“The thing that bothers me more is where that object was hidden,” I said. “Isabelle’s clone was thoroughly searched before she was taken into custody.”
“I can’t believe it was inside of her. It must have been lodged deep, since Claudia killed her in order to retrieve it. Under better circumstances, I assume she might’ve undergone surgery. But then I have to ask how that thing got inside her to begin with… We’re missing pieces of the puzzle.”
“Okay, let’s keep moving,” Jericho interjected, motioning for us to follow him. “The training halls should be about a mile in that direction. Another fifty yards beyond, and we’ll have reached the armory.”
We continued our journey, constantly surveying our surroundings and taking care with our steps. It was eerily quiet, and chills occasionally danced down my spine with the rising breeze coming from the North. This fake Shade felt colder than the real one. In my mind, I kept going over possibilities as to who might be behind it all—who had the power and the ability to craft such a world, and how big could it be?
The logistics alone were daunting to consider, not to mention the task of covertly gathering DNA samples from The Shade and building the doubles to populate this island. The natural elements intrigued me. How had some of them turned out so differently? Were the colors and the specimens the result of nature, or were they the creative whims of a magical entity?
A low growl to our right made me freeze on the spot. Suddenly, the prospect of reaching the armory was no longer as positive as I’d thought, especially since I immediately recognized the sound. I’d heard it before.
“Stop,” I whispered, my muscles hardening as I braced myself for the worst. Slowly turning my head, I saw the flaming blue eyes first. Big and round, like sapphires. There were no irises. Nothing to tell me what sort of creature this was, only that it was made of icy shadows, and it was prowling in the darkness just a few feet away.
“We’re not alone anymore,” Astra whispered, then slowly raised her hand. Her palm glowed pink, the light intensifying as she cast it in the direction of the moving shadow. The fiend hissed and ran from its path. It snarled and continued to circle us, looking for another attack angle.
“Jericho, you know what you have to do,” I said, my claws and fangs coming out. If these entities wanted a war with us, I was fine with that. As long as this journey ended with us breaking into the armory and getting everything we needed, I was fine with pretty much anything. This was but one of the challenges we were bound to face.
The dragon fae ignited two fireballs in his hands, augmenting the light that Astra had already released. We’d agreed on a protocol in case we ran into these shadows again—create enough light to daze the monster, then move quickly so as not to draw the clones in our direction. It wasn’t a surefire way to survive, but it was our best option.
“It’s not going to come any closer,” Astra said, eyeing the creature carefully. It had shifted to our left, still snarling, furious that it couldn’t get to us. Above, the deep indigo night sky turned suddenly black, and a cold wind blew ferociously through the forest, battering Jericho’s fires. The lights flickered, and the shadow creature managed to get closer.
“Let’s go!” I said, taking the lead as we ran farther up the narrow path.
Other shadow beasts joined the trail, coming from different parts of the forest. It was clear that if one caught our scent, more would always join the hunt. Astra’s hands burned bright and pink, casting enough light to keep the fiends at a safe distance, but it was only a matter of time before one of them would try something else.
“We have to push them back and lose them, otherwise they’ll follow us all the way to the armory,” Jericho warned as he threw a few fireballs. They landed with bright bursts of orange, scaring away several shadow fiends.
It wasn’t enough. Nothing in our arsenal would be enough, especially if we wanted to maintain a low profile in these woods.
“Thayen, we’ve got a huge problem,” Soph said, beckoning me to look behind us. The blood in my veins ran cold as I saw exactly what the issue was.
“Damn,” I said. There wasn’t just a dozen or two of these creatures trying to take hefty bites out of us. There were over a hundred of them, swarming the woods around us and inching closer with every second that passed. “They’re adjusting to the light,” I realized. My conclusion made me shiver, but it was undeniable—I was watching it happen with my own eyes.
