Ichase after Xander with everything I have, my focus only on him and how fast I can make my wings move into the shadows. He can’t do this. I won’t allow him to sacrifice himself.
The air around that terrifying moving funnel swirls before me, violent and chaotic. I pursue it for all I’m worth, and when its winds draw me in, pulling at my huge body, I simply encourage it, powering right into its grasp.
Darkness swallows me whole.
I know Ghoul’s power; I understand the shadows he wields because I’ve wielded them too. But this feels like something more than any of us. As if Ghoul is just a vessel, a crack in the world that’s allowing the darkness to pour through.
The vortex spins around me, powerful, bitter, and dark with strands of that white lightning streaking like angry serpents. I feel the vortex tugging at the pieces of me, scraping at my scales, pulling on something that is inherentlyme. Fear crashes into my chest, suffocating as I crane my neck upwards to catch sight of Xander. The end of his tail whips about high above me as he flies to the highest point. The sight of him gives me strength, and I shove aside the animal instinct to flee, forcing my wingsoutwards and down against the current of the fierce wind. Every wingbeat is painful as the residual venom of the bullet burns through my vessels, but I push on.
I’ve never swum with the current, and I’m not about to start now. I power upward, chasing Xander’s black scales, even as the vortex batters at my body, trying to force its will upon me. But I go where my dragon mate goes.
The force only increases as we reach the topmost point of the vortex, and a pressure like I’ve never known squeezes at my ribs. The roaring in my ears becomes painful, and I squint against the pain, the fear, the opposing forces to latch onto Xander’s tail with my teeth.
His big head whirls around to see me, snapping angrily, but the both of us get pulled by a force that won’t be denied. A force that feels like damnation.
My vision goes first. Then my hearing.
And it’s like death when I feel like my body has been taken from me and I am nothing at all.
Suddenly, I can breathe again, my lungs opening up to cold air, my skin freezing. It feels like dirt under my curling fingers as the pit in my stomach grows, icy dread opening up within me.
And when my eyes blink open, with terrible shadows licking behind her, I’m looking up into the face of my mother.
Chapter 110
Scythe
Lyle’s four paws are steady as he thunders across the dirt. I open fire on the soldiers on both sides, the automatic rifles I took from enemy soldiers finding their marks. Lyle leaps over the bodies of Blade and Blair, my sworn cheetahs. They go to their regina now, as I fight for mine.
The sight of their bodies powers me, so that when the shadow snakes, slithering over the ground like translucent abominations, launch themselves at us, I send a powerful psychic blast that fires them tumbling backwards and away from us.
But our path is not yet clear. There are the two rows of crocodile soldiers guarding Mace. I knew Katerina’s rex would come after Aurelia eventually.
Except they are not looking at us at all, but above towards the vortex where my regina disappeared. I can stop neither their bullets nor their bodies. A fight here will be to the death.
Instead of advancing on us, the biggest male gives a harsh command and they fall back, towards Ghoul’s sitting body and surround him as if to protect him. The sides of the truck arepulled upwards and they are contained within the vehicle once again.
They had only come to kill Aurelia, I realise, and now they mean to use this vehicle as a fortress.
Mace’s truck lies before us, the shadow vortex up swirling high above, nothing but a manifestation of hell itself. Xander had put himself into that darkness for us. Had condemned himself to it. And yet the fifth member of our pack is still a member of our pack. They both must be saved.
Serpents writhe over the cabin of Mace’s truck, protecting him in a final stand. The battle rages behind us, our felines protecting the academy. Somewhere, I hear the nimpins chirping.
Lyle growls low in his chest, the rumble spreading through my thighs.“Kill.”
“The serpents,” I say, remembering an old burn in my neck, “they’re all venomous.” And our regina is not here to suck out the venom this time.
Behind me, Eugene lets out a crow. “Where are we up to, guys?” Savage calls, trotting up behind us, Eugene bouncing in his carrier. Next to him is Stacey in golden lioness form, looking terrified but willing to help.
Savage nods, readjusting his bedazzled goggles. “Do it, Stace.”
The lioness tosses her head, and from her back, no less than twenty colourful nimpins, collected from the departed anima students, fly up in the air and open their tiny beaks.
I throw up a psychic shield around my brothers just in time.
Chapter 111
Aurelia
