Reign of Shadows (Reign of Shadows, #1)(49)

She was armed, too, holding her sword at the ready. I didn’t want her to have to use it though—one drop of toxin off their receptors, and she would suffer. The fractured thought bounced through me that if I was quick with my arrow, the dwellers wouldn’t have to get too close.

Until I didn’t feel her beside me anymore.

“Luna,” I shouted, yanking arrow after arrow from behind me, shooting advancing dwellers with swift thunks. They were closing in, falling on me in an endless pour.

“Luna!” I roared, for once not caring about remaining quiet. It seemed like every dweller in the world was converging on us anyway.

Then suddenly it felt like another time. Another place.

I had a flash of myself struggling at the cell door of my prison, gripping the bars and screaming Bethan’s name until I went hoarse, until the last dwindling rays of midlight vanished. My last glimpse of anything was my father’s smiling face up on the ramparts.

“Fowler!”

I shook off the memories. Luna wielded her sword, thrusting it into the pale, soft body of a dweller.

“Luna! Get behind me!”

An indignant expression crossed her face.

“Luna,” I growled. With a curse, I jumped several paces until we fought back to back. I pulled my dagger from a sheath at my waist and started stabbing into dwellers, grateful for my height. I managed to avoid the toxin dripping from the nest of receptors in their faces and stabbed them in the heads.

I was worried that Luna wouldn’t be so lucky if one got too close. She was considerably shorter and didn’t have the best advantage to inflict damage.

“Luna,” I called over my shoulder. “We need to move!”

“How do you suggest we do that? They’re everywhere!”

I looped my left arm with hers. “Follow me.” With a yank, I pulled her after me, charging through and whacking a path with my sword.

I struck dwellers down, swerving around when I heard Luna cry out. A dweller had closed both its hands on her arm and was lowering its face to her, toxin dripping from its feelers. She was stabbing it in the belly with her sword, but it didn’t seem to care. It kept coming.

With a shout, I swung my sword and sent its head flying. Whirling around, I cut down several more dwellers, clearing a path for us to squeeze through. We were almost to the top of another rise now. The air glowed even brighter.

A giant crested the rise ahead of us. My battle cry withered in my throat. I didn’t recognize it as a dweller at first.

It rose up out of the night, limned in the red-gold haze from the village in the sky. This one was unlike the rest. It looked like some freakish entity reaching close to seven feet. Even the toxic receptors on its face were thick as my wrists, like wiggling snakes, stretching for a victim. It approached us, its feet falling heavily on the damp earth.

I clamped a hand on her arm and backed up.

“Fowler?” she gasped, and I realized she must have heard its louder-than-usual tread and sensed its size.

I grabbed an arrow and shot the monster in the face. It paused with a shudder, but its great body kept lumbering toward us.

With a curse, I pulled another arrow out and let it fly. The second arrow pinged off the edge of its shoulder and seemed only to enrage it. It huffed and moved faster now—faster than I’d ever seen a dweller move before. Its pasty gray body was almost running at us.

“Fowler?” Fear laced Luna’s voice.

I shoved her back behind me and readied my sword, my grip achingly tight. If this was the end, then I was going down first and I was going down fighting.

An arrow whistled past me to land at my feet. More followed, hissing through the air, raining down from the trees, striking the great body of the dweller. It made a gurgling sound and halted just a few yards away from me. Still, it didn’t fall. Over a dozen arrows pierced the chalky flesh of its body and it still remained standing.

It began moving again, staggering toward me, the toxin dripping from receptors as thick as black syrup. A shouted command from above heralded another volley of arrows. This time, it dropped to the ground on one knee. I waited as other arrows continued to rain around us, finding targets in the other dwellers.

But the big one wasn’t finished. With a wet rasp, it pushed back up to its feet and continued. I stepped forward and swung my sword, cutting its thick neck only halfway. Pulling back my arm, I swung again, this time slicing it clean and sending the head soaring. The giant finally fell, snapping the ends of dozens of arrows sticking out from its body.

I looked up, my chest heaving with labored breaths. Countless faces stared down at us from planks in the trees.

One man dropped onto a platform positioned at a lower level than the village floor. With a grinding crank, the wood platform started to descend.

“What is it?” The knowledge that we were still surrounded by an army of dwellers was there, in the thread of anxiety in Luna’s voice.

“People are coming to get us,” I murmured as the lift lowered.

“We’re going up?”

“We are. There’s a man coming down in a lift.”

“A city in the trees,” she repeated after me. “It’s brilliant.”

“Almost as good as a tower?”

“Almost.” She nodded in agreement. I heard the smile in her voice.

The lift stopped inches before hitting the ground. “What are you waiting for?” The man motioned around us to the army of dwellers still closing in. “Get in. I’m not here to pick up dwellers, too.”