I reached her just as she was about to collapse, my hands glowing pink as I cupped her face. Incandescent veins spidered across Soph’s cheeks. I pushed myself beyond my limits and healed as much of her broken mind as I could. It was the only thing I could think to do, considering I’d experienced enough of that black spray to understand that she needed emotional healing more than anything else. I had to move fast.
“Listen to my voice, Soph,” I said. She whimpered in my hold, tears streaming down her cheeks as I held her up. “Nothing you’re feeling right now is real. Listen to me!”
Finally, she found the strength to meet my gaze. “It hurts, Astra…”
“I know, and I don’t have the strength to fully heal you, so I need you to do some of the work for me. Just listen to my voice,” I said, fatigue taking over and turning my limbs into boiled spaghetti. “Listen to my voice and understand that you’re under the effect of foreign magic. You have to push through. Please.”
Soph nodded rapidly, her eyes widening as she took deep breaths, gradually coming out of the emotional hallucinations the black spray had inflicted upon her.
“We have to keep running. We have to stop Claudia’s clone from getting away,” I reminded her. “Can I count on you, Soph? Can I count on you to follow my lead on this?”
She nodded again. “Yes. I think so… yes…”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
I took her hand in mine and somehow found enough air in my lungs to suck in a breath and start running again. There were other clones following us—the mongrels must’ve slipped past Kelara’s crew, but they were still far enough away to not pose an immediate threat.
We caught up with Jericho and Dafne. The dragon fae was considerably slower with her on his back, but at least she was conscious and remarkably calm, considering the nightmare she’d inhaled. I imagined it had something to do with Jericho’s presence. She had her arms around his neck, her cheek pressed against his as she worked on controlling her breathing while he ran.
“You’re imagining it,” Jericho said to her. “Just focus on that. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie. You’re okay, and we’re going after Claudia’s clone.”
“It’s a lie,” Dafne repeated after him. “It’s all a lie.”
“Way to go, Jericho!” I exclaimed as the four of us sped down the widening forest path.
Thayen was about forty yards ahead now, still on Claudia’s clone’s heels. As long as we had her in our sights, there was some hope left that we would succeed in stopping her. My legs hurt. My thighs were burning. But I couldn’t give up. We were so close.
“Come on!” Thayen shouted, briefly looking over his shoulder at us. “She may be like Claudia, but she’s not Claudia!”
The faster he moved, the closer he got to her.
We left the woods behind. The giant redwoods watched us as we made our way onto the beach. Farther to our left, where the ocean met the sandy shore, the Port rose with its stone structures. Beyond it, the lighthouse beamed in the night, rivaling the moon itself beneath the sea of stars.
A shimmering portal opened at the base of the nearest Port building—a shipyard warehouse that hadn’t been used in ages. Adrenaline spiked through me as I understood what Claudia’s clone’s next step was. She planned on taking what she’d gotten from Isabelle’s doppelganger back to wherever they’d all come from.
“Don’t let her get away!” Jericho shouted to Thayen.
“Obviously that’s what I’m trying to do,” Thayen shot back, clearly frustrated and possibly tired from the constant running and fighting we’d had to deal with for what felt like an endless number of hours.
But Claudia’s double managed to get away, jumping through the shimmering portal. We ended up a few feet from it, its energy rushing through my body like an electrical current, jolting me back to life.
“Crap!” Thayen muttered, unable to take his eyes off the glowing gash. “We can’t… we can’t let her have whatever she took!”
“Then we have to go in after her,” I said, though I had no idea what had given me the courage to say such a thing. I only knew that the simple proximity of the portal was downright rejuvenating, as if all the energy I’d wasted healing and throwing barriers and fighting back against the clones was finally coming back to me. It was as if someone had plugged me into a socket, my batteries refilling faster than I could even comprehend.
Thayen gave me a troubled look. “Go in there?”
