Free Vamped Up by Kristin Miller Page B

power. He or she knows what it can do. Greed and pure evil will take root and he will search out another, and another, until the evil of the Nether Realm is brought upon us.”
    Two Primuses spoke at once, a slurred grumble. “How’d you stop them before?”
    “We didn’t. The Crimson Bay Massacre of 1912 and subsequent explosion of the premises claimed the lives of every elder in the area, along with the evil that was trying to take over. Total devastation. I don’t have to remind you of our tragic losses. But we are forewarned this time. It is not too late. Thanks to Dylan and Slade recovering a few pages of scroll, we have a clearer picture of the Grimorium Verum than we’ve ever had. I’ve been informed that in a newly translated passage, it reads, “Elders will fall, all will succumb.” These events have been foreseen, fellow Primuses. Perhaps the way we can defeat this evil has been foreseen as well. We have a team working on translating the scrolls as we speak, along with another searching for the rest of the revered tome. If we can piece together the rest of the scrolls, we may be able to stop more elders from being murdered for their souls.”
    Dylan leaned over again, speaking quietly into Ruan’s ear. “This is something we’ve never seen, Ruan. We could use your help.”
    “Why me?”
    “Because you’re the best at breaking codes and deciphering the scrolls; you know that. There’s no one like you.”
    As if Slade’s superior hearing caught on her words, his gaze shot to her. She loved his possessiveness, but at times like these he needed to tone that shit down. She continued anyway, a blush rising in her cheeks. “If you can look through the scrolls for two minutes . . . two minutes . . . and try to piece some things together, maybe we could figure out what’s really going on.”
    He met her eyes for the first time. Behind the hard exterior of his clenching jaw and the tight line of his lips, Dylan glimpsed the friend she knew. “I’m telling you,” she said softly, nervously tossing her curls over her shoulder. “This thing, the death shade, it spoke Eve’s name.”
    His eyes, flaming greener than she’d ever seen them, shadowed over. “If what you’re saying is true, I can protect her better away from here. This haven sounds like a target. Besides, I don’t take orders anymore.”
    “I’m not giving you an order, Ruan. I’m asking you. As a friend.”
    Justus shouted over them, his voice demanding. “Do you know which elder was killed?”
    “No,” Hiram said firmly.
    Another Primus, tall and sleek in black and gray, stood up from a table at Hiram’s left. “And you don’t know who is behind this?”
    “Nothing concrete,” he answered again.
    “What else?” another Primus asked. “We must know everything and you’re holding back.”
    Hiram held up the top page of scroll for the room to see. “I know that there is reference in these scrolls to the death shades. Also found in these scrambled passages is where they will be unleashed and how many will die in the end. We simply didn’t know the time before. The time is now .”
    “But you said they’re scrambled,” Justus spoke out. “We’ve been trying to decode those pages for centuries. What hope can we have if a death shade has already been released? It could be too late.”
    Dylan put a hand on Ruan’s knee and squeezed. His gaze shot to his jeans and the placement of her hand, then up to her face. Gone were the traces of lust he’d had for her months ago. All that remained was friendship . . . if that. God, she hoped that was still left. Otherwise, there would be no way he’d help with the scrolls. And they needed him.
    “Ruan, please,” she said. “Just give it a shot. We can’t afford to hand over the strength of our elders to someone who wishes to use those powers for evil. And I saw this death shade too. There is nothing more evil. You came here for a reason, right? You answered my call because