35 AURORA
Below me, huddled in a deep, rain-filled drainage ditch, are two young girls.
Shivering. Terrified.
Their thin silk garments are plastered to their blue-with-cold skin.
And though my brain is desperate to keep searching for Sky, I can’t leave them. Not with the two evil men who are closing in on them from each side.
Both carry items; tasers, rope, knives, cuffs—and both wear bloated, self-satisfied, eager expressions.
The girls don’t have a chance unless I stay to help. Luckily, my innate nature knows just what to do.
A sudden contraction of my core, fueled by my disgust and anger, draws all the ambient air around me into my center. The sudden atmospheric vacuum makes the temperature in the glade plummet, the hunters' breaths instantly turning to white fog as the pressure drops.
Condensing my weightless form into a sharp, twisting tornado of silver-white whipping wind and howling static, my rotating form generates a localized electromagnetic hum, crackling with raw, miniature lightning.
I slam down directly between the ditch and the hunters.
Got you, motherfuckers.
The men shriek, throwing their arms up as my winds whip the freezing rain into a blinding, razor-sharp twister. I spin faster, the friction throwing off sparks of gold and lilac light, tearing the rifles straight out of their hands and flinging them into the undergrowth.
Fuck dragon fire.
I am the storm.
But just as I prepare to flog them permanently into frozen nothingness, a violent, agonizing yank detonates against my ribs.
London.
His connection to me is vibrating with a sudden, suffocating wave of unadulterated panic.
He needs me.
He needs me right NOW.
Fuck.
Gathering every ounce of my remaining velocity, I expand outward with one final, deafening blast of compressed air. The shockwave hits the hunters dead in the chest, lifting them both off their feet and throwing them backward into the briars like broken dolls.
Run girls. Run.
Before the mud can even settle, I’m away in a silver flash.
I launch myself through the dense timberline, cutting through the now torrential rain. Trees blur into vertical streaks of green and black as I track the pull of the bond, flying faster than my human mind can compute, desperate to bridge the distance.
Bursting into the dark glade, the sheer chaos of the scene hits like a smack in the head.
Blood, mud, rancid acid and frightened sweat. The latter comes from an older man who is digging at the earth with London.
Tally is staggering onto his feet, while Francois is trapped under a giant, mutated dog-creature. Tally’s golden fur is caked in filth and stained crimson where jaws have torn into his shoulder. Francois, in snake form, is sluggish, straining to get free.
Fuck.
I look to London. He’s frantically scrabbling in the mud. And that’s when I see it—a black box flashing green digits. An electronic countdown clock.
00:02:14
00:02:13
Gravity slams into my bones as I shift back, my feet slipping as I rush toward the shallow trench they’re digging. “Move! Get back!” I gasp, thrusting my hands forward as London and the stranger scramble out of the way.
I tap deep into the storm inside my chest, throwing my arms upward to try and manifest a violent, localized updraft directly over the rectangle of loosened earth.
I’ll suck away all that heavy clay.
Fuck. It’s not working.
The rain has turned the earth into a heavy, thick, unyielding sludge. My winds merely whip the surface water into a frenzied spray, scattering mud across the ferns but leaving the weight of clay firmly in place.
Air cannot lift this. It needs claws. It needs hands.
00:01:45
Panic, cold and sharp, pierces my heart.
“TALLY!” I scream over the howling gale. “You need to dig her up right now!”
Hearing my command, Tally tears his jaws away from his opponent, leaving a massive gash across the hound's muzzle.
He throws the monster off, pivoting in the mud, and launches his massive wolf-frame straight towards the crater.
His claws become a blur of motion, flinging massive clods over his shoulders as he and London dive back into moving earth.
But the hound he abandoned isn't dead. It lets out a wet, enraged snarl, its yellow eyes locking onto Tally’s exposed spine as it prepares to spring.
“Fuck you,” I hiss.
Before the beast can launch itself, I shift into a shaft of concentrated high-pressure air, striking the dog in its side. Bones snap, and my force pushes harder, as the creature swipes through my non-existent body.
Nope.
I channel the full weight of the tempest, pinning the thrashing monster down beneath a suffocating column of wind.
To my right, Francois has finally gotten the upper hand, his black coils now crushing the second hound until it goes entirely still. He shifts back to human and runs to help dig.
Two dog-monsters down. Now we can finally concentrate on Sky.
But before I can even turn to check the countdown clock, a sudden, catastrophic change hits the clearing.
An unnatural dread sweeps through me. Something tells me to look up.
Down from the stormy canopy, a creature comes diving into the clearing.
It has the face of a beautiful woman—immaculate, dark hair and striking features—but her humanity ends there. The creature’s body is a nightmare of massive, dark-feathered wings and cruel, curved talons.
The storybooks would call her a Harpy.
Her eyes narrow as she looks at Francois, London, Tally and the stranger digging deep in the hole. “Francois de Vaux. I knew you were trouble. A spy.” She glares from him, to the dead hounds. “Now you’ll pay,” she hisses through her teeth.
I don’t know what she’s talking about and don’t care. As long as she leaves my guys alone to do their job.
But the bitch obviously has no chill.
The Harpy lets out a deafening shriek and dives, her razor-sharp talons aimed straight for my gravediggers.
Nope.
“HEY, CUNT!” I scream, as a fierce, white-hot spark ignites in my core. “YOU HAVE TO GET THROUGH ME FIRST!” I step directly between her and the grave, still mostly human, but with the winds roiling under my fingers.
Hurry, guys.
I trust them. They can save her. I need to concentrate on this awful creature.
She leaps towards me. I send a wild wave of storm her way seconds before she tears my throat out.
The harpy tumbles over, smacking hard into a tree.
It only takes a second for her to gather herself and strike again.
This time I meet her in the middle of the glade, my body turning into a zephyr that is almost out of my control.
CRASH.
I whip her around and around, she claws and screeches.
And it fucking hurts. How that can be I don’t know.
I do know I need her out of here.
Or dead.
The whirlwind that is our fight rises higher and higher above the ground, above the tree canopy and into the full might of the storm. But that’s not a problem for me. It’s as if the elements are cheering me on.
Razor sharp talons slash at my ethereal core.
Fucking bitch.
Phantom pain or real—I can’t tell. But it makes me falter. For a second my human body flickers in and out of existence.
NO.
If I shift back to human, sixty feet up in the air, I’m fucking fucked.