A Shade of Vampire 88: An Isle of Mirrors

by Forrest, Bella

  The hospital’s ground floor was sparsely populated with a handful of nurses and doctors waiting for any walk-in patients. I didn’t mind. It meant our island was healthy and rarely in need of medical assistance. Besides, we had bigger fish to fry.

  Outside, everything seemed peaceful. Warmth permeated the enormous clearing where the hospital had been built—the late spring temperatures helping the citrus blossoms burst open and spread their lemony fragrance all around. The permanent night gave us a starry view of the sky, the moon slowly moving across as it bathed everything in a delicate pearlescent light. For a moment, it seemed as though nothing had really happened.

  As though it had only been a wicked dream.

  Soul appeared outside, giving us both a surprised look. “What are you two doing out here?” he asked, and I told him about Voss and the sudden lack of comms available.

  “Then we’d best get the others,” Soul said, and the three of us headed west. The terrace was only a couple hundred yards away. Beyond the giant old oak trees and the magnolia garden, the Vale humans had erected a cobblestone alley with posh little shops and gourmet bistros, each with an open-air terrace and fresh flowers in cast-iron pots decorating their tables. The whole area was secluded from the hospital’s traffic, making it perfect for the occasional cup of coffee or, in my case, crystal glass filled with fresh deer blood.

  It served as our miniature French alley, complete with a sweet water stream—one of the many that flowed through The Shade. We couldn’t see it from here, but I could already smell the latest batch of croissants that had just left the oven. It made me miss my Trakkian days, but I had found different comforts in my life as a vampire.

  “I can teleport us over there,” Soul nodded ahead. Both Astra and I were inclined to agree, since time was of the essence at this point, but a familiar voice cut through.

  “Stop right there!” Chantal shouted from somewhere behind us. I quickly turned around. We still had a view of the hospital clearing—just enough to see several figures bolting through the woods beyond. Instinctively, I ran toward them, and Astra and Soul followed.

  I could see Chantal running, but she wasn’t alone. Soph, Zane and Fiona’s half-daemon daughter, and Voss were with her, just a few yards from the edge of the forest. They were chasing after someone. The sight before us didn’t make sense. “Wait, isn’t Voss—"

  “What the…” Astra cut me off, equally stunned. We all recognized the creature they were trying to catch.

  “Come on,” Soul said, grabbing us both by the wrists.

  “No, wait, Voss is supposed to be up in the hosp—” I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence as everything went black for a split-second. We materialized closer to the chase just as Voss, Soph, and Chantal ran past us. They were going after… Chantal.

  “Holy crap,” I blurted, my blood running cold.

  There was a clone of Chantal darting between the redwoods and moving at an impressive speed. She threw fireballs back at her pursuers, her skin shimmering silver under the moonlight that pierced through the tree crowns. And the Voss we were seeing… was that a clone or the real one? Who was the Voss we’d left upstairs? My brain could no longer compute this entire sight.

  “I said stop!” Chantal demanded, fury drawing a deep shadow between her eyebrows.

  Voss shifted into his wolf form and went ahead, getting dangerously close to the clone, while Soph picked up the pace and extended her daemon claws. Chantal flung fireballs back at her doppelganger, careful not to hit Voss in the process.

  “Well, this is weird,” Soul mumbled, watching Chantal’s clone shrink in the distance with Voss hot on her trail. Soon they were all tiny dots against the dark green backdrop of the forest.

  “We need to go back to the hospital,” I said. “Voss!”

  It didn’t take long for the realization to fully sink in.

  “Oh, no,” Soul managed, finally realizing what I’d been trying to say. Not that I could really blame him. This whole situation was confusing to all of us.

  He grabbed us both again, teleporting our stunned asses straight back to the hallway outside of the clone’s room, where Voss’s doppelganger was already hard at work on breaking the door open. He wasn’t able to get through, however, despite the weird-looking bladed object he’d been using. It didn’t look like anything we’d ever used or even thought to design—the blade was long and split in three, each extension molded into a different shape. One was long and slim, much like an icepick, while the other two were wider and undulated, with sharp tips. Tiny lights flickered on the handle as the Voss clone kept pressing them in a certain order and cursing under his breath.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Astra croaked. “When will this stop?!”

