An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,6

from?” Thayen demanded. Sweat covered his face, but he seemed to have a better grip than during the previous attempt. “Tell the truth!”

“No!” she cried out. The pain must’ve been horrendous to make her react like this.

I had little sympathy for her, however. She’d tried to kill me, and she had very likely taken my cousin from us. No, whatever Thayen was doing to her, she deserved it. “The more you resist, the worse it’ll get,” I said. “Is it worth it?”

“If the rivers run red with your blood? Yes,” she hissed, but Thayen slapped the tabletop hard enough to startle her.

“Who sent you?”

“I… I can’t!” the clone replied, her beautiful features crooked from the pain and the anger. She felt helpless, and I didn’t need my weak aura-reading to tell me that. It was written all over her face.

“Tell me!” Thayen pushed and pushed until she finally snapped.

“You… you can do anything, but you can’t stop it,” she whispered, blood dripping from her nose.

Soul leaned in closer to Thayen with a troubled look. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Hers is, too,” he replied, keeping his focus on the clone. “Come on, tell me.”

“You… you can’t stop what’s coming,” Isabelle’s clone said. “I’m not the only one. We… we are many. Unstoppable.” Her eyes rolled into her head, and she slumped over the table.

Thayen gasped, and I instantly gripped his wrist, checking his pulse again. “You know the drill,” I told him. “Deep breaths. In, out, in, out. Slowly.”

He followed my lead, and I gave him a tissue to clean his nose. There was less blood than before but still enough to warrant some concern. Thayen had limits, and we didn’t really know what breaking them would mean.

“She’s unconscious but alive,” Soul declared, briefly touching the clone’s back with his scythe, the blade glimmering white as it analyzed the creature.

“Did you hear what she said?” Thayen replied.

“We all did,” Rose said from the other side of the glass panel. The others remained gathered around her, concerned looks on their faces. I couldn’t really blame them. Isabelle’s clone had held on tight against Thayen’s attacks, but she’d still let something slip.

“My clone isn’t the only one besides hers, then,” Richard replied, arms crossed. “For sure, there are more out there.”

“We are many,” Thayen repeated. “We are many and unstoppable… That sounds creepy as hell.”

“Where is she coming from? What lies beyond those shimmering portals? How did her makers get our DNA, to begin with?” Thayen asked, becoming increasingly agitated. “And if there are so many more of her kind, where are they? Are they already here?”

Or were they on their way to The Shade as we spoke? What purpose did they serve? Why did they want me dead? Unfortunately, Isabelle’s clone had not given us much to go on except for more questions and no answers. I dreaded getting used to something like this. I loved a good mystery now and then, but this was not what any of us wanted or needed, and I worried I wouldn’t be the only one they wanted dead.

Thayen wasn’t finished with the clone, however. Once she woke up, I knew he’d push her again. With each stab at her faux spirit so far, he’d gotten her to react. She’d told us something important, but we needed more. So much more…

Tristan

Anunit wanted us to pass her three trials before we sealed our deal. Her methods and motivations worried me, but I was also curious. I could see why Death wanted this Reaper apprehended, and I wondered what she would do once we delivered Anunit to her. Unending had spoken to me telepathically shortly after agreeing to the Reaper’s initial terms. She’d assured me that Death would likely remove her power and perhaps reassign Anunit to some remote hellhole as punishment for her deeds.

We still had a long way to go before we got to that point, however, so I chose to focus on the present. If we pulled through—and if Anunit kept her promise, bound by death magic—Unending and I would have a family of our own to look forward to. While we’d already discussed the possibility of adoption, my wife was battling a powerful desire she’d inherited from the original soul she’d been based on. The more she remembered, the more human she seemed to me. Unending’s yearning for a child of her own was something I’d learned to respect and understand. And since we still had this chance with Anunit, no matter how strange, we