An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,56

Great Dome. For a moment, I feared the worst at the sight of bodies on the ground, until I realized they were all alive and breathing. “In here!” I shouted, then rushed to my father’s side first. He’d taken a blow to the head, but his wound had already healed. He was groggy—still halfway between conscious and asleep—but he was okay. I checked him from top to bottom before moving to my mother, who was on the floor next to him. Astra was already verifying their souls, apologizing for the physical discomfort. It would never be any less weird, but it was a necessary measure, and no one seemed to mind.

Mom had also suffered some crippling hits, but nothing she couldn’t recover from with her vampire nature. “Mom, talk to me,” I said, gently slapping her cheeks until her eyes popped open, and she saw me.

“Thay, honey!” she cried out and instantly reached out to hug me. I held her close for a moment while Dad groaned and managed to push himself into a seated position. Astra put a hand through his chest.

“I’m sorry about this,” she murmured. He squirmed as she pulled her hand back, smiling. “It’s you, all right…”

“Ouch… Good to know,” he replied, then looked at me, while Astra moved to check Mom next. “Son… where’d you come from?”

Soph, Jericho, and Dafne were already helping the others wake up. The attack had caught Corrine, Ibrahim, Claudia, Yuri, Liana, and Cameron in here. For a second, I wondered why they’d been gathered inside the Great Dome, since they were all practically retired. Xavier and Vivienne had been told to stay on Neraka, where they’d been visiting with the Manticores. Lucas and Marion, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.

“What happened in here?” Soph asked, loudly enough for everyone to hear. Gradually, the Shadians gathered themselves and stood, stretching their arms as they tried to overcome the headaches they seemed to have. “Clones?”

“Yes. And much to our shame, we got our asses handed to us,” Ibrahim grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck, a pained expression on his face as he looked around. The council table had been shattered, and it looked like at least half the chairs had been used as weapons. The floor was covered with tiny shards of glass, and a draft was persistently blowing through the broken panels on multiple sides of the structure.

“How many of them?” Jericho asked, one hand resting on Cameron’s shoulder as he checked him over to make sure he was okay. “They did quite the number on you, I see,” the young dragon added, pointing at the dried blood covering half of the vampire’s face.

Over in the corner, Dad fumbled through a box filled with medical and magical supplies that had survived the skirmish. He gave cloths and bottles of potions to Corrine, who quickly started using them on what injuries remained on her and the others. Most cuts and bruises had already healed, but Liana was still holding her side, blood pouring from a half-opened gash. She pressed the potion-imbibed cloth onto the wound, hissing from the pain. “Bastards. I’ll torch them all, I swear. Every last one of them, including the two who had the audacity to look like my husband and me.”

I gave Mom a startled look. “You were attacked by your own clones?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “That was the terrifying part. They stormed the Great Dome and mingled into the skirmish. Everything happened so fast, we didn’t even know who we were fighting—our friends or their disturbingly perfect copies.”

“They knew we were in here,” Dad added, looking around angrily. “They counted on our confusion, and it worked. I hesitated more than once, not knowing whether I was about to tear out Ibrahim’s throat or his clone’s, and it blew up in my face.”

Jericho cursed under his breath. “That means they were highly organized. Targeting this place because they knew who’d be in here. They were banking on confusion, and they got it.”

“If they keep this up, if they intensify their attacks in this particular manner, I’m afraid we won’t survive,” Corrine said, her brow furrowed as she finished patching the last of Ibrahim’s wounds. “There are more of them now, and it’s only going to get worse.”

Astra nodded slowly. “Dozens more, if not hundreds. We saw one portal opening up about a mile south of here, but I’m willing to bet breaches occurred across the island.”

“What’s their endgame? Are they still just coming after you,