A Shade of Vampire 39: A Rip of Realms
Bella Forrest
Contents
Also by Bella Forrest
The “New Generation” Names List
1. Benedict
2. Hazel
3. Ash
4. Tejus
5. Rose
6. Hazel
7. Hazel
8. Ruby
9. Tejus
10. Hazel
11. Ash
12. Tejus
13. Ruby
14. Julian
15. Benedict
16. Ash
17. Ruby
18. Hazel
19. Tejus
20. Julian
21. Jenus
22. Ash
23. Benedict
24. Hazel
25. Hazel
26. Tejus
27. Hazel
28. Rose
29. Benedict
30. Rose
31. Hazel
32. Ruby
33. Derek
Read more by Bella Forrest!
Also by Bella Forrest
THE GENDER GAME
The Gender Game (Book 1)
The Gender Secret (Book 2)
The Gender Lie (Book 3)
The Gender War (Book 4)
A SHADE OF VAMPIRE SERIES
Series 1: Derek & Sofia’s story
A Shade of Vampire (Book 1)
A Shade of Blood (Book 2)
A Castle of Sand (Book 3)
A Shadow of Light (Book 4)
A Blaze of Sun (Book 5)
A Gate of Night (Book 6)
A Break of Day (Book 7)
Series 2: Rose & Caleb’s story
A Shade of Novak (Book 8)
A Bond of Blood (Book 9)
A Spell of Time (Book 10)
A Chase of Prey (Book 11)
A Shade of Doubt (Book 12)
A Turn of Tides (Book 13)
A Dawn of Strength (Book 14)
A Fall of Secrets (Book 15)
An End of Night (Book 16)
Series 3: Ben & River’s story
A Wind of Change (Book 17)
A Trail of Echoes (Book 18)
A Soldier of Shadows (Book 19)
A Hero of Realms (Book 20)
A Vial of Life (Book 21)
A Fork of Paths (Book 22)
A Flight of Souls (Book 23)
A Bridge of Stars (Book 24)
Series 4: A Clan of Novaks
A Clan of Novaks (Book 25)
A World of New (Book 26)
A Web of Lies (Book 27)
A Touch of Truth (Book 28)
An Hour of Need (Book 29)
A Game of Risk (Book 30)
A Twist of Fates (Book 31)
A Day of Glory (Book 32)
Series 5: A Dawn of Guardians
A Dawn of Guardians (Book 33)
A Sword of Chance (Book 34)
A Race of Trials (Book 35)
A King of Shadow (Book 36)
An Empire of Stones (Book 37)
A Power of Old (Book 38)
A SHADE OF DRAGON TRILOGY
A Shade of Dragon 1
A Shade of Dragon 2
A Shade of Dragon 3
A SHADE OF KIEV TRILOGY
A Shade of Kiev 1
A Shade of Kiev 2
A Shade of Kiev 3
BEAUTIFUL MONSTER DUOLOGY
Beautiful Monster 1
Beautiful Monster 2
DETECTIVE ERIN BOND (Adult mystery/thriller)
Lights, Camera, GONE
Write, Edit, KILL
For an updated list of Bella’s books, please visit her website: www.bellaforrest.net
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Copyright © 2017 by Bella Forrest
Cover design inspired by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The “New Generation” Names List
Arwen: (daughter of Corrine and Ibrahim - witch)
Benedict: (son of Rose and Caleb - human)
Brock: (son of Kiev and Mona – half warlock)
Grace: (daughter of Ben and River – half fae and half human)
Hazel: (daughter of Rose and Caleb – human)
Heath: (son of Jeriad and Sylvia – half dragon and half human)
Ruby: (daughter of Claudia and Yuri – human)
Victoria: (daughter of Vivienne and Xavier – human)
Benedict
I must have dozed off again, because when I woke Yelena was gone. At first I thought I was having another nightmare; the floor was rumbling and the bed was vibrating so violently, I was almost shaken off. A loud crash made me jump up—the chest of drawers had fallen forward, and the wood had split in two from the force of the impact.
“Get up!” Ruby cried, slamming open the door to my room.
“What’s going on?” I shouted, running after her.
Ruby yelled back a reply, but I didn’t hear it. Bookcases, chests and tapestries were crashing to the floor. The castle was being hit with shock after shock of what I could only assume was an earthquake—the gray stones of the room were shifting in the walls, and it didn’t feel like it would be long until the entire castle came crashing down around us.
“It won’t open!” Yelena yelled over at Ruby. Both girls were by the entrance doors to our quarters, furiously trying to shove them open.
“I think they’re blocked.” Ruby grunted with the effort of pushing open the heavy wood frame. She managed to press the door partly ajar. “There’s a crack… I can see rubble. I think we’re trapped!”
“Is anyone going to come help us?” another one of the kids cried out, waving their arms about in front of the windows. Ruby snorted with derision.
“Unlikely. We need to get ourselves out of here.”
