A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones - Bella Forrest Page 0,73

glow inside me to expand, I set my mind into a sort of meditation. Every thought I had was brought back to the pink light. Every idea, every fear and doubt… it would come back to the pink light, feeding my power and suffocating the horror that had been creeping through my veins since I’d first laid eyes on Hrista.

“Thayen, focus on helping your dragon friends,” Brandon said as he circled our cluster with both swords out. He hacked and slashed at each of the Berserkers who dared get close enough. “We’ll handle these Purgatory fiends.”

Myst nodded in agreement. “Use the rest of your clips and thin that crowd. Jericho and Dafne will soon be overwhelmed otherwise.”

I could already see what she was talking about. The woods trembled as the sea of clones tightened around the clearing. Dafne spat her blue flames that turned to ice, raising frosted walls against the incoming foes. Jericho took flight and circled above, casting fire down on the doppelgangers. The redwoods burned, too, and it hurt me until I remembered that this place wasn’t real. It had to be destroyed. I couldn’t see any other way out of this awfulness.

Thayen turned his pulverizer weapon on a bunch of clones who’d managed to climb Dafne’s ice walls. Poof! Poof! And they were gone, vanished in puffs of shimmering gray ashes. One of the Berserkers got too close for comfort, but Myst was there to slash her shiny sword at him, causing light to dance across the grass. It hit the Berserker in the shoulder, and he cried out, moving back as he cursed under his breath.

“Come on, give it your best shot!” Regine snarled somewhere to my left. Myst was an elegant and ruthless fighter. Her blows were heavy and determined. In a clear contrast, Regine was like a firecracker. Light-footed and fast, she never stayed in one spot for too long. She bolted across the clearing so many times, it left some of the Berserkers standing in irritated confusion.

Brandon was quick to capitalize on that hesitation, driving his twin swords through their backs. Like Myst and Regine, he couldn’t kill Berserkers—the creatures of Purgatory could not kill one another—but we needed them disabled or slowed down, at least, or else they would certainly kill the rest of us.

I focused the pink light into my hands, opening the palms toward Torrhen. He stood about twenty feet away, smiling calmly. “You’ll get tired soon enough,” he said. If there was one thing I was grateful for, it was Haldor’s absence. His shadow hounds would have been too much to bear. I wondered if I could find out where they had taken him.

“You know, you’re pretty pathetic to let a Valkyrie boss you around like that,” I replied. The light poured into my ankles and feet, learning to spread over the grass like Hrista’s liquid darkness. The more I focused, the more I dared to imagine I could do with my power. I held back a smile and focused on the light. It trickled across the flowers and the green blades of grass, hurrying toward Torrhen.

His blue eye twinkled. “Hrista is more than a Valkyrie now, little girl.” He brought out an axe, a monstrous thing with a deep black blade that was three feet wide. I dry-swallowed at the sight of it. He brought the axe down with a grunt, hitting the precise spot where my liquid light had met the darkness, and begun to push it back. As soon as the blade came down, it launched a powerful pulse that smacked into me with the force of a tidal wave.

I heard myself cry out as I flew backward. Brandon moved like a shadow, catching me in his arms. The impact knocked the air from my lungs for a second, my pink glow fading. Torrhen was right. I was already getting tired. I’d put plenty of energy into Regine’s sword, plus the light I’d expelled against the Berserkers to stop them from reaching me. “Are you okay?” Brandon asked, his gaze wandering all over me, checking for obvious injuries.

“Yes.” I nodded briefly, gripping his shoulders for support. For the first time, I had a full understanding of how broad the Berserkers were. Metal covered both biceps, but I caught glimpses of his muscles stretching, taut and firmly contoured, as he raised his arms and reached for the sheathed swords on his back.

“Stay close and use your light wisely,” he said. “You can’t run out too soon.