“What have we got to lose?” I replied, the urgency pressing against my chest. “If we stay here, they’ll keep coming for me. They won’t stop, Thayen. Whatever Isabelle’s clone took, I’m sure it’s only the beginning.”
“Gah, this hurts!” Dafne cried out, and I quickly touched her face to heal her. She was still under the black smoke’s influence, though she’d been doing an incredible job of keeping it together. The pink glow in my hands seemed brighter. My earlier theory about my “batteries” recharging was true. “Oh, keep it coming,” the ice dragon said as my healing began to work on her traumatized mind.
I moved to Soph next, finishing what I’d started earlier, while Thayen gave me a confused look. It demanded an explanation, and he’d certainly earned it.
“It’s the portal,” I told him. “It’s not just that I can sense it when it’s open. It’s recharging my energy levels for my Daughter powers. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I’m feeling a lot better now than I did five minutes ago.”
“Astra’s right,” Jericho said, his brow furrowed as he looked at the shimmering gash. “We have to go in there. Now.”
“What if we can’t come back? What if we find our death in there?” Thayen asked.
Soph raised her chin in defiance. “We’re cowards if we sit this one out. And you know it. Claudia’s clone took something from us. It was important enough for her people to come through and wreak havoc in our world. We cannot let this stand.”
“Damn it!” Thayen snapped and walked right into the portal.
We only had a few seconds left, at most, before it would close. There was no room for hesitation. One by one, we went through, and the sensation was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Chills danced across my skin, mingling with hot sparks as I felt the shimmer envelop me from head to toe. My soul buzzed, and my heart swelled to the point where I feared it might burst from my chest.
It only lasted for a few seconds as I walked through a peculiar sea of diamond white. I closed my eyes as I approached the exit. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. As soon as I stepped onto the other side, my words were lost.
Thayen, Jericho, Dafne, Soph, and I stood on the beach. The Port was just ahead. This was The Shade. For a moment, I thought maybe we hadn’t made it through. I thought the portal had closed, and that we’d only advanced a few feet across the sand.
“It’s not our Shade,” Thayen mumbled, his eyes wide as he looked around. I followed his gaze and understood exactly what he meant.
This was The Shade, sure… but not ours. The air seemed different. Denser. Heavier. The black sky lacked stars and the moon, yet moonlight seemed to come down from somewhere. The ocean lapping at the shore was blue, but a strange blue, almost gray, as if the world had run out of pigment. The same could be said of the sand. It was meant to be golden, but it inched closer to silver. The green of the nearby redwood forest was faded, too, and I had trouble wrapping my head around what I was seeing.
“Holy crap,” Soph said, gasping as she reached the same conclusion.
This was the other world, the place the clones had come from. Our people weren’t the only things that had been copied. Someone had made a Shade. A slightly different Shade, but a Shade nonetheless. My skin pricked as the whole concept unraveled inside my head. The synapses were making all the right connections, yet I couldn’t believe the sight before my eyes.
“Guess we’re suing for copyright infringement, huh?” Jericho muttered, making Dafne snort a brief chuckle as she rested her head on his shoulder. She
was tired, and I couldn’t blame her. My healing had only stopped the nightmarish visions and feelings caused by the black smoke. It didn’t replenish her physical energy.
This was beyond strange. It was troubling on so many levels, and it still didn’t make sense. We had new questions to deal with—the primary one being about this Shade’s creator. Who had done this? What kind of power had it taken to pull off something like this?
The shimmering portal closed behind us, and we were officially stuck here, at least temporarily. We’d have to find our way back later. But Claudia’s clone was somewhere nearby, and we had to stop her before she and her people took us down. We were walking into strange and unknown territory. Ironically enough, this territory was The Shade.
Kelara
By the time we were done with the clones in the woods, Thayen and his crew had already left. I’d heard him shout Claudia’s name, and upon seeing Isabelle’s clone’s body on the ground, it didn’t take me long to put two and two together.
