People were falling, thousands, before his eyes, though he refused to follow their flight path to the ground. Every word they said, every flickering figure, marked a death.
This compelled him to speak.
“Those who the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” This would not drive him insane, but Hieronymus Bosch withhis paintings of macabre hells with tortured people would have been thoroughly inspired.
Vargr clapped him on the shoulder and left his hand there, gripping hard. Cyn turned in his arms and hugged him.
“I’m not mad like the quote says,” she said into his chest before she looked up. “I’m justmad. Fucking mad. We will do this, and we will end this war, take back our planet and murder every one of those aliens above who are trying to destroy us.”
“Amen,” added Vargr.
“You are sure you are well enough?” He had to check.
“I have my mojo back, Rutger, Vargr.” She smiled like the deadly, kickass babe she was, and showed her teeth. “I wanna blow away some bad motherfucker aliens.”
“Yeah, baby. Yeah,” Vargr breathed. “They do not know what is coming for them.”
Which washow it came to be that he stood with Cyn and Vargr at the back of the assembled members of this small part of the beast horde. He listened to Willow give a grand speech about how they were about to embark on the first stage of their renewed attack on those who dared to violate this Earth—theirbeloved Earth.
The hall was on the first floor of War Quarter. The moon had risen and shone in through many small square windows just below the twenty-foot-high ceiling. Whether by chance or not, moonlight cast a strong shaft of light over the stage where Willow stood before a podium. The wall behind her was blood red. She wore a white, long-sleeved smock, and pale gray tights. The sleeves trailed cloth as if mimicking medieval princessfashion. Against the red wall, she brought to mind an avenging angel, if it wasn’t for her rabid speechifying.
He smiled.
The speech itself and her shouting, those reminded him of a radical dictator. The arm gestures nailed it. This event deserved that sort of crazy speech. Who wouldn’t yell and spit and carry on?
He’d never seen her so worked up, but if this was the beginning of the end—of them finally taking the initiative in this terrible game of genocide the Ghoul Lords were playing, he’d do anything. Fucking anything.
They must win. Must.
The hall echoed with her words, and the crowd became restless, stirred by her vehemence until they too shouted, raised their arms and shook them, vowing allegiance to this renewed cause.
“We will take back Earth from the invaders!” she screamed.
Rutger whipped around and arm-wrapped first Cyn—hoisting her higher so he could kiss her cheek and squeeze her—then Vargr, except he couldn’t pick that heavy beaster up. He felt the wings ruffle where his arm fell across Vargr’s back.
He kissed Vargr’s cheek too, loudly. “Let’s fucking do this!”
Vargr chuckled then hugged and kissed him back, just as wetly and loudly. “Anything to get you to stop putting those lips on me!”
“Hell, yeah,” Cyn added in a quieter tone. “We do this, and we watch each other’s backs. And Willow’s, especially her. I think she’s more important to this than anyone.”
Though he nodded, he disagreed. Cyn was more important. And Vargr… He was beginning to feel as if they were inextricably bound together. All three of them.
He’d heard Cyn say a few times how bondmating was just chemicals, but it no longer was, not to him. He hugged them both, tighter, inhaling their mingled scents.
48
So this waswhat it was to be a cog in an army, a mere soldier. Willow had taken to ordering people about like a mermaid took to water. A mermaid with pretty blue hair and blue, swirly patterned arms. Cyn had been told to stay at the back, so here she stayed.
It had taken a day to get up here in relays, with the wing-soldiers flying people up in stages through the bigger stairwells. Half this force was winged, half foot. Mads was with them this time purely because Willow needed his wings. Rutger had been left behind because he was too heavy. He’d told her of his theory that Willow was not letting both her and Mads be with her if there was too much danger. That made sense because those two were the people from Worshipper Quarter who were already thought of as the bosses.
Not really democratic, but few in this beaster horde seemed willing to lead.
She wasn’t even sure Mads wanted to do much more than follow Willow about.
They’d spent a few hours to get organized here, in what must have been a childcare facility.
The chair she sat on was orange plastic and made for a ten-year-old, but it’d taken her weight. It amused her to sit on a silly chair.
