every other ghoul will tell you the same thing. Reapers are quite aggressive when it comes to their existence and the secrecy surrounding it. Whatever is going on outside this castle, it’s not something the Reapers planned for, and they will have contingency plans in place to silence anyone whom they might identify as our source of information. No one must know, among those who are living, about Reapers and Death. It’s a rule set in stone. The ghouls are abominations, and they know that if they reveal the secrets of Reapers, they will be hunted even more.”
“Well, they’re already hunted, aren’t they? Pretty sure the Reapers don’t want them around, not after the mess so many of the ghouls made in previous years,” I said.
Herbert let out a long hiss, followed by more whispers. Grandpa Ibrahim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re not making this any easier, Herbert. Whatever happened to that tame ghoul you once were?” he asked, and Herbert’s reply made him scoff. “He says that even the tamest of ghouls will think twice before spilling the secrets of Reapers. At least if he’s free, he can evade them. If he’s captive anywhere, even in the Sanctuary, the Reapers will find him and destroy him. According to him, nothingness awaits. Ghouls don’t get to move on into the realm of the dead, whatever that may be. Therefore, despite his respect and affection toward me, Herbert will not cooperate unless he’s granted his freedom.”
That was a hard pill to swallow. Why would we let a ghoul loose? They ate people. They ate people’s souls, if given the chance, and if our theories about the fallen fae were correct, an entire buffet would await Herbert right here on Calliope, if we were to set him free. They couldn’t resist such a hunger, from what we’d learned after Taeral’s encounter with Yamani. All the fae we held in crystal casings, many of them my friends, would be vulnerable, their souls a feast for a free ghoul.
Then again, it also made sense to consider the possibility that Reapers might be around the fae sanctuaries—but was it a certain fact? Not for us, it wasn’t, and therefore not a good angle to gamble from. In other words, there was no good reason to cave to Herbert’s demand.
“This is the only way for us to find out anything about the Reapers and Death,” Grandma Corrine said to me. She didn’t like it any more than I did, but she seemed to be more in favor of releasing Herbert than I was.
“There are huge risks to letting him go,” I replied, then scowled at Herbert. I could feel him tinkering in my head again. Maybe the decades he’d spent in that pencil box had whittled away at his obedience and gentile nature. Maybe the Herbert we were dealing with now wasn’t the Herbert that Grandpa Ibrahim had worked with. Solitary confinement could easily mangle a mind, especially one as savage as a ghoul’s.
“Deaths of innocent people, for starters. Plus, based on what we know now, they’d also be a danger to any ghosts or wandering spirits,” Grandpa Ibrahim said.
“It seems we’re at an impasse,” Grandma replied. She raised an eyebrow at Herbert. “You disappoint me.”
The ghoul just shrugged. Those were the terms he’d set. No matter what we did, we wouldn’t be able to get him to tell us about Reapers and Death—unless we set him free. I understood our desperate need for information, since any piece of intel could help us prepare a better strategy to reach out to Death, who was literally the only entity that had the power required to rise against the Hermessi. The stakes were sky high.
But I was conflicted.
A troubling boom tore through the sky outside. We all rushed to the window. Grandpa Ibrahim pulled the curtains back, and we watched a chunky ball of fire hurling toward… Stonewall. “Oh, boy,” I gasped.
A low rumble tickled my ear. I slowly turned my head to find Herbert hunched down behind Grandma and me, watching the fireball with sparkling interest. His leathery lips stretched, revealing the fangs that could easily tear through my flesh.
“There’s a soul in that fire,” Grandpa Ibrahim said. “Herbert can see it.”
That just rendered us speechless, as the blazing meteor shot down and crashed somewhere dangerously close to Stonewall. My heart contracted painfully. I worried about the Bajangs that lived in that place. The low-magnitude earthquake that followed told me that the force of the impact had been considerable, to say the least.
I couldn’t see most of Stonewall from here, but it didn’t take an expert to realize that a burning object that size could easily destroy at least one or two of the villages that had developed at the citadel’s base.
“I think our conversation with Herbert will have to wait,” Grandpa Ibrahim said, peeling his eyes away from the black smoke thread that rose from where the fireball had crashed, just beneath the horizon’s slightly arched line.
Herbert whispered something, but Grandpa snapped his finger and muttered the spell that made the ghoul lose his physical form. He dissipated into gray mist before the pencil box sucked him back in. The lid snapped shut, though I could still feel his irritation from inside. It scratched at my brain.
“He is not happy,” I replied, squirming from the mental discomfort.
“Whatever happened in Stonewall just now takes precedence,” Grandpa Ibrahim said.
“We should go there,” Grandma agreed.
I was more than ready. Any agreement with Herbert would go on the back burner until we figured out what was going down in Stonewall. We had to be there and get those creatures to safety. My only hope was that there would be no severe injuries. The last thing Calliope needed was a devastating rock from the sky.
Harper
From the moment we’d pierced Calliope’s atmosphere, I knew we’d be in for a rough ride and an even more difficult landing. I also became aware of the fact that everyone would see us coming down from the skies. Ramin had had to manifest into his full fire form in order to breach the planet’s protective atmospheric layer.
I’d felt every particle of cold air brushing past us. Every gust of wind and the tickle of every cloud we swooshed past. The descent had been brutal and intense, but it was nothing compared to the crash itself. Ramin had done his best to avoid populated areas, and he was also aware that we needed to land somewhere close enough to Luceria and Mount Zur. We didn’t want to spend much time making our way to either of the locations—Ramin was an outside Hermessi, and we weren’t sure how many of Calliope’s elementals were still on the rebels’ side.
The impact almost disintegrated us both. Or at least, that’s how I felt it.
Without a body, however, the sensation of pain was superficial and short-lived, merely an echo of what the real deal would’ve been like. We
burned hot, two in one, as we recovered from the fall. We didn’t even see the size of the crater we’d made until we both came to our senses. Rising from the charred ground, we glanced around—one soul, hidden inside the fiery manifestation of Neraka’s Hermessi.
The crater was huge, about a mile in diameter, and perfectly polished and black, shaped like a salad bowl. We were at the bottom, looking up. Above, the sky was a pristine and familiar blue, with streaks of clouds that would soon be whisked away by the afternoon winds. I loved being in the sunlight, and I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it. Of course, this was only a moment. Soon enough, I would hopefully find my way back to my body and return to my life as a vampire—while secretly hoping that, once this whole Hermessi problem was out of the way, Amal and Amane would go back to studying Derek’s blood and figure out a way to make all vampires into day-walkers.
In the meantime, I settled for our current surroundings. The citadel of Stonewall rose proudly to the south, about a couple of miles away.
“Surely, they felt us crash,” Ramin said, reading my thoughts.
Behind us, there were sprawling woods that stretched for miles. We’d landed smack in the middle of the plains that separated Stonewall from the continental forest. Fortunately, we hadn’t ravaged any of the new villages that had been developed at the citadel’s base.
“It won’t be long now before someone from GASP comes by,” I replied. “We definitely made an entrance.”
I was nervous and excited at the same time. GASP had no way of fighting Ramin directly, so I doubted they’d come at us with any kind of hostility. Even if that were the case, it would all come to a sudden end once Ramin identified himself and mentioned my presence inside him. After all, we’d come here for help.
A Shade of Vampire 73: A Search for Death Page 8
