She’d enlarged her shield many times in training, and I had every faith that she could do it here and now. As she’d once said herself, this had to work. We’d all be on Shit Street if it didn’t.
David’s impatient sigh seemed like a boom in the quiet of the night. The forest was unnaturally silent—no doubt Alora had ‘spoken’ to the wildlife and told them to keep quiet so that they didn’t make noise that would alert the dragons. She had probably also recruited the predators to join the battle. Good.
Since I didn’t have a gift that would help me bring the bastards down, my job was to take out the fallen. But I had no idea if my gift would help me with that. It was possible that they didn’t have blood-bonds. If that was the case, I’d have to rely on combat moves. I was good at combat—Jared wouldn’t have accepted anything less. But since the shifters could be just as competent at it, there was no saying that taking them out would be easy.
I rolled back my shoulders, trying to shake off the dread that snaked through me. It didn’t work. Tension and anticipation thickened the air until it was almost tangible. This waiting around shit headed into a whole new level of frustrating.
Discretely, I took in Butch’s scent on a long inhale. It was comforting. Reminded me of his strength; that he would be fine in this battle. The natural scents of the forest usually had the same calming effect on me, but not tonight. Not when so much depended on the outcome of the war.
Among all those scents was something else: the smell of ozone. Rain would be coming soon. It would seem that Keeley was preparing to unleash the storm. I could see a grey cloud beginning to form. Hopefully she was as in control of her power as her confident nature suggested. We were going to need her in a big way, especially since it—
They’re coming, Jared warned.
A shot of adrenalin pumped through me, and I squeezed Butch’s hand. This was it.
“If we hadn’t been watching out for them, we would never have known they were on their way,” whispered Butch.
As I stared up ahead, I understood what he meant. They were all dark and moving so silently it was eerie. Now I got why they had chosen to come at night—they could better conceal themselves in the dark.
They were flying directly toward the island, and they were huge. Fierce. Seriously scary looking with long curled horns and massive bat-like wings. And they were here to kill us.
Butch took a single step out of the trees, ready to do his part. As David and I moved with him, he cast us both a ‘stay back’ scowl. We just stared at him.
Conscious that there was no time to argue, Butch planted his feet wide apart and raised his hands. I couldn’t see his shield. I couldn’t even sense it, since it didn’t buzz with energy like Sam’s did. But I knew that if I reached out, I’d feel it—hard and totally impenetrable.
His face was a mask of concentration as he enlarged the shield. Able to see the creatures and the formation they were traveling in, he would know just how far and high he’d need to extend the shield to prevent any from passing. If he was struggling at all, it didn’t show in his expression.
More adrenalin flooded my system as the dragons neared. Had they been moving at a slower pace, they might have scented us—we were positioned all over the island, after all. But the creatures were flying at such an admirable speed that they didn’t have a moment to sense us.
The five in the front slammed into the shield, causing it to glimmer much like sunlight reflecting off glass. I winced at their ear-splitting, harpy-like sounds of shock and pain. They might have bounced backwards if the others—moving too fast to avoid a collision—hadn’t crashed into them. Only the dragons at the rear managed to halt in time. Unfortunately none fell to the ground. Shit.
Before they could even think to act, a buzzing silvery-blue shield blanketed the island. With a roar of challenge, vampires came at the dragons from every angle.
Butch gave me a quick kiss. “Stay alive.” He darted to Sam’s side just before our squads formed a wide protective circle around him and the Grand High Pair.
Chaos then reigned.
Jared’s lightning bolts illuminated the sky, showing flashes of red-hot arrows, balls of ice, and ripples of psychic energy whooshing through the air toward the dragons. The creatures screeched and roared as they retaliated from above, breathing streams of fire; the responding agonised cries of my kind made my stomach roll.
Two things became swiftly clear: they were much faster than we’d expected, and they weren’t going to go down easy. Flying around the island, they attacked with fire and ice, swiped people with their spiked tails, smacked them aside with their punctured wings, or grabbed them with their claws and then tossed them at other vampires. They also breathed clouds of smoke to impair our vision, making it harder for us to defend ourselves.
Basically, they were total bastards.