“So much for subtlety,” Echo said as she stared down the barrel of a gun. Floodlights surrounding the ruins of Grand Central backlit the group of soldiers who had the misfortune to find themselves standing directly where Echo and her company had emerged from the in-between. “We really should have seen this coming.”
“Drop your weapons!”
The owner of the gun – a National Guardsman, judging from his pale fatigues – couldn’t seem to decide where to direct his gaze. Wide eyes flicked between Echo and the group of assorted Avicen and Drakharin behind her. Compared to them, Echo was positively plain. Not a scale to ogle or a feather at which to marvel. Her own attention was divided between the rifle pointed squarely at her face and the gigantic tear in the sky, through which arcs of what looked like black smoke were shooting like the negative image of solar flares. An enormous gash in the in-between had opened up right above Midtown Manhattan, impossibly dark against the deep violet of the night sky. From her vantage point at the center of what remained of Grand Central’s main concourse, she could see the long line of it, cutting across the heavens like a cruelly torn seam. Half a dozen Drakharin mages had lent their power to transporting them all here, and the reception was somewhat chillier than Echo had anticipated.
The National Guardsman shook free of his initial shock just enough to speak in a tremulous voice. “Who the hell are you and where the hell did you come from?”
“Umm.” What did one say to such a query? Hi, I’m the firebird, you may know me from folklore of various cultures all over the globe. And these are my friends, members of magical species you had no idea existed until twenty-seven seconds ago. We teleported here to fight evil!
The in-between where they’d come through refused to close behind them, as it should have once the gateway was no longer in use. Instead, it remained, a gaping hole in the ground, as black as sin. A side effect of the world falling apart at the seams. Echo hoped nothing else came through besides them. It felt a bit like leaving the door to one’s house unlocked. And it probably made them look even more fearsome to the trembling soldier in front of her. Echo wasn’t quite sure how to explain any of it in a concise manner the man would believe. She was spared from having to figure it out by a familiar voice coming from behind her.
“Easy, soldier. They’re with us.”
The Ala glided into Echo’s field of vision. She had traded her customary skirts for an ensemble of leather armor the likes of which Echo had never dreamed of seeing her wear. It was curiously stuffed and aged, as though it had seen some use, and the Ala wore it with ease, as comfortable in the outfit as she was in her flowing silk dresses. A broadsword Echo had never seen before was strapped to her back, snug in a bejeweled sheath that looked like it would be at home in a museum.
A handful of Warhawks followed her, along with a few Avicen who weren’t fighters, not by nature or trade, but who were wielding swords and knives and bows all the same. It looked like whoever was able to carry a weapon had joined the fray. Echo scanned the group until she caught sight of a familiar head of tawny feathers. Rowan. He met her eyes with a shallow nod. His face was covered in soot, and a long, ugly gash ran from the outer edge of one eyebrow to the middle of his cheek. As fast as Echo had hurried here, it looked as though the fight had started without her. The Ala appeared wholly unperturbed by the array of guns and the human men who brandished them. As if literal millennia of hiding from humanity hadn’t just imploded in spectacular fashion.
“Someone’s been busy,” Echo observed. The gun lowered and she exhaled a shaky breath, glad her brain wasn’t about to be painted across the floor. Grand Central was enough of a mess as it was, with the debris only partially cleared away and cranes and scaffolding surrounding the pit in the center of the concourse.
The Ala made a gesture for the other guardsmen to lower their weapons. They did.
“What happened here?” Echo said, her hands still held out at her sides. The rifles were no longer aimed at their faces, but the men holding those rifles seemed as unsure of Echo and her company as she was of them. The forehead of the man who had confronted her was beaded with sweat, and while he had obeyed the Ala’s command with the rest of his men, he was still eyeballing the Ala as if he wasn’t quite convinced she was real.
“These fine gentlemen and I have come to an agreement,” said the Ala, her onyx eyes bearing down on the fidgety guardsman. “Nothing brings people together quite like a shared threat, wouldn’t you agree?”
“So it would seem,” Echo said. The unlikely band of allies standing at her back was proof enough of that.
“When the sky tore open right above our heads, we realized our time living in the shadows was at an end,” said the Ala. She came to stand beside the guardsman in front of Echo. The soldier, who didn’t appear to be a day over twenty-five, took a small, probably unconscious step away from the Ala. Not that Echo could blame him. Even disregarding the inhumanly black skin – as dark as a starless night sky – and the feathers, the Ala cut an imposing figure in her armor.
“Tanith has Ivy,” Echo said. A more detailed explanation for the impossible logistics of what had transpired in her absence could wait. There were more pressing matters to attend to, and so long as she wouldn’t have to dodge bullets while staging a rescue mission that was also an assassination, Echo found she didn’t much care how it had come to pass that the Avicen were working alongside the human military.
A murderous look passed over the Ala’s face. “I know. Ivy was at the hospital, tending to the sick, when Tanith appeared in the middle of the ward and absconded with her.”
Rowan drew closer to the group, his eyes never quite straying from the human soldiers surrounding them. Several of them stared openly at the knife Rowan held tightly in his right hand. The blade was bare, save for a coating of a red fluid that appeared too gelatinous to be blood. He wiped it off on his jeans before sliding it back into the sheath strapped to his forearm. “A nurse called the police to report what she had seen, but no one believed her. Not until monsters started falling from the sky.”
Caius pushed to the front of the group. The Drakharin in their party seemed even more ill at ease with the presence of humans – and human weapons. Echo assumed he had been busy making sure none of them spooked and started a fight. That would be the last thing anyone needed. “Monsters?” he asked.
