Dark Possession - Aja James Page 0,93

would have to wait.

They were under attack.

“The Pure Ones were made not in the image of the Pure Goddess, as many would believe, but in honor of the Beast who loved the Goddess and died for his love. Too late, the capricious, selfish Goddess learned to care, to know remorse. It is a lesson and a punishment she instilled in all of her creations, for each carried her spark within them—the Pure Ones…”

—From the lost oral histories of the Zodiac Scrolls

Chapter Seventeen

One moment Eveline was touching the Eagle King’s arm, and Ramses was angled forward reflexively to break her away from him, and the next, explosions boomed all around them, blowing up rock and stone under a hail of missiles.

It happened all at once.

Ramses had been so concentrated on Eveline and the eagle warrior that the screech of stealth fighters reached him only a second before the missiles landed.

His first reaction was to throw himself on top of Eveline to protect her, while the eagle warrior immediately took to the skies with one strong boost from his muscular legs and a flap of those powerful wings.

In the back of Ramses’ mind, he ran through possible scenarios of who sent the fighter jets and how their enemies knew their location, while he shouted out loud to Eveline—

“Stay down!”

Leaving her looking after him with a wide-eyed paralyzed expression on her ashen face, he stood over her and spread his legs wide. If anything hit close to their location, it would have to go through him to get to her. With his body turned to stone, he could probably take a hit and survive. Though he’d never tested his ability to withstand modern air-to-ground missiles or machine gun fire.

No time like the present.

He opened his arms and clenched his fists, drawing upon his Element, making the boulders around him obey his will. Thanks to the explosions, there was a lot of loose rocks to play with, saving him the trouble of breaking them apart.

With a flex of his hands, he sent boulders of all sizes into the skies, immediately taking out one jet through the belly, making it explode mid-air, and sending another one into a tailspin.

The manipulation of such large, heavy objects quickly took a toll, however, especially since he needed supreme focus to direct them with precision rather than just fling up a bombardment and not care whether they hit any targets. Ramses knew that he couldn’t keep it up for long.

Fuck.

A new squadron of aircrafts were headed their way, like a flock of scavengers on the horizon, while three remaining jets still circled above.

He wasn’t alone in fighting against the sudden attack. The Eagle King was holding his own with the fighter jets. The warrior was far more agile than the piloted planes, like a bullfighter taunting a massive, fast, but stupid bull.

With deftness and accuracy, he evaded one plane at the last possible moment, grabbed onto its hatch and tore the entire thing off, leaving the pilot no choice but to eject himself. Then, he purposely placed himself in the crosshair of one jet, waited until there was missile-lock, let it chase him back toward the plane that fired it, and shot straight up when the missile hit the other jet instead.

But the eagle warrior wasn’t fast enough to avoid the afterburn of the explosion, injuring his wings in the process.

Ramses watched it all happen while he continued to deal with incoming jets. Again, he wondered why the Eagle King didn’t fully transform to Beast. A giant eagle was much faster than a winged-man. More impervious to injuries as well.

“You have to stop!”

He distantly heard Eveline’s voice beyond the deafening din of battle. Even though she was lying at his feet, she sounded miles away.

“Ramses, you’ve reopened all of your wounds. This is taking too much out of you. You won’t last much longer!”

He knew that. He could feel it in the quivers of his body. His blood was boiling too hotly from overexertion; a thin stream trickled out of his nose.

The Eagle King was injured too, barely able to stay in flight with badly damaged wings. They were sitting ducks on the ground, while the jets didn’t exactly stay still for Ramses to hit them with boulders. There were too many of them. Ramses wouldn’t be able to hold them off much longer if he continued the current strategy.

“Alend!”

He felt Eveline’s hands on his legs, as she knelt at his feet, either trying to lend him strength or