An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,26

void I felt in Isabelle’s copy,” Astra explained. “It’s Soph, for sure.”

“Well, thank the bleepin’ stars,” the daemon princess exclaimed and wrapped her arms around Astra, holding her tight for a few seconds. “I’m so glad you’re all okay… we heard the boom, the screams from afar. We were still chasing after Chantal’s clone, so we couldn’t rush here straight away.”

I sucked in a breath. “Wait, you’ve been chasing Chantal’s clone until now? That’s weird. Did you lose sight of her at any point? Where’d she go?”

“We had our eyes on her the whole time,” Voss replied. “And she vanished through one of those shimmering portals about a mile north of here, closer to the witches’ sanctuary.”

“Did she look okay?” Jericho asked.

“What do you mean?” Chantal said, nervously approaching Astra. “Check me next, just so we’re all on the same page,” she told the young Daughter.

“Thing is, we fought with Voss and Chantal’s clones about ten minutes ago,” I explained. “And Jericho did quite the number on your copy. She was burnt beyond recognition, though she did survive and managed to run off.”

Voss shook his head, while Astra repeated her soul-searching process. It hurt Chantal on a deeper level, but much like Soph, she kept herself straight and tense, putting up with the pain so the truth could be known. “No, the clone we were after looked okay,” Voss said. “Which is weird. Does this mean we have two Chantal doppelgangers on the loose?”

“Oh, good grief,” the succubus-fae cried out when Astra was done. “That was invasive on so many levels…” She gave me a troubled look. “Hold on. I’m immune to fire. How did my clone get scorched? Correction, how did one of my clones get scorched?”

“A flaw in the design, most likely,” the Soul Crusher interjected, reappearing beside us with Kelara and their ghouls. Stan and Ollie had joined her and the others for food, since Soul had stayed behind with Astra and me. Their expressions as they returned and saw the mess that had once been the hospital bordered on hilarious, though there wasn’t anything funny about this whole situation. I’d made a habit of searching for tidbits of humor in the worst of moments—if only in my head—as a coping mechanism, so I was thankful Stan and Ollie looked so weirdly comical despite their shock. “We’ve got a problem,” Soul added. “There was an attack at the terrace. A series of blinding explosions. Kelara and the ghouls were thrown back by the blast.”

“Oh, no.” Fear stiffened Astra’s frame. “Where are the others?”

“I’m not sure. Stan, Ollie and I passed out somehow,” Kelara replied. “By the time we came to, everybody was gone. The explosions were more like flashbang grenades, rather than explosive devices, though. Most of the structures along the terrace were okay.”

“We’re obviously going to investigate this,” Soul said, then looked at me. “But I wanna talk about you kiddos first. What did we miss?”

I cursed under my breath. “We need to go check the terrace out!”

“You need to calm down. One step at a time,” Soul insisted, his tone clipped. “Your people are strong and resourceful. Considering the lack of dead bodies over there, I find it safe to assume that no one died during those blasts. So, talk to me. Let’s get this out of the way.”

“Wait, you said there’s a flaw in the design?” Chantal replied, quickly adjusting to the Reaper’s request. He was right, but I had trouble shaking the anxiousness off. “How can that be? Isabelle’s clone had everyone fooled. You Reapers included.”

“Either their maker isn’t bothering as much now that the cat is out of the bag, or there’s a certain lack of information as far as your abilities and weaknesses are concerned,” Kelara said. “If the former, it means the clones are now being mass produced, so to speak, with more of a focus on appearance than accuracy. Voss’s clone had bladed wings, which are an improvement, if you think about it.”

“My what, now?” Voss blurted.

“Long story. I’ll tell you later,” I said, then looked at Kelara. “What if it’s the latter?”

“It confirms what we were already suspecting. That the enemy has very good intel, but not as much as they’d like. And that maybe not all of their DNA samples are good. They can be tainted or incomplete, depending on how they were extracted or retrieved. I suppose we’ll find out when we get to the clones’ leader. Someone’s got to be behind this, for sure. Look