"The witch with one green eye and one blue eye is the only one that got an actual hit," Hubert said, slowing to a stop to look at Mar�jorie. The small team of female Guardians briefly stopped to hear him out. "The ammunition went through illusion mass, giving the appear�ance of invincibility. But as Cain's forces come into this plane, it will take a moment for that to happen."
Hubert pointed toward the lingering spiral in the sky. "This is why you can see our entry points, unlike other demons. The distortion be�tween the dimensions of Nod-land and Earth has a drag coefficient of pure energy reconstituting into mass, and the loud sound like thunder tells you when beings have exited the other realm to break through."
Mike, Jose, and Berkfield were on the deck, weapons at the ready. Bobby and Dan had the hybrids within their sight lines, peering at them through assault rifles.
"Okay, people. We listen for the sonic boom, then unload your clips," Damali said, motioning for the squad of hybrids to fan out on the beach. Her mind was screaming an SOS to Carlos to return to base, but it was as though her calls had gone into a black void.
"We gotta get Rivera back here, D," Mike said, eyeing the motley group of hybrids and then the darkening horizon.
"Ya think?" Damali said, not meaning to be sarcastic, but her nerves were shot. She let go of the beacon to Carlos and locked in on the horizon and then the sea. "All right," she commanded. "I want all newbies and Sara inside. Mike, you hold position on the deck with RPGs with Berkfield, with Dan on the roof with mortars, along with Bobby covering with sniper rifles. Jose, you're on the roof with Bobby, sniping with automatics. Krissy, Inez, and Juanita, you cover windows, but keep your heads down. Marj and Marlene, electrify both entry points. Nothing with fangs comes over the threshold."
Damali tightened her grip on her Isis and then quickly unfastened the baby Isis dagger holster at her hip and double-checked the maga�zine on her nine millimeter. "Keep Sara down, behind the kitchen counter."
"Thank you," Hubert said, nodding to his team to surround the perimeter of the villa.
But for a moment, Damali stopped. Fear was wafting from the large entity in waves that almost created pain. It was a disorienting fusion-wide, terrified eyes and a voice like an English professor with what under any abnormal circumstances would seem like a warrior demon.
"Have you guys ever been in combat?" Damali asked, not sure why she cared or was concerned about their safety.
The entities shook their heads, eyes glistening with panic. She sighed and allowed her shoulders to drop. "Okay, if it gets crazy, fall back beneath the house crawl space. That's the best I can do."
But before any further discussion could ensue, Hubert grabbed the nymph and shoved her toward Big Mike. "Take her. The aerial assault is upon us!"
All eyes were immediately trained on the horizon as Mike caught the nymph and hustled her inside and quickly returned to the deck. Jose scrambled up to the roof with mortars and hunkered down next to Dan and Bobby, everyone trying to get a sense of direction and an enemy head count. Initially it looked like what could have been small specks in the sky resembling a flock of birds, but as soon as Hubert had flung the nymph into Mike's arms, Damali's internal radar picked it up a beat after Hubert's. The specks were fast-moving spirals headed their way
"Positions!" Damali shouted, dodging behind the deck for cover and holding her Glock at the ready.
Guardians scrambled, hunkering down and taking the nymph deeper into the villa with them. Artillery would only hold up for so long, given the numbers of hybrids that she could sense on the move. It would only be a matter of time before her team was slaughtered. Damali's mind latched on a quick plan: Use nature against things that could bleed half-human blood. The debate in the Neteru Council of Queens' chamber stabbed into her consciousness, but she also knew her queens had as much as said that both Neteru Councils had been given explicit instructions from On High to stand down and to let the living Neterus do this job. However, every threat her enraged queens had hurled across the oval table in a fury, Damali mentally grasped.
Instantly she felt a current strobe down her arm, and she stood quickly and headed toward the beach. "Hold your fire until I give the command!"
