A Shade of Vampire 90: A Ruler of Clones

by Forrest, Bella

  I didn’t have an answer for him. I didn’t even have a theory. I only had relief. He’d not only survived, but he’d kicked major Ghoul-Reaper ass. Those in the Reaper circles had often hinted that my husband, the living creature, was not worthy of me. But I was the one not worthy of Tristan, and it filled my soul with pride to be a part of his life and to see him like this. I wanted to believe Death would eventually give us the truth about him and his predestination for the Reaper realm, but I had my doubts. She’d lied about so many things before.

  How could I trust her again, after everything?

  “I’m not sure,” I told Tristan. “But we’ll figure it out. For now, let’s just relish this moment. You won, and now we’ll get to see the book of the World Crusher. Thanks to you, my love.”

  He held back a smile as we both looked to Eneas. The Ghoul Reaper was upset, but he would be true to his word. I could see it in his black eyes. Soon we would find ourselves one step closer to the truth—the same truth that Death had been hiding from us.

  Astra

  I would’ve liked nothing more than to stick around and find out who Regine was and what she was doing here. But this second Valkyrie’s arrival was a stroke of good luck we had to take advantage of while we could. Our friends weren’t here, so we’d have to search every other glass house until we found them.

  “Leave! Now!” Myst said, eyeing Thayen and me. This was her way of telling us that she and Regine would handle the Berserkers.

  Haldor’s shadow hounds turned their focus to us. They couldn’t get too close because of the light emanating from within me, plus Jericho would throw fireballs at them if they tried. But we couldn’t lose them, either. Not for long, anyway. We would need more than the Valkyries to keep the dark beasts at bay, now that Haldor had set them on us.

  “Go on, scram!” Regine added, raising an eyebrow at us.

  Torrhen laughed. “The meat sacks understand their predicament better than you do. There is no point in running, darlings.”

  “Besides, my boys here will be more than happy to eat them up. The half-Daughter’s light won’t last forever, and the Daughter is still under the influence of runes. Useless…” Haldor added, a mixture of humor and disgust twisting his thin lips.

  Irritated by his remark but also frightened by the truth of it, I inched closer to Myst and Regine. I touched their blades, allowing the liquid light to flow from my core and into their beautiful swords. Green fires burned in the emeralds, and red flames danced inside the rubies. The diamonds glowed white as the blend of steel and gold began to shine brightly.

  It made the Berserkers curse and the shadow hounds move back, their phosphorescent blue eyes shrinking to slits. The shining swelled and swallowed this entire stretch of the fake Shade’s extension, providing the window we’d needed. I grabbed Thayen’s hand and moved away from the melee. Jericho and Mom followed closely. “Come on,” I whispered and swallowed another invisibility pill.

  By the time we almost bumped into the incoming clones, we’d already gone invisible, hiding between the glass houses as the grunts ran past us and toward the fight we’d just left behind. There were enough shadowy nooks and dark corners for us to move around undetected. Myst and Regine were putting on a flashy show behind us, their light cutting through the empty, starless sky.

  “What in the world do we do now?” Jericho asked as we stopped on the edge of the extension, overlooking the dark waters of this false ocean with its false waves crashing against the heavy black iron of this equally false platform with false glass houses. Absolutely everything here was fake, and it was pissing me off.

  “We find our friends,” I replied, gritting my teeth. I’d had enough of it all. Enough of Brandon’s murky allegiance. Enough of the clones and the weird devices and the unknown agendas. Enough of the Berserkers and their shadow beasts and weird third eyes. Enough of everyone and everything, Valkyries included. Our lives had been torn and tossed and plunged into chaos, and we couldn’t even save our friends without running into one form of trouble or another. Yeah, I was tired and angry. Fed up. “We find our friends, and then we keep forging ahead with the mission. We get to the truth, and then we stop these bastards from doing anything else to mess with our world and our people.”

  “I wholeheartedly agree,” Thayen said.

  Mom cursed under her breath as a throng of clones darted past the glass house, catching up with the others who’d gone after Myst and Regine and the Berserkers. I could hear the clanging of blades from here. It was loud and sharp, cutting through my soul and making my skin prickle.

