“Guys? Guys! There are tanks!” I scream, my voice breaking with panic.
Layden swings his head back to look at us. “What?” he yells over the wind and engine noise.
I’m about to scream “tanks” again when Ksenia unhooks herself from the bench chair with fumbling, desperate hands, drops to the metal floor, hikes her legs up, and screams so loud it’s clear she’s ready to push out her baby right now before Kharon can even get there to catch it.
But none of us expect what happens next.
The baby emerges from between her legs in a rush—along with a burst of blinding white-blue light runes that explode outward like a bomb.
The runes shoot straight through the helicopter, through the front window, shattering it into a million glittering pieces.
The runes continue on fifty feet outside of the helicopter, expanding and swirling until they create a massive pearlescent pool hanging in midair in front of us—like a portal. Or a mirror.
Or a doorway to… somewhereelse.
“What the fuck is that?” Layden shrieks as glass rains down around him.
I don’t fucking know, but I finally manage to yell again: “TANKS!”
Layden looks down, finally seeing that the tanks have launched their missiles during the explosive birth—at least twenty of them screaming upward toward us in a deadly swarm.
He has just enough time to move the stick of the controls full speed ahead, straight toward the hovering pearlescent mirror still hanging impossibly in the air in front of us.
And just like that?—
We plunge through the hovering pearly sideways pool in the sky.
Into complete darkness.
It’s like going from day to night in the space of a heartbeat. The sky is so pitch dark that even the lights of the helicopter barely penetrate it—the beams seeming to stop just inches from the source, swallowed by the thick, inky blackness.
The air feels wrong. Heavy. Ancient.
Then we all hear it, and our heads swing around in unison.
That sound.
It’s already loud in the helicopter—wind rushing in through the shattered front window, the rear ramp still open, the blades overhead creating their constant whump-whump-whump.
But this is something far louder.
A horrible, deep, squawkish scream from some sort of beast. The sound reverberates through the darkness, through my chest, through my bones.
First one scream.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Raven begins to cry—high, terrified whimpers. Hannah holds her tightly, pressing the baby’s face against her shoulder.
All of our heads twist back and forth frantically, trying to locate the sources of the sounds. Trying to discern how close the ungodly creatures might be.
Because they sound like they’re in the sky with us.
Flying with us.
Circling.
