An Isle of Mirrors (A Shade of Vampire #88) - Bella Forrest Page 0,85

made it through. I thought the portal had closed, and that we’d only advanced a few feet across the sand.

“It’s not our Shade,” Thayen mumbled, his eyes wide as he looked around. I followed his gaze and understood exactly what he meant.

This was The Shade, sure… but not ours. The air seemed different. Denser. Heavier. The black sky lacked stars and the moon, yet moonlight seemed to come down from somewhere. The ocean lapping at the shore was blue, but a strange blue, almost gray, as if the world had run out of pigment. The same could be said of the sand. It was meant to be golden, but it inched closer to silver. The green of the nearby redwood forest was faded, too, and I had trouble wrapping my head around what I was seeing.

“Holy crap,” Soph said, gasping as she reached the same conclusion.

This was the other world, the place the clones had come from. Our people weren’t the only things that had been copied. Someone had made a Shade. A slightly different Shade, but a Shade nonetheless. My skin pricked as the whole concept unraveled inside my head. The synapses were making all the right connections, yet I couldn’t believe the sight before my eyes.

“Guess we’re suing for copyright infringement, huh?” Jericho muttered, making Dafne snort a brief chuckle as she rested her head on his shoulder. She was tired, and I couldn’t blame her. My healing had only stopped the nightmarish visions and feelings caused by the black smoke. It didn’t replenish her physical energy.

This was beyond strange. It was troubling on so many levels, and it still didn’t make sense. We had new questions to deal with—the primary one being about this Shade’s creator. Who had done this? What kind of power had it taken to pull off something like this?

The shimmering portal closed behind us, and we were officially stuck here, at least temporarily. We’d have to find our way back later. But Claudia’s clone was somewhere nearby, and we had to stop her before she and her people took us down. We were walking into strange and unknown territory. Ironically enough, this territory was The Shade.

Kelara

By the time we were done with the clones in the woods, Thayen and his crew had already left. I’d heard him shout Claudia’s name, and upon seeing Isabelle’s clone’s body on the ground, it didn’t take me long to put two and two together.

“Considering the amount of effort they put into retrieving Isabelle’s double, I’m thinking she had something they needed,” Soul said, frowning at the sight of her slit throat. “I mean, what other reason would the clones have to kill her, unless they retrieved whatever she had. Right?”

“You’ve just read my mind,” I agreed.

The horn sounded once more, making me quiver because I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It echoed across The Shade, startling the birds from the redwood treetops. They flew away in an erratic pattern, and that wasn’t normal, either. Nothing was normal anymore, not in this place. Stan and Ollie were busy feasting on the flesh of a couple of dead clones. Usually, I would’ve been put off, but in this case I didn’t feel anything. Maybe these familiar-looking creatures with fake souls had succeeded in bringing out the worst in us. Or maybe they simply weren’t deserving of any empathy on our part.

“Are you okay?” I asked Soul, and he gave me a soft smile in return.

“I’m as good as it gets under the circumstances,” he said. “Considering they’re using some pretty nifty tools against us, I’m proud to call myself a fast learner. I didn’t get black-sprayed, not even once.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s cause for celebration.”

“Thayen and the others went after Claudia’s clone,” Soul said, recalling an earlier conclusion as he carefully analyzed our surroundings. “And I get the feeling the rest of the clones are gone.”

Pointing at the bodies scattered around us, I found myself rather confused. “This isn’t all of them, though. I saw many more on the way here.”

“The horn called them away,” Derek said as he stepped out of the woods. He wasn’t alone. Sofia, Corrine, Ibrahim, Rose, Caleb, Ben, and River were with him. “The comms are back, too. Telluris, as well.”

I immediately reached out to the Time Master through our telepathic connection. My message got through, and I received his response quickly. He was on his way to The Shade already, worried that neither Soul nor I had answered his previous attempts