“Ready?”
Roxy nodded once, a feral grin taking over her face. I returned it. I felt half-wild, adrenaline surging through my veins. There was no better feeling.
Our camaraderie was short-lived. A cry sounded out—the creature had narrowly missed striking a retreating soldier with its tail.
“Pin it down!” Finley shouted, startlingly close.
I saw her then, just off to my left. Her voice sent a cold sensation through me. This woman had shot Grayson, wiping out his life in an instant. Yet I had to do battle with and possibly alongside her now because she couldn’t control her own monster, the one she’d brought to the battlefield. For heaven’s sake.
Finley and the last of her available soldiers surrounded the creature. The monster shrieked, enraged, as its tail lashed out and crashed down on a clump of young pine trees. They disintegrated into kindling scraps, and the ground shook beneath us. A soldier screamed before the monster crushed him, silencing the man forever. My stomach churned at what his last moments must have been like. Even though we were now in a life-or-death conflict, I couldn’t shake my grief at the deaths of all these people who were my comrades not so long ago.
“Go for the restraints!” Finley screamed.
Her soldiers tried to grab a series of thick woven straps swinging from the monster’s harness. The creature spewed another cloud of yellow mist. The putrid stench followed, and I watched one of the fallen soldier’s bodies dissolve in a jaundiced froth.
Ignoring their captain’s orders, the soldiers abandoned the straps and opened fire on the monster. No laser, no bullet, no prod provoked any reaction besides rage from the beast.
“How could they have thought bringing this creature here was a good idea?” Gina asked in disbelief on the comm, echoing my own thoughts. “Even if it doesn’t kill us all, it will find its way to nearby towns.”
A new wave of adrenaline hit me with the image of the monster rampaging through the nearby resort town. If trained soldiers couldn’t fight this monster, how could civilians? While I would love nothing more than to watch Finley suffer the consequences of her own arrogance, her troops were suffering and didn’t look like they would be getting it under control anytime soon. If it overpowered them, I doubted my small team would have a chance against it. But if we combined forces…
I growled in frustration, knowing it definitely had to be done and hating it. “Finley!” I shouted, straining to be audible above the battle. “The monster is out of control. Call off the attack on us, and we’ll help you contain it.”
Zach groaned in my ear. “We’re helping her now?”
“Goody two-shoes,” Roxy muttered under her breath next to me.
Finley turned at my voice, glowering when she spotted us, her eyes wild. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She fired at us with no warning. Roxy yelled and flung herself to the ground while I ducked behind a tree, poised to return fire.
Before we could take any additional action, however, the monster swung its head, alerted by the commotion. It opened its mouth and unleashed its toxic spray in our direction. Grabbing Roxy by the collar, I dragged her out of range, the nearby plants wilting to sludge as we scrambled clear.
Finley wasn’t as lucky. She screamed in agony as the liquid enveloped her. Her ivory white skin began to peel from her muscles, the tendons liquifying, bones melting. She tumbled to the ground. The smell was ungodly. She stopped moving as the last of her life drained from her body.
I vomited onto the grass, gasping for breath, then forced my eyes back to the monster. It had returned its attention to the other side of the field. How the hell had Bryce and Louise lasted this long with that thing?
When a soldier neared it, the monster smashed its claw into the ground. Cries rang out. The long body lurched forward, focusing on someone I couldn’t see. Roxy pulled me behind a fallen tree, far enough from Finley’s body that we didn’t have to see the horror. We couldn’t get hit by that mist.
“We’ve got to get control of that thing,” Roxy muttered.
“Its body is too long for it to see what’s happening behind it. It was our noise that made it turn around.” I sucked in a breath. “Any ideas?”
“The remaining chains and the saddle could be promising. The electric prods didn’t seem to be affecting the beast at all.” Roxy clamped her hand on my shoulder, her gaze serious. “Shoot like crazy when we’re up close? The skin might have a weak spot.”
