An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,34

form, sneaking into my consciousness, hell-bent on sabotaging all the progress I’d made over the years. I was a vampire, damn it. I was a Novak and a Nasani, and I had The Shade to protect. Flinching at the first sign of large-scale trouble would be a sign of weakness, and Soph was absolutely right. I was leading this group. I had to pull through, not only for myself but for them, too.

A few deep inhalations later, my surroundings had come back into focus. “What are we looking at here?” I asked, glancing in Astra’s direction. “Any odd sensations? Anything out of the ordinary? You’re our main weirdness scanner right now.”

Astra chuckled softly, then crouched and touched a spatter of blood. It hadn’t fully congealed yet. “Nothing particularly supernatural,” she said. “Merely a bad vibe. People got hurt here, but they ran away.”

“Do we know who was here?” Dafne asked. “Friends of yours? Family?”

“Draven and Serena. Lumi. Kailani and Hunter. Jovi and Anjani. Phoenix and Viola. Rose and Caleb. Kelara and the ghouls had come with them,” I said, frowning, then tried the comms channel again. Nothing but empty static. “The tech is definitely off. The comms are completely disconnected now.”

Soph cursed under her breath. “If they’re not here anymore, they must have gone to safety. Where are the three key spots we can look? They obviously didn’t pass by the hospital.”

“The Vale is out of the question, since it’s mostly human, with civilian structures,” I said. “The Great Dome is one possibility. The command center farther north is another. The armory and the training halls would be the third, just off the top of my head.”

“Without any way of reaching out to them, we’re going to have to check each of those locations,” Astra concluded, her gaze darting from the terrace to the other restaurants and shops, taking in all the destruction that had been left behind.

“That was more or less the plan all along,” Soph replied, crossing her arms. “Though I would’ve expected to find more people in this area.”

“Come on,” I said, unable to stand still for another second. “This place is a bust. Let’s hit the Great Dome first. We’ll have to cross the redwood forest, and chances are we’ll run into a clone or ten.”

Jericho and Dafne flanked Astra, while Soph and I led the way straight into the woods, steering clear of the better-known paths. It was time to act as if we really were in a war zone—until we knew exactly what had happened at the terrace and to our communications systems, and until we found our people safe and sound, we had to assume the worst.

“I’m still miffed that Voss lost my clothes,” Jericho muttered.

“For what it’s worth, I can imagine what that whole incident was like. Falling, getting up, tumbling around and fighting the clones… your clothes were literally the last thing on their minds,” I said.

“And just my two cents here, that robe doesn’t look bad on you,” Dafne giggled. “You’ve got legs for days. You can totally get away with this fresh-out-of-the-flaming-shower look.” It made Jericho laugh, and it was a sound I didn’t even realized I’d missed.

The trek through the wilderness was mostly uneventful. We only caught glimpses of people running as far away from our location as possible. We tried to go after them, but they vanished pretty quickly, and we still had the Great Dome to get to. It was as if the Shadians were fleeing from something or someone, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand what. How many clones were out here, and how had they managed to cause such fright in the span of a single hour? It didn’t make any sense.

We headed northeast toward the Great Dome, occasionally trying the comms channels again. Telluris was still down, and Astra and I couldn’t establish new connections between us, either. “Someone is going to a hell of a lot of trouble to keep us from talking to each other across the island,” Soph said.

The darkness of the night reigned supreme, as we only saw glimpses of the starry sky above. It was also chillier than usual, though that wasn’t exactly unheard of. The woods were always colder, especially out here, where the northern winds blew uninterrupted. We didn’t come to these parts often. The sooner we reached the Great Dome, the better I’d feel.

We walked for another twenty minutes in heavy silence, our minds obviously crowded with all kinds of scenarios. Suddenly