  This doppelganger had passed as one of us. That wasn’t supposed to be a surprise, given how well-made Isabelle and Richard’s copies were. They’d fooled us before. But this one had chosen a more covert approach, getting us out of here so he could do whatever he’d been sent to do. From the looks of it, breaking Isabelle’s clone out of that room was still a priority, though he had clearly not gotten the memo on all the magical wards that had been put in place.

  He grew still and looked back at us, lights still blinking on his strange instrument. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he muttered.

  It made me angry beyond belief. Isabelle was the only one they’d taken, while the others’ clones were waltzing around and messing with us. It didn’t make sense. However, it did mean that their maker had infiltrated The Shade more than once, since they’d been able to gather so much DNA material for their fakes. Why had they abducted Isabelle, in particular, then?

  Whatever their agenda, I allowed my rage to take over. Voss’s clone was going down. We were getting to the truth today, one way or another. I’d had enough of the mystery and the nonsense, of the unwarranted and inexplicable violence, of the chaos that had infiltrated and turned my world upside down.

  I let my claws out and revealed my fangs. He knew things were about to get bad. His expression told me that much as I lunged at him.

  Astra

  (Daughter of Phoenix and Viola)

  What followed happened quickly.

  I barely registered the movement as Thayen attacked Voss’s double. The foreign tool ended up on the floor. I snuck around the two-man skirmish and grabbed it before the doppelganger could get to it. Soul stood on the side and watched the fight—he’d intervene if needed, but I had a feeling he wanted to see how Thayen would handle the clone, perhaps whether he’d try to use his glamoring ability or not.

  Thayen was thrown against the wall as the clone spread his wings in a menacing fashion. Only then did I see what made him truly different from the real Voss. Each feather had been replaced with stainless steel blades. The sight made my stomach churn because I understood their purpose before Thayen could even blink.

  “He needs help,” I said, giving Soul a nervous glance.

  He vanished, reappearing a couple of feet behind the clone. Somehow, the clone knew what he was doing, and horror gripped me by the throat and stopped me from warning the Reaper of what was about to come his way. “Watch out!” I eventually managed, but it was too late. The clone had already fluttered his deadly wings. Soul disappeared again, and I wasn’t sure where he’d gone.

  “Damn it!” Thayen said, pushing himself back up.

  I unleashed my Daughter energy, my hands glowing pink as I pointed them in the clone’s direction. Channeling all the rage I’d been gathering over the past couple of days, I released a flurry of shimmering pulses in his direction. He used his steely wings as a shield, but it gave Thayen the split second he needed to use his glamoring ability.

  The clone didn’t see it coming. He froze, grunting as Thayen took hold of his fake soul. It was barely a grip, but it was working. “Don’t move!” the vampire commanded him.

  Concentrating an energy pulse in the palms of my incandescent hands, I prepared myself for a devastating attack. Voss’s
clone couldn’t move—this was my chance to destroy him before he did any more damage or hurt anyone else. He’d come here to set Isabelle’s doppelganger free, and I would be damned if I was going to let either of them walk out of this place. Enough was enough.

  “Do it now!” Thayen called out. “I can’t hold on for much longer. He’s resisting, and he’s way better at it than Isabelle’s copy!”

  “That means they’re learning,” I muttered, then let go of the pulse.

  Voss’s double couldn’t pull his wings forward as a shield again. Thayen’s hold on him was weak but still enough to tamper with his defenses. A figure bolted between us, and something shone so bright that I had to close my eyes.

  “Astra, move back!” I heard Thayen shout.

  Something rammed into me with the strength of a supercharged bull. My whole body hurt as I was slammed against the wall. I cried out, coughing and wheezing as I landed on the floor. Finally able to see again, I looked up to find Chantal standing beside me, a crystal-like disk with a diameter of about two feet in her hand—as it moved, I noticed how it reflected the light. This was another foreign object, and she wasn’t Chantal but her able-bodied clone.

