I fight to stay on his back and to keep the Oracle safe as we narrowly miss the cliff face.
Shrieks of rage scream through the air as the united swarm smashes against the side of the rock, although a few stragglers were far enough behind us to veer wide of it.
My mouth falls open as we pass the jagged outcrop, much lower than we were flying before.
A new swarm was waiting for us, hiding behind the rock. If we’d continued on our previous path, they would have taken us down.
That’s all I see before I’m forced to focus on the sheer strength it’s taking to remain on my eagle’s back as he dives into this never-ending darkness…
Amid the rush of air and the scream of my strained muscles, the Oracle gasps.
Her lips move against my cheek, causing a maddening rush of sensation to pass through my jaw.
I’m certain she gasped because the steep dive is dragging her stomach in unwanted directions, but that quick inhalation…
Her gasp and moan…
I’d give anything to hear her make that sound at the touch of my ungloved hand on her?—
I don’t have to shake off my thoughts because my eagle’s dive does it for me.
My jaw clenches as we spiral at a near-vertical angle.
Just when the bile enters my mouth, my eagle levels out, soaring across the surface of a river whose liquid flows thick and slow.
It isn’t water. I know that much. And it’s eerily quiet. A hush that spells disaster.
His speed doesn’t slow, his panicked wing beats growing more frantic even though the vampyrs in the sky appear to have fallen back.
He will sense the creatures sleeping along the riverbank directly below us. All the uneven mounds upon mounds that are slumbering vampyrs curled up, so many of them that they’re piled on top of each other.
“Straight ahead,” the Oracle whispers, her eyes open again, her face still pressed to mine, or rather, mine is pressed to hers.
Her voice is so quiet that, once again, I strain to hear her.
“Don’t rise,” she says. “Don’t stop.”
Don’t rise?
A glance at the landscape ahead of us makes me freeze.
It’s a fucking dead end.
This valley is completely closed in.
And now, all around us, the vampyrs are waking up. The terrain is shifting, all those mounds undulating as a new swarmbegins to stir.
The Oracle struggles beneath me, as if she can predict the command on my lips for my eagle to take us back up into the sky. There isn’t much she can do. She’s trapped beneath me, her stomach pressed to my eagle, but it seems she’s trying to take my hand, her arm turning and her fingers grasping the underside of my wrist.
Her touch is barely perceptible through my armor. It isn’t as if she’s strong enough to put a dent in it.
“Don’t stop,” she gasps.
My eagle’s wings beat hard again, lifting us higher. I have no doubt he’s following his instincts, preparing to carry us upward, even if he stays at this low altitude for as long as he can.
The Oracle inhales a sharp breath, and I sense the rise of her chest beneath me, the build-up of pressure that warns me she’s about to scream.
Before she can, I thump my eagle’s neck twice, telling him to dive once again. But in this case, he’s so panicked that I know the best it will do is keep him level.
