A Shield of Glass (A Shade of Vampire #49)(17)

Vita inhaled deeply as she woke up, the runes gradually vanishing from her skin.

She sat up, tears welling in her blue-green eyes. Damion said nothing as she looked around the room, her face brightening at the sight of me. I brought a finger up to my mouth, quietly reminding her that no one knew I was there except her. She looked away, quickly catching on, and shifted her focus to Damion. A deep frown brought her eyebrows together as she pursed her lips.

“What are you doing here?” she muttered to him.

“My job. You’ve been under for quite some time now, and Azazel had some urgent business to attend to. So he left me here to take note of your runes and alert him once you’re up,” he replied with a shrug.

“You’re damn right I was out for a while,” Vita snapped. “Whatever those weeds you burned were, they knocked me into oblivion.”

“You’re fine, no need to moan about it. I’ll go get him,” Damion mumbled, then left the room.

Chills ran down my spine, and a feeling of urgency came over me as he closed the double doors behind him, leaving me alone with Vita. She looked at me with a pained expression that rang more alarm bells in me.

“Aida, we don’t have much time,” she said with a trembling voice. “Azazel will be here soon and will expect me to tell him what I saw in my visions.”

The dread of seeing Azazel, even from my protected state of Oracle connection to Vita, was extremely difficult to handle. But I held it together, as we both had a job to do. I nodded briefly, waiting for her to tell me about the visions before I revealed the horror we’d been dealing with for the past ten hours.

“I won’t tell him everything, of course, I’ll bend it as much as I can,” she continued, tears streaming down her cheeks. “But just so you know, the future has changed, and not for the better. In short, there’s a darkness in Azazel, a curse of some kind that fuels his immense power. Not just the Daughter he has in his possession and the energy he’s drawing from the volcanoes. Something much more toxic and evil. We’ve changed the outcome, sort of. The Daughter no longer sacrifices herself to destroy him, but Draven does, by taking that curse into himself. I think it has something to do with that creepy snake medallion that Azazel is wearing, because in my vision, after Azazel is vanquished, Draven turns into a Destroyer and wears the damn thing around his neck.”

I thought I’d had a bad time of it already, but according to Vita’s vision, the worst was yet to come. I held my breath for a second, trying to process that information, as I had difficulty imagining Draven going dark like that.

“What… What do you mean, Vita?” I managed, my voice barely audible.

“Draven will become a Destroyer if he defeats Azazel. I think it’s the only way to kill the guy, by taking his curse away,” she reiterated. “Thing is, the burden is too heavy for Draven. He won’t make it. He’ll turn into the very monster he destroys and will go on a killing rampage. We… We die…”

Her voice broke as she got to the most painful part of our possible future. I had no words left, just an overwhelming feeling of grief seeping into my soul, tying knots in my heart and burning my stomach.

“We will try to stop him, but we’ll die. You, me, Jovi and Phoenix… The Daughter… I don’t know what happens to Field or our other allies. I only saw Serena, Bijarki, and Anjani left alive. And not in a good way. Bijarki and Anjani end up exiled on Marton with other incubi and succubi, whom they unite by getting married, in hopes of either finding a way out of Eritopia, or replenishing their numbers and eventually killing Draven and getting rid of that curse,” Vita said.

“How? If Draven must take on the curse to begin with, in order to destroy Azazel, who will take it from him to do the same?”

“I don’t know. But I think if a non-Druid takes the curse, it might not work the same way. Or maybe we’ll find a way to get rid of the medallion altogether. Or maybe we’re just delusional and hanging on to false hope, I don’t know. But I can tell you one thing—if Draven gets hold of that medallion and kills Azazel, it’ll start a chain of catastrophic events. The only people I saw left standing were Draven and Serena, whom he kept in a cage, unwilling to let her die because there’s still a part of him that’s truly him, and has feelings for her, and doesn’t want her gone. But all of Eritopia will burn. The few who survive are doomed to die out in the desert.”

“What of the Daughters, then?” I replied, feeling the rage toward those so-called protectors of Eritopia simmering through me. The thought of my brother dying, of me, of Field, of my loved ones dying—I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t accept it.

“I don’t know. I only saw them laying their little sister to rest on Mount Agrith, and Viola dying. Her connection to Phoenix is vital because she will die when Draven kills him.” Vita sobbed, speaking between hiccups as she wiped her face with the corner of a bedcover.

“Listen, we’ll work something out,” I said, aware that we had very little time to deal with grief and that Azazel was on his way up to her room. “Bijarki is on his way to get you. It will take him a couple of days to get to Luceria, so hang in there, okay?”

She nodded slowly, regaining her composure.

“I set Kyana free last night,” she said. “But I got in trouble for it…”