“Considering the amount of effort they put into retrieving Isabelle’s double, I’m thinking she had something they needed,” Soul said, frowning at the sight of her slit throat. “I mean, what other reason would the clones have to kill her, unless they retrieved whatever she had. Right?”
“You’ve just read my mind,” I agreed.
The horn sounded once more, making me quiver because I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It echoed across The Shade, startling the birds from the redwood treetops. They flew away in an erratic pattern, and that wasn’t normal, either. Nothing was normal anymore, not in this place. Stan and Ollie were busy feasting on the flesh of a couple of dead clones. Usually, I would’ve been put off, but in this case I didn’t feel anything. Maybe these familiar-looking creatures with fake souls had succeeded in bringing out the worst in us. Or maybe they simply weren’t deserving of any empathy on our part.
“Are you okay?” I asked Soul, and he gave me a soft smile in return.
“I’m as good as it gets under the circumstances,” he said. “Considering they’re using some pretty nifty tools against us, I’m proud to call myself a fast learner. I didn’t get black-sprayed, not even once.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s cause for celebration.”
“Thayen and the others went after Claudia’s clone,” Soul said, recalling an earlier conclusion as he carefully analyzed our surroundings. “And I get the feeling the rest of the clones are gone.”
Pointing at the bodies scattered around us, I found myself rather confused. “This isn’t all of them, though. I saw many more on the way here.”
“The horn called them away,” Derek said as he stepped out of the woods. He wasn’t alone. Sofia, Corrine, Ibrahim, Rose, Caleb, Ben, and River were with him. “The comms are back, too. Telluris, as well.”
I immediately reached out to the Time Master through our telepathic connection. My message got through, and I received his response quickly. He was on his way to The Shade already, worried that neither Soul nor I had answered his previous attempts at communication. I looked at Soul. “Time is coming. I asked him to gather as many of the First Tenners as he can.”
“And I have already reached out to Death, brought her into the loop,” Soul added. “I’m not sure what good that’ll do, but hey… I did my part.”
Sofia stared at the clone corpses, many of them torn to shreds by our ghouls, who were now sniffing their way down a path that led to the Port beyond the woods. “We’re currently receiving reports from all over the island. Some places were hit, others weren’t. There were multiple shimmering portal sightings, too.”
“They’re gone now,” Rose said. “As soon as the horn sounded just now, the clones just up and left.”
“It means that whatever they came here for, they got it,” I replied, shaking my head as I once again thought of Claudia’s doppelganger. “Where are the others?”
“When the attacks started, they were in different locations around The Shade,” Sofia said. “Some were verified by your team and Thayen’s and sent back to the Great Dome. We tried to get as many of ours back that way, but without the comms running, there was very little we could do.”
“The casualties are at a reduced number, too.” Ben sighed, running a hand through his hair. Then he spotted his own clone among the others. “Good grief, this is creepy and then some…”
I glanced his way, knowing I’d have a little bit of reaping to do. “How many of your people are dead, do you think?”
“Less than a hundred. We’ve got officers doing the rounds and scanning the island from one end to the other,” Ben replied, still staring at his copy. “There’s a lot we don’t know yet. Hell, I’ve got at least twenty questions of my own about what happened here.”
“Oh dear.” Sofia gasped when she finally came across Isabelle’s clone. “What happened to her? Where are Thayen and his crew?” She gave me a horrified look, and I didn’t know what to tell her, exactly. I offered a full account of what I saw and heard during the melee, but without more information, I couldn’t tell Sofia what had happened to her son.
“How did you all get here?” Soul asked the Shadians.
Derek pointed up at the trees. “We had scouts climb up to the top on a half-mile radius around the Great Dome. Some were tasked with watching the skies; the others had to keep an eye on the ground in case more people were headed toward us, originals or otherwise. One of them spotted movement in the sky near the Port. He gave us a troubling description of two dragons being shot down. We figured this was the place we needed to be.”