She couldn't address the stricken expressions held by the team; now was not a time for them to challenge her command. It was basic mathematics. They were outnumbered, therefore severely outgunned. Shells and bullets could be quickly exhausted and wasted, but there was a rich supply of natural weapons the queens had made available to her. Plus, she knew how Cain would probably play this; her team was expendable, but he wanted her alive and able to mate. He'd try to take her as a hostage to lure Carlos to his death. Damali advanced down the beach, knowing she wasn't the primary target for annihilation, al�though her family was expendable to Cain.
As the air spirals came into view, Damali held up her Isis and sent out the call to arms. "I call a murder of ravens," she shouted, and within seconds a thick, angry cloud of ravens amassed and headed to�ward the spirals.
The fast-moving black cloud of birds with razor-sharp beaks flew into the funnels, and within moments, screaming, winged entities be�gan to fall out of the sky with dead birds. Multiple sonic booms of hybrids entering the atmosphere were deafening. Headed on a suicide mission, the ravens zigzagged away, broke formation, and then recon�vened to hurl themselves at the airborne invaders again. Smaller, more aerial-agile black bodies went after huge leathery wings, flying right at them like living black bullets in a frontal assault, tearing through the membranes that gave the hybrids flight and sending stunned entities crashing into the waves. Damali watched the sea bubble and quickly ran to the shore, touching her Isis to the water.
"Sharks-U-boats, clean up the carnage! Dolphins-torpedoes! Killer whales-subs! Do not let anything come up breathing!"
Large red bubbling patches spread out in the water as the sea churned and the winds kicked up again. Huge entities riding a black dragon cavalry tried to emerge from the red underwater pits to crest the waves, but lost limbs to slashing shark teeth and were knocked off their mounts by leaping bottlenose dolphins. Huge orcas battled the dragons that were carrying the hybrids, ripping open exposed under�bellies beneath the waves and slamming into dragon rib cages like massive, thick-bodied missiles with teeth. Hurricane winds rose as a seawall built, but Damali held the line, grabbed her Isis with two hands, and made a batlike swing that split it in two to send it crashing backward into the hybrids.
"Eve owns the elements, you bastard!" Damali yelled, and sent multiple white lightning strikes from the tip of her blade to fry aerial hybrid attackers that were trying to advance on the villa.
The ground beneath her feet had begun to rumble and she knew the land assault was coming. Jamming the Isis long sword into the sand, she sent an arc of war fury into the earth.
"Insects swarm! Leaf-cutter ants from the Amazon, I call you! Scorpions render deadly! The scarabs of Anubis I summon you!"
Hybrid demons emerged from the sand like they were coming out of a hundred foxholes at once, but the instant their heads surfaced, scrambling insects swarmed over their faces and ate out their eyes, de�livering lethal stings to the howling beasts.
The rain and wind was almost too severe to hold her footing, but Damali hunkered down, using the Isis as an anchor and watching in horror as a massive black dragon surfaced too quickly for the seafaring creatures to attack it. Even in the driving rain she could see the black armor and Black Death sword raised that only belonged to one entity she knew. Cain. Behind him came a stronger cavalry, and she pushed herself to her feet with her blade. "Fire!" she shouted to her team.
Damali fell against the sand from the RPG blast Mike released as it missed the lead entity's dragon and took out the one behind it in a red-and-black splatter of guts. The demon hybrid that had been rid�ing the dragon hurled toward the water, but was saved by a black feather-winged entity.
"Go for their horses!" she yelled over the din of exploding artillery and death cries.
Wounded entities screamed; war horns and hybrid command-screeches rent the air. Machine-gun report from the roof shredded feathers. Bullets flew by her in hot flashes of metal and lethal whizzes. Grenades pelted the beach with canisters of holy water tear gas, mak�ing shrapnel from friendly fire an obstacle course that pushed her fur�ther away from the house. Black arcs from the sea met white arcs coming from the villa that crackled in the air, lighting the torrential downpour like fireworks. The huge entity wearing a black helmet had made it to the beach.
"Attack!" he yelled.