Telepathy was quicker than speaking aloud. *Six of them. Birds of some sort. But—big.*
The plane jerked again. The blood poured from Carol’s face. *That’s one of them.*
“A bird did that?” Mathis swore. “You’re sure that isn’t Rouse out there? Maybe he decided to return our call after all.”
“What do you mean, birds?” Keeley was still holding on to Carol’s arm. Shit. She was human; she couldn’t hear telepathic speech. She was the one who’d reminded Carol to use her power, and Carol hadn’t even told her what she’d found.
Carol wet her lips. “There’s—there’s something out there. It’s—it feels like—there’s, there’s six of them—”
What’s wrong with you?she was screaming behind her own eyes.Just say the words!
“Six—” she tried again.
The screech of metal drowned her out.
Metallic talons tore through the wall of the cabin. The others shouted and jumped to their feet. More rips appeared. Three, then four. An alarm went off. Masks dropped above the seats. The air pressure dipped, wind roaring out through the gashes. Maggie wailed with terror. She clung to the ceiling, wings fluttering as the loss of air pressure tried to tear her away.
Then the wind dropped. Light-headed, Carol thought it was as though a bubble had formed around the plane.
“Screeee!”
A bronze-colored beak the length of Carol’s forearm appeared through one of the holes, two feet from where Maggie had flattened herself in terror.
Maggie shrieked. Carol shrieked, too. Her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest. She was trapped, helpless, the same way she had been when—
Shift. Transform.She couldn’t. They were in a narrow metal tube hurtling through the sky. If she shifted, she would just be another danger to the others. A shark panicking as it drowned in the open air.
“Get away from her!” Keeley thrust the pack into Carol’s arms and dashed towards Maggie. “Maggie! Come to me!”
The little dragon leaped into her waiting hands. Keeley sprinted down the aisle towards the cockpit. Lance positioned himself in front of her, his eyes glowing an eerie green as his inner snow leopard rose up in defense of his mate.
“CRRAAAAAWWWWW!”
An unearthly screech filled the cabin. One of the creatures was almost through. The sucking wind of decompression had stopped—How?Carol thought wildly,How is that possible?—but the air was thin and brutally cold.
Mathis shifted into his lion form and roared. It probably wasn’t voluntary. It was taking all of Carol’s focus to keep her shark under her skin.
Another creature shrieked on the other side of the cabin. A third behind it.
Then something dropped heavily through the hole in the ceiling, a tangle of green-bronze feathers that rang like sheet metal.
It raised its head, and Carol’s mind whited out.
It’s like me,Carol thought, ice dripping through her veins.Oh, god, it’s like me.
Another creature tore through the ceiling, then another. Three of them.Which means there are still three out there,Carol told herself, but the thought was submerged beneath the static terror filling her mind.
She’d thought she was the only monstrous shifter in the world.
Their attackers were part-bird, part-human, the mixture different in each one—a human face there, feet or claws, arms and wings or only wings. Their bird parts were green-stained bronze. Long, vicious beaks and claws, and metallic feathers that scraped together as they moved.
“Who are you?” Lance demanded. He was still in human form, standing braced in front of Keeley. Maggie was safe behind them both, and Delacourt’s lion form filled the aisle between their attackers and the cockpit.
Carol was the only one on her own. Her heart thudded.
Ames’s voice murmured into her mind. *Engines are fine, they just hit the cabin. Get on the oxygen before decompression fucks you, and keep them occupied while I find somewhere to put us down.*
But weren’t they miles from land? Carol’s chest went tight.