Jericho’s fire and Astra’s pink light wouldn’t hold them back forever. I wasn’t even sure what the light did to them, I was simply grateful it had kept them away thus far. We were forced to stop as more shadowy monsters cut off our path forward. I couldn’t see them clearly, but the sounds they made were painfully and terrifyingly real, their jaws snapping and their fangs clattering.
“We need to do something,” Astra said, intensifying her pink glow until it filled her from head to toe.
“If we keep this up, the clones will find us before long,” Soph replied, her brow furrowed. She was constantly looking around, her red eyes sparkling with daemonic ferocity. She would take no prisoners. “There are too many of these freaks already, and they’re starting to adjust to the damn light, so there goes our main weapon.”
“Hold up, I’m not done yet!” Jericho exclaimed, then proceeded to hurl a few more fireballs. I wasn’t sure he’d hit anything, but a few of the creatures whimpered, and I caught sudden movement at the corner of my eye. Only then did I see the tall figure up the path, coming into view.
“What the…” My voice trailed off, quivering in the pitch black of this fake Shade. The guy coming toward us was enormous—at least seven feet tall and as wide as a pair of double doors, nothing but solid muscle. His posture came across as hostile, and he held something in his right hand, something slender and malleable, like a whip. He stopped thirty feet from us and raised it over his head, clicking his teeth.
It was enough to send the shadow creatures into a frenzy.
They attacked, forcing Jericho and Astra to use their powers to their full extent. Fire flashed past me. Shimmering pink barriers rippled through the night—a new skill Astra had developed, apparently. They acted like regular sentry barriers, but they carried bits of pink light in their invisible mass, light that exploded upon impact. Every explosion revealed a gruesome and skeletal silhouette of one of the shadow monsters, and it was horrifying. They appeared to be made out of darkness. There was no flesh or bone, or any other physical feature. Just the idea of a moving creature.
“It’s not going to work,” Dafne said, dodging one of the fiends and ducking as another jumped toward her. It ended in Jericho’s crosshairs, and he launched a fireball that hit the monster in its chest, throwing it backward. It screamed as it scuttled away, sparks flying off its razorback. I still couldn’t see any indication of animal or humanoid features—only flitting darkness that was hungry to eat us.
Astra froze when she saw the massive figure behind us, his whip still above his head. “Whoa. Thayen, who the hell is that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet he’s anything but friendly,” I replied, glancing at the path ahead. It had been completely obscured by the shadow fiends, and the wheels in my head weren’t turning fast enough to produce a solution. This was a nightmare, and no one would be able to wake me from it.
I heard Dafne gasp. Turning to make sure she was still with us, I found myself breathless at the sight of a powerful light coming from the East. No, not coming—flying. Shooting toward us at an incredible speed. The closer it got, the brighter everything became. It made my eyes hurt, so I squinted, peeking just enough to make out the hundred or so shadow figures that became almost translucent in the face of such celestial shine. With effort, I kept my eyes on the tall human-monster with the whip, and my heart stopped for a second. Darkness danced around him like tiny tongues of black fire, but I could tell he had a head and a humanoid form.
His eyes twinkled a strange hue of blue, but with the add
ed intensity of neon. He seemed to be smiling, and I caught a glimpse of sharp fangs. He was smiling—not at us but at the incoming light.
“Cover your eyes!” Astra shouted. It was more warning than suggestion. The light was getting too bright, so I brought my forearm up to shield my vision. My heart thudded wildly as I listened to the cacophony of shadow monsters running away—branches and twigs cracking, heavy footsteps fading away—that had to be the blue-eyed behemoth leaving as well.
The silence that followed made me feel as though we’d been entombed, like we’d already met our end but weren’t fully aware of it. The white light that had engulfed us began to fade, its sun-like warmth gradually replaced by the coldness of the alt-Shade’s night. There was a metallic jingle that sounded familiar. Peeling my eyes open, I dared to look around, only to find us alone. Our attackers had gone. Astra’s breathing was erratic, but she seemed okay, and Dafne had ended up in Jericho’s arms at some point. He must’ve wanted to protect her from the incoming light, but now their positions were awkward. Dafne scoffed and took a few steps away from him. She sucked in a breath when she finally saw who had delivered the light to us.
