Chapter 30 Avery #2
The rift was a horizontal slit in our reality, ten feet wide and blurry, like someone had smudged the scene with a paintbrush.
A faint violet glow emanated from it, the same color of the wraiths’ eerie, poisonous magic.
Seeping from the rift were wisps—the L1 wraith, vaguely beast-shaped clouds, harmless to us but harbingers of something much worse.
There were so many wisps, though. The fog of them blanketed the campground, challenging even my beast’s sharp night vision. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Get ready,” Heath breathed.
The rift yawned.
Swarmers crawled out of the void and spilled onto the playground. They had the fat bodies of boars, the more agile legs of a dog or wolf, and vaguely canine heads, their jaws sagging and unhinged, needle teeth lit by the violet glow leaking from all the holes in their gray skulls.
There were at least a dozen, and they crawled over the playground equipment like demonic ants. They chittered and screeched, their claws scraping over the plastic.
“Support, let’s go!” Brody shouted, ripping his sword from his back.
Our front-line team went to work. They sprinted in arrow formation toward the playground.
Brody ducked the first swarmer that leapt from the railing of the merry-go-round, spun in his crouch, and sliced the back legs off the monster.
Ian was there a second later to cleave the head from the body with one smooth upward strike of his katana.
Nico batted another wraith out of the air with a vicious backhand of his tactical tomahawk right to its head.
He whipped around, spinning the small axes in both hands and mincing another attacking wraith to pieces.
Joon cleaned up behind him, slicing the heads off each of Nico’s battered wraiths with his sword.
Matt and Andre ran right up into the playscape, hacking away, conducting a symphony of death screeches.
We’d jogged closer, ready for whatever else was about to come out of that rift.
“We lost one!” Ian yelled. “Incoming, Blackwell!”
One of the wolf-boars streaked our way, its lifeless gray flesh peeling from its body and exposing its rotting rib cage as it ran.
Wyatt spun his battle-ax in one hand before he stepped into its path. He swung the ax like a baseball bat and hit the wraith square in the neck. It split apart, exploding against his blade, body parts hitting the grass and melting into gray sludge.
More screeching sounded, this time a deeper pitch.
Two Rippers crawled from the rift and hit the grass on four grotesque feet.
These were hellhounds as big as Heath’s wolf, the molting gray flesh of their bodies hairless, their legs covered in flaking scales and ending in three-toed talons. One of them was missing a chunk of its skull entirely, and both glowed with sickly violet magic.
Before we could attack, two more leapt from the rift. Also hellhounds, but instead of scaled legs and talons, these had a row of vicious spikes down their backs and tails that looked like machetes.
I ripped my swords from their sheaths. Wyatt tossed his ax to Elijah, yanked his shirt off, and then shifted into his bear. Aiden unsheathed his saber and handed it to Heath before his jaguar burst from his body.
“We’re on!” Heath shouted.
Wyatt ran for one of the talon-hellhounds while Aiden attacked one with spikes. Wyatt’s bear hit the wraith with the force of a tank and knocked it straight into the cement wall of the bathroom complex. Heath ran up behind him, both his and Aiden’s sabers in hand, and slashed the head clean off.
I sprinted after Aiden, my assigned side of our formation.
The spike-hound jumped into the air, and Aiden’s jaguar followed suit.
They clashed like cymbals, and the wraith hit the ground on its back, while Aiden twisted and landed with feline grace on his paws.
He snarled and dropped to his belly as I took a running leap over his back, my swords raised high.
Just as the wraith hound flipped to its feet, I was there to drive my swords into its back. Wraith guts splattered, and it screeched at a decibel level that would’ve made human ears bleed.
Aiden snarled again and pounced. As he sank his incredibly strong jaws into the wraith’s skull, I yanked my swords from the body and hacked through the neck in two fast strokes.
Then we ran for Elijah.
He’d drawn both the remaining Rippers, his brilliant mythic soul too juicy for them to resist. With a look of only mild exertion on his face, he swung Wyatt’s ax at the talon-hound as it bore down on him, its jaw unhinged and its mouthful of jagged teeth aimed at Elijah’s face.
Elijah took its head off on the first swing, spun, and then rammed the butt of the ax into the chest of the spike-hound, impaling it there.
Wyatt arrived just in time to smash the impaled hound, taking it to the ground. It thrashed under our bear, but it went still after I drove one sword through its glowing violet eye socket. I quickly chopped off its head with my other sword.
