An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,81

us all back.

“I’m currently useless,” Dafne said, and Soph handed her one of her spare long knives.

“You can still slice one of these bastards,” the daemon princess replied.

The ice dragon smiled at the sight of the blade. “Damn right.”

“Jericho, I hope you’ve got enough fire left in you to show these knockoffs that they made the biggest mistake of their pathetic lives when they decided to invade our island,” I said.

Isabelle’s copy giggled. “I like how you’re still hoping to survive this.”

She was cuffed, and Dafne moved to grab her by the back of the neck, long knife ready to cut anyone who dared approach them. “Shut the hell up already,” the ice dragon muttered. “I’m getting tired of the sound of your voice.”

“You’re woefully outnumbered,” Isabelle’s clone retorted. “Might as well give up now and hand me over. Maybe they’ll kill you quickly.”

“I see about a dozen of them left,” I said, eyeing our adversaries as they inched forward, gradually closing the circle around us.

“Guess again, nimrod,” Ben’s double replied. More of them emerged from all around us. They’d been wearing red glasses and using invisibility magic. They must’ve been part of the posse from the beginning but stayed hidden from sight. Jericho had missed them, since he hadn’t been able to see them. My blood ran cold as I realized we were dealing with many more clones than I’d thought, and each was armed with a disk shield and a black spray bottle… and who knew what other dirty tricks up their sleeves.

We had limited space to work with due to the redwoods. Dafne couldn’t use her ice shards while in humanoid form, and Jericho’s arm would take some time to heal. Astra’s batteries were low, and only Soph and I were slightly better equipped to fight. It didn’t look good, especially since we couldn’t even call for help.

Ben’s clone threw out his hands, flames crackling from his open palms. He started throwing fireballs at us, and we had no choice but to duck. Dafne kept Isabelle’s copy close. “I’ll keep her away from them,” the ice dragon said.

Among the doppelgangers, there was a version of me. It made my blood run hot and cold at the same time, since this was the first time I was seeing a mirror image of myself. To say that I was creeped out would’ve been an understatement. He came out from the swelling crowd, grinning as he approached me, eager to fight. I got into an attack position, shifting my bodyweight from one leg to the other. He started running, his feet light as he glided across the short distance. Something glowed just behind him. A split second later, he’d been cut in half, blood gushing as his torso and legs fell in different spots.

Kelara emerged from between realms, her scythe crimson red and dripping.

The clones exchanged confused glances, but they had no time to figure out what was happening as Stan and Ollie started tearing through them. Growls and spine-tingling howls mingled with horrified screams. Somewhere to our left, a gaping black hole opened, and an unseen force threw some of the doppelgangers inside before it closed. An interdimensional pocket. The Soul Crusher was here, too.

“Sorry we’re late.” Kelara sighed. “There were some… issues along the way.”

“Better late than never,” I said, hope daring to blossom in my heart.

The clones still outnumbered us five to one, and they intensified their attacks. Astra used whatever sentry abilities she still had functional to keep some of them at bay, but they were getting closer, so I moved to protect her while Dafne stayed close to Isabelle’s clone. Soph teamed up with Kelara, and they started zigzagging through the doppelganger crowd, slashing left and right before the clones could use their black spray on them.

Stan and Ollie were doing a horrifyingly good job on their own, able to switch from subtle to visible forms, catching their targets on the wrong foot at every turn. Soul was decimating the clone population with a mixture of death magic and modified interdimensional pockets, dooming those he tossed inside to a gruesome demise. He’d told us once that if he closed such modified pockets with people still in them, they would be crushed into nonexistence, their souls forever lost. Of course, there weren’t any real souls to worry about in this instance, but I still shivered at the thought. I could tell these were modified pockets because of the screams that came out of them before they