So much carnage. And for what? For my cousin to trick the city into thinking he was their only hope for survival? If I despised him before, I truly considered him an abomination now, for doing this to his own people.
There were more bodies here than in the rest of the city. The husk of the crow-creature lay abandoned. Gabby and Eli were nowhere to be seen. They’d certainly retreated to the palace to watch, or were keeping up appearances by pretending to slay monsters elsewhere.
We wound through the corpses scattered on the streets, keenly aware it was too quiet. The raptor’s cries had gone mute, and the silence that permeated the area screamed death. Emma held her cloak over her nose and mouth, to avoid breathing in the smoke or the smell of the torn bodies. The corpse of Lady Iris still hung on one of the few pieces of the stage that had remained standing, hovering over the square like this was her judgement upon us all.
“Do you think most of the people have gotten to safety?” Emma whispered.
“I don’t know,” I mused. “But—”
I didn’t finish my sentence, for Kiara screamed. I whipped around— she was pinned under the raptor’s claws, who’d jumped on her from behind. It hissed and went to dive its teeth down toward her throat, but Alexei rammed his shoulder into the raptor’s. The raptor fell off, but not without lashing its claws out at Alexei, and slicing through his mask to cut his cheek. Blood spurted, and Alexei staggered backward. Theo projected a shield as the raptor went to attack again, and it was sent tumbling. The raptor spun upward and hissed as the eight of us surrounded it.
The raptor wasn’t very big— only a bit larger than me in my wolf form. We had it cornered. This one would be easy.
As we moved in, the raptor let out a horrible screech that hurt our eardrums— all of us covered our ears, and we fell to our knees at the raptor’s cry. I had to close my eyes and duck my head in an attempt to get away from the awful sound. What kind of creature was this? Its yell was nearly as bad as a siren’s scream.
When the raptor saw we were down, it attacked. It darted forward with its claws extended toward Stefan. Delmare pushed him down, but not before the raptor sank the tips of its claws into Stefan’s front. Stefan groaned and fell to the side, blood spilling all over his cloak. Delmare shot a battle orb at it, and missed.
What the raptor didn’t have in size, it made up for in speed. The raptor jumped from this point to that, and our magic skittered by uselessly. The raptor didn’t stay on one target for long— he cut a gash into Odette’s arm before it lunged out at Alexei, and sliced into his leg. They weren’t deep cuts, but if the monster provided enough of them, we’d all bleed to death, which I’m sure was its strategy. When I was sure the raptor was one place, he was already another, and slicing into another one of my friends with vengeance.
I changed course. Once the monster turned on Emma, I unleashed my throwing knives before the raptor could get to her. Three of them hit the raptor in the side. It gave a wild cry, and that put it off the attack. It backed up, lashing its tail and shaking its head. Its dozens of eyes glittered at me with hunger, the knives still embedded in its sides.
The monster began screaming again, louder this time and focusing his voice directly on me. The sound was so loud and grating, it was enough to create pain. I was sure my ears would bleed. A great pain developed in my temple, a migraine unlike any I’d felt before. I fell to the ground again as the monster advanced, making his voice louder and louder, until it felt like my brain was going to explode inside my head.
Odette and Theo moved in unison. Their shields combined into one, forming a bubble that they enclosed around the creature. The shield kept the screech within, and the monster’s head lolled back. Its voice died down, but by this time, it was too late. The aftershock of the noise bounced back against the shield, and echoed into a tremendous clamor the raptor could not survive. Its head exploded, and eyeballs went pinging against the inside of the shield as the raptor killed itself with the sound of its own screams.
Theo and Odette let the shield drop. The tangy smell of fresh blood mixed with the spilled gore. Save for Emma and I, everyone had been cut open by one of the raptor’s claws. The shifters would heal quickly, but the girls were losing blood. The other shifters tore their cloaks and made makeshift bandages, wrapping them around the girls’ wounds. Even so, Delmare, Kiara and Odette’s faces remained pale.
And still, the roars of our enemies hadn’t grown any duller.
“How many more are there?” Delmare asked. She winced as she pressed a hand to her side, where the raptor had delivered a painful strike.
As if in response to her question, several more cries rang out amongst the shadows.
“Sounds like a lot,” Theo commented dully. He held Odette against him, who appeared slightly nauseous.
“We have to get to a better vantage point. If we can see how many monsters there still are, we’ll know how many we have to fight,” I said.
“The rooftops,” Emma suggested. “It’s the best way to see what’s going on out there.”
We left the square, and searched for the tallest building that was still standing. Once we found it— a large apartment complex— we scaled the fire escape, until we came to the very top, which overlooked most of Dolinska.
My heart plummeted as I walked across the rooftop, observing the city streets. Less than a quarter of a mile off, hundreds of fae were still trapped. Monsters had cornered them, and were slowly picking them off one by one. There were reptilian behemoths, giant spiders, three-headed beings, trollish creatures with large feet that made the ground shake with thunder… no matter where my eyes landed, there was another monster more terrifying and vile than the first, and they were picking off fae like flies.
In the distance, I could see the lights of the soldiers as they surrounded the palace, giving the illusion they were protecting the royals, when really, they were allowing the city to burn.
“There are too many to fight,” Alexei said in despair. “We’ll never eliminate them all before we die ourselves.”
My mind worked, trying to find a way out, to come up with a plan… anything. Gabby and Elijah would level Dolinska to the ground if they had to, to convince the survivors that building up our army was our only shot at defeating the Black Claw, so this never happened again. But what could me and my companions do against such endless butchery?
It was Emma who spoke. “We have to get Gabby to pull them back.” Her voice was rough.
“How?” Theo choked.
“We have the video,” Emma said. “We blast it on every television screen in Malovia. Anyone inside of their homes watching what’s taking place in the city is going to see her performing dark magic. Gabby will have to handle the scandal, before it gets out of hand. She can’t control the monsters and do that at the same time. She’ll force them to leave the city.”
“That video is our only card we have to play against Gabby,” Kiara protested weakly.
“We have to use it. We don’t have a choice. If we don’t publicize that video, there will be thousands of deaths, even more than we’ve already lost.”