  We took advantage of the chaos outside and started opening the door to every glass house in our path. Not all the doors were locked, but we didn’t have time to inquire why, assuming that HQ relied on security and the Berserkers to keep their assets in place. We startled those inside—clones of our witches and scientists—none of whom had enough speed of thought to put on red lenses. Where the doors wouldn’t open, we smashed the locks or broke the windows to look inside, still searching for our friends. As we moved further down the extension, the noise from the Valkyries and the Berserkers grew fainter, but I still heard the shouts and the screams, the splashing of doppelgangers being thrown into the water.

  “They have to be here,” Jericho whispered as we continued with our search. “They have to.”

  “We’ll find them,” I replied, still firm in my beliefs and driven by a surging determination to survive. Moments later, I opened another door, and a clone jumped on me. It was a copy of Corrine, only she seemed… incomplete. Baring her teeth and hissing like a wild animal, her features were smudged as if someone had wiped her prominent cheekbones and bright eyes with a sponge, leaving only faint impressions behind.

  “Astra!” Thayen managed, but I shot the witch-clone with my pulverizer weapon. Silvery ashes settled on me. I huffed and puffed and coughed some of it off, but I got back up, and we went on with our search. We didn’t waste our pulverizer pellets, using them only where needed. I realized that the witch-clone from earlier had jumped at the door, not me specifically. The creatures that were held here must’ve been dazed, and with the violence currently unfolding around them, I imagined they’d be confused and desperate to get out.

  “They have to be here,” I murmured, mostly to myself, five minutes later. We were still pushing doors open and bumping into dazed doppelgangers who couldn’t even see us. “They have to…” I took a moment to look at Thayen. He was getting better with his glamoring—or at least his recovery periods were getting shorter. I hoped he’d be able to do more, soon enough. I would’ve liked a proper spirit-bender to help us with the powerful Berserkers, at least.

  We spread out, each of us taking a glass house along the way until finally I heard Isabelle’s frightened squeal and my mom’s cry of pure joy, followed by laughter. It must’ve been weird for Isabelle and the others to have their souls “checked” without even seeing Mom. By the time Thayen, Jericho, and I reached her, she was inside another unit, visible and with her arms thrown around a groggy Isabelle who’d just gotten out of bed. Voss and Chantal were with her, IV needles piercing their forearms.

  “Finally!” I groaned, then revealed myself and swiftly kneeled beside Voss’s bed. He gave me a curious look as I pressed my hand through his chest, his soul tickling the tips of my fingers. “It’s him,” I told Thayen, who took my place and gently removed the hawk-wolf’s IV. I checked Chantal and Isabelle while Jericho cleared their arms of needles and gave them plenty of water to drink so that the medication would leave their systems as quickly as possible.

  It was the one thing I couldn’t help with. They weren’t ill or hurt, so I had nothing to heal. We would have to wait for the drugs to pass naturally through their bloodstreams and wear off.

  “Can you stand?” Thayen asked Isabelle, who could barely keep her eyes open. She shook her head slowly, and he put an arm around her shoulders to help her up.

  “This isn’t the holding section,” Jericho noticed
, looking at some of the boxes filling this particular glass house. “This is storage.”

  “They were using Isabelle, Chantal, and Voss to get to us,” I said. “They knew we were coming for them. They knew Myst or even Brandon would spot them here, and that they would bring us to this place.” It had been a ruse from the very beginning. But we’d found them. That was all that mattered.

  Thayen took Isabelle, Jericho handled Voss, and I had Chantal. The three of them were drowsy, their knees weak and eyes drooping. “Come on, it’s time to go,” I said, looking at Mom. She was frozen in place, her eyes wide and cold purple as she stared at me. “Mom?”

  A low growl slipped past her, wisps of black coming from her back like steam rising. The shadow hound behind her reared its ugly, shapeless head. Only then did I see the obsidian claw extending from its crooked, smoky hand and up to the side of her neck, where it threatened to pierce.

  “No…” I mumbled, my blood running cold, the horror suddenly too real. “Let her go.”

