An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,42

until I realized she was shaking me. I felt her hands on my shoulders. What the hell was going on?

“Voss, wake up!”

The darkness vanished as I came to and saw Chantal, a blurry mishmash of soft colors with two turquoise spots where her eyes were supposed to be. I had to blink many times before the image finally came into focus. Yes, it was her. My cousin. And Richard. He’d ended up with us at one point. “Ow…” I grunted, a headache stabbing my brain.

“Good. He’s awake.” Richard sighed. They helped me up, though they looked as startled and as confused as I felt. It took us a while to figure out what had happened, but we all remembered the same string of events prior to a bright explosion.

Soul and Kelara were missing. We’d sent Richard’s parents away, along with Draven and Serena. We’d taught them our safe word, knowing we’d use it whenever we met again. A portal had opened, and a throng of clones had come out, among them copies of the very people we’d just said goodbye to minutes earlier. It was all a jumble in my head, but I managed to put all the pieces into a coherent thread as Richard and Chantal shared bits and pieces of their own experiences.

We’d been taken by surprise. “I think we saw the portal open two seconds too late,” Chantal surmised, glancing around. “We’re still in the oak forest, but… where, exactly? Does any of this look familiar?”

“It’s just trees and trees and trees,” Richard muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “I may have a concussion. I’m not sure.”

“Try not to fall asleep, then,” I replied dryly. “Soul. Kelara. Where’d they go?”

“No idea,” Richard said, his brow furrowed. “Do you think the clones did something to them?”

Chantal scoffed, but I could tell she was worried sick about the Reapers. “What could the clones possibly do to entities like the Soul Crusher and Kelara? They’re First Tenners.”

“They nearly took Soul down with that black spray thing back at the hospital,” I reminded her. “Maybe they got to him again. I just… I wish I could remember.”

“We were knocked out,” Richard said. “Chances are this is all we’re going to be able to recall, at least for a while. Our short-term memory is rattled, and it will take time for the brain to fully process what happened. Until then, we need to make a move.”

I got up, a new wave of anxiety washing over me and sending chills through my arms and legs. “Wait. Why’d they leave us here? The clones came at us. There was that explosion. All the light… no bodies, see? Except for the three of us. Why? Why were we left behind?”

“Oh dear,” Chantal murmured, patting her uniform. “The tablet. The tablet with all our files and directives.”

“What?” I replied, not grasping the issue as quickly as I would’ve liked. I blamed it on the throbbing headache that had settled between my temples.

“Check your pockets. There are zero devices left on us,” Chantal said. “They took everything, including the healing magic. The earpieces. Our weapons. Everything.”

Richard gasped, rolling up his sleeve. “My watch. Damn it, it was a gift from Field!”

“What use would they have for the watch?” I wondered.

“There’s a GPS tracker in there that I could activate, but if the comms are down, then likely tracking won’t work, either, since they’re patched into the same network,” Richard explained. “But the watch had sentimental value. This is petty, even for the stupid clones.”

We spent another minute or so trying to understand what the play had been. The clones had taken us out, but they hadn’t killed us. They’d taken our devices but not our lives. We were on our own—there was no sign of Kelara or Soul anywhere around us. Heck, I wasn’t even sure this was where the portal had first opened. The more I looked at the trees, the weirder it seemed, as if we’d been picked up, carried off from the original location of the attack, then dumped here like potato sacks.

“Voss. Should we keep moving and stick to the original plan?” Chantal asked. “Or do we head straight for the Great Dome?”

“If we give up now, we won’t have enough people to count on for any kind of retaliation,” I said. “The clones are doing something big, and I fear if we go directly to the Great Dome, we risk innocents not even knowing what hits them when the doppelgangers come