He gestured outside the Crystal Dome where a desperate battle was taking place. The security guards who were still outside were shooting at the snake-bat things, but it didn’t seem to make a difference how many of them they shot, because when one dropped, there were always two more to take its place. They poured out of the gash in the sky and covered the helpless reporters like ants or bees swarming over prey. As Baird watched, a group of them took off, leaving one hapless victim twitching on the concrete just outside the Crystal Dome.
“Gods,” he said thickly, for the things had not only chewed the victim’s clothes off—they had chewed his skin off as well. All what was left was a raw, bleeding, screeching creature clawing weakly at his face, as though he was still trying to get the things off of him.
The male’s eyes stared from his sockets because his eyelids had been chewed off with surgical precision. His lips were gone too, giving him a skeleton grin and where his nose had been, there were two black holes. As one skinned hand clawed at his face, the other grabbed at his groin, where his shaft and balls had also been eaten away.
“Don’t look, lilenta,” Baird said thickly, pulling Olivia closer to him and turning her head away from the bloody ruin that had once been a human reporter. “You don’t want to see this.”
“But I’m a doctor!” she protested. “Sylvan and I should go out there and help!”
“You can’t risk it, baby,” Baird told her. “You can’t help anyone—all you’d be able to do is get chewed up yourself. There’s no way I’m letting you go out there.”
“I have to—” she began.
But at that moment, a fleet of ships came rushing down through the sky.
32
Baird looked at the ships and then cast a confused glance at his brother.
“Did you call them already?” he asked Sylvan.
Sylvan shook his head, also looking confused.
“No, I haven’t had time.”
“Then how did the fleet get here so fast?” Baird demanded. Because the ships in the sky were undeniably Kindred in origin. Then he noticed something he had missed before. “Gold!” he exclaimed. “They’re not silver—they’re gold. Sylvan—that isn’t our fucking fleet!”
“It’s our fleet—the fleet of the Monstrum Kindred!” Storn exclaimed, pointing to the golden metallic ships zipping all over the sky. “They must have sensed the Darklings and come after them!”
“Can they do anything about them?” Mia asked anxiously, staring at the sky.
“Our scientists were developing a weapon they hoped would defeat them when I left,” Storn answered, putting an arm around her and drawing her protectively close. “I only hope that they finished it and it works.”
As he spoke, one of the small golden ships took aim at a flock of Darklings and appeared to shoot. But what came from the ship’s guns wasn’t any kind or ray or beam or bullet—it was an explosion of blue and gold sparks that burst like a star and settled onto the mass of Darklings.
Baird frowned to himself.
What the hell is that? How do they expect to kill the damn things with fireworks?
But as he watched, the flock of Darklings seemed to shiver and then…it began to dissolve.
“It’s like a stain when you spray bleach on it,” Olivia breathed. She was also staring at the sky. “Look—it just melts them away ‘til there’s nothing but black dust left. That’s amazing!”
Indeed, more and more of the small, maneuverable golden ships were shooting out the gold and blue sparks and more and more of the Darklings were dissolving into little clouds of black dust which fell to the ground. Already the blue sky seemed clearer when only moments before it had been black with the alien invaders.
“They’re saving us!” one Council member exclaimed. “The Kindred fleet is saving us!”
“Those ships are not from our fleet,” Sylvan told him. “I believe those are the Monstrum Kindred. As I said, we have no weapons that can defeat the Darklings but I know the Monstrum were developing one.” He nodded with satisfaction. “It appears to be working admirably.”
“They’ve come to Beijing as well,” a holographic Council member said. “The golden ships!”
“They’re over Australia too.”
“And Sweden!”
“And Japan!”
“It appears that the Monstrum Kindred have made an appearance on Earth at exactly the right time,” Sylvan said, throwing Baird a look.
“You’re not kidding,” Baird growled. “We saved them from the Scourge, but not even the Scourge stripped people to the fucking bone! Those Darklings are like flying piranhas!”
Almost as soon as the battle started, it seemed, it was over. As more and more of the Darklings were dissolved into black dust, fewer and fewer of them came from the green gash in the sky. At last there were none left at all and several of the golden ships stationed themselves around the gash, like sentries guarding an open doorway to keep some dangerous predator at bay.