  The shadow beast hissed, and I felt the light growing inside me. It screeched and tightened its grip on my mom, hiding behind her while its claw broke the skin and drew a generous drop of blood. It was its way of telling me to stop or it would do much worse before I could get it off her.

  “There’s only one of you,” I said firmly, though my voice trembled. I wasn’t sure it was enough to deter the fiend, but I was desperate to get my mom out safely. “This isn’t going to work.”

  The creature growled, its jaw dropping, and I could see the pitch blackness in the back of its throat, an abyss that hungered for my flesh and my soul. Mom tried to stay calm, not moving a single inch. “Don’t provoke it,” she said. “Take a deep breath, baby.”

  “Why don’t you zap away from him?” Jericho asked, holding Voss close.

  “It’s got another claw in my back,” Mom replied. “I can’t risk it. He’ll feel me as soon as I prepare to vanish, and he’ll cut deep…”

  This was unbelievable. Unfair. We’d made it so far. For once, I would’ve liked a more significant victory against these monsters. For once, I would’ve liked the truth, devoid of any complications. For once, I would’ve liked those I love to be safe and out of harm’s way. Was I really asking for too much?

  The shadow monster shrieked in agony as a dark mass appeared behind it. The black shimmer of a blade cut through the fiend, and it let go of Mom, scattering away in wispy ink strips that splashed onto the wooden floor. Brandon emerged from the dark mass, twin swords out and thirsting for violence. “Go on, Pink Lady. Take your little one and her friends away from here,” he said to Mom.

  “Little one?” I shot back, raising an eyebrow for good measure. Seeing Brandon here wasn’t that surprising, though it did fill me with unexpected joy. I hadn’t faulted him for leaving, but I sure as hell thanked the heavens he’d returned.

  Brandon smiled faintly. “I do like how you light up when I poke you one way or another. Now, leave. All of you. It’s time.”

  “Why’d you come back?” I asked, as Mom came over and wrapped her arms around Chantal and me.

  “He took us,” Chantal mumbled against the leather of my GASP uniform. She pointed a finger at him. “He… he’s the one who took us…”

  I looked at her, then at Brandon. “Them, too? Seriously?”

  “This really shouldn’t come as a shock anymore. There’s no time for this! Just go!” he snapped. “Go, before more shadow hounds find you!”

  “He’s right, Astra. There’s no time,” Thayen interjected, moving closer with Jericho and the others so we’d be physically linked. “Viola, we need to get out of here.”

  Brandon had gone to a lot of trouble to get here and to save us. He’d risked Hammer’s destruction, though I dared not imagine what that would be like. He’d described it to me, sure, but imagining it was something else entirely. Not for the faint of heart. And Thayen was right. This wasn’t the time or the place to demand additional explanations. Brandon had done enough for now. I doubted I could fully trust him as long as the Berserkers still had Hammer, but at least I knew he meant well. That had to count for something. I’d make sure he told me everything else I needed to know the next time we saw each other. I made it my mission. Intel and DNA samples clearly weren’t the only things he’d stolen from our Shade. Brandon had stolen my other friends, too, not just Isabelle. He’d neglected to tell me that little detail.

  But for now, I was thankful he’d returned in time to tear the shadow hound off my mother. Her bright pink light engulfed me, and I found myself smiling as we disintegrated into thin air. I saw Brandon disappear into the pink light, his eyes having captured mine in a long and intense gaze. Yes, we’d speak again. We had to.

  Thayen

  When we reached the Black Heights, I was still struggling to understand everything that had just happened. The melee itself had not been unexpected. We’d known we would face more violence sooner or later. I’d only hoped it would take longer. At least we’d managed to find our missing friends and get them safely out of there.

  “The clones and the Berserkers must have known we’d come looking for Isabelle and the others,” I said as Soph and Dafne rushed to greet us. Dafne threw her arms around Jericho’s neck before he could even say anything.

  “You’re back!” the ice dragon exclaimed.

