Night Fae (Dark Fae Kings #3) - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,67

shelter.

Richie sidled up to me, a riot of bitterness, disappointment, fear, anxiety, and exhaustion haunting his boyishly good-looking face. This hadn’t been the romantic escapade he’d pictured when he came to California looking for a hookup.

A wave of sympathy for the rich, privileged boy washed over me before vanishing like mist. I was no longer the Evelina Greene who sat on a college boy’s lap, giggling and boozing at a fancy party.

I was morphing into Ileana—my birthright.

Chapter 20

The landscape shifted to a mixture of rocky and grassy terrain. A cave loomed ahead, curved around a reddish mountain. My superior hearing caught the sound of rushing water from inside the cavern.

I turned to smile at my companions. “Joy found us a shelter. We can rest now—”

The sky ripped open as if on cue, and inhuman shrieks and the flap of jagged wings accompanied the alien windstorm.

“What the—” Richie didn’t get a chance to finish his curse.

The wings stretched to their full width, covering the red sky.

Two creatures the size of half a cruise ship stared down at us like insects. They were even more terrifying than demons. A crest of horns protruded from their spines. Thick, sharp scales covered their powerful limbs, and their claws were as long and lethal as swords.

They hovered in the sky, eyeing us like tasty morsels stuck between their enormous teeth, their lengthy, spiky tails swinging left and right. Just that sight made my stomach knot with fear.

These beings didn’t belong to this realm. Then, suddenly, I don’t know how, but my mind reached out and touched them. A flash of images pierced my consciousness—Fae warriors hunting the alien younglings in a barren land under the blackened sky during the Wild Hunt.

So, in this trial, the Furies opened a crack between dimensions to let the full-fledged alien hunters come and take revenge on me because they saw me as their enemy—the high Fae.

The fury in the lethal beings’ eyes was like an abyss, threatening to devour me.

My brother’s and companions’ terror at seeing the winged alien beings was so tangible that it kicked me out of my own terrified stupor.

“Run for the cave!” I shouted, my shaking hand gripping the Legend Heavy. “Take care of my brother!”

If I didn’t stand a chance, none of them did.

Joy, go. Guard my brother and protect the rest, I commanded the hellhound.

He sprang ahead, leading my team and my brother toward the cave.

“Evie!” Nox paused, not wanting to leave me.

“You’ll slow me down,” I yelled. “Go!”

Then, without warning, the female alien hunter opened her massive jaw, spewing out maimed human bodies. Tania’s head plunged from the sky first, a third of her red hair missing from her skull. I also distinguished the punk dude’s tattooed arm tumbling down beside the head. Then, three severed legs along with the rich blonde girl’s headless body rained down with other unrecognizable body parts.

My companions screamed, utterly petrified. The hellhound howled frantically.

My stomach twisted in icy knots, and pure terror seized my heart again.

“Run!” I barked at my team and my brother, jerking them out of their paralysis. “Don’t look back! Run!”

Joy nudged my brother to climb onto his back, and Megan and Jill helped Nox settle down in a hurry. Nox grabbed the fur of the hellhound, holding on for dear life. Richie trained his rifle toward the aliens who still hovered above us as he ran.

He’d become their next meal if he provoked them.

“Don’t shoot, Richie,” I yelled. “Leave it to me. Go!”

“Run faster, Richie!” Megan shouted. “Do you want to die?!”

“We can’t just leave Evie—” he argued.

Jill shoved him forward as she passed him. “Don’t be a liability to Evie!”

The group fled.

My every cell and instinct screamed for me to scurry away from the hunters, but I couldn’t run. I needed their focus on me, so my brother and my team could get away. It was me they wanted anyway.

“Take this, fuckers!” I thrust the elephant gun onto my shoulder and shot the female hunter before she dived toward me. The impact jerked me back a couple of paces, but I stood my ground the next instant. I trained the powerful rifle on the male, whose gray skin was a shade lighter than the female’s, and shot him.

Both hunters raised their forearms, and the bullets sparked off their armguards.

No fucking way! My jaw dropped, and my heart pounded in dismay. These aliens had more advanced weaponry than humans.

The Legend Heavy was my ace and my best bet against them, but the