We’d reveled in the silence the shadow monsters had left behind, failing to notice her—the woman who’d brought the blinding light to us, who’d been standing in front of us for the better part of a minute.
“Hi, there,” Dafne managed, her tone flat and her eyes round with a mixture of shock and fear. “What the heck are you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the woman replied. But it did. She was an astonishing sight to behold.
She was tall, almost as tall as me. Her shoulders were broad, her legs long and muscular. She looked born for battle, strong yet elegant—a warrior queen of sorts. Her hair was long and blonde, flowing down her back like liquid gold. Her eyes were like blue fire, something I’d seen only once before—on the giant man with the whip. They were the same. Strange, without pupils—only flaming azure irises.
“No, seriously. What are you?” I half-whispered, realizing that I could barely hear my own voice.
Her armor was made of a gold alloy, with elegant curves and a brilliant sheen. It covered her torso like a perfectly cut bodice and extended down her right arm from shoulders to fingers in an interesting mechanism that didn’t appear to impede full range of motion. Her knees, calves, and feet were protected by the same type of metal, and she held a sword in her left hand. Gold, leaf-shaped blades protruded from behind her ears, continuing in a string pattern down her back. I wondered what purpose they served? Maybe they were merely decorative.
But the sword—the sword was out of this world. A mixture of steel and gold sinuously danced through the long blade. The hilt was made of some kind of bone, polished to perfection and enriched with precious diamond, steel, gold, and mother-of-pearl inlays. It was a work of art, and its shine was gradually dimming. I was willing to bet it was the source of the powerful light that had just saved us.
“Seriously, it doesn’t matter,” the tall woman said, her voice as smooth as honey. There was something about her that arrested me, demanded my full attention—causing everything else to fade into the background. The shadow monsters and their blue-eyed leader no longer mattered. Nor did my jumbled thoughts. Not while I beheld this strange, wondrous creature before us.
Damn the clones, too, I thought. Damn them all to hell, because I knew I wouldn’t be leaving this place without understanding who and what she was. The woman clearly didn’t belong here. Everything about her felt foreign, not of this world. Much like us, she had to have stumbled upon this nightmare.
And now our paths had crossed.
Sofia
Six hours had passed since we’d reached the troubling conclusion that Thayen had managed to take his small crew through one of the shimmering portals. The Shade had been combed twice by vampires and witches alike, and we’d found no sign of them anywhere else. That, along with the sand tracks near the Port, confirmed this theory.
We weren’t any closer to a useful answer. The Shade was still sealed off, but not intentionally so. The clones had somehow disabled the portal near the Great Dome, and it would take a while before Corrine and Arwen could get it back up and running. At least the Reapers were around to help—in case we needed them to bring someone over from across the GASP federation.
But if there was a positive aspect to all of this—Derek and I had agreed—it was that our son was getting closer to revealing the mystery. Our faith in his strength and resilience were immutable, further reinforced by the support he was getting from Astra, Jericho, Dafne, and Soph. If anyone could navigate enemy territory and investigate something as complex and as confusing as this clone issue, it was Thayen. I was only sorry that we couldn’t send more people over to help him. We had yet to figure out a way to open a shimmering portal of our own, and since we didn’t have a known destination or coordinates to work with, there was little chance we’d succeed.
“How is the tally on our Shadians looking?” I asked Rose as Derek and I returned to the Great Dome. We’d turned it into a temporary command center, protected by a circle of vampire and werewolf guards surrounding the structure.
“So far, only five missing,” Rose replied, giving me a worried look as she and Caleb turned away from the main screen where regular updates from GASP agents across the island flickered, one after the other, like the end credits of a bad movie. “Isabelle, Viola, Richard, Voss, and Chantal. We still haven’t been able to find them. No Telluris connection. No answer on the comms. No heat signature anywhere.”