  “Thought they’d get me, huh?” Jericho tried to smile, his gaze almost black as he slowly tightened his arms around her waist. I’d initially suspected there might be something brewing between them, but now it was blatantly obvious, even if Jericho and Dafne didn’t seem entirely aware of their own dynamic at times. “So does this mean you missed me?”

  As if realizing what she’d just done, Dafne stiffened and cleared her throat, then took a couple of steps back and politely patted him on the shoulder. “Well done,” she muttered.

  “You weren’t too bad yourself,” he shot back with a sly wink and a smoldering look that left Dafne speechless—the irony did not escape me, since she was the one who usually had that effect on Jericho.

  Richard was more alert too, so he joined the group and took Voss off my back. Our newly rescued friends were unconscious, moaning softly whenever we moved them. “That whole encounter was part of their plan.”

  It was hard to get it out of my head. The brutality of it. The unhinged violence. The pure and evil darkness that had come for us—it haunted me.

  “But we survived it,” Astra replied. “Brandon was instrumental. Myst came through for us, too, and then some.”

  “Yes, she did. And Regine… whoever she is,” I sighed, my legs suddenly weak. It had been a crazy morning, and I longed for the quiet normalcy of our Shade.

  “Another Valkyrie,” Jericho replied. “As if this place wasn’t weird enough already, we now have enough material to put together crappy jokes. A Valkyrie, a Berserker and a vampire walk into a bar…”

  We all chuckled, relieved and exhausted as we settled inside the cave. Jericho built a small fire to warm Isabelle, Voss, and Chantal. They couldn’t stay awake, falling in and out of consciousness with slow moving lips and droopy eyes. Richard was the only one who truly understood what they were going through. He gently stroked Chantal’s blond hair. “The medication they gave us is really strong,” he murmured, emerald-gold gaze settled on his sleeping cousin. “And this place sucks the life out of us, too. They’ll need to sleep as much of it off as possible.” He paused to look at me. “How are you holding up? Where’d you find them?”

  “In one of the glass houses,” I said, then gave him the details of that entire episode, chills running down my spine whenever I remembered Haldor and Torrhen. We were no match for them. We couldn’t destroy the Berserkers. And the ones who maybe could—the Valkyrie—were weakened by the fake Shade’s lack of light. Sure, Astra and Viola could feed Myst and Regine’s powerful swords. Myst had stated she could use Jericho’s fire, too, since fire of any kind was a natural source of light. Astra’s glow was a more powerful be
acon for the Valkyrie, but even with two supernaturals to charge her weapon, it didn’t feel like it would be enough. We were missing too much information. We didn’t know enough about the enemy.

  “At least you all made it back safely,” Richard concluded, patting me on the shoulder. “I still can’t believe you guys found your way into this realm…”

  “It was dumb luck, trust me,” Astra scoffed. “Pure dumb luck. Well, that and Thayen’s persistence in following Claudia’s clone even when all hell was breaking loose back home.”

  “What matters most is that we’re together again,” Viola replied. “We have better odds against this adversity. The more of us, the better. If only we could find the scheme we need to break the runes that are still holding me back…” She glanced down at her arms, the black ink drawn in different shapes on her pale skin, each line and curve grooved deeply, the cuts fully healed and crusty. The circle had been broken, but the others had to be undone in a specific order that only the original spellcaster knew—an order which would have been inscribed upon a so-called scheme.

  “That should be the next item on our to-do list,” Myst said, appearing out of nowhere. Deep cuts covered her left arm, the shoulder plate jagged and fractured. Every movement caused her discomfort, but she didn’t complain. Even with her weapon sheathed, I could see the darkness oozing through the scabbard. It pained me to see her like this. It proved she was vulnerable, and it made me wish I could do more to stop her from incurring such injuries again. Astra had attempted to heal her once before, but Myst had been clear that it wouldn’t work since she didn’t have a living body. Astra couldn’t heal Reapers or any other creatures of the realms beyond. She’d be better soon enough, though. Myst had been clear that the Valkyries and the Berserkers were never down for too long, much like the Reapers. It made sense. “I’m sorry,” she added, looking at me. “I’d thought those were your friends. I saw them from afar when I first found them… I didn’t think to check.”