Several shots boomed and my chin jerked up. Beyond the wall, a dark cloud zoomed across the horizon, heading straight for us. Except it wasn’t a cloud.
I took a step back, my hands going to the daggers.
The cloud arced up and shattered into hundreds of mother-freaking crows.
My jaw dropped open. “Holy crows…”
“There’s a couple of eagles mixed in there,” Luke commented.
“And a few hawks,” Aiden added.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Holy birds of prey! Is that better?”
“Much,” Aiden murmured.
The birds blanketed the sky, so thick they eclipsed the sun for a moment. I’d never seen anything like it. They swirled overhead, a dark, ever-expanding funnel. They changed course suddenly, flying down toward us like little, winged torpedoes with sharp claws and beaks. I thought of the flayed body and almost hurled.
“They’re possessed!” shouted a Guard. Dirt streaked his white uniform.
I wanted to thank the guy for the obvious. I wasn’t an animal specialist, but I knew birds didn’t go psychotic for no reason, which meant there had to be daimons nearby…either them or a god. A god could influence our feathered friends. But my smartass response died on my tongue when the birds from hell swooped.
They were on us in seconds.
Dipping down, Olivia shrieked as she batted one away. “Ah! Birds! Why did it have to be birds?”
I smacked one before it got its gross little claws in my already jacked-up hair. How in the hell were we supposed to fight a swarm of birds? Talons grazed the back of my hands, and the pain was sharp and quick.
Solos spun around, his arm arcing gracefully. A dagger flew across the space, tip over handle, and embedded deep into the back of an eagle that had attached to a Guard’s shoulder.
Well, that was one way—a little time-consuming, but effective. However, I had a better idea. Waving my arms like a deranged crossing guard, I darted toward Aiden. He’d grabbed a hawk off a fallen Sentinel. Tiny red scratches bled on his cheeks.
“Fire!” I yelled. “Light the sky up!”
Luke was swinging at the sky with his blades like a cracked-out chef. “Olivia and I will cover you two!”
Sheathing the daggers, Aiden raised his hands, brows lowered in concentration and the line of his jaw tightened. Sparks flew from his fingers, and a second later, his hands were on fire. I reached over, wrapping my hands around his wrist. I took a deep breath, ignoring the wings that came awfully close to my cheek and the willies the feeling gave me.
Closing my eyes, I used the air element and pictured the flames moving up in a steady stream and then spreading like a ceiling of fire. Aiden could get the fire into the sky, but not as quickly and at the magnitude he could with my help.
“That’s it,” Aiden said, his skin hot under my fingers.
I opened my eyes. For a moment, I was awed. Using the elements was still new to me. Fire, a vibrant shade of blood-red, pulsed over Aiden’s hand and exploded outward in a massive ball. Wind blew my hair back from my face as the inferno licked into the air, rolling toward the wall and back to the campus, consuming the birds in its path. The blaze wasn’t natural, but a product of the aether that Aiden carried inside him. It ate the crows up, leaving nothing by a fine sprinkling of dust behind.
When most of the birds were destroyed and only a few were left to dive-bomb us, Aiden closed his hands into fists and I let go of his wrists. Only then did I see the faintly glowing glyphs on my hands. No one but Seth could see them, but they still made me feel a little weird when they came out to say hello.
“That was so Resident Evil,” said Luke, his eyes wide. “Awesome.”
I cracked a grin, a little breathless. “It was kind of Alice awesome, wasn’t it?”
Luke started to nod but stilled when a Guard flew past us, arms flailing as he tried to get one of the remaining birds off his back. He frowned. “I’ll never look at a bird the same way again.”
Shooting him a look, Aiden stepped forward, snatching what I guessed was a hawk off the back of the yelping Guard. The hawk twisted in his grasp, and I got a good look at its face. The thing’s eyes were all black—no pupils or irises, just like a daimon’s.
I turned away from the sickening crack that followed. Once the animals were that far under the control of a daimon or god, there was just no undoing it.
Several Sentinels staggered to their feet, battered and cut, but no one had gotten it as bad as the two who’d been by the burnt-out cars on the access road and were most likely blindsided by the birds.
A shiver snaked its way down my spine, and my hands automatically went to the daggers on my thighs. Tiny hairs rose on my body. All around me, halfs and pures reacted to the peculiar tension seeping into our skin. My glyphs swirled, changing patterns and forming new ones.
“They’re coming!” yelled a Guard near the top of the wall. His white robes flapped like wings in the wind.
I was kind of expecting a griffon to come out of nowhere, but that’s not what slammed into the iron gate with enough force that it rattled the massive structure and split open the skin of the assailant.
It was a daimon.
Face as white as the Guards’ robes and veins as thick as black snakes, the daimon backed up and charged the gate again.
Wiping blood off her hand, Olivia shook her head. “What is it doing?”
“Other than rearranging its face?” I flinched as it slammed the gate once more. “Maybe it’s really hungry.”
Daimons were pure-bloods that had become addicted to the aether in the blood of pures, and only within the last year we’d learned they could also turn halfs. They were what originated the whole vampire myth without the hotness. It started eons ago—something Dionysus had done, most likely when he’d been bored.
Most of our problems stemmed from the gods’ boredom.
Another daimon joined in, then another, and another. Each time they whacked into the gate, I flinched. Their exposed flesh was mangled and bloody.
Solos was at the gate, able to pick off two of them by shoving daggers through the gaps. Daimons were highly allergic to titanium. It cut through their flesh as though it were water. They burst into shimmering blue clouds, one after another, but more joined in, bouncing off the gate. My gaze went to the sides. The hinges were weakening.
I moved, seeing dozens and dozens of daimons behind the ones at the gate. Aiden summoned fire, catching several of them ablaze, but they kept coming at the gate until the fire consumed them.
This was so not good.
But a frightening realization occurred. When I’d been all Team Seth after I’d Awakened, I’d learned he and Lucian were working with daimons, feeding the monsters pures who weren’t siding with them. The daimons could be here because of Ares, or they could be here because Seth was coming. Either way, it was unlikely that this many would just show up in the middle of nowhere, like it had been during the Council meeting in the Catskills.
“We have to do something.” Luke unhooked his daggers, eyes narrowing as he turned to me. “Can you do your Apollyon thing? Like you did with the automatons?”
Figuring I should do the same as Luke, I unsheathed my daggers. My hands shook, and I hoped no one noticed. “I can’t promise I won’t take the gate out in the process. Maybe if I could get outside, slip up behind them.”
“Not happening.” Aiden stalked forward. “They’d be on you in seconds.”
With all the aether in my veins, it would be like ringing the dinner bell, but if I did get out there, I could do something. I could end this before it got out of hand. My mouth stayed closed, though, which was so unlike me that I wasn’t sure I was me anymore. A week ago, I would’ve been scaling those damn walls.