Chapter 20 #2
Is Romulus right? Is this really all because Remus came for me?
If that’s true... if this is because of me...
My eyes land on Ksenia’s pain-contorted face as she clutches her stomach through another contraction, whimpering despite her fierce expression.
Then, dear god, this is all my fault.
“Where are you taking us?” Abaddon demands as we lift further into the air, the castle falling away below us.
“I know somewhere we can go,” Layden says tersely, not elaborating.
“Is it safe for us?” Abaddon presses.
“Safer than here,” Layden mutters. Then, sharply: “Shit. They’re here. On our six. Incoming. Eight fighter jets, and they’re firing missiles.”
I can hear them now—a high-pitched screaming sound cutting through the air.
“Abaddon, Romulus, get the fuck out there and deal with it, or this ‘copter and anyone not immortal will be wiped out in about fifteen seconds.”
The back ramp of the helicopter lowers again with a mechanical groan, and before it’s even halfway down, Abaddon and Romulus are running—wings flaring wide and magnificent—and they dive out into open air.
I scream, then cover my mouth with both hands.
Screw it. We’re mostly stable in the air. I unbuckle with shaking fingers because I have to see what’s happening with Romulus. He just flung himself out of a helicopter thousands of feet in the air!
The ramp is now fully open, and my hair whips around my head violently as I hang on to metal grips along the interior ceiling. The wind is deafening.
I gasp at the sight of Romulus and Abaddon flying with their massive black wings outspread—each wing easily twenty feet from tip to tip, the feathers gleaming like obsidian in the afternoon sun.
They soar straight toward the incoming missiles with impossible speed, their bodies streamlined and powerful.
The twin speeding projectiles are moving so fast I can barely track them—only the thick white trails left slicing through the brilliant blue sky like chalk lines. They’re closing the distance at hundreds of miles per hour, the screaming sound growing louder by the second.
But each brother dives directly in front of the missiles without hesitation, wings tucking tight against their bodies to increase speed.
Romulus reaches his first—I can see his arms extend, grabbing the missile mid-flight like catching a football. For a split second, he holds it.
Then it detonates.
The explosion is massive—a ball of orange and red fire blooming outward in a perfect sphere, black smoke billowing at the edges. The shockwave ripples through the air visibly, distorting everything behind it like heat waves off summer pavement.
I scream, the sound ripped away by the wind.
A hundred feet away, Abaddon’s missile explodes too—another fireball, this one even larger, the flames so bright I have to squint against them.
But when the smoke clears—great dark clouds drifting on the wind—both brothers remain.
My hand over my mouth trembles, my throat raw.
They’re hovering there in the air, wings beating slowly to maintain position. Romulus’s shirt is gone, burned away, revealing the unmarred muscled planes of his chest and abdomen. Abaddon’s mane seems slightly singed but he’s otherwise untouched, golden eyes blazing with fury.
They’re already streaking toward two other missiles that have gotten even closer to us—close enough now that I can see the white-hot flames jetting from the rocket engines.
They’re maybe two hundred feet away. Coming right at us.
Romulus reaches one of the missiles with a burst of speed, his tail whipping behind him for balance as he grabs it with both hands.
This time he doesn’t just hold it—he redirects it, muscles straining visibly as he forces the missile to turn.
It spirals away, exploding harmlessly over empty forest below.
The trees briefly light up orange before smoke covers them.
Abaddon takes a different approach. He flies straight at his missile and punches through it.
Actually punches through the metal casing like it’s cardboard.
The missile explodes around him, but he emerges from the other side of the fireball like a demon rising from hell, wings spread wide and trailing smoke. Bits of flaming debris rain down around him.
These explosions are even louder than the first—ear-splitting booms that hit me in the chest like physical blows. The turbulence rocks our helicopter violently. I’m thrown against the wall.
The guys are close enough now that I can hear Abaddon’s roar—primal and furious, a sound that raises every hair on my body. It’s not quite human, not quite animal. Something ancient and terrible.
I crawl back to look, holding onto the benches. Abaddon shoots back toward the jet fighters who launched the missiles, his massive form gaining speed. White runes begin pouring from both his hands—not in streams but in thick ropes of light that twist through the air like living things.