“Like the one that attacked the Nest,” Rowan replied. He rolled his shoulders as if fending off an ache, jostling the bow he’d slung across his back. Echo had a vague recollection of him telling her he was much better at ranged weapons, much to his chagrin. He’d always thought swords looked cooler. “But smaller. A lot of them.”
A shudder ran down Echo’s spine at the mention of the vile creature that had decimated the Avicens’ home and a good chunk of Grand Central. A nightmarish entity, formed of writhing shadows and screaming souls. Before Tanith had bound herself to the kuçedra, it had gone in search of its counterpart, sniffing out the firebird in the places where her presence was strongest. And Echo had led it right to the Avicens’ doorstep.
Rowan pulled an arrow from his quiver, showing them the red-tinged head. “It’s bloodweed,” he said. “I thought if it could stave off the infection, or whatever was literally sucking people dry of their life force, then it would hurt those things. Nothing else did.”
It was a clever solution, and Echo felt a brief swell of pride in Rowan for having thought of it. “But you beat them back?”
There wasn’t a shadow beast in sight.
Rowan heaved a tired sigh. “For the moment, yeah. But they keep coming in waves.” He jerked his head up at the breach in the sky. “They’re falling through that thing.”
Echo peered up at the rip in the in-between. It wasn’t swallowing the clouds around it like a black hole the way she had imagined it might, but there was a void in its immediate vicinity that took her a moment to puzzle out. Starlight, faint through the dense smog that blanketed the city, peeked through the smattering of thin clouds everywhere but near the tear. “It looks like it’s swallowing the light around it.”
“Yeah,” Rowan said. A layer of grime coated his clothes, along with patches of drying red that Echo hoped was not his blood.
A commotion drew their attention to the cluster of Drakharin behind them. Dorian’s voice, sharp as a knife, cut through the crowd as he pushed his way forward. “What the hell is he doing here?”
Echo followed Dorian’s vicious gaze.
Oh.
Among the Avicen stood a single warlock, who’d been hidden behind the bulk of their group. He had starlight eyes full of magic and mischief. Hair as black as night. Skin a burnished gold.
Quinn. He’d been a prisoner of the Avicen since he’d tried to betray Dorian (and Ivy and Jasper) months earlier, but someone had let him out of his cage.
The warlock held up his hands in a placating gesture, as if Dorian were a temperamental colt that needed calming. “Would you believe me if I said I’m here to help?”
“No,” said Dorian and Jasper in unison. Dorian’s sword dripped with the bloodweed elixir being passed around. Jasper’s gaze dripped with disdain.
Quinn lowered his hands. “Then believe this: If that crazy bitch has her way, this world will crumble, taking every single one of us with it. Including me. I’m here to help myself. Helping the rest of you is just a fortunate by-product of my own self-interest.”
“That’s enough,” the Ala said. “We can’t afford to be precious about our allies.”
Dorian looked ready to argue, and Echo didn’t blame him. She wasn’t sure about having the warlock at their back, even if his reasoning was grotesquely sound.
“We need all the help we can get,” Rowan said decisively. That, however, was not what halted the words on Dorian’s tongue. Echo felt it before she saw it: a growing malevolence. Rowan’s expression mirrored her own. A frown spread across his features as he glanced upward. “Ah, crap,” he uttered, more tired than surprised. He slung the bow off his shoulders and slotted the arrow into place. “Incoming.”
The Ala looked toward the breach, uttered an incredibly descriptive curse in Avicet and drew her sword. The others followed suit, even the still-skittish Drakharin. Rifles swiveled upward. One of them caught the light just enough for Echo to see that the tip of the barrel had been coated in the bloodweed concoction.
Echo gazed up at the gaping maw of the in-between. Shadows swirled from its unfathomable depths, taking form as they poured forth, solidifying into loosely defined beasts. Their amorphous forms shifted from one shape to another. The kuçedra had looked like a dragon when it had attacked the Nest, taking the form of that which the people in its immediate vicinity feared the most, but now every soul in New York City was watching the breach spew forth monsters made of Darkness, projecting their own fears onto them, forcing them to adopt forms too varied to truly congeal into coherence.
With her free hand, the Ala tossed a thick plastic bottle toward Echo, a wide-mouthed purple container emblazoned with the logo of New York University. She caught it, surprised by the warmth radiating from it. “For the rest of their weapons,” said the Ala. Her arched eyebrows said the rest: You are your weapon.
Echo slid the dagger from her belt, unscrewed the bottle, and dipped the blade into the bloodweed mixture. The smell assaulted her nostrils while she held the open bottle in her hand, but the odor lessened once the liquid met steel. Fascinating. She passed the bottle to Caius, trusting he would distribute it among his troops – their troops, she supposed.
Be ready, Echo, whispered a voice at the back of Echo’s mind. Rose’s own fear slithered around inside Echo’s skull. Tanith will not fall without a fight.
Rowan nocked an arrow and then let it fly. It pierced what passed for a hide on one of the creatures. A shrill, unnatural shriek sliced through the air. Echo clapped her hands over her ears, but Rowan seemed unaffected. Maybe he’d grown used to the sound of those things dying. “Echo, you either have the best timing …,” Rowan said as he retrieved another arrow from his quiver. There were a dozen left, maybe fewer. “… or the worst. Either way” – he let loose another arrow, his hazel eyes already seeking out his next target – “welcome home.”