Iknew we weren’t completely invincible with my invisibility as serpents can detect heat, but it’s still a rude shock when they catch us with an obsidian net. It snaps around my wings, crushing them against my body, and both Lyle and I go plummeting. I don’t even have time to make a joke about Lyle now knowing how it feels.
As my power suppresses, my shield evaporates, and I’m forced to shift into human form, pressed against my deputy headmaster.
“The glass!” Lyle shouts, getting the bag out from between us just in time. He takes the glass orb and throws it in the air as hard as he can towards the academy.
“Minnie!” I shout, but I don’t see where it lands. I can’t do anything to break our fall into enemy territory, but Lyle tries. He shifts into lion form, letting his rabid self take over and pulling me on top of him as we fall.
Just when I think we’re going to smash into the earth, multiple large claws snag my limbs and long wing beats strain. Astonished, I look up to see three American eagles working together to slow our fall.
Lyle is far too heavy for them, but instead of splattering to the earth and breaking bones, we just drop heavily onto the dirt right in the centre of the militia. My right leg gets caught under me, and I cry out in pain, scrambling to free it.
My lion roars as I remove the obsidian net, throwing it into the dirt and pulling up a shield around us both. I hobble on the spot, panicked as I search for my glass bomb. Before me, Lyle leaps onto a soldier, his teeth sinking deep and making crimson spill. Bullets crack against my shield.
“Lia!” Minnie’s high voice rings out. I whirl towards the academy wall where Minnie stands, pointing to three streaks shooting towards me. One has a docked tail. My black bag is around Sabrina’s spotted leopard’s body, flanked by the assassin twins in their cheetah forms.
“Cover Lyle!” I say to Minnie as I shift into eagle form and rise in the air. Team Assassin is fast on their way towards Ghoul’s truck, the shadow vortex powering upwards like a tornado straight from hell, disturbing the air and creating unstable crosswinds. Electricity lashes out in the dark, tiny streaks of blue and white lightning. The avians scatter away from it to avoid getting tossed to the ground, but shielded, I can surely spear through without getting hammered.
Below me, bullets bounce away from Sabrina’s long body as her surrogate mates take the lead as her guards, directing bullets away from her with telekinetic shields of their own.
“Pass the orb to me!”I shout to Sabrina’s mind. She can’t reply and ignores me, their group of three focused and charging towards a gap between two vehicles protecting the serpent king’s entourage. I swoop in low on top of my friends, calling out to Sabina again.“Give it to?—”
Young soldiers jump out of the two guard trucks, except it’s not guns they wield. My beak opens in a cry of warning, but it’s too late. The soldiers fling out their arms with a cry, and shadowserpents fly out of their hands. The soldiers collapse, but their beastly spirits surge forward of their own accord.
Blade and Blair skid to a stop as they see this for the first time. ButIhave felt an attack from a shadow snake before. I cry my friend’s name.“Fall back!”
Sabrina looks up at me, that spotted face beautiful and fierce, and she shakes her head, jerking her chin forward at Blade and Blair. Without fear, without hesitation, the three felines charge onward. The first snakes strike them, fangs ripping into flesh, but they don’t stop, claws uselessly passing through the long bodies as they make their way to Mace’s truck. The serpents leap for them, lodging their fangs into their muscle, collecting the dark spirits on their bodies like leeches as they go. The pain must be unbearable, but the three spotted felines keep running.
Mace’s truck is guarded by two rows of crocodile soldiers; the first row is on their knees with their guns pointed at the felines, and the second is standing, swinging their guns upwards. To me. I recognise the biggest one in the centre. He’d shifted at The Collector’s house. There is only death in his eyes as the barrel of his gun suddenly turns to sharp focus. With immunity to order powers, they’d been specifically asked to guard Ghoul and the serpent king.
Both rows fire a round of bullets at us. I dive, simultaneously shoving the bullets away with my own telekinesis from my friends, but this does nothing, and several land in spotted flesh. I look on in horror, realising too late that these bullets are made of obsidian.
My scream is pure avian terror as Blade and Blair stumble from direct hits in the face and chest. Both males fall to the ground. The leopard with the docked tail stumbles, landing flat on her face from a hit that clipped her ear and one in the shoulder.
Sabrina’s paws dig into the dirt, and she gets back up, jaw opening wide in a very human grimace. She charges forward, tongue out in pain, that black bag still secure as she claws toward the guards like it’s the last thing she’ll do.
“Please!”I beg of her.
The guards shoot at me again, and I’m forced to swerve sharply away from my friend. But as I circle back, more bullets fly, and one hits me in the wing. I cry out in agony, blasted backwards and away from my friend. I turn my falling body in time to see Sabrina being thrown back by another round of brutal bullets. She tosses her overcome body in a peculiar way, her movement sends the glass orb flying.
My cry is panicked, my left wing flapping uselessly as I have no choice but to send myself to the ground while Sabrina falls, her eyes unmoving as they fix on the sky. But it’s like a perfect dance as an American eagle swoops in with precise timing, catching the orb in one large claw. As if they planned this.
“Regina!” Scythe’s voice is furious in my mind as someone catches me with telekinesis. I’m turned to see Scythe riding towards me on Lyle’s back, an automatic gun in either hand, shooting as he goes. I land myself sideways in his lap, shifting into human form so I can run towards Beak.
“No!” I scream, but Scythe has one arm banded around me like metal, and he’s shooting with the other hand, drowning out my screams.
Beak flies towards Mace’s truck, but he hesitates at the border of the black mat as if he senses its power. Then he surges forward, wings angled backwards as if some force is pushing his body. I realise that somehow, my father has made his protective runes form a dome around him like the academy’s.
A haunting cry, beautiful but pained, comes from Beak’s open maw as he closes his eyes and pushes through, his feathers burning, smoking around him. Beak extends his claw outward,holding my precious orb as he shoulders through the shield with the full force of his burning body.
Someone shoots at him, and bullets lodge in his soft underside. With a flick of his claw, the orb goes flying, tossed about in the wind created by Ghoul’s vortex. The orb arcs, falling on top of Mace’s truck, where it smashes to pieces on its side.
Beak is thrown to the ground outside the shield where he bounces and joins Sabrina’s body, his maw open and silent, venom and blood leaking from his injuries.
I scream in outrage and pain. I didn’t want any of this. My body sags in Scythe’s arms, sobbing and shaking as grief and sacrifice hit me in the chest just as carnage rules around us. My arm is on fire from the lodged bullet, my entire right leg burns with old injury, and above it all, heartbreak threatens to tear me in two.
A cry sounds from behind us, and Scythe swears under his breath. My head snaps to see Savage pointing at the sky. Because while we’d all been distracted by the Boneweaver bomb, no one noticed a lone dragon flying into that terrible vortex—black scales against a blacker void.
Everything in my head turns silent, my world narrowing down to that maddening, single point. “Oh no you fucking don’t.”
