Kyron
Nova said let’s go. The Hollow listened.
The Hollow moves fast. Brent’s already barking orders before he gets up off the ground.
Cal appears from the storage building at a run.
Someone’s hauling Marcus toward shelter — I don’t track who, I’m already checking the street, the tree line, calculating which way they’ll come if they’re already that close.
“I can go up,” she says.
She means her phoenix.
Absolutely not.
“No, I’ll go,” I say immediately.
Rane looks at both of us. “A flaming bird or a giant owl.” He clears his throat. “You really think that’s subtle?”
Locke frowns. Vaelor makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like you’re both idiots. I don’t have an answer because he’s right and I hate that he’s right.
The street is controlled chaos. People know what to do here — Brent made sure of that. A woman pulls her kids off the road. Cal’s already gathering the women and children and the ones who can’t fight. Doors slamming up and down the main street.
Marcus said they’re coming. Not I think. Not I heard something. Present tense. Certain. Which means he saw them close enough to know.
The crow hits her in the face.
Out of nowhere, wings everywhere, screaming, talons catching her hair and Nova ducks and shoves it away and it comes right back.
“What the—”
It dives again. She throws her arm up. It screams at her, circles, comes at her a third time and she shoves it hard and it veers off—
And comes for me.
It’s screaming in my ear and I grab for it and miss and it pulls back and goes straight for my face and I catch it finally, both hands around its body, and it’s still screaming—
Looking.
Not at me. Not at Nova.
At the tree line.
“Okay.”
I let it go.
It lands on the fence post. Feathers puffed. Eyes on the trees.
“Uh, guys,” Rane says. “Isn’t that what it did right before…”
I hear it before I see anything. Branches. Too many branches. Moving wrong.
“They’re already here.”