A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire, #21)

The path wound deeper and deeper into the mountain until the Elder commanded us to stop. Strangely, it was right in the middle of the tunnel. There were no doors or anything nearby… at least not that I could see.

Then Arletta pointed to our right. A ridge ran down the wall from top to bottom to form a perfect ninety-degree angle.

“Enter through this door,” the Elder commanded.

No wonder the Elder had said I would never find the place where Hans was hidden. When passing through long tunnels like this, one didn’t pay attention to the walls. They faded into the background.

Arletta and I pushed against the stone with all our strength, but it was incredibly stiff. As though it hadn’t been opened since the day it was locked.… Perhaps even eighteen years ago. Fear filled me. Will Hans really not have consumed blood for eighteen years? Although I didn’t see how he would have been able to consume it since the Elders weren’t supplying it, at the back of my mind I’d held out hope that somehow he’d managed to procure enough blood to stay healthy. Please be alive. Please be alive. I repeated the mantra over and over in my head like a prayer.

Hans’ brothers helped out with the stone entrance and, with all of us pushing at once, the door ground open.

Before us was another long, dark tunnel, the ground and ceiling cluttered with stalagmites and stalactites. We had to watch our step to avoid being gouged. After five minutes, we reached a dead end.

“Now what?” I murmured.

“This is another door,” Braithe, Hans’ second youngest brother, said. And he was right. Before us was the same ridge. Again, it required all five of us to force it open. The grating of stone against stone sent echoes bouncing around the walls, making the place feel all the more eerie. We stepped through the second door and arrived at the top of a jagged stone staircase—at the bottom of which we could spot yet another door, this one locked with a bolt. I wondered how many more doors we’d have to pass through.

We reached the bottom of the staircase and, drawing aside the thick metal bolt, began to tug on the third door. Just as it felt like we were on the verge of prying it open, the Elder spoke again.

“Beyond this door, you will be reunited with the vessel you seek.”

As Hans’s siblings continued to tackle the entrance, I drew away and held up a hand. “Wait,” I whispered. Now that we were on the precipice of seeing Hans again, fear washed over me—fear of what we might see behind this door. Most of all, I feared seeing his wasted corpse.

Hans’ siblings respected my wish to take a few moments to steel myself before barging through the door. I was sure that they were taking the opportunity to do the same. Sensing that the Elder’s presence was still with us, I asked him in a shaking voice, “Is Hans actually alive?”

There was a pause. An agonizingly long pause. Then the Elder gave me the least comforting answer he possibly could. “I know not,” he whispered back.

My mouth dried out. “How can you not know?”

“Neither I nor any of my fellow Elders have entered the chamber since we locked them in here for safekeeping almost two decades ago.”

Safekeeping. They wanted to keep these vessels safe. The Elders must have been convinced that they would survive. Otherwise what was the point in locking them in here? They might as well have just let them perish like their other vessels.

Still, I couldn’t keep myself from asking, “Do you really not know what happens to a vampire when they starve?”

“I do not know,” the Elder responded, a hint of impatience in his tone. “I have never witnessed the result of starvation in a vampire before. Open the door and we shall see.…”

As we resumed our hold on the door and forced it loose, we geared ourselves up to likely be the first people in history to find out.



* * *



Nothing could have prepared me for the sight that lay beyond that stone door.

As we stepped through into a pitch-black dungeon—darker than even the dank corridors we’d been traveling along— the first thing that hit me was the smell. The thick stone walls had contained and stifled it while we had been standing on the other side, but now it was unbearable.

The scent alone sent my mind into a panic. Vampires indeed could starve and the smell was that of rotting corpses.

But the strange thing was, as I cast my eyes despairingly around the large, circular chamber, there wasn’t a body to be seen. The floors were empty, except for the odd puddle of water.

“The ceiling!” Braithe choked.

As my eyes drifted upward, I stopped breathing. The stalactite-ridden ceiling was lined with… bodies. Naked, stark-white bodies. I stumbled further into the chamber, my head hanging back as I gazed upward in disbelief. The bodies… they were utterly emaciated, their skin—if it could even be called that anymore—was thin as papyrus. From where I stood, I could only see their backs, but I could see the backs of their heads—each devoid of even a strand of hair.

No. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.