The helicopter veered toward the monster, and Zach opened fire. The monster wheezed and thrashed, lifting a giant claw to strike at the chopper.
Gina! She needed to be careful, but the Bureau had never trained us to deal with monsters like this. Thankfully, the chopper swung away with a quick lurch, free from the threat of giant claws for a moment.
Just as I sighed in relief, the chains around the front pair of wings broke with a hideous squeal of metal. In the struggle, the chains dropped against the ground with a horrifying thump. One pair of wings was officially free. The monster reared, more agitated than ever. Suddenly the prospect of it taking flight was horrifyingly possible. That was the last thing we needed.
My eyes went to the saddle on the beast, thinking over Roxy’s suggestion. Could we manage to stop it from up there? The Bureau soldier had been controlling the beast until Colin took them out. It seemed like the sole promising option… if I could be a better rider.
“Don’t antagonize it,” I told Zach. “Keep pinning the soldiers in place. We’re going to handle the monster.”
Roxy’s brows shot up. “Hope you have a special cannon I don’t know about hidden in your pocket,” she said, doubtful.
“Bryce?” I called into the comm. “I need you and Louise to distract it any way you can. Do you copy?”
“I copy,” Bryce grunted, sounding winded. “We’re doing our best to dodge Finley’s team. I can’t guarantee we can do both.”
“Let’s try,” I said into the comm.
Here goes nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I ran for the monster, terror making my legs shake. Roxy kept up with my pace. Her face was set in a mask of stoic determination.
The ground was slick with gore and rot, but I somehow repressed my urge to vomit again to focus on our task. We had to act before we lost our opportunity. We couldn’t let the monster release another attack like the one that killed Finley.
If Roxy and I climbed the beast, maybe we could get it back under control, maybe even find a weakness up there on its back and kill it. As far as I could tell, it lacked the capacity for strategy. It just kept moving forward no matter what, only attacking when startled by sound.
A huge thanks to the Bureau for sending the worst possible monster to stomp all over the place. It had already taken out a number of Bureau soldiers, but if we kept close to the monster, we had a better chance of staying away from its acid. Surely it wouldn’t spew acid on itself, right? If we could also dodge its flailing limbs.
The creature lurched forward up the mountainside with a grunt, ripping up dirt and roots like they were nothing. Fantastic. The Bureau soldiers screamed and dived out of the way.
“I’m going up!” I shouted to Roxy. One of the straps swung nearby, still attached to the saddle. I grabbed it with a running jump, letting the force swing me upward. With a horrified gasp, I smacked against the creature’s underbelly. The papery scales sent a disturbing shudder through me. Luckily, the monster didn’t notice, and its skin wasn’t toxic. It charged ahead while I clung to the rope, gaining my bearings.
“We’ve got company,” Roxy yelled, running alongside me below.
I glanced back to see soldiers swarming toward her. My irritation spilled over. Even without Finley, the Bureau soldiers mindlessly followed her last orders despite the obvious emergency.
“Back off!” I screamed. “Can’t you see we’re trying to stop this thing? If you want to live, we need to control this monster.”
They didn’
t listen. Roxy covered my back with a spray of bullets aimed at the pursuing soldiers. It was difficult for her to shout and run at the same time, but I heard her even with the creature’s hisses filling my ears.
“Keep going,” Roxy called over the piercing noise of the gunfire. “I’ll keep them busy.”
Gratitude and admiration warmed me as I hauled myself up the rope, remembering a time when this had been little more than a torturous exercise at the gym. I pulled myself up quickly, working fast despite the strap burning my skin. Whatever material the Bureau used to secure the creature, it was tough. The fibers scraped my hands raw in just a few feet. It was unlike anything I had touched before. More unknown technology they had developed.
The monster lurched to the side, and a woman screamed. A wave of terror coursed through me before I realized it wasn’t Roxy or Louise. But the next one could be. I pulled myself into the saddle, panting. On top of the monster was better than bouncing alongside it on a rope. I had a better vantage point.