“Had any of them gone beyond The Shade, we still would’ve been able to reach them,” Caleb said as he rubbed the back of his neck. He’d been up for hours, and dark shadows had settled beneath his tired eyes. “And given what the clones have done so far, we’re almost positive the missing people are also in that realm, wherever it may be.”
Everybody was doing something at this point. Corrine and Kailani were working with the witches, trying to devise a series of spells to cast over The Shade—protective shields and alarms that would sound when a portal opened—anything that could aid us in case of another clone invasion. Unfortunately, they weren’t making much progress, though their efforts were otherwise highly appreciated. We knew almost nothing about the enemy’s foreign magic, but Lumi and Phoenix had begun studying every single piece of equipment salvaged from the doppelgangers, with additional support from Soul and Kelara. Seeley, Nethissis, and Sidyan had added death magic of their own in and around the island in an effort to slow the enemy down. Everyone was trying to do something—anything, to help.
“Phoenix and Lumi are making some headway with the gear, though,” Rose added, her expression lighting up a little. “They’ve figured out how those awful cubes work. It’s like we suspected, a combination of physical technology and the clones’ special magic.”
“Do they think it’ll help them identify the magic itself?” Derek asked as he settled into one of the chairs. I couldn’t sit still for more than a minute, so there was no point in even trying.
“We’re not sure yet,” Rose said. “But it’s keeping Phoenix busy. That’s got to count for something.”
“Jovi and Field are with him,” Caleb replied. “I think they’re helping, too. The Parents with Missing Children and Wives Club, I guess…”
Derek let out a heavy sigh. “It’s going to be okay. I have faith in our children, and I have faith in our ability to prepare for future attacks. The Shade is already stronger than it was six hours ago. The covert ops are in motion, albeit with modified directives. We’ve got clusters of agents positioned all over, ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble.”
I moved closer to the screen, skimming over some of the text messages coming from outside. It was hard to get Thayen out of my mind even for a minute, but Viola’s absence worried me the most. If the clones were so determined to kill Astra, then what would they do to her mother? What had been the purpose of taking her? If they’d wanted to use V
iola to capture Astra and kill her, surely they would’ve said so. These creatures had done things that didn’t quite make sense. Hell, there were multiple copies of certain Shadians, and we hadn’t figured out why.
“We’re getting constant encouragement from the others in the GASP federation beyond our realm,” Rose told me, inching to my side. “Ben and River are organizing new patrols for the Vale and the civilian areas, and our kids are manning the distribution of equipment and weaponry for the agents and any other Shadian volunteers willing to help.”
“That’s good,” I murmured, barely able to smile. “Is there anything else we could do?”
“Yeah, give yourselves a break and put your hands out,” the Time Master said as he joined us inside the Great Dome. Some of the glass panes were still missing, but there was a crew outside working on fixing the building and returning it to its former glory. Granted, they had some magical help from Shayla, who took a swift moment to give me an encouraging wink before she got back to telekinetically mounting a new glass pane on the south side of the structure.
“Hands out?” Derek asked, slightly frowning.
The Reaper stopped in front of the council table, his scythe glimmering blue. “I figured out a way to mark you all as originals,” he said. “It’s a tattoo the clones can’t reproduce, not even with death magic.”
“Oh? How come?” I replied, my eyebrows raising in surprise.
“A little tip from Death. She may not be the most helpful in terms of resources right now, or helpful in general, but she was kind enough to dispense some advice,” he said. “I gave her a full report of what happened. Every detail. Every missing person. Every weapon used. She has never seen anything like this either, but she taught me a combination of words and sub-words to create this tattoo. It will never go away. Once I burn it into your skin, it stays there forever.”
A Shade of Vampire 89: A Sanctuary of Foes Page 2