More swarmers crawled out of the rift. Cat bodies, eight hairy spider legs, four glowing eyes. Seven, eight, nine….
Heath began to swing his sword at them, calmly and methodically. Ian and Brody rushed in to help, leaving our other Support Squadron members to clear the last round of swarmers.
Two more Rippers climbed through the rift. Gorilla bodies with reptile heads, mottled flesh, exposed bones, glowing eyes.
Masculine shouting sounded from behind the playground. Kellan’s unit had arrived on the scene. Their six Support Squadron trainees joined ours in clearing out the swarmers. They chased them off the playground and into the pavilion, jumping on top of picnic tables and hacking at limbs.
Kellan and Hank the bear attacked one gorilla wraith. Ari the orange tiger and Teegan the man took the other.
A jarring bellow shook the ground, and a Giant vaulted from the rift. Taller than a house, humanoid like Giants often were, it had a lion head with a horrifying clown mouth full of teeth. Gray skin stretched over knotty muscle, its clawed hands too large for even that enormous body.
I exchanged a look with Aiden’s jaguar. His eyes glowed turquoise, wary but confident. We could do this.
We ran toward the Giant but pulled up short when its twin jumped through the rift and hit the ground next to it.
“Elijah!” Heath bellowed.
The basilisk poured from Elijah’s body, its roar somehow louder and more frightening than the Giant’s.
More than a few of the trainees shouted in alarm.
“Herd the remaining swarmers east!” Brody shouted. “Get out of his path!”
The Giants leapt on top of the pavilion, one right after the other.
The metal roof creaked and sagged under their enormous bodies.
Void eyes surveyed the carnage below, and then they turned, zeroing in on the neighboring shifter town in the distance like they’d decided to pass on the buffet of Prime souls here and look for easier prey.
“Fuck,” I spat. “That’s high intelligence.”
Aiden rumbled a noise of agreement. I stroked the soft fur on his muscular shoulder to center myself as I planned my attack.
One of the Giants lost patience and leapt from the roof, landing on all fours, ready to sprint down the road toward town.
The basilisk was on it before it could move. Elijah sank his teeth into the thing’s neck and whipped his thick serpent body around it. Heath ran for them, sword raised.
The remaining Giant screeched from the roof. Wyatt the bear appeared on my other side and huffed in annoyance.
“I know,” I said, scratching his ear. There was blood matted along a shallow gash on the side of his head, and the ire I felt over that minor injury almost set my beast loose. I shook it off. “We could climb up there,” I went on, “but it seems like a waste of effort when it’ll just jump down—”
Kellan’s griffin bounded over and took a running leap into the air. He batted his enormous wings and landed on the roof, screeching his bird head off and flapping his wings menacingly at the Giant.
The Giant took the bait and charged. They smashed together and tumbled off the roof. Wyatt, Aiden, and I were there when they hit the ground.
As Kellan flapped his wings and pecked that razor-sharp beak at the Giant’s head, Aiden clamped his teeth around one arm, and Wyatt got the other.
They pulled with their strong jaws and managed to pin it.
I scrambled onto its back and stabbed one blade straight through the base of its skull.
I reached for my beast, digging for the strength to hack through its thick neck with the other while the animals around me tore at its limbs.
I didn’t stick around after I severed the head and the wraith’s flesh began to ooze into the grass. More Rippers had found their way out of the rift, and while Kellan’s quad was dealing with some, two were headed straight for where Elijah and Heath wrestled with the other Giant.
I sprinted, my beast pumping energy into my limbs. I would get to those hellhounds before they got to my Fated. Before they could sink their teeth into my basilisk’s smooth, scaled flesh. Before they could hurt Heath while he swung his sword at the Giant thrashing in Elijah’s hold.
More Guardians poured out of the woods. As their boots hit the pavement, their shouts grew loud and alarmed. This rift was spitting wraiths at an alarming rate, so leadership must’ve sent as many units as they could spare.
Wyatt roared, waylaid by another Ripper in the pavilion. Ian jumped in beside him, lending his sword.
The thud of feline paws behind me said Aiden was hot on my heels.
Heath stabbed the Giant through the throat. It shrieked.
The Rippers were nearly to them, but then they registered my beast soul, shiny jewel that it was, and whirled to face me.
I lifted my swords, ready to disembowel the first one that tried to jump on me.
Then I froze, locked in place as the force of aggressive shifter dominance clamped down around me.