A sudden shriek breaks across me. “New blood!”
Whatever creature flew through the air aboveus vanishes again in an instant, gone too soon for me to make out what it looked like, but other voices hiss into the night after it, each one shooting closer to us before receding.
“Tasty wench.”
“We need her.”
“Let us drink her.”
“Let us drain her dry.”
“Oh, yes, let us drain?—”
With a roar, the king strikes his axe across the air, and the magic he was gathering around himself explodes up through the darkness, illuminating the sky and the creatures teeming within it.
My blood chills.
Hundreds… Horrifying hundreds…
A scream rises into my throat as the creatures swarm down upon us.
Chapter Twelve
Antony
Fear shoots down my spine as the swarm of vampyrs writhes in the darkness.
Wrenching my blade upward, I roar out my terror, expelling every shred of that weak emotion.
The power I was gathering explodes across the air, lighting up the creatures swarming toward us and revealing every terrifying feature of their undead forms.
Discolored fangs descend from peeling lips. Fleshy white faces are framed with yellowed wisps of hair wafting at scaly scalps. Pointed ears mangled. Bodies clad in tattered black robes billow and make them appear bigger than their withered figures actually are.
A fucking sea of them. A nightmare thrashing in the darkness.
The second my light collides with their oncoming forms, they shriek and jolt backward, trying to escape it.
It burns patches of their exposed skin, the stench of undead flesh turning my stomach.
But for all its brightness, the light I’ve gathered around us won’t kill them, and it won’t keep them at bay for long.
I inherited this power from my mother, as did Cassia and our two brothers, but I can’t create it to the powerful levels Mother can, and I certainly can’t sustain it like she can.
The vampyrs’ harsh screams reveal their determination to get past me.
They’re starving. Craving blood. They’ll do anything to get it, even risk burning themselves. As long as they can grab the Oracle and drag her off my eagle, any superficial burn will be worth it.
Then they can feast.
I shouldn’t have underestimated how enticing her blood would smell to them, how intensely her presence could stir their beastly needs.
I thought I’d have to fight a few, maybe ten, even twenty of them.
Not hundreds.
Not all at once.
Fear pushes at my mind again, and this time it grows.
