Steel, rubber, glass and big croc bodies shoot outwards, becoming shrapnel. I throw up a telekinetic shield in front of Stacey, Savage and the nimpins just in time. Smoke and burnt rubber fill the air, and through it I make out multiple male bodies in and around the wreckage.
Savage carefully steps forward, his mouth dropped open in awe as two living male bodies become evident, both lying on the ground. One is naked, rolling over on his back and choking on the soot. The second remains still, that black vortex never so much as shuddering as it whirls from a central point of his chest.
“Xander!” Savage calls, sprinting to him.
The dragon in naked, human form stumbles towards us, coughing into his hand. “I crashed into it,” he croaks. “It didnothingto the bastard!”
But the sheer impacthadkilled his crocodile guards.
Savage barrels into Xander, shaking him by the shoulders. “Where is my regina!” Xander’s mouth opens and closes, looking up into the shadow vortex.
Scythe snarls, tugging on my mane. “Look behind us!” We all swing around to see the new force making its way to the wall.
“Guys, what do we do!” comes Minnie’s panicked voice from the walkie-talkie.
“I’m going after Mace!” Savage shouts, letting go of Xander and sprinting right.
Mace had made it out.
Scythe kicks at my sides like I’m a horse, and I swear in my head, hurrying after our wolf. Behind us, a growing shadow and a huge thump tell me Xander has shifted again. Hopefully hegoes for the helicopter currently gunning bullets at our beasts on the wall.
Ahead, Savage has caught Mace’s scent and is doggedly curving past various abandoned and damaged trucks back the way we came.
“He’s making for a truck!”Savage says in our minds as we complete our U-turn.“He’s going to run for it!”
Eugene must be showing him what’s to come, but it means that we’re now running directly into enemy lines, their fresh guns pointed, fingers on triggers. Xander breathes fire on a helicopter above us, but he can’t be in two places at once.
“Savage!” Scythe shouts. His guns stop firing, the ammo finished. “We need to double back!” There’s too many of them, and we have no weapons. A bullet clips my ear, making Scythe flinch.
“Guys, we’re fucked!” comes Yeti’s cries from Scythe’s pocket. “Get the fuck out of there!”
As if he’s realised he’s led us into a line of over fifty new troops, Savage promptly whirls around and runs back towards us, his face scrunched into an “oops” expression.
“Lyle,” Scythe says quietly. It’s that quietness that makes my heart turn cold. The acceptance in it that makes me toss my head in fury as I envelop the three of us in telekinesis and we rise into the air, ready to slingshot back to the safety of the academy without my regina. Without Mace.
Xander roars his displeasure above us. A second helicopter must have landed a fat bullet in his side because pain tinges the edges of his dragon’s rage. We’d gotten this wrong. So very wrong.
“Wait!” Savage cries, pointing. I whirl us around in mid-air. What’s left of our avian forces starts screeching, indicating something in the scrubland beyond the enemy lines. A mist has gathered there between the trees, sylvan and low to the ground.It seems to swirl in a familiar pattern. As the late sun dips below the horizon, it gives way to a new sort of dark.
Old power rumbles in the air.
And as if from a dream, a lone unicorn appears from the mist, her long silvery mane casting its own blue-tinged celestial light as she canters towards us. A hush gathers about the field, and it’s pure disbelief that silences the enemy as the tip of a gleaming horn shines with something like starlight.
A guiding light, because behind her, racing with all the speed of the wind, is an entire company of felines I recognise as previously sworn to the Clawsons.
Aurelia’s voice shines in our group chat.“They’ve come to fight for the feline queen.”
“About fucking time!” Minnie shrieks over the walkie-talkie.
Chapter 117
Aurelia
It had always felt sacrosanct to touch Lorian, so I never had. But somehow, whether it had been Connor or one of the freed captives of The Collector, they had found a single hair from his mane and given it to Xander.
And Xander, thinking he was going to die in the shadow vortex, had thought he was giving me a final, parting gift when he gave it to me tucked inside my necklace.
“Fuck you, Xander!”I shout across the battlefield as I lead our feline forces by the light of my new horn.
