A Call of Vampires (A Shade of Vampire #51)

Jolessi was the fifteenth Kingdom of Eritopia, a colorful bead with lush jungles and turquoise oceans, a vibrant splash in the cosmic darkness.

We spent a few good minutes naming all the planets in Eritopia’s system, as the sphere took us farther away. We passed thousands of small stars, shapeless asteroids, and racing comets, piercing through pink and yellow gas clouds before we left the galaxy.

The more distance we put between us and Eritopia, the better we could see the full picture. The galaxy itself was huge, thousands of stars and the twenty planets spiraling around the massive sun. Our parents, our siblings, and our friends were down there, little specks of dust at the heart of the In-Between.

All I could think of was how tiny we were—and yet how powerful we could be. My sister, my cousins, and a handful of Eritopian rogues had managed to save an entire galaxy, that giant spiral of stars and planets and pink and yellow gas and dust clouds.

There was nothing we couldn’t do ourselves.

The universe may be big, but we can be bigger.

The sphere began to tremble and hum, then shot to supersonic speed. Everything darted by us in thin white lines against the black backdrop of the In-Between.





Harper





(Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)





We spent several hours like that, gawking at the universe around us as our sphere cut through it, passing through galaxies of all shapes and sizes, thick columns of rainbow-colored stardust, asteroids, and comet showers. I’d once visited a planetarium in Hawaii with my parents when I was just a kid, and I remembered looking up and feeling my jaw drop at the sight of so many stars, so many worlds out there just waiting to be discovered and explored.

“We’re here,” Rewa said gently, staring ahead.

Our light orb gradually reduced its speed, gliding through the void as yet another galaxy unraveled before us. This one, however, was peculiar, different from what we’d seen so far. We all moved closer to Rewa’s side, leaning into the spell’s transparent wall to get a better look at what lay ahead.

One giant sun, about three times the size of Eritopia’s, hovered in the middle. It was the heart of the galaxy, the engine whose massive gravity kept everything together. Two stars, each just one fifth of this sun, orbited it at a very close, but fixed distance of maybe fifteen or twenty million miles. It was weird because, the way they moved, they would never collide, and yet together they looked like three suns—one large, two smaller twins.

The seven planets followed, the nearest one a red dwarf reminding me of Mars, maybe thirty or forty million miles away. Others were gradually bigger. The farther they got from the suns, the larger their circumference and the darker, colder their colors.

The two farthest from the suns were huge, one teal and the last a bone-chilling blue with white strips and thick planetary rings. The fourth planet, however, seemed to be our destination. Rewa had mentioned three moons and this one had them.

“Those are the suns,” Rewa said, her eyes glimmering with the excitement of being back home. “The big one we call Kol. The other two we call Drul and Khai, named after Mara twins of legend.”

“No one could tell them apart, and it was how they deceived the enemy’s armies and released their people,” Jax muttered, remembering the Mara lore. “They were the Maras of old times... Ages long gone. Calliope was young, and the Daughters were still figuring out who they were.”

“Indeed.” Rewa nodded slowly, looking out. “We called them Drul and Khai because we couldn’t tell them apart, and because they reminded us of our history.”

“I can imagine it’s insanely hot with three suns,” Blaze remarked from the right side, gazing at the galaxy’s core as we got closer.

“It must be, on the neighboring planets.” Rewa smiled. “But on Neraka it’s fine. The first planet there, the small red one… That’s Trekh. It’s nothing but dust. No one could possibly live on it; its shell is probably scorched. The second one we called Karak. Bigger, but just as hot.”

Karak had a uniform, matte amber hue. No relief forms had lasted the heat blasts from the suns. It was probably as barren as Trekh and the one after it.

“The gray one is Asmosi.” Rewa pointed at the third planet. “Our guess is that it’s all stone and nothing else. It’s far enough not to burn like the first two, but it’s still too hot to sustain life. The fourth one is my home, our beautiful Neraka…”

She smiled, gazing at the large planet. It was a pleasant and balanced mixture of blue and green, with several continents separated by smaller oceans than what we knew on Earth. White clouds gathered in clusters, stretching lazily over entire swatches of dry land. The three moons that orbited Neraka—one white, one pale orange, and one smooth amber— were equal in size and in constant motion.

“The moons are a peculiar thing,” Rewa muttered, “because they affect the tides worse than Calliope’s moon ever did. They don’t come out at once, either. The first to rise is Pell, the white moon. The second is always Xus, the orange, followed by Llaim, the amber marble. Only once every fifty years do they all come up at once, and the entire world goes crazy. The planet no longer holds us close, and we find ourselves floating for a few hours, before Pell moves ahead and breaks the alignment.”

“So you’re telling me that when all three moons rise at once and in perfect alignment, Neraka loses its gravity?” Caia frowned, cocking her head to one side.

“A little, yes.” Rewa nodded. “It’s a strange phenomenon, but we’ve learned to track it and make sure our people aren’t stranded somewhere in the sky when Pell breaks free. As soon as that happens, it all jolts back to normal and gravity can hurt.”

“That’s weird,” I murmured, then noticed the thin strip of dark purple rocks orbiting Neraka, just above its atmosphere. “But not as weird as that… How are they staying like that?”

“I don’t know.” Rewa shrugged. “It’s always been a mystery. The asteroid belt is far enough away to not collide with our moons. Sometimes rocks do diverge from the path. The ones that are big enough to not burn through the atmosphere completely make it onto the ground. We’ve collected some in a small natural museum in Azure Heights, but we don’t know whether they do anything or whether they’re just pretty purple crystals.”

“They must do something if the Daughters of Eritopia can’t open portals on Neraka,” Jax said, and I could sense the tension in his voice.

“I guess,” Rewa sighed, “but honestly, we are not scientists. We’re barely even scholars… We are artists and craftsmen; we don’t bother with aerial phenomena and the outside world. We’re happy on our little patch of land. Oh, look, that’s Satharia, the fifth planet.”

She pointed at a giant marble, slightly bigger than Neraka, glazed in shades of blue and dark green, with white cloud streaks toward the middle.