An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,40

it at Soul. “Wake up!” These Reaper traps didn’t have specific blocks on non-Reaper objects, and this was a good time to take advantage of it.

The pebble hit him in the shoulder, and he moaned softly. At least he was still functional, thus helping my nerves unwind a little. I loved him more than anything, and we weren’t used to such adversities anymore. Our last scuffle had been with a band of ghouls on Persea, about a year ago. This was something else entirely.

I wanted to reach out to the other First Tenners for help. We obviously needed some assistance. But our telepathic links had been severed as well, I remembered. Not just the comms and the Telluris soul connections of GASP. Again, the reach of this foreign magic baffled me, and we had no one around to answer our most burning questions. I tried to go over my memories again to see if other moments would resurface after the bright blast, but I got nothing. The same black emptiness. The void of a deep sleep.

A couple pebbles later, I finally got Soul to look up and see me. He was as out of it as I had been a few minutes ago, so I gave him a second to wrap his head around our current situation.

“What… what are we doing here?” he asked, trying to get up. He was sluggish and clumsy, as if his arms and legs weren’t working together anymore. “What happened to me?”

“The same thing that happened to me, my love,” I said. “I think the clones knocked us out and locked us in here.”

He froze, giving me a troubled look before he noticed the pentagram used to trap him. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I woke up just like you.”

“What do you remember?” Soul asked. I told him about Thayen’s coin breaking, then recounted everything I could about the moments prior to the blackout, unable to dig out more from my fractured mind. Thankfully, he had a bit more to fill in the blanks. He frowned as he recounted his own experience. “We were somewhere around here when the portal opened. I felt it. So did you. We quickly realized we were more receptive to its presence during the initial phase, much like Astra. Then they appeared. Clones. Way more than I’d thought were even possible.”

“And then we kicked your asses until you couldn’t remember a thing.” Draven’s voice echoed through the woods. He emerged from a nearby oak tree, his dark blond hair dancing in the evening breeze. His hand clutched my scythe, and I instantly knew he wasn’t really Draven. A clone, a perfect copy of the Druid I’d last seen at the terrace, long before today’s nightmare had begun. “Nice toothpick,” he added.

“Don’t insult their weapons, darling,” Serena’s clone said as she joined him from behind another tree. She was carrying Soul’s weapon, though she was having trouble with its size. It was much taller and probably weighed more than she did. An ancient weapon belonging to one of the most powerful among the First Ten. At least it had an impact on the clone. That counted for something, though I wasn’t sure what just yet. “These are powerful objects we’ve gotten our hands on.”

Soul got up, and I could tell it took a lot of effort, as he wobbled before finding his balance. “What did you do to us? How’d you knock us out?” he asked.

“A magician never reveals his tricks.” Serena’s clone giggled.

“Why did you stick around? To rub it in our faces?” I demanded.

Her humor faded. “To give you a warning. Reapers need to stay out of this.”

“Wait. Wait.” Soul chuckled, shaking his head. “You get the drop on us. You lock us down with death magic you’re not even supposed to be capable of wielding. You take our friggin’ scythes, and then you have the audacity to tell us to… butt out? Are you serious right now?”

“Consider this your first and final warning,” Draven’s copy said. “The order comes from high above. Stay out. This operation doesn’t concern you.”

Soul pointed an angry finger at him. “Buddy, I will tear you apart limb by limb and beat you over the head with your own arms. You’ve crossed a line. You don’t belong here. Hell, you’re not even supposed to be alive!”

“And yet here we are,” Draven's copy replied with a cold grin. “We have plans, Reaper. Important plans. Things to do. People to kill. An entire world to