Siege of Shadows (Effigies #2)(102)

But we were, even if not intentionally. Just as one blast shot off the head of a phantom, another one blasted off the helicopter’s tail rotor. The helicopter shuddered and shrieked out its warning, the loud, dull sound bleating against my eardrums. We were going down.

James was clicking buttons desperately, but we were spinning out of control too quickly.

Gulping in air with short, desperate inhales, I grabbed Lake. “Get us out of here!”

Lake could barely breathe; she tried lifting her arms up to still the air, but that required concentration she didn’t have with the helicopter flinging out of control.

“Jump!” she screamed. “Jump now!” Grabbing her bag, she started unbuckling her seat belt. “Trust me!”

There was no time for debate. Belle pulled a petrified James out with her into the night, Chae Rin, Lake, and I following close behind. Holding my breath, I plummeted through the sky, the cold wind biting my skin. Below us, two halves of a smoking, bloodied phantom crashed into the mountainside, but I was too far up to see who’d hit them.

Another phantom went down with a well-aimed shot, but there were more circling back toward us with gaping jaws. Belle and I attacked at the same time, one phantom bursting into flames and the other falling back down to the earth, encapsulated in ice. The wind rushed past my ears as I continued to fall to the mountainside.

“Lake!” I heard Chae Rin scream, but we were already starting to slow down. The wind rushed up to meet me but softened to a caress as it pillowed my body. The farther we descended, the clearer the figures below became. For the first time, I could see the people who’d killed the phantoms. There were three of them bundled up in thick jackets and climbing boots: a woman and two men—no, not two men, but one man and one kid. I couldn’t see their faces properly, but I did see the smoking barrels of their giant, body-length guns flashing with blue electricity.

Guns aimed at us.

“Stop!” I cried, but they weren’t looking at us. One last phantom. I could hear its screeching drawing closer to us from above. Our feet touched the ground just as two more shots were fired, but they both missed their target. Belle already had her sword out, but it was Chae Rin who rushed forward and, leaping, caught the phantom’s thick neck in her arms with her incredible strength. It pushed her back, but as she slid across the rocky terrain, she held the phantom’s gaping jaw in place. With her magic, the earth caved in and snatched the phantom’s tail, pulling him in like a sinkhole. She had to let go of its snapping jaw and jump out of the way so that the stone and soil could do their work, swallowing it up and crushing its body. By the time the earth had finished shifting, the phantom’s horn was all that was left peeking out of the soil. Chae Rin kicked it off.

That’s when I heard the click behind my head.

“Who are you?” a female voice, deeply inflected with a Spanish accent, rumbled in a low and throaty tone as the gun pressed against the back of my head.

“I thought that would be obvious,” I answered coolly, even as I raised my hands in the air. “Seeing as we just smoked a few phantoms for you.”

“Abril, enough,” said the man to my right. His face was hidden behind a blue scarf, but from his Scottish-inflected voice I could tell he was young, maybe a bit older than us. I recognized the huge, long-range weapon he’d used to fire at the phantoms in the sky. The metal covering, the electric blue bars that slid up the sides as it powered up—it was the same weapon Howard had used to fight off the phantoms in New York. A Sect weapon. The design was exactly the same.

The man rested it against the ground while his hands fumbled in his bag, searching for something. He took out a metal stick that, when he tugged at it, stretched out in new sections. “We need to set up protection or we’ll get eaten out here. Put your gun down. This isn’t over.”

He was right. I could feel the rumbling beneath my feet.

“They’re coming!”

The kid. He’d pulled his scarf down long enough for me to see his olive-skinned face before he turned around again and aimed his weapon at the mountain peaks. Several phantoms, as black, rotted, and smoking as the rest, crawled over the hills on thin, towering spider legs. They were moving too rapidly toward us, even despite the weight of their giant, cicada-like torsos.

I batted Abril’s gun away with my hand, and though her face was covered with a red scarf and a thick hood, I could see her eyes rounding in fear at the sight of the phantoms. Shoving her gun back into her holster, she dove for her Sect weapon on the ground.

As big as the phantoms were, they were fast enough to dodge the blasts, scuttling back and forth. The kid jumped out of the way, narrowly avoiding the sharp edge of a phantom’s leg as they came for us.

One leapt out from behind us so quickly, Lake and James didn’t have time to react. Lake screamed as the phantom smashed its leg into James hard and he flew back, landing on the ground with a heavy thud, out cold. I couldn’t see if he was breathing or not.

Belle ran, ducking to avoid Abril’s hectic blast, and slid, cutting off two legs in one go. Chae Rin created another sinkhole in the mountain, which took a phantom down, but she had to be careful—the Scottish boy had to run and duck out of the way to avoid being taken with it.

It was chaos. With a great yell, Lake managed to push one of the phantoms back, but there were two more coming around the corner. Rushing forward, I summoned every bit of strength I had to set them on fire. I managed to burn off some legs, though there were so many trees nearby, I had to be careful not to start a wildfire.