hole and disappear.
As soon as there was nothing else substantial to draw into the energy bend, a hard suction force literally lifted their bod ies up off the ground while they gripped their blades with eyes closed and as gale-force winds beat against them. Then as though someone had suddenly turned off a giant tap, the noise, wind, and suction abruptly stopped, dropping them hard with an umphf - and the opening in the ground resealed. They both looked up quickly at each other, breathing hard and sweating.
"What the hell was that?" Damali said, pulling herself to stand.
"Humans, take cover! Your sweat draws them!" a voice called out. "Raid!" Carlos immediately looked up. The sky was going black. The sound of leather wings beating against the atmosphere created a slow Doppler effect in the air. He yanked his blade out of the pavement at the same time Damali extracted hers, and began running with Damali, trying to get them behind any building that remained. A flaming black arrow whizzed by Damali's thigh, and just as quickly as it landed, a sixfoot-tall, female angel hy brid, dressed in ancient Viking armor with a startlingly beautiful contrast of long, platinum dreadlocks, amber eyes, and ebony skin, somersaulted out from behind a huge palm that lined the boulevard, dropped to one knee, took aim with a massive crossbow, and fired.
Damali and Carlos glanced at each other, the same men tal thought stabbing into each other's brains - Valkyrie.
Whatever the warrior had shot at, she apparently hit, be cause the cloud stopped approaching, turned on what had begun to fall out of the sky, to rip it apart to consume it.
"Go, go, go!" the angel hybrid shouted, pointing to a cluster of monuments in the distance, then began running after Carlos and Damali, turning occasionally to fire in the air. But the targets she hit were eaten quickly and it only gave the huge flock of beasts momentary pause.
"Go without me - seek shelter with the others in the old palace!" The angel hybrid turned to run back toward the ap proaching cloud to draw the fanged entities away from Damali and Carlos. "Run now, humans!"
Damali and Carlos took one look at each other. "Aw, hell no!" Damali shouted. "We go out swinging!" Carlos yelled. "No!" their would-be protector shouted. "You do not un
derstand. They'll eat you! They've been driven to frenzy. This is unlike any battle you've ever known! Most humans come through in bits, not whole like you, already mutilated
flesh in the bombardment from earth plane. Go, humans!" she shouted, her voice strident as she began running again.
"No - you don't understand!" Damali shouted, running behind her and then past her. She spread her wings quickly and held up her blade. "Neteru, not straight human," she said, her breaths coming in bursts. "And a little something else called crazy."
"Damned straight!" Carlos said, jogging to Damali's side, eyes lit silver, battle-bulked, fangs fully dropped to bat tle length with blade raised. "Let's do this." The entity before them slammed her forearm across her chest and swiftly bowed. "I am Valkyrie, sworn like my kind, to follow the carriers of the sacred blades." Her big, beautiful amber eyes shimmered with unshed tears. "My honor is to die beside you!"
"Ain't trying to die today, sis," Carlos said. "But we are gonna clean out a nest. Fall back; hold the line for the refugees. Let us draw the fire as bait." Damali glanced up at the quickly approaching darkness that covered the sky then looked at Carlos and shot him a mental image of the two Neteru battles that had taken place in the Black Forest glen. All it took was a nod to let her know he got it. Both Neterus began running, increasing in speed as Damali pulled her wings in close to her body, then both leapt up off the ground, locked left arms at the elbow, blades out, and spun. Like a gleaming silver tornado of fury energy they went headlong into the airborne mass of leather-winged predators creating blood-splatter carnage in a horrific aerial display. Body parts began dropping from the sky as demon-hybrid blood streamed in ribbons. The chaotic dark flock soon broke into disorganized clusters of entities diving and bobbing in screeching clouds to attack what had been maimed. Like sharks cannibalizing their own in a feeding frenzy, they began to fall. But the Neteru whirl of white light outrage then sent strobe pulses of blue-white charge from