The missile explodes around him, but he emerges from the other side of the fireball like a demon rising from hell, wings spread wide and trailing smoke. Bits of flaming debris rain down around him.
These explosions are even louder than the first—ear-splitting booms that hit me in the chest like physical blows. The turbulence rocks our helicopter violently. I’m thrown against the wall.
The guys are close enough now that I can hear Abaddon’s roar—primal and furious, a sound that raises every hair on my body. It’s not quite human, not quite animal. Something ancient and terrible.
I crawl back to look, holding onto the benches. Abaddon shoots back toward the jet fighters who launched the missiles, his massive form gaining speed. White runes begin pouring from both his hands—not in streams but in thick ropes of light that twist through the air like living things.
The jets are sleek and modern, dark gray metal catching the sunlight as they bank and turn. But they’re not fast enough.
The runes hit them like lassos, wrapping around the fuselage of the lead jet. Almost immediately, it veers off course, the cockpit sparking with electrical discharge. One wing dips sharply and the jet begins to spiral—slowly at first, then faster and faster, spinning like a top as it falls from the sky.
“Unmanned drones coming at our three o’clock!” Layden yells from the cockpit, his voice cracking with strain.
I whip my head to the right and see them—at least a dozen smaller aircraft, more agile than the jets. They’re painted matte black, triangular in shape, with no cockpit windows. Pure killing machines operated by someone safe on the ground somewhere.
They’re swarming in from the opposite direction too, coming at us from all sides like angry hornets.
Abaddon banks hard left, his lion-like features set in a snarl as he starts tearing into the drones coming from the west. He grabs the first one out of the air with both clawed hands and literally rips it in half down the middle. Metal screams as it tears.Sparks shower out. The two halves tumble away, flames licking up from the exposed wiring.
He moves to the next one, his wings beating powerfully. This time he swipes at it with one clawed hand, shearing off the entire wing. The drone immediately loses stability, spinning wildly before exploding in a ball of fire.
And midair, I see Romulus’s head begin to turn.
It’s unsettling to watch—the whole head rotating a full one-eighty degrees on the neck, the body not moving at all. Like an owl, but wrong. Unnatural.
So that Remus’s face—that wild, wicked, impossibly wide grin—appears on what was the back of the head, now facing forward. Now greeting the drone swarm from the east.
His eyes are bright with manic joy. His too-wide mouth is open in a laugh I can hear even over the wind and engines.
He doesn’t just fight the drones.
He plays with them.
He grabs one out of the air and uses it as a bat, swinging it into another drone with such force that both explode on impact. The blast rocks him backward but he’s already moving, diving toward the next target.
He sling-shots one plane into another—I watch him grab a drone by the tail, spin in a full circle building momentum, then release. The drone shoots through the air like a missile, slamming into another with such velocity that the metal doesn’t just crumple—it punctures straight through. Both aircraft explode simultaneously, creating a double fireball that blooms like a deadly flower.
Remus flies through the flames, his wings barely singed, already reaching for another drone. He rips its wings off with his bare hands—grabbing the thin metal and just tearing, the awful sound of rending metal audible even from here. He crushesothers like aluminum cans. Then uses his tail like a whip, the flat end smashing and sending drones into uncontrolled spins.
And he’s laughing the entire time.
More and more drones come—wave after wave, at least forty now filling the sky around us. But Remus and Abaddon destroy them before they can get anywhere near us or line up a shot.
The sky is full of fire and smoke and falling debris. Trails of black smoke mark where drones used to be. The air smells like burning fuel and hot metal.
Kharon watches from inside the helicopter, all six arms ready, runes flickering around his fingers like blue-white fireflies. His dark eyes track every threat, calculating, ready to act if anything gets through his brothers’ defense.
I only happen to look down because Layden swings us sharply south to make our escape, and the sudden banking turn throws me against the wall. I have to grab for a handhold to keep from falling.
Through the window in the floor—reinforced glass meant to let soldiers look down at the battlefield—I see them.
Tanks.
Dozens of them, maybe fifty or more, lined up on the ground in perfect military formation. They’re positioned in the clearing where the castle used to be, arranged in precise rows like chess pieces. The long firing tubes—cannons that must be at least twenty feet long—are all pointed upward at sharp angles.
All aimed at us.
At the exact same angle. The exact same trajectory. Someone calculated this.
