avoid breathing in the smoke or the smell of the torn bodies. The corpse of Lady Iris still hung on one of the few pieces of the stage that had remained standing, hovering over the square like this was her judgement upon us all.
“Do you think most of the people have gotten to safety?” Emma whispered.
“I don’t know,” I mused. “But—”
I didn’t finish my sentence, for Kiara screamed. I whipped around— she was pinned under the raptor’s claws, who’d jumped on her from behind. It hissed and went to dive its teeth down toward her throat, but Alexei rammed his shoulder into the raptor’s. The raptor fell off, but not without lashing its claws out at Alexei, and slicing through his mask to cut his cheek. Blood spurted, and Alexei staggered backward. Theo projected a shield as the raptor went to attack again, and it was sent tumbling. The raptor spun upward and hissed as the eight of us surrounded it.
The raptor wasn’t very big— only a bit larger than me in my wolf form. We had it cornered. This one would be easy.
As we moved in, the raptor let out a horrible screech that hurt our eardrums— all of us covered our ears, and we fell to our knees at the raptor’s cry. I had to close my eyes and duck my head in an attempt to get away from the awful sound. What kind of creature was this? Its yell was nearly as bad as a siren’s scream.
When the raptor saw we were down, it attacked. It darted forward with its claws extended toward Stefan. Delmare pushed him down, but not before the raptor sank the tips of its claws into Stefan’s front. Stefan groaned and fell to the side, blood spilling all over his cloak. Delmare shot a battle orb at it, and missed.
What the raptor didn’t have in size, it made up for in speed. The raptor jumped from this point to that, and our magic skittered by uselessly. The raptor didn’t stay on one target for long— he cut a gash into Odette’s arm before it lunged out at Alexei, and sliced into his leg. They weren’t deep cuts, but if the monster provided enough of them, we’d all bleed to death, which I’m sure was its strategy. When I was sure the raptor was one place, he was already another, and slicing into another one of my friends with vengeance.
I changed course. Once the monster turned on Emma, I unleashed my throwing knives before the raptor could get to her. Three of them hit the raptor in the side. It gave a wild cry, and that put it off the attack. It backed up, lashing its tail and shaking its head. Its dozens of eyes glittered at me with hunger, the knives still embedded in its sides.
The monster began screaming again, louder this time and focusing his voice directly on me. The sound was so loud and grating, it was enough to create pain. I was sure my ears would bleed. A great pain developed in my temple, a migraine unlike any I’d felt before. I fell to the ground again as the monster advanced, making his voice louder and louder, until it felt like my brain was going to explode inside my head.
Odette and Theo moved in unison. Their shields combined into one, forming a bubble that they enclosed around the creature. The shield kept the screech within, and the monster’s head lolled back. Its voice died down, but by this time, it was too late. The aftershock of the noise bounced back against the shield, and echoed into a tremendous clamor the raptor could not survive. Its head exploded, and eyeballs went pinging against the inside of the shield as the raptor killed itself with the sound of its own screams.
Theo and Odette let the shield drop. The tangy smell of fresh blood mixed with the spilled gore. Save for Emma and I, everyone had been cut open by one of the raptor’s claws. The shifters would heal quickly, but the girls were losing blood. The other shifters tore their cloaks and made makeshift bandages, wrapping them around the girls’ wounds. Even so, Delmare, Kiara and Odette’s faces remained pale.
And still, the roars of our enemies hadn’t grown any duller.
“How many more are there?” Delmare asked. She winced as she pressed a hand to her side, where the raptor had delivered a painful strike.