Much Ado About Vampires Read Online Free PDF

grinding out some horrible instructions about locating and torturing the person named Ailwin, going into sickening detail about what he’d like done.
    “Go,” Bael said, waving his hand toward the woman, and just like that, she was gone. “As for you . . .”
    Ulfur had half turned toward me, angling himself so his back was to the wall, no doubt to keep anyone from seeing that he had an object stuffed into the back of his jacket.
    I bit my lip, unsure if I should say something, or just let it go. I didn’t condone stealing at all, but . . . my little devil urged me to turn around and walk out of the house, to leave the two men alone, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. It was obvious the strange stone I held must belong to the Englishman, and that meant I had to return it.
    I started toward him with the intention of doing just that when Bael threw wide his arms and, with a voice filled with fury, screamed, “Abi in malam crucem, confer te in exsilium, appropinquabit enim judicium Bael! ”
    “Go to torment, go into banishment, for the judgment of Bael is at hand,” I whispered in translation, and just like that, I was slammed by a wall of power as the floor fell out from beneath my feet.
    A scream was literally ripped from my throat as I plummeted into blackness, but it was a short-lived scream, one that turned to, “Ow! Ow, ow, ow! Jesus wept!” For the second time in a few minutes, I shook stars from my eyes and pushed myself into a sitting position, wincing when my hands, still clutching my things, came into contact with sharp, pointy rocks. “What the hell ?”
    “Not Abaddon, no,” a weary voice came from behind me. I got to my knees and looked over a large, craggy boulder that squatted next to me. The man named Ulfur lay facedown on the rocky ground. “Worse. We’re in the Akasha.”
    “How . . . what . . . huh?” I looked around as I got painfully to my feet. We seemed to be on some sort of horrible windswept, rocky moor. Or at least what I thought of as a moor, never having seen one in person. But this place . . . it brought a new level of angst to the word “desolate.” The wind seemed to carry with it the voices of a thousand tormented souls, the ground, stones, and sparse vegetation all the same shade of dusty brown. It was very rocky—not soft, smooth rocks, but sharp, pointed ones that jabbed up out of the earth as if they were straining to escape. “What’s an Akasha ? ”
    Ulfur groaned as he rolled over, brushing himself off as he sat up. “The Akashic Plain, more frequently known as the Akasha, is what mortals think of as limbo. It’s a place of punishment, of permanent banishment, and before you ask, yes, it is possible to leave it, but you have to be summoned out. I think my face is broken.”
    “Limbo? How did we get here? We were in the house.... Ow. What the devil . . .” I tossed my handful of coins, flinching as I pulled a thin sliver of gold from where it had pierced my finger. “Oh, holy Chihuahua, that hurts. Ugh. I broke the rock you stole.”
    “The what?” Ulfur touched his forehead, his fingers pulling away red.
    “The rock you dropped when you crashed into me. The one you stole from that English dude. All the little gold parts are twisted up, and the gray stone is in about a dozen little pieces.”
    He jerked upright at that, one hand scrabbling behind him to find whatever it was he had stuffed beneath his coat. What he pulled out was a flattened goldfish disk, discolored and stained. “The Anima! Oh, no . . .”
    “You know, there’s a limit to how many unbelievable, confusing things I’m willing to entertain in any given hour, and I think this hour has far surpassed that limit. What the heck is an Anima? And why did you steal it? And who was that English guy, why did he feel so wrong, how did we get here, where exactly is this Akasha place, and most importantly of all, how do I get back to the house? ”
    “Those are a lot of questions,” Ulfur said, his