  The enemy had come out to play, and they’d brought some toys to the party.

  She raised the disk and prepared to bring it down hard, its edge sharp enough to sever my head with one swift move. Voss’s clone broke free of Thayen’s hold and went after him with his bladed wings. I couldn’t help him; I had one hell of a problem of my own to handle.

  “Where the hell did Soul go?!” Thayen croaked as he deflected the doppelganger’s attacks. He’d brought up a chair to keep some distance between them, though I doubted it would do much good in the long term. The clones were set on kill mode.

  Chantal’s copy tried to cut my head off, but I kicked the side of her knee and threw a barrier out. It hurled her backward like a rag doll until she hit the glass panel from Isabelle’s clone’s room with a painful thud, but she wasn’t done. Throwing fireballs at me, she managed to get up and turn her copied fire fae ability to the max in a bid to pummel me into a scorched mess. My Daughter instincts flared, and I pulled an energy shield around me. It stopped the fire from reaching me, but each blow took a toll on my stamina.

  I could feel myself weakening. Much like Thayen, I’d only come up with a temporary solution. We needed much more to defeat these bastards.

  “Fire in the hole!” Soul shouted, appearing next to the eastern wall. He touched the blade of his scythe with two fingers, and a phosphorescent pattern emerged on the marble floor, glowing green. He’d been hard at work, I realized, crafting an attack spell.

  It all came to a sudden halt, as even the clones understood that something nasty was afoot. Soul elbowed the wall, and it came crumbling down. He motioned for us to jump through the opening. “Move! Move! Move!”

  I didn’t hesitate, and neither did Thayen. We dashed toward the gaping hole before the clones could scramble toward us. We jumped, and a massive explosion tore through the entire floor of the hospital. Screams echoed somewhere nearby, but I knew Soul would’ve evacuated anyone within the vicinity of his spell—standard Reaper procedure to keep the innocents safe.

  I pushed a barrier beneath me, and it hit the ground and bounced back, softening our fall. We landed and rolled to the side. Soul had already joined us, scythe still glinting in his hand as he looked up. Reddish flames had blossomed through the hole, spewing plumes of black smoke and debris as the blaze consumed everything in its path. I couldn’t see Voss or Chantal’s clones anywhere. My heart was beating fast, and I was dangerously close to hyperventilating.

  “What in the world…” I murmured, trying to catch my breath.

  “You two okay?” Soul asked.

  Thayen and I nodded at the same time and shared a confused look.

  “What sort of blast was that?” I replied.

  “Proprietary blend of mine,” Soul said. “Isabelle’s clone is still safe in her warded room, however. The whole hospital could come down, and her room would remain untouched. A solitary cube atop a pile of smoldering rubble.”

  “You were gunning for Voss and Chantal’s clones, right?” Thayen asked, albeit sarcastically. “You almost blew us up, too.”

  Soul nodded. “Sorry about that. I’m not sure it did anything. You two were fast, but the doppelgangers weren’t half bad, either.”

  “This is weird. What was Chantal’s copy doing here? I thought the real Voss and the others were chasing her down,” I said. “I’m not making much sense of this…”

  “The more you trouble yourself over it, the harder it’ll be to process the facts, and one fact I can give you right now is that there may be more clones of the same individuals running around now,” Soul replied with a shrug. “One step at a time, Astra. Also, nice save,” he added, pointing at the object coming out of my pocket. I’d almost forgotten about the tool Voss’s clone had tried to use on the door to free Isabelle’s doppelganger.

  Thayen pressed the distress button on his earpiece. We’d barely had a moment to breathe, let alone try and call for help again. “Can anyone hear me?” He was trying the general channel. None of the others had worked thus far, and I wasn’t sure this would do any good, either. “We need backup at the hospital right now,” he said. “Voss and Chantal’s clones attacked us. No sign of them for now, but Isabelle’s clone is secure… Come in! Any GASP member on this channel! Hello?”