The saddle, made of some kind of flexible synthetic leather, was strapped tightly onto the monster at the base of its neck. An apparatus attached to the front of the saddle hooked up to a complex system of levers that met a system of pulleys and gears on either side. One of the straps in the back of the harness was broken, but the saddle itself had held so far. If I was lucky, it would last long enough for me to do what I needed to.
“We’re running out of time!” Bryce cried, his breath coming through the comm in exhausted gasps.
My heart slammed against my chest. Without sparing time to look for him, I wrapped my hands around the front of the saddle and surveyed my options with panicked eyes. There was a variety of gears and handles, but I had no idea which to press or pull. I yanked one, and nothing happened. I pulled another, and the monster veered slightly. I couldn’t see what was happening with Bryce or Louise, but the way Bryce had sounded suggested they were almost at the end of their strength.
A gust of wind buffeted me as the monster beat its wings. I pressed myself tightly to the saddle, dodging the wings as well as I could. The monster had been tied up for a reason, but the Bureau should’ve used better chains. Its front set of free wings flapped powerfully, lifting the beast partially off the ground.
The rapid beat of the chopper’s blades joined the haze of the wings as Gina pulled close to the monster. Someone screamed into the night air—another soldier’s life cut short by one of the monster’s claws. The creature shrieked in anger as the chopper dipped lower, approaching from behind. I had just adjusted to the wind from the creature’s wings when the chopper sent new currents from the back. I might as well have been trapped between two hurricanes. I clung to the harness, unable to try the levers without risking a fall.
“I’m still on this thing,” I shouted into the comm.
The monster reared and swiped a claw at the chopper surprisingly fast. It wheezed savagely, and the second pair of wings burst from their chains.
There was no time to wait for stability. I grabbed the control apparatus, trying to pull any of the strange gears. Even if it ejected me from my seat, I had to try. Gunfire drowned out the chopper, which swerved aside. I prayed Roxy was still handling the Bureau soldiers. If they decided to fire at the monster, they could take me out in the fray.
“Lyra! Is there anything you can do to stop it?” Gina cried back, panicked. Our time in the Bureau had never exposed us to a creature quite like this.
“I’m trying,” I said through gritted teeth. In that moment, I would have given anything to go back to redbill attacks.
The monster stretched its four free wings with a triumphant roar and reared upward. I screamed as it faced the helicopter. I weaved one arm and leg into the harness, trying to anchor myself to the monster’s body as I fell backward. Disoriented by the rough jostling, I landed with a pained grunt on one of the bony gray spines protruding from the creature’s back.
The creature bucked again, its leathery wings beating harder, and my head slammed against its back. Knocked loose, my comm—the one I had altered at Phoenix HQ—flew from my ear. Fear exploded in my stomach as I watched the tiny collection of metal and plastic disappear into the air. There was now no way for me to communicate with the team.
Worse, the monster sucked in a breath, preparing to launch yellow mist at the chopper. Feeling the rumbling in its body and terrified for my brother, I lurched forward without hesitation and yanked the closest lever I could find.
Miraculously, the harness forced the monster’s head down as it unleashed the terrible yellow spray. The mist brushed the side of the chopper, but the bulk of it missed. My internal celebration was cut short as I saw that the acid was hissing on contact with the metal. Despite the metal of its muzzle remaining unaffected by the acid, the monster’s breath could destroy more than just organic matter.
Zach!
I watched with horror as the side door bubbled and sagged. The chopper tilted as Gina struggled to control their crash. Metal split with a sickening crack. The monster turned its back on the chopper, but I heard it crash. I clung to the harness, hyperventilating. My brother could be dead right now, and I had no way of knowing.
But I couldn’t fall apart. With intense effort, I cleared my mind. I banished all thoughts of the future and the past, living solely in the moment.
I had no comm, no weapons. All I had on me was a small set of knives shoved in my boots for emergencies. Survival emergencies, not “monsters from the Immortal Plane” kind of emergencies. My hand reached into my boot, fingers curling around the solid comfort of the knife’s handle.
