An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,18

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.