Island of Glass (The Guardians Trilogy #3)(54)

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.

“Bran?” Riley shouted.

“He said to get here, stay here,” Sasha shouted back, sent a bolt through one creature that continued through another. “And he’d—”

For an instant, the light blinded. It carried a flood of heat, a burn of power that scorched the air. What died didn’t have the chance to scream.

Overhead the sky bloomed blue again.

Shaken more than she liked, Riley bent over, braced her hands on her thighs as she caught her breath.

“You’re hurt.” Annika hugged arms around her.

“No. Just a couple of nicks.”

Though it did no good, she protested when Doyle yanked her sweatshirt off her shoulder, studied the wound. “A graze.”

“Like I said.” She jerked the shirt back in place.

“They swarmed you.” Sasha lowered her bow, looked back as Bran strode toward them. “I didn’t realize it until it was nearly too late.”

“Quantity over quality, that’s what I was thinking.” Sawyer swiped a splatter of blood from his cheek. “Enough to keep us busy, but on the weak side.”

“Yeah.” Riley nodded. “I thought the same. Then the wind picked me up, tossed me—like getting slapped by a tornado. A couple hundred of them banked toward me.” She snarled out a breath. “She knew I’d been hurt, figured I was the weak sister. Well, fuck that.”

“We were too far away to help.” Annika rubbed Riley’s arm. “If Doyle hadn’t been closer, if he hadn’t . . .”

Realizing she still held her gun in an iron grip, Riley made herself holster it, look at him. “Yeah. Thanks for the assist.”

“All in a day’s.”

His eyes said something different, she thought, something not so cool and dismissive. She kept hers locked with his as Bran checked her shoulder.

She heard him speak, didn’t register the words. He and the others might have stepped into another world. Hers raced, pumped with adrenaline and lust.

Doyle gripped her arm, said, “Now.”

She sheathed her knife. “Now.”

She moved with him toward the house. Apparently she didn’t move fast enough to suit him, as he plucked her off the ground. Since that was fine with her, she wrapped her legs around his waist, dragged his head down to hers.

“Oh.” Delighted, Annika hugged her arms. “They’re going to have very good sex.”

Sasha watched Doyle carry Riley up the terrace steps. “Shouldn’t we treat her wounds before . . .”