Free Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) by Gabriel Beyers Page B

than what appears on the surface. The world was by no means solid, but instead seemed a tenuous stack of layers, folding in and out and over one another, sometimes mingling or even collapsing all together. Her gift of seeing the lingering dead, her sister-like relationship with Alicia the ghost, gave her a perspective that few others were privy to.
    Silvanus was not human, that much she was sure of, but neither was he a ghost. She had heard his voice, touched his hand. So she asked again, “What are you?”
    “I don’t know.” Silvanus’s voice was low and tender. “You call me Silvanus, and it’s a name I mean to keep, but my true name, if I ever had one, is lost to me now. What I am and how I came to be is also a mystery. I swear it unto you.”
    “What are you going to do?” Jerusa asked. “Are you going to hurt me?” Though she wasn’t afraid of dying, Jerusa knew there were worse things than death a person could suffer. Alicia stood beside her, faithful as ever. Why had she ignored the ghost’s warning?
    Silvanus dropped to his knees in the carpet of moss and dead leaves so that he could stare into her face.
    “It is true that I am a danger,” he said. “But not to you. Never to you. Sweet Jerusa Phoenix, you have given me nothing but compassion. I’d sooner cast myself into the fires of Hell than allow harm to come to you.”
    “How poetic of you,” Jerusa said. Her voice sounded wispy to her own ears, and though she was not cold, she shivered uncontrollably. “Why are you here — in this place, I mean?”
    “I was hoping to find another like myself. Someone to give me the answers that I seek.”
    A startled excitement swept over Jerusa. “Did you find someone? Are they here?”
    “I found … something.” Silvanus’s brows furrowed and her lips pressed into a firm line. Whatever he had found, it was clear that it troubled him. “But no one like me.” He reached up, took her by the hands, this time without the strange quickening charge, and without thinking, she pulled him to his feet.
    Their hands remained clasped for a lingering moment before she reluctantly pulled away. A shadow of sadness passed over Silvanus’s face, but Jerusa felt it pass over her heart.
    “Will you do something for me?” he asked.
    Jerusa wanted to say, I will do anything, but instead said, “If I can.”
    “Be somewhere safe when the sun goes down and don’t leave until it comes up again.”
    “You know, you’re the second person to give me that advice.” Jerusa watched his face. She thought she caught a flash of surprise, but she couldn’t be sure. “Foster said the same thing to me just a little while ago. What are the odds?”
    “It is curious.”
    Jerusa ran her fingers through her hair, brushing the loose strands from her face. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why I need to stay inside tonight.”
    “Because I’m not the only dangerous thing roaming these woods.”
    And with that, Silvanus was gone. He did not turn and run. He did not fade out of existence like the lingering dead did. One moment he was there. The next he was just gone.
    Jerusa choked back a scream. She turned in circles several times scanning the trees for the young man, but the forest was empty. It felt empty, too. With Silvanus gone, the magic of his presence dissipated like a puff of smoke. A heaviness overtook Jerusa’s limbs and she sat on the ground without a care as to what might be beneath her.
    Had he really been there at all? Had it all been in her mind?
    Jerusa pulled the knapsack into her lap and opened it. She half expected to see it full of Foster’s clothes, but it was empty save for the shoes that had been too small for Silvanus’s feet.
    “What was he?” Jerusa asked Alicia. But the ghost didn’t answer, or wouldn’t or couldn’t. Instead, she leaned against a tree with her arms crossed over her chest — her patented stance — and stared disapprovingly down at Jerusa.
    “Not human,” Jerusa