“So, Thayen went that way?” Sofia asked, pointing toward the path that Stan and Ollie were investigating. I could barely see them now, their bony figures moving through the rich underbrush. Their heads poked out once in a while, their black eyes finding mine. I gave them a nod each time, encouraging them to keep tracking.
“Yes,” I said, then turned to Phoenix. “Where is Viola? Something tells me Astra wasn’t the only Daughter they were after. Of all the clones I’ve come across so far, two of them were made after you, yet none after Viola. Nor Astra, for that matter. It’s the one pattern that stands out.”
Phoenix exhaled sharply, and I almost felt his anguish as though it were mine. “I haven’t found her yet. I suppose Astra didn’t have much luck, either?”
There was a hopeful look in his eyes, and it broke me to have to shake my head in response. “I’m sorry, Viola wasn’t here,” I told him. “We need to head to the Port. Now.”
We were all in agreement. While the rest of The Shade was pulling itself together, recovering after what had easily been the single most complex and brazen hostile infiltration it had ever faced, complete with raids and violent attacks, our confused little group still had work to do. A dull sensation persisted in the pit of my stomach as we made our way down the forest path, chasing after Stan and Ollie. I couldn’t shake the feeling that despite the peaceful silence that had taken over the island, things were nowhere near better than five minutes ago.
This had only been the beginning, and it would only get worse going forward. Soul walked along with me, his hand occasionally brushing against mine. We exchanged glances, and I knew we were on the same page. Something was still very much off, and we were woefully underinformed about the enemy and their operations. Well, technically speaking, the clones were The Shade’s enemy, but they’d become mine and Soul’s, too. They were an affront to the living, a stain on the concept of souls. This fight was personal.
Corrine gasped as soon as her feet sank into the golden sand. “Oh… there was a portal here.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “I thought you couldn’t detect them.”
“I can’t. But I can see a number of footprints going in this direction,” she replied, pointing toward the shipyard’s warehouse.
We spent about twenty minutes searching this side of the beach. Soul and I used death magic tracking spells, while Derek and Sofia traced every single scent that still lingered i
n the salty ocean air. Corrine and Ibrahim used tricks of their own to understand what had happened here, while the footprints left behind told the same damn story.
“They stop here,” Phoenix muttered. “You’re right, Corrine. There was a portal here.”
“I’ve got Claudia’s scent, but it’s weird,” Derek said. “When I focus on it, it’s subtly different.”
“That’s because it’s her clone,” I replied. “She escaped through a portal here, and I figure your kids went through in an attempt to capture her.”
As soon as I said the words aloud, all eyes were on me. Big and glassy eyes, glistening with fear and horror and genuine concern. I felt bad for being the one to offer the conclusion, though they already knew it. It probably wasn’t the easiest idea to accept.
But it had to be iterated clearly. “Thayen, Soph, Jericho, Dafne, and Astra went through the shimmering portal after Claudia’s clone.”
The statement had troubling implications, and the more Shadians who reached the shore in search of answers, the greater the overall issue became. Caia and Blaze were the first to join us outside the shipyard warehouse, panting and desperately searching for their son. Lethe flew Elodie in all the way from the Black Heights. Phoenix was shaking like a leaf—he’d had it the worst. Astra had gone on to another realm, and Viola was missing.
“Do we have even the slightest idea of what exists beyond these portals?” Caia asked as she struggled to get her breathing back to normal. I could only imagine what she was going through. I’d had a son once, but I’d let him down. I’d lost him, and it had happened such a long time ago that I barely remembered how such emptiness felt. Looking at Caia’s pained expression now, however, I realized I did have an inkling, at least. It hurt beyond belief.
“No, but considering the clones are designed to look like us and function like us, I think it’s safe to assume our children won’t be killed by the atmosphere there,” Derek said. “I’m truly sorry we don’t have more to go on.”
A Shade of Vampire 88: An Isle of Mirrors Page 21