“Servants’ entrance,” Julian croaked from the small door where he was standing with Jenney, both of them holding onto the walls as the floor shifted wildly beneath them. “We can get out through the kitchen.”
“Okay, kids!” Ruby barked at the cowering children. Some were hiding under coffee tables in the hope that the wooden surfaces would save them, others followed Julian and Jenney’s lead, backing up against the shifting, shaking walls. “We need to stick together, okay? Just follow me. Keep your eyes on one of us”—she pointed at me, Julian and Jenney—“at all times. Don’t run off, no matter how scared you might get. We’re all going to get out of here in one piece.”
I started toward the door, letting Ruby lead the way.
“Do you think it’s the entity?” Yelena asked me breathlessly as we ran down the stone staircase to the servant quarters.
“No idea,” I replied, lying. Had it been anywhere other than Nevertide, I would have assumed that this was a regular earthquake. But this was Nevertide, and I was pretty certain that there would be some entity-shaped reason as to why this was happening. All around us I could hear the crashes of stone tumbling to the ground, the sounds of tearing, ripping, metals being crushed and annihilated under rock.
Up ahead, Ruby pushed open the door to the kitchen. I heard the thunderous blaze of fire erupting from the room even before the flames flickered out from the door.
“We need to find another way!” Ruby cried, both she and Jenney forcing the door back as it lit up their faces and scorched the outside of the frame, instantly blistering the wood and
leaving it charcoal black.
“I know a way!” Jenney called back, gesturing to us all to follow her. She ran forward, past the kitchen and into the labyrinth of the servant quarters. The ceilings were low here, and I was already starting to feel claustrophobic, like the walls were closing in on us with every step. Luckily, the stone remained intact, though I didn’t think it would stay that way for long.
We moved further along the corridor. Now I couldn’t see any light ahead, only the silhouettes of the kids, visible in the firelight that had now fully erupted through the kitchen door behind us, casting its light through the tunnels. I could feel the heat of it on my back as I ran, praying that the kids would move faster.
Yelena reached back to grab my hand, and my fingers closed around hers. I focused on the back of her head and the occasional glimpse of her profile as she glanced back to double-check I was okay.
The corridor started to open out a bit, and Jenney slammed her body against a small wooden door. I recognized it as the side-entrance to the castle, the one that Ash had used to smuggle us in with the root cart. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“It’s locked!” she cried out to Ruby. Julian rushed forward to help her push against it, but was clearly still too weak from his time spent in Queen Trina’s castle. The door didn’t budge. I looked around for something that we could use to force it open—something sharp and solid…
I let go of Yelena’s hand, spying a bronze vulture head that had fallen to the ground.
“Julian, help me!” I called out, waving toward the fallen ornament. The skull was too heavy for me to pick up by myself, so I started to drag it across the floor. Julian hadn’t heard me, but in a moment, Ruby was by my side, and together we heaved the ornament off the floor and staggered toward the door.
“Stand back,” I yelled out, simultaneously swinging the vulture head, with Ruby holding the other side, into the door. The first hit reverberated up my arms painfully, but the second swing smashed the wooden paneling, creating a hole in the door. We swung again, and this time the vulture head went sailing through the door, splintering it completely.
“One by one—out you go!” Ruby ushered the kids through as quickly as she could. They stumbled and practically fell over themselves trying to get out, each face appearing soot- and tear-stained in the daylight.
The last few disappeared out of sight, and I looked around.
“Where’s Yelena?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her go through the door.
“We’re missing two!” Jenney cried out, half out of the door as she counted the heads of the kids.
The inferno was getting closer, and Ruby looked worriedly back down the corridor.
“We need to leave now,” she replied, holding on to the sleeve of my robe.
“Not without her!” I yelled, pulling back my robe and twisting out of her grasp.
“That’s suicide!”
“I don’t care,” I retorted, running back the way we had come. I knew none of them would follow me—Ruby would want to, but Jenney and Julian wouldn’t let her. But there was no way I would leave Yelena on her own. I didn’t know why she’d run off, but I owed it to her to go after her—for everything she’d done for me—and everything I’d done to her. Yeah. I owed her. I owed her big time.
I ran back along the corridor, my body breaking out in a sweat as the heat from the blaze battered me, unrelenting and dry, my face feeling like it was going to melt off. My eyes started to water, the smoke irritating them and blocking off any oxygen so that my head swam.
“Yelena!” I called out, coughing and spluttering, knowing that it was probably useless to call her name. She wouldn’t be able to hear me over the sound of the fire and falling stone.
The fire was only several feet ahead of me: a solid wall of flame, blocking my path…which meant she had to be in one of the rooms off this part of the corridor, or else she was dead.
“Yelena!” I roared again, kicking open the doors that I passed. Most of them were bedrooms, as small and cramped as Ash’s had been. I bent low, trying to make out human forms in the billows of smoke that poured in from the blaze of the corridor. There wasn’t time to give each of them more than a cursory look—there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide anyway. I just had to keep searching rooms and hope that she was in one of them.
