Fletcher looked up and felt the cold rush of fear down his spine, prickling his skin with goose bumps. In the growing light, he could see the bird-demons among the branches far above, their black feathers blending with the murky shadows of the canopy. Already a few of them were awake, their heads untucked from beneath their wings. Fletcher and his team were lucky that they had not been spotted when the birds had come to roost.
“We should move, now,” Fletcher whispered. “We’re not safe here.”
He turned and looked into the scrying crystal. It was still too far to see the source of the blue light, though it was larger in the crystal’s screen. At the same time, the blue was less visible, for the growing light of dawn made its glow indistinct.
Silently, Fletcher tugged a few branches from the barricade to make a way out of their camp and motioned the others to mount. He followed suit, gathered Athena, and cajoled Ignatius to move through the gap. The Shrikes might wake any minute.
The Drake tucked his wings against their knees so he would fit and turned to face their exit, placing each foot with care so as not to snap stray twigs underfoot. Athena wriggled against Fletcher’s chest, and he realized he was gripping her tightly with unconscious fear. He released her and she pounced onto his shoulder, catching Alice’s attention. Fletcher’s mother smiled, oblivious to the danger they were in.
Ignatius took one step. Two steps.
Then, the unthinkable. Alice laughed aloud, her voice unbridled as she reached for the Gryphowl. Athena leaped into her arms, hoping to keep her quiet.
But it was too late.
A screech came from above. Then another, cutting through the air like nails on a chalkboard. Slowly, ever so slowly, Fletcher tilted his head back.
A dozen eyes stared at him, black and beady in the dawn light. It was as if time stood still, freezing the world in one horrific moment. Then a dark form dropped from the canopy above, landing among its brethren in a rattle of branches. A second came after it, enormous wings beating the air. It cawed softly, the sound raucous and raw in Fletcher’s ears, filling him with terror.
More followed, one after another, seeking the source of the noise beneath them. Pairs turned to dozens, turned to scores, so many that the branches creaked under the weight of the enormous birds. One settled so close that Fletcher could see the red wattle shaking as it snapped its beak in anticipation.
“Three,” Sylva breathed, just loud enough for Fletcher to hear.
He didn’t understand, his mind reeling with fear.
“Two.”
Fletcher stared as the first Shrike dropped to the ground, no more than a few yards from Lysander’s feet. Sylva and Othello were already mounted.
“One.”
Ignatius was lowering into a crouch.
Oh.
Fletcher lunged for the Drake’s neck.
“Now!”
They launched into the air, shooting directly up so that Fletcher was flattened against his mother, feeling her arms tighten around his midriff as the momentum pressed them against Ignatius’s back.
A mad cacophony of screeching tore at his eardrums as the two demons hurtled by, then they were twisting through the canopy and into the open air.
The dawn sky was stained the yellow of an old bruise, and the red land in front of them glowed with its light. The world tilted once more as Ignatius jinked into the deadlands, then they were whipping through the air in a flurry of beating wings. Lysander was just ahead, his lighter load and experience giving him the edge over the Drake.
Screeching, ragged with fury, the Shrikes followed in their wake. Fletcher glanced back and his breath caught in his throat. The Shrikes were in hot pursuit, so many that the jungle was almost blocked from view by the mass of black forms that tore after them.
“The light, where’s the light?” Sylva yelled, twisting her head to look over her shoulder.
The sky was too bright, so much so that the portal no longer glowed like a beacon to point their way. They flew on into the wastelands, hoping to catch a glimpse of the blue speck.
“Faster,” Fletcher yelled.
The Shrikes were gaining, and the Matriarchs were leading the flock. Their wings were as large as a cutter’s sails, beating the air in long, ponderous sweeps that somehow thrust them through the air at breakneck speeds. It was all Ignatius could do to stay ahead of their outstretched claws, the talons ready to hook into his burgundy flesh.
A flash of pain. Fletcher turned to see Ignatius’s tail had been stabbed by a Matriarch’s beak, but even as he did so, the Drake’s tailspike slashed upward, stabbing into the demon’s plumage and hurling it aside.
Another dropped from above, its wings folded, talons aimed for Cress. Fletcher drew Gale and fired twice without thinking. The Matriarch was snatched away in a double burst of feathers and blood.
Wind tore their hair as they hurtled over the red plains, the rock-strewn terrain rushing beneath them. The land stretched onward, the void on their right, the jungle on their left, with nothing to guide them but the rough direction that Pria had disappeared in.
“There!” Othello bellowed, even as he blasted buckshot from his blunderbuss into the mass of Shrikes behind. Three jerked and tumbled limply away, but it barely made a dent in the screeching tumult of wings and beaks.
Fletcher saw nothing but the Shrikes behind; he felt only the tilt of Ignatius’s path as he followed Lysander in a new direction. His mother’s face was at the corner of his vision, calm as she stroked the Gryphowl in her arms.
A crackle of lightning spurted from behind her, Cress’s battle gauntlet outstretched and swinging to spread the spell. The nearest birds jerked and spasmed in the air, twisting and dropping like stones, only to recover and join the pursuit once more.
Fletcher tried a shield, but the white light spooled away in the wind, tangling in a nearby Matriarch’s claws but doing little else. A fireball followed from his next finger, blasting it beak over claws into another, knocking both from the air.
A small Shrike swooped in from the side, and Cress cried out in pain as its talons tore at her. Her returning kinetic blast sent it flying, accompanied by a crossbow bolt that took its neighbor through the wing. Then the Shrikes were above, below and among them, the flock overtaking to surround them from all sides.
“It’s a portal,” Sylva screamed, and Fletcher turned to see the spinning orb in the distance, a blue mote floating on the horizon. A pair of Shrikes dropped from the sky above Lysander, and Ignatius blasted a torrent of flame, leaving their charred, smoking remains to whip over Fletcher’s shoulder.
In response, the Griffin screeched and dropped down, taking a Shrike by the wings and tearing it apart, even as another slammed into his side and scrabbled at his feathered fur.