“I can’t detect anything,” Danny said. “But smelling is not my strong suit. Much like directions. I just don’t have the knack. Now, knocking someone out cold or handing them their teeth after a brawl, I’m your man.”
I inhaled, forcing the air in slowly. My wolf twitched her ears. I noticed something too. After a few breaths it became stronger as it settled over my taste buds. It was faint, but definitely bitter. “I’m not exactly surprised we’re coming up against something before we hit her ‘official’ territory,” I said. “She’d be foolish to let us draw too close without a fight. Plus, she loves games. Putting up some puzzling roadblock sounds like something she’d do. We need to tread very carefully from here.”
“I will investigate a bit farther.” Naomi strode for a large opening past the trees. A bright moon and a bevy of stars kept the night sky luminous. The stars ran in an almost continuous swath of white. With my newly enhanced vision, I could see so much more. Stars that had been undetectable before now flickered in the sky. It was breathtaking. The only person who had an issue finding his way in the dark was Ray. He’d stumbled along behind us at less than half the pace, swearing up a blue streak as he went. But since he was following us on his own, I wasn’t complaining.
“Be wary out there,” I called. “It could be a trap.”
Naomi reached the clearing. “Once I pass out of these trees I’ll take to the sky and see what I can find—”
The instant she crossed the tree line she was swarmed.
Small, black creatures coated her, flapping their wings in furious motion. I ran toward her shouting, “Are those bats?”
If they were, they weren’t any kind of ordinary bats.
Before I could processes what was happening, Danny dropped his pack and lunged into the fray. “Get the bloody hell off of her, you beasts!” He tore them from her body. As they came off, so did bits of her clothing and skin.
“What are they?” I yelled to Eamon, coming up short of the trees and dropping my gear by the edge of the clearing. We had to know what they were in order to fight them. They hadn’t attacked her until she passed through the trees, so that had to mean there was a delineation of some kind. Eamon froze in place, staring at his sister. “Eamon!” I shouted. “What are they?”
“Winged devils.” He said it so quietly I had to strain to hear him.
“What?”
“Their proper name is Camazotz, which translates into ‘Death Bat of the Underworld.’ ”
Underworld? These were from the Underworld? “How do we stop them?” I urged.
He didn’t answer, so I shouted behind me, “Ray, head back into the forest! Find a log or something to hide under. When this is over, we’ll find you.” I turned to my brother, who hovered next to me at the edge of the trees, equally helpless. The bats had fully engulfed Danny. If we went out there now, we’d be swarmed too. “Tyler, we have to stop them! What do we do?”
We watched as Danny struggled to pull them off his own body. Naomi had fallen to the ground now. Danny collapsed to his knees.
I took an unconscious step forward and my brother’s arm shot out to stop me. “We can’t go out there.” He grabbed on to my forearm to keep me in place. “They covered Danny instantly. If we go out there, they’ll swarm us too.”
“What are you talking about? We can’t let them die out there,” I insisted. “Selene must have them contained. They aren’t coming after us here, so this tree line must be the cutoff. If we can drag Danny and Naomi back here, maybe they will disappear.”
“Jess, there are too many.” Tyler dropped my arm and started pacing back and forth agitatedly along the tree line. “I can make a run for it, but there’s no guarantee I can grab them both before the suckers bring me down. They look like they’re multiplying too. Every time Danny kills one, another one pops up in its place.” It did look like there were twice as many as before, and every time one died, another popped up. They couldn’t get ahead, because the beasties weren’t dying.
“Eamon!” I turned and ran over to his still immobile form. “You have to help us save your sister. Eamon!”
He stared stoically forward. “There is no way to help them. The Camazotz are summoned from the Underworld for protection. Selene has paid for them with a piece of her soul. Their claws are like razor blades, their teeth venomous. They are things feared even in the Underworld. We cannot stop them.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled in frustration, throwing my hands in the air. “If they exist, there’s a way to defeat them. They have to have a weakness.” My voice was frantic. “Think, Eamon. My friend is dying and I’m going to help him, even if I have to run out there on my own. If you know Selene, and know where they came from, they have a flaw. Think!”