An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,72

blood from her ear. “Jeez, I can barely hear anything…”

It would take a while for us to fully heal, especially since I’d used the very last of my energy to stop Anjani’s copy from turning our brains into literal mush. Jericho pointed up. “Flight is our only option.”

“Do it,” Thayen said. Isabelle’s clone kept laughing. “Laugh it up. You’re coming with us.”

“Am I, though?” she shot back. “Look around you, idiot. You’re surrounded.”

Jericho slipped out of his robe and tossed it over to Dafne, who looked away one second too late. He burst out in full dragon form and lowered his head once more. We could all hear the clones shouting at one another as they rushed toward the clearing. Only seconds remained before this whole place would be swarming with their wretched kind.

Within seconds, we’d climbed onto his back. I held on tight, though I knew how heavy we were on a dragon his size. Jericho sprayed all the fire he could conjure around him, turning clockwise as he raised a curtain of orange flames around us. Some of the clones walked right into it and screamed as the blaze licked at their skin. Most, however, stayed back and yelled orders.

The dragon clone had collapsed, parts of him reduced to charred flesh and crackled bones. Jericho exhaled sharply, releasing a cloud of black smoke, then flapped his wings and got us off the ground. Seconds later, we were up in the sky, having left a ring of fire behind. The flames started eating through the redwoods, spreading fast, but they’d done a decent job of keeping the clones at bay.

Isabelle’s copy didn’t look very happy, back under Thayen’s control with her hands still trapped in charmed cuffs. “Bet you didn’t see that coming, huh?” I said, and she rolled her eyes.

“We’re headed for the Port, right?” Dafne asked. She glanced down at the ground once in a while, keeping Jericho’s rolled-up robe under her arm. The night sky was illuminated by the flames, and the smoke rose to swallow the stars and the moon of The Shade’s nocturnal spell. None of us were comfortable with setting the redwood forest ablaze, but we’d had no other choice. I was too weak to do much else.

It was a miracle we’d made it out of this mess alive once again. On top of that, we’d taken what the clones had been aiming for this whole time. We had Isabelle’s copy, along with whatever she must’ve stolen from us—I figured it had to still be on her somewhere, but we’d figure that out later. First, we needed relative safety more than anything else.

“Yeah, the Port,” Soph replied, cringing from the ear pain she was still dealing with. The wind blew in our faces, slightly cooler than usual, drying my sweat and brushing through my hair. It had a soothing effect as Jericho flew east, far from the fire ring.

I knew Stan and Ollie were capable of looking after each other. With their ghoulish abilities, they could easily sneak past the clones that had come for us down there. And they would soon go look for Soul and Kelara. We needed the Reapers, now more than ever.

“You’re not going to win this,” Isabelle’s clone said.

“I need you to just shut up for the time being,” Thayen replied dryly. “Your voice is the last thing I want to hear after that audio torture.”

The doppelganger laughed lightly. “Don’t you understand? They won’t stop until they find me. They will kill each and every one of you until they have what they came here for.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Dafne asked, her tone clipped. “What did you take that is so damn precious to your clone buddies?”

“Like I’d be stupid enough to tell,” Isabelle’s double muttered.

None of us were really comfortable, crowded like this on Jericho’s back, since the dragon was smaller than his father and others from his species, but at least he was strong enough to hold us. Despite his clear discomfort, Thayen found enough energy to grab Isabelle’s clone by the back of the neck, pushing her down until the side of her face pressed into Jericho’s scaly nape.

“You either shut your mouth, or you start talking,” he snapped.

“Why don’t you make me, huh?” she replied, then burst into mocking laughter. “You can’t, can you? Batteries depleted? You’re getting soft, buddy. No way you’re getting out of this alive.”

Every word she said made Thayen angrier and angrier until he unleashed his glamoring on her.