A Rip of Realms (A Shade of Vampire #39)(40)

“What about the Acolytes? Does it say anything about them?” Hazel pressed.

“Hang on,” I muttered, flicking through the pages once more. Eventually I found an extract that mentioned them, and once again I started to read out loud.

“Since the uprising of the humans, there have been friends of the forbidden. They called themselves the Acolytes, and claimed that they were able to communicate with the entity through visions, and are dedicated to bringing about their master’s rule. They took to regularly sacrificing humans and animals to their master in order to feed him energy…’

“So, nothing remotely helpful once again?” Tejus questioned sarcastically.

“No, nothing helpful,” I retorted. I was just as angry about this as he was, and I didn’t like his accusatory tone—it wasn’t my fault that the book didn’t hold anything of use.

The only information that I hadn’t heard before was the inclusion of the ‘jinni’—I’d never heard Tejus mention it when he’d passed on the information he and Hazel had gathered.

“What’s a jinni?” I asked.

“A kind of supernatural creature, really powerful—it’s rare to hear of one on their own though, they tend to live in tribes,” Hazel replied, pacing up and down on the debris and rubble.

“They live on Earth?” I asked.

“Well… some. But they originate from the supernatural dimension.”

I nodded slowly, wondering how Hazel knew about a dimension different to hers. Before I could ask, Tejus interrupted.

“Does it mention at all what these ‘forbidden’ are? What the entity is? How the jinni managed to trap them in the first place?” He shot the questions at me, one after the other, but I could only shake my head wearily. The book didn’t disclose anything that might answer those questions.

“So this is a dead end.” Tejus sighed.

“Not necessarily,” Hazel said. We all looked at her in astonishment, wondering what she could have possibly understood from what I’d read out that might lead her to believe that there was a way out of this.

“Listen, it said that the ‘forbidden’ are going to open the portal—that’s good news. If we can get all the sentries out of Nevertide before it’s destroyed, then GASP has a chance of either shutting the portal, or battling whatever these creatures are in both Earth and the supernatural dimensions. It’s a risky strategy, but it might be the only chance we have.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ruby murmured, deep in thought. “These creatures can’t be much worse than what we’ve faced before…and at least we’d have an entire army of jinn to help out, not just one.”

What?

“What’s GASP?” I asked.

Hazel stopped pacing, and looked over at Ruby with a guilty expression on her face. Ruby glared at her for a split second, and then turned to me.

“Um…I guess I have a couple of things to tell you…”





Benedict





We surveyed the kitchen in the summer palace, the dirty plates and leftover food, and winced as a globule of oat paste slipped off the kitchen counter with a heavy slop.

“This is gross,” I remarked to Jenney.

“This is nothing. Try cleaning up after a banquet of over one hundred ministers.”

I sighed. My friends were off searching for a way to save Nevertide from the entity, and I was here babysitting. Even Julian had gone, declaring that he’d made a full recovery from his time in Queen Trina’s dungeons. I didn’t believe him for a moment.

“You’d think, after being the entity’s puppet for weeks, they’d let me join them,” I muttered.

“Haven’t you had enough excitement to last you a lifetime?” Jenney countered. “I’d have thought you’d be happy to take it easy for a while.”

“This isn’t taking it easy.” I gestured at the mess. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. I could hear the kids next door as well, sounding like a horde of elephants running rampant around the room.

“You can go and join them, try to keep them under control while I clean up here?” Jenney offered.

“No, thanks,” I replied hurriedly. “I’ll clean.”

Jenney gave me a knowing smile and then handed me a grease-encrusted cooking pot.

“Get to it then.”

I started washing up, using mostly cold water—the plumbing wasn’t great here, and for baths we’d had to heat up water on the stove. Since arriving here, Hellswan had started to feel like a luxury. At least we’d had beds there and a constant supply of hot water. Still, it beat the temple, and at least I was getting some sleep, not wandering around hallways trying to collect stones.

“Cut the water a second,” Jenney said. I did as she requested, waiting for her to explain why.

“Can you hear anything?” she asked.

I stopped clashing the pots around and stood still for a moment.

“Not a thing.” I shrugged. The palace was silent.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?” she replied, wiping her hands on her apron, and moving toward the door.

Where are the kids?

I couldn’t hear a sound coming from next door, and immediately started to feel a bit tense. It was pretty rare that Yelena stayed silent for longer than a couple of seconds…I hurried out behind Jenney.