I was two more doors from the blaze when the door to the left flew open and Yelena came staggering out, carrying the young Portuguese kid in her arms. His body lay limp, but Yelena was choking badly.
“He ran off…he didn’t understand,” she hacked out, before she started to sway on her feet. She stumbled forward, and I rushed forward to catch them both before they smacked into the ground.
‘Yelena!” I cried out, trying to shake her upright, whilst keeping one eye on the flames that were snaking closer by the second. “You need to stand up! Please—I can’t do this without you!”
The boy looked dead to the world, and I didn’t know if he was alive or not, but his expressionless face and closed eyes didn’t give me much hope. I took him out of her arms and flung him over my shoulder as best I could—he was small and light, but I wasn’t going to be able to carry them both.
“Wake UP!” I screamed at her. I pulled at her waist with my spare hand, pulling her upward so that her body was leaning against mine.
“Just let me rest here for a minute…” she murmured, disorientated and completely oblivious to the flames and, even more worrying, the sound of the ceiling starting to rumble and creak.
Without stopping to think, I started to move forward, grabbing Yelena more tightly. I staggered toward the dim light up ahead, just able to make out the cries of Ruby and Julian urging me forward.
I could practically feel the flames inches away from my bare neck.
We have to make it.
Don’t stop…
The fumes were starting to get to me. The hint of daylight started to move about as my vision blurred, but I kept my grip on Yelena tight, putting one foot in front of the other.
The broken doorway was only about five feet in front of me when the ceiling started to cave in. I shoved Yelena in front of me, pushing her through the break in the door and into Ruby’s outstretched hands. Without waiting to see whether or not the coast was clear, I launched myself through with the boy still over my shoulder.
I smacked into Yelena’s back, breathing in a lungful of air before I slapped down, hard, onto the ground.
Dust and debris billowed out behind me. The servant quarters’ foundation had collapsed completely; the sound was deafening, shaking the ground outside and shifting the entire castle with a horrible, uneasy rumble.
“Thank God you’re safe!” Ruby rasped, turning me over. “I thought we’d lost you – don’t ever do that to me again!”
“Yelena?” I asked, my throat as dry as a desert.
“She’s okay,” Ruby reassured me, still looking half furious and half relieved, “you saved her life, Benedict.”
I smiled.
Cool.
Hazel
“Put me down!” I cried, struggling once again in Tejus’s arms. We had reached the edge of the exterior castle walls, along with a mass of other sentries who had poured out of the portcullis, all yelling and screaming, blindly following one another as they shoved and fought their way out of the grounds.
“Seriously, Tejus!” I screamed, “I can walk by myself!”
He grunted in anger, but his grip loosened and he let me slide down to the floor. As soon as my feet touched the ground, I slipped out of his grasp and started to run back the way we’d come, determined to find Benedict and my friends and make sure they had escaped.
“What the HELL are you doing?”
Tejus bellowed after me, but I was soon swallowed up by the mass of ministers and I didn’t bother to turn around. I would return to him when I found them but I had to know that they were safe. Tejus still didn’t fully understand that when it came to Benedict and my friends, if they weren’t okay, I wouldn’t be
okay. Much to his annoyance, my own safety would always come second place. I pushed and elbowed my way through to the portcullis. Most of the crowd didn’t even notice me. I was too small compared to them to attract much attention: the only danger would be losing my footing and being trampled to death by the mob.
With one final shove, I broke free of the bottleneck of sentries that had formed at the gate and started to run toward the main entrance.
My strides seemed more powerful than normal, like I was running at twice my speed…and more than that, I could feel strength coursing through me, as if I could easily obliterate anything that stood in my path. I didn’t know if it was the adrenaline, or my newfound sentry powers, but it felt good not to feel so powerless, even for just a moment.
I reached the entrance in a matter of moments; when I got there, I skidded to a halt.
No!
There was a loud boom, like dynamite exploding, and I stared open-mouthed as the entrance arch split in two and collapsed, almost gracefully, in on itself. I heard the screams of the sentries who had been standing beneath it—and the ones behind who hadn’t made it out yet. Then a brief silence, as all cries stopped.
“BENEDICT!” I yelled out, shattering the silence. A commotion broke out behind me as the ministers and guards realized what had happened, and within a few short moments it was total chaos.
Ignoring the sentries, I started to run around to the side entrance of the castle. My stomach was twisted in a tight knot, a sick lurching feeling accompanying every step I took.
Please be safe.
Racing ahead, I had to make a wide berth around the grounds of the castle. The rock and stone from the towers and buttresses rained down with heavy thuds and splintered off into lethal shards. I paused for a second as I caught sight of the small door to the side entrance—I could see the familiar figures of humans gathered outside it, along with bright red flames pouring through, black smoke snaking into the sky.
“Ruby!” I called out, recognizing the blonde halo of my friend. The group of kids surrounding her moved out of the way to let me pass, and I raced up to Ruby. She and Julian were hunched over the body of my brother.