Blood of the blood frees it. And so the ice will burn bright as a sun.
She read his notes again, read others. At least he’d marked down the books and the pages so she could verify.
As she worked, she frowned over some of his translations, wrote down questions and her own interpretations.
When she needed it, she bolstered herself with a ten-minute nap, made more coffee, dug deeper.
“See the name, read the name,” she muttered as she read. “Speak the name. What name?”
As she read on, Annika burst into the room. “Sasha says something is coming. To hurry.”
Riley leaped up, left the question unanswered.
By the time she got downstairs, ran out, the others were armed and waiting.
“From the sea.” Sasha gestured. “It’s not her—she’s not ready—but she’s sending plenty. A dark cloud. I see a dark sweep of cloud, blocking the sun.”
“We can take the towers. Me and Sawyer.”
“Not this time.” Doyle searched the pale blue sky, the stacks of white and gray clouds. “We save that tactic for when she comes full force. This is a test run.” He gestured with the sword in his hands. “There, due west.”
They came, swirling into a funnel that spun the clouds, darkened them. Until they became the clouds, black and alive. They spun, a kind of whip and wave inking the pale blue to midnight.
“Impressive.” Sawyer drew both his sidearms. “But what’s the point?”
At his words that whip cracked, a sonic boom that shook the ground, and smothered the sun.
“That’s the point,” he said when the world fell into dark, absolute. “Can’t hit what we can’t see. Bran?”
Then came the thunder of wings, the cyclone of wind. Bran struck against the dark, turned the black into a murky, green-tinged gray.
“That’ll do.” Riley fired with her right, gripped her combat knife in her left. Red-eyed ravens, long-toothed bats with oversized heads and twisted bodies.
Their wings, she knew, would slice like razors if they met flesh.
But the bullets Bran had enchanted hit home. Nerezza’s winged army flashed in fire, fell in a rain of bloody ash. To her left, Annika shot light from her bracelets, pounded into a handspring, and shot again. Sasha’s bolts flew, accurate and deadly, while Bran burned a swath with twin lances of blue lightning.
And all the while, even over the scream of wind, she heard Doyle’s sword sing and strike, the brutal music of the battlefield.
Were they slower than before? she wondered. A multitude, no question, and even with skill, they’d be overcome without Bran’s powers. And still, she’d nearly misjudged a couple of targets, moving more sluggishly than others.
She dived and rolled to avoid an attack, reloading as she moved, firing from the ground. She sprang up, punching out with her knife as one veered close. Then the wind gripped her like a hand, tossed her up and back. Her body, not quite healed, knew fresh pain.
Winded, she fired again, fought her way to a crouch. Her blood froze when a swarm within the swarm peeled off, arrowed toward her.
Not enough bullets, she thought, but made what she had count. She rolled, slowed to a crawl by the force of the wind. She felt the bite of a wing graze her calf, another bite into her shoulder as she kicked and slashed.
Dozens fell around her as her comrades destroyed them, and still they came.
She fired again, stabbed one before it could slice wing and talon over her face. Three coalesced, eyes bright and mad, lancing toward her as she struggled to reload.
Doyle’s sword sliced through them, cleaved and struck as he shoved through that crazed wind. With one hand he reached down, gripped her by the neck of her sweatshirt, and dragged her behind him.
“Stay down!”
She didn’t believe in staying down. Using his body as a windbreak, she pushed up, reloaded. She stood with him, back-to-back, half mad herself as she peppered the air with bullets.
Annika leaped through, bracelets flashing, then Sawyer, then Sasha.