The jets are sleek and modern, dark gray metal catching the sunlight as they bank and turn. But they’re not fast enough.
The runes hit them like lassos, wrapping around the fuselage of the lead jet.
Almost immediately, it veers off course, the cockpit sparking with electrical discharge.
One wing dips sharply and the jet begins to spiral—slowly at first, then faster and faster, spinning like a top as it falls from the sky.
“Unmanned drones coming at our three o’clock!” Layden yells from the cockpit, his voice cracking with strain.
I whip my head to the right and see them—at least a dozen smaller aircraft, more agile than the jets. They’re painted matte black, triangular in shape, with no cockpit windows. Pure killing machines operated by someone safe on the ground somewhere.
They’re swarming in from the opposite direction too, coming at us from all sides like angry hornets.
Abaddon banks hard left, his lion-like features set in a snarl as he starts tearing into the drones coming from the west. He grabs the first one out of the air with both clawed hands and literally rips it in half down the middle.
Metal screams as it tears. Sparks shower out.
The two halves tumble away, flames licking up from the exposed wiring.
He moves to the next one, his wings beating powerfully. This time he swipes at it with one clawed hand, shearing off the entire wing. The drone immediately loses stability, spinning wildly before exploding in a ball of fire.
And midair, I see Romulus’s head begin to turn.
It’s unsettling to watch—the whole head rotating a full one-eighty degrees on the neck, the body not moving at all. Like an owl, but wrong. Unnatural.
So that Remus’s face—that wild, wicked, impossibly wide grin—appears on what was the back of the head, now facing forward. Now greeting the drone swarm from the east.
His eyes are bright with manic joy. His too-wide mouth is open in a laugh I can hear even over the wind and engines.
He doesn’t just fight the drones.
He plays with them.
He grabs one out of the air and uses it as a bat, swinging it into another drone with such force that both explode on impact. The blast rocks him backward but he’s already moving, diving toward the next target.
He sling-shots one plane into another—I watch him grab a drone by the tail, spin in a full circle building momentum, then release.
The drone shoots through the air like a missile, slamming into another with such velocity that the metal doesn’t just crumple—it punctures straight through.
Both aircraft explode simultaneously, creating a double fireball that blooms like a deadly flower.
Remus flies through the flames, his wings barely singed, already reaching for another drone.
He rips its wings off with his bare hands—grabbing the thin metal and just tearing, the awful sound of rending metal audible even from here.
He crushes others like aluminum cans. Then uses his tail like a whip, the flat end smashing and sending drones into uncontrolled spins.
And he’s laughing the entire time.
More and more drones come—wave after wave, at least forty now filling the sky around us. But Remus and Abaddon destroy them before they can get anywhere near us or line up a shot.
The sky is full of fire and smoke and falling debris. Trails of black smoke mark where drones used to be. The air smells like burning fuel and hot metal.
Kharon watches from inside the helicopter, all six arms ready, runes flickering around his fingers like blue-white fireflies. His dark eyes track every threat, calculating, ready to act if anything gets through his brothers’ defense.
I only happen to look down because Layden swings us sharply south to make our escape, and the sudden banking turn throws me against the wall. I have to grab for a handhold to keep from falling.
Through the window in the floor—reinforced glass meant to let soldiers look down at the battlefield—I see them.
Tanks.
Dozens of them, maybe fifty or more, lined up on the ground in perfect military formation.
They’re positioned in the clearing where the castle used to be, arranged in precise rows like chess pieces.
The long firing tubes—cannons that must be at least twenty feet long—are all pointed upward at sharp angles.
All aimed at us.
At the exact same angle. The exact same trajectory. Someone calculated this.
“Guys? Guys! There are tanks!” I scream, my voice breaking with panic.
Layden swings his head back to look at us. “What?” he yells over the wind and engine noise.
I’m about to scream “tanks” again when Ksenia unhooks herself from the bench chair with fumbling, desperate hands, drops to the metal floor, hikes her legs up, and screams so loud it’s clear she’s ready to push out her baby right now before Kharon can even get there to catch it.
But none of us expect what happens next.