I would make it work.
I leapt forward, stomach in my throat with fear, pausing only to yank more controls atop its head. The monster swatted at the muzzle. It wanted to be free. Did it know that someone was trying to control it? Or did it simply sense a pull? The monster struck its own face in its attempt to break the muzzle. I lurched in that direction and held tightly to the saddle.
No match for the claws of the beast, the control apparatus broke away, falling past my head. I yelled as the creature lurched forward. No longer restrained, the monster opened its mighty jaws, the lower one unhinging like a snake’s, and released a much larger, concentrated cloud of yellow mist onto the mountainside.
But it couldn’t reach me back here. The saddle was at the base of its neck, so the monster’s anatomy prevented it from batting me off. With its apparently low intelligence, I doubted it could form a strategy to scrape me off on what remained of the trees. I had the saddle on my side.
Below me, the last pair of wings burst free, the chain links falling to the ground like shimmering rain in the moonlight. Giving a final sibilant wail, the creature flapped its wings and rose into the air. Screaming, I clung desperately to the saddle. This was the worst possible outcome. I was alone, with no method of communication, on a flying creature that could rain down acid that dissolved metal like it was paper. The muzzle was gone. The chains holding down the wings were gone. The saddle was likely to go next. I doubted it had been designed with flight in mind.
The creature showed no signs of stopping. I snatched one of the knives from my boot and stabbed downward with all my strength where the base of its horrifying skull met its spine. The blade barely punctured the rolls of flesh. My heart dropped with my hope as the creature screamed. It didn’t sound wounded, but it definitely sounded irritated.
Alerted to my presence, the monster bucked. The saddle beneath me caught air for a moment, leaving me frozen in terror. The creature pulled away from the battle and flapped its wings powerfully. The saddle reconnected with its body with a fleshy smack. The monster wheezed terribly, as if pained. I wrapped my hands around the saddle, knuckles burning white with desperation.
A familiar screech cut through my racing mind—far different from the monster or the desperate humans on the ground. I let out a hopeful cry, as if in response to the redbills that began to appear all around me. Their forms dove toward the ground, streaking
through the air. A flash of movement and color caught my eye as a particularly large redbill dove through the monster’s wings, headed toward me. Dorian’s redbill!
The bill weaved between the creature’s wings, utterly dwarfed in size, coming to hover beside my saddle. On its back, I saw Dorian reaching for me.
I stared at him, relief filling me like cool water, a hint of heartburn slipping under my ribs. “I’m glad you’re here, but some warning about acid-breathing monsters from the Immortal Plane would have been nice!” I yelled.
“Get on,” Dorian bellowed.
I shook my head fiercely. “I have to neutralize this thing!”
If it got away, some sleepy village nearby would get trampled or melted to putrid sludge. The monster surged again, this time jerking sideways, and I pressed myself into the saddle. Dorian stood on his redbill, his dark hair whipped by the wind of both creatures’ wings, and effortlessly leapt from the redbill’s back to the monster’s, landing behind me on the saddle. Impressive, even with impending doom lurking beneath us.
He reached out a hand and grabbed me to steady himself. I felt an electric spark pass between us but no pain. From his belt he pulled a large dagger, offering it to me as if it were a bouquet of roses. It wasn’t a blade he’d carried before his mission to the Immortal Plane. Whatever its origins, I took it gladly, feeling a burning sensation of determination fill my entire body.
The monster let out an enraged scream, swatting at anything that moved around it as the redbills’ talons carved its papery skin. The vampires attempted to harass the creature from all sides. Redbills shrieked as the monster tore through their group. The birds and their riders fell from the sky like missiles, screams of the injured ringing out into the night. The redbills called to one another, their gleaming black forms darting back from the chaos. They rose into the sky. Dorian’s redbill refused to leave with the others, even as the monster veered away from the clearing and soared up the mountainside.
Darklight 2: Darkthirst Page 30