“Well, Imy-Mut, welcome to the party. Would you mind handing over the staff? Then we can get to the real fun. How would you three like to serve me forever?”
“Seriously? Dude, we don’t have souls. And we don’t like humans.” The draugr turned to the reaper. “Well, actually,Ilike humans well enough. And Khent kind of does. But mostly, nah.”
To score a reaper and a draugr would make Vladimir the stuff of legends. Adding a dark elf to that… Hmm. Perhaps he shouldn’t rush taking the Staff of Blight. It might not even be the real one.
He commanded the small legion at his disposal, those he’d sent ahead who’d been stealthily entering the keep, to take the staff away.
A group of ghouls, witches, and druids suddenly appeared from under the ground and yanked the staff down and away.
“Onvyr, get it back,” Rolf ordered.
The dark elf left, but Vladimir paid him no mind.
There was something about the reaper that nagged at him to look closer.
When the draugr appeared in front of him between one heartbeat and the next, Vladimir called on the creature’s essence and yanked it from him, swallowing it down.
The reaper didn’t look surprised when his companion dropped to the ground in a boneless heap. He didn’t take his gaze off Vladimir.
“You’re next, reaper.”
Vladimir didn’t expect a smile from the reaper. Or the sudden pain from within that throbbed like a toothache.
“None but those Of the Bloode may contain those Of the Bloode,” the reaper said. “And now you face your Better, human.”
Vladimir smiled, showing his own teeth. When he’d been fully human, he’d had to deal with those stronger and scarier, those who treated humans like scum.
But Nergal had given Vladimir so much to appreciate.
Time to show the vampire that he didn’t know as much as he thought he did.
“Taste fear, reaper. And meet your new master.”
He took a step closer, eating through distance and time in the blink of an eye, and swallowed down the reaper as easily as he’d taken the draugr.
No mess. No fuss. Just immeasurable power now swimming inside him with all the rest.
With a smile, Vladimir nodded to the lamia and demigods hovering nearby.
“Go fetch the staff. And bring me the dark elf as well. Try not to do too much damage. I’d like him mostly in one piece before I devour his soul.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Val couldn’t understand it.
The house stood in one piece. Not a shred of damage to any of the building or the furniture within.
But half the pack lay dead, blood, pus, and other noxious fluids swimming with disease.
“This is the work of the true Staff of Blight,” Mormo said, his voice distressed. “I’m so sorry, Val.”
She looked around the common area, not understanding. She didn’t feel death anywhere, but she could clearly see it. Yet the grief she expected to feel didn’t come.
Talon lay gutted, his head barely clinging to his neck. He’d been disemboweled. The room smelled horrible, the heavy scent of blood and intestinal discharge almost overpowering. Nearby, the bodies of the bear twins curled protectively around Misty, her body in two pieces in a pool of blood.
And then Val sensed it, the lie that was not death. But something else.
