“Come on, Hadras!” Eneas shouted, unable to hide his anxiety anymore. If he’d been optimistic about the outcome before, he was clearly worried at this point, unable to take his eyes off the melee.
Hadras felt encouraged by his brothers, who soon joined Eneas’s cheers. “You can do it!” Filicore added, and Hadras grunted as he went after Tristan again.
He swung left but stopped at the very last second, then dropped and went straight for my husband’s knees. Tristan jumped, and Hadras came up with a lateral leg kick that threw him onto his side. He fell hard, and I grimaced, feeling his pain. The Ghoul Reaper moved to deliver the killing blow, bringing the half-moon blade down.
Tristan shifted onto his back and scrambled backward as Hadras kept hitting the ground, snarling as the wound in his side glowed brighter with every movement. It was a peculiar sight to behold, and I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I was thankful Tristan could do something to aggravate the Ghoul Reaper.
I covered my mouth with both hands as Hadras went straight for his head. Tristan rolled to the right and finally got back up.
“Okay, I’ve had enough fun,” Hadras hissed. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”
“You mean you’re getting tired of missing,” Tristan chuckled.
“Get the little worm!” Deas said from the sideline.
Filicore growled, his black eyes glistening with murderous desire. “Make him bleed!”
Hadras vanished and reappeared a couple of feet behind Tristan. My mind froze in fear, but this wasn’t the end for my husband. He spun on his heels and caught the Ghoul Reaper’s blade against his before it could find flesh.
Unexpectedly, he brought his knee up at the same time, kicking Hadras between his legs. The creature screamed in agony, further shocking everyone—including me. I knew Tristan could do damage against a Reaper with my scythe, but I’d had no idea he could use his body, too. Not against an entity that belonged to the realm of the dead. This didn’t make sense, but by the stars, I welcomed it.
Hadras doubled over in pain, and Tristan swung swiftly, cutting off Hadras’s head with one deft swipe.
Eneas sucked in a breath, his eyes wide. Malin shrieked and tried to intervene, but the others held him back. “No!” Filicore snapped. “It’s a duel! Stay out of it!”
Hadras’s head rolled over in the white dirt, blinking in confusion. Light glowed from the gaping wound of his severed neck, while Tristan stared at him in disbelief, still panting from his efforts in combat. “What the…” My husband’s voice trailed off as Hadras cried out.
“Guys! A little help here!”
This… I had never seen before. Tristan couldn’t kill a Reaper, that much was clear. But he’d managed to decapitate one. “This is weird,” I managed.
“What did I just do?” Tristan asked me, and I could only shrug in response. The sight of him like this made my senses tingle, however. His broad shoulders, black hair tousled and casting shadows over his bold eyes, his lips parted as he breathed deeply, my scythe in his strong hand… Yes, I was certainly reminded of what had drawn me to him since day one. Beneath his “nerdy façade,” as his sister Esme had called it, a strong and fierce man dwelled, ever ready to fight for what’s right.
“You cut my head off!” Hadras squealed. “This doesn’t make sense!”
Eneas was speechless, unable to look away from his fallen brother. Tristan was quick to take advantage of the situation. “So, does this mean you yield?” my husband asked Hadras.
“I will rip your head off first!” the Ghoul Reaper shot back.
Tristan smirked and hacked off an arm from Hadras’s fallen body. Hadras screamed again, and the sound filled the entire sky, echoing through the city on the nocturnal winds. He’d felt the cut. His arm was separated from his body, and he could feel it. But why was he not yet doomed to the nothingness? “Do you yield?” Tristan asked again.
“Screw you, meat sack!”
“Hadras, stop! Don’t provoke him!” Eneas tried to intervene, but Tristan had already brought my blade down again, removing a leg. Hadras howled, and my skin crawled. The white light of his wounds was mesmerizing and impossible to look away from, though I remained puzzled by what it meant.
Death had promised she would address Tristan’s newfound ability to wield my scythe once this mission was over, but the more we explored this angle, the weirder things became.
“Argh! I yield, damn it! I yield!” Hadras finally conceded, and my husband grinned in satisfaction as he walked away from the Ghoul Reaper’s body and back to me.
“Nicely done,” I whispered, retrieving my weapon. Strangely enough, the transfer made my whole arm tingle, as if a sliver of my husband’s energy had been preserved within the handle and was now making its way into me. Exhaling sharply, he kissed me. He was hungry, his blood pumping with adrenaline. I leaned into him, his forever, thrilled to have witnessed such a victory.
“I had you to come back to,” he replied, lips brushing against my ear and sending a hot frenzy surging through me.
Eneas cleared his throat. “You impress me, vampire.”
“Screw Tristan. How do we fix him?!” Filicore shouted. He was fumbling around Hadras’s body with a severed leg in his hand, while Deas held the arm. It looked as though they were trying to put a life-size doll back together, but were missing the assembly instructions. The image was equal parts horror and humor, and the Ghoul Reapers were apparently just as baffled as I was.
Deas looked my way. “Have you dealt with this before?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “It’s as new to me as it is to you, I promise.”
“But he’s not gone,” Fileas murmured, staring at