  “I doubt you’ll be able to get through to them,” Soul replied, stating the painful obvious. “My telepathic communications have been cut off, too. Whatever these clones are using, whatever kind of magic this is, it’s tampering with all our networks, undead or otherwise.”

  “It was worth another shot. Desperate times, desperate measures, yadda, yadda… What the hell do we do, then?” Thayen asked, the scratches on the side of his face already healing. The clone’s bladed wings had sliced through his GASP uniform, leaving patches of skin exposed. He’d drawn blood, but nothing the vampire couldn’t handle.

  I’d gotten off easy, too, with just a few bruises that would heal by nightfall. However, I knew this was just the beginning. It would get worse soon enough. Soul raised his scythe again, his brow furrowed as he went into fight mode. “They’re coming.”

  “Who?” I asked. I got my answer as Voss and Chantal’s clones emerged seemingly from nowhere. They both wore red lenses. “Oh, crap, they’re using our invisibility magic!”

  Soul took on Voss’s clone with his dangerous wings, but the doppelganger produced a device that released a black smoke-like gas. It hit the Reaper right in the face and immediately forced him screaming to his knees. “No! Stop it! No!” Soul cried out, covering his eyes.

  Chantal’s clone sprayed the same substance at us. I managed to get back a couple of steps, and I also pulled my GASP-issued face mask over my mouth and nose, but it didn’t help much. The particles were spreading fast, reaching my nose through the filtering fabric as I inadvertently sucked in a breath. It burned right through me, making my head hurt. Reality warped itself around me, and I caught a glimpse of Thayen grunting as he collapsed into a fetal position.

  Whatever this stuff was, it took effect very quickly, and the masks were useless.

  Every muscle in my body ached, convulsions taking over with such violence that I feared my bones might break. I lost any sense of light and dark, of objects and space. Pain expanded like a heatwave, making me whimper before it pushed me over the edge and into a crippling state of despair. I had no control over myself or my emotions. I’d lost it completely.

  Hitting the ground hard, I felt my lungs fill with water. Where had it come from? Was this even happening? I was drowning. I seemed to be drowning. Is this real? Struggling to breathe. Unable to survive. Death came knocking. I could hear her giggling in my ear, inviting me to just… let go. But why would I? No, I’d fought too hard up to this moment. I’d resisted their attacks. I was a Daughter. Drowning wasn’t a way to kill me. This d
idn’t make sense. Or was I not really drowning? Was this just a malevolent illusion? If so, how could I get past this deathly point?

  “If Isabelle couldn’t take you down, then I will.” Chantal’s clone snickered as she towered over me, the reflective disk still in her hand. I wanted to throw out a barrier to push her away, but I couldn’t even draw a life-saving breath anymore, let alone defend myself.

  Despair took over, my ears ringing and my heart thudding. The adrenaline rush made everything worse as the anticipation of my impending demise took center stage in my consciousness. This was it. I could smell it. The rancid stench of failure.

  A spine-tingling roar broke through. Chantal’s clone screamed. Chills rushed past me as I inhaled deeply for the first time in what seemed like forever. The air was cold, and I managed to peel open my eyes just as a flurry of ice shards swooshed down after the doppelganger. I recognized Dafne in dragon form about fifty yards away, her jaws opened wide as she unloaded on the clones, left and right.

  Voss and Chantal’s copies were forced to move away from us. Some of the shards sliced through them, but they were still moving. They both aimed their weird spraying devices at her. I forced myself into a sitting position. My arms were weak. My body weakened and my breathing labored, but it occurred to me that the black mist’s effect was brief and profoundly psychological, just enough to mess with our defenses so the clones could deliver the kill shot. Fortunately, Dafne had come upon us somehow.

  The worst part was that the spray had affected Soul, too, and he was struggling to pull himself back together. The stars had gone out from his eyes, leaving behind nothing but darkness as he looked around and tried to understand what had just happened.

  Dafne hissed and lowered her head, releasing more ice shards all around her in a bid to keep the clones at bay, but they were both determined to hit her. A fire dragon emerged from the woods—majestic but smaller than most I’d seen. I only needed a second to recognize Jericho as he made it rain fire on the doppelgangers.