Everything seemed frozen to the spot as the screaming increased, the sound coming in ripples from before us, the earth shaking beneath us in what I was sure the mortals were assuming to be an earthquake. I knew better.
The sound of their fear moved down the street toward us in a flood of sound I knew at once we couldn’t escape. My heart raced in a pulse of panic as my muscles tensed in agony at the sounds, the panic, and the exhilarated fear moving over me.
I barely recognized Ilyan moving into protective position, his magic flaring angrily as he tried to figure out what had happened and, more importantly, what he could do.
Nothing.
He could do nothing.
“It’s starting,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if the words were mine or that of my sight. The depth of my voice was entirely dead.
I had barely spoken before the golden light of the sunset, the light that had been seen so clearly in my sight, was sucked from the sky and replaced with a sheet of red. The color was thick and all-encompassing, as though someone had thrown a thin blanket over the world.
I looked toward the sun on instinct, the red tinged orb that was trying to sink behind the skyline. As the earth rattled beneath me, the strength of a distant explosion rumbled through the ground as the red blanket of sky was streaked with pillars of black.
Thousands of winged creatures cut through the sky, through the red veil, descending on the city.
Devouring the city.
Devouring us.
Fourteen
I stared at the tower of Vil?s in horror, my jaw tightening as I waited for it to end, for the sight to pull me back into reality. However, I knew it wasn’t a sight, that the screams and the pillar of diseased Vil?s were all terrifyingly real.
Panic engrossed the city as, one after another, more columns began to erupt into the sky. The blasts of the distant explosions, the shaking of the earth underneath our feet, and the blood red hue to the sky only increased the already rapid rate of my heart.
The creatures poured into the sunset on all sides of us, streaking over the blood red sky like bats, flocks of winged monsters encapsulating the city from all sides.
Enclosing us in.
Trapping us.
Even if we wanted to escape the city, there was no chance of that happening now.
Edmund had drawn us here.
To this.
Ilyan had been right. I had been right.
It was a trap, and we had walked right into it.
I looked toward the street I had seen Wyn fleeing through only moments before, but she was nowhere to be seen.
What had been a joyful, European city was now nothing except chaos. People ran blindly as they tried to escape an unknown enemy. Running into buildings, trying to start cars, many frozen as they looked up to the sky, fear keeping them in place. The screams, the chaos only increased as the first of the Vil?s hit the ground around them like wet rags then came to life with terrifying speed.
Wings unfurled, bodies glistened, teeth gnashed, and their sharp claws attached themselves to the humans like locusts, biting, ripping, and tearing at their flesh as they infected them with their poison. The once revered “kiss” was placed upon them like a disease, infecting them and their newly born magic with the same infection the Vil?s held.
Edmund was creating his army.
I had seen sight after sight reveal itself before my eyes. I had been amazed and taken back by my own power. But this? This should have stayed hidden in the shadows of the Drak blood I held. This should have never come to pass.
A car zoomed past us, at least twenty of the little things clawing at the metal in an attempt to get inside just as a roar of anger and madness broke through the air beside me. Ilyan’s magic flared in a violent surge that shifted through me, igniting my own power as the two forces blended together in a wave of the same fairy lights I had seen so many times before. Except now, they were not wrought in love and passion. Now, they were bred from the flame of Ilyan’s anger, an anger I had only seen once before. However, then it had been nothing compared to the power I felt move through me, nothing compared to the rolling force of his power that emanated from him.
Now, the lights were dangerous.
Now, he was dangerous.
But he wasn’t the only one.
I was dangerous, too, and I was going to stop this.
We moved from our frozen shock as one, our shields dropping from our bodies as we met the new battle head on, as we ran into the tangled mess of blood and carnage.
Hands moved, magic and light and power surged from our bodies as the Vil?s left the bloodied and battered people they had dug into writhing on the ground. They flew to attack us, to attack the danger we represented.
The mortals were easy pickings. Even the ones who tried to fight back were felled in seconds.
But Ilyan and I?