Okay. He had a point. “You’re right, but you don’t understand. I can’t hide. If I do…” I took a deep breath and decided to be honest for once. Go me. “If I don’t go out to that wall and face whatever’s there, I never will. You get that? And I can’t let myself do that. I have to…I have to get over this.”
And that was true. So much was riding on me. I needed to face Seth and transfer the power of the God Killer from him to me, and that was going to require a major throwdown between us. Then I’d have to face Ares. I couldn’t wimp out because I got my ass handed to me. I needed to pick myself up and get going. I’d done it before.
But this time is different, whispered that annoying voice that sounded so much like me.
I ignored the voice. “I have to do this or…” Or I would hide again.
Aiden looked away, drawing in a deep breath. His shoulders tensed, and I knew he was going to argue with total Aiden logic. He let out the breath. “Okay. But stick close to me. If it gets out of hand, and if I think you can’t handle it, I’m throwing you over my shoulder. Do you understand?”
Color me surprised—and a little annoyed—about the high-handed statement, but I got that it was coming from a good place, and the sirens weren’t shutting up anytime soon. I nodded.
“Deal?”
I sighed. “Deal.”
“Then let’s do this.”
Picking up my pace, I forced my tired muscles to work as we jogged down the pathway. As we got closer, we were joined by several more Sentinels, and I could already see a couple dozen near the wall.
The sirens eased off, but the thick, unnatural tension hanging in the air like heavy clouds told me that whatever had happened hadn’t ended. Scanning the grounds, I felt my stomach dip. To our left, a small group of Guards and Sentinels crouched, circling something. I recognized Luke, Olivia, and Solos, and I wasn’t surprised to see them in the thick of things. They didn’t hesitate. Even though Luke and Olivia hadn’t technically graduated, they were Sentinels.
I, on the other hand, was a poser in black.
Solos straightened, tucking back a strand of shoulder-length brown hair that had escaped his low ponytail. He turned at the sound of Aiden’s voice, and the jagged scar stood out against his abnormally pale cheeks.
I didn’t hear what he was saying. My gaze was fixed on what the other Sentinels were staring at.
A body was on the ground, totally unrecognizable. Male? Female? No clue. It had been a Sentinel, that much I could tell from the tattered remains of the black uniform. The skin and clothing looked like they had been pecked away until only thin slices of flesh and muscle remained. Even the eyelids and eyeballs were removed.
My stomach turned. “Good gods…”
Olivia rose, smoothing her hands along her thighs. That’s when I saw the other Sentinel on the ground, knees bent and hands clenching over her stomach. Blood streamed across them. Deep, vengeful cuts tore through her cheeks. Her left eye was a bloody mess. Moaning softly, she was trying to stay still as another woman wrapped white gauze around her face, covering her destroyed eye.
“They were out doing rounds, down by the burnt-out cars. They’re saying they came out of nowhere,” Olivia told me in a hushed voice. “She almost got taken out by them pulling him back to the gate.”
I tore my gaze from the body. “What came out of nowhere?”
Olivia opened her mouth, but the eeriest high-pitched squawk I’d ever heard cut her off. It was a constant crescendo of harsh screeching.
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.