The baby emerges from between her legs in a rush—along with a burst of blinding white-blue light runes that explode outward like a bomb.
The runes shoot straight through the helicopter, through the front window, shattering it into a million glittering pieces.
The runes continue on fifty feet outside of the helicopter, expanding and swirling until they create a massive pearlescent pool hanging in midair in front of us—like a portal. Or a mirror.
Or a doorway to… somewhere else.
“What the fuck is that?” Layden shrieks as glass rains down around him.
I don’t fucking know, but I finally manage to yell again: “TANKS!”
Layden looks down, finally seeing that the tanks have launched their missiles during the explosive birth—at least twenty of them screaming upward toward us in a deadly swarm.
He has just enough time to move the stick of the controls full speed ahead, straight toward the hovering pearlescent mirror still hanging impossibly in the air in front of us.
And just like that—
We plunge through the hovering pearly sideways pool in the sky.
Into complete darkness.
It’s like going from day to night in the space of a heartbeat. The sky is so pitch dark that even the lights of the helicopter barely penetrate it—the beams seeming to stop just inches from the source, swallowed by the thick, inky blackness.
The air feels wrong. Heavy. Ancient.
Then we all hear it, and our heads swing around in unison.
That sound.
It’s already loud in the helicopter—wind rushing in through the shattered front window, the rear ramp still open, the blades overhead creating their constant whump-whump-whump.
But this is something far louder.
A horrible, deep, squawkish scream from some sort of beast. The sound reverberates through the darkness, through my chest, through my bones.
First one scream.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Raven begins to cry—high, terrified whimpers. Hannah holds her tightly, pressing the baby’s face against her shoulder.
All of our heads twist back and forth frantically, trying to locate the sources of the sounds. Trying to discern how close the ungodly creatures might be.
Because they sound like they’re in the sky with us.
Flying with us.
Circling.
And they don’t sound happy that we’re here.
But exactly where the hell are we? Is this some sort of—
“Get buckled in!” Kharon demands, his voice cracking with fear I’ve never heard from him before. He grabs his wife and newborn baby—still wet with afterbirth and wailing—off the floor and buckles them onto the bench wall.
Before he can even get the buckle fully cinched, something massive bumps against the helicopter from outside.
The impact sends me flying across the interior, slamming into the opposite wall with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
“Thing!” Layden shrieks from the cockpit, using some name I don’t recognize. “Get us the hell out of here!”
“I don’t know where here is!” Kharon shouts back, panic clear in his voice.
“Your kid brought us here, and you’re the only other realm-jumper I know. So get us all out of here before whatever the fuck is out there decides to eat us for dinner and you spend a thousand years boiling in its intestines!”
“Fuck,” Kharon curses—something I’ve never heard him do. He clutches his freshly born daughter tight with his center pair of arms, protective and fierce. With his other four hands, he grabs hold of the helicopter wherever he can, his dark skin beginning to glow.
Runes start spewing from his hands, covering the helicopter both inside and out in a protective shell of white-blue light.
I watch in awe, finally managing to buckle myself in with shaking hands right as we jerk roughly again—harder this time, the whole helicopter tilting violently to one side.
I look toward the back ramp.
And my blood turns to ice.
A gigantic, reptilian claw—each talon as long as my entire body—has gotten hold of the helicopter’s tail section. The scales are black and ridged, gleaming wetly in our lights.
“Faster!” I cry, clinging to the belt straps so hard my fingers ache.
“I’m going as fast as I can!” Kharon shouts, sweat pouring down his face as more runes stream from his hands.
The baby in his arms starts crying—loud, lusty wails of a healthy newborn.
And then runes begin to pour from her tiny waving fists too.
A bright stream of white-blue light explodes from the infant’s hands, shooting out the back of the helicopter until another massive pearlescent mirror looms in the darkness ahead of us.
The light is enough to illuminate what’s around us for just a moment.
And I see them.
Huge beasts with enormous flapping wings that span hundreds of feet. Scaled bodies as large as buildings. Long, serpentine necks. Clawed feet. Eyes that glow red in the darkness.
Holy shit.
I can barely breathe.
Are those—?
Are those dragons?!