24. The Stranger #2
Those white eyes widened, and the creature lunged at Flora.
It knocked her down with a force so unyielding that it ripped the air from her lungs.
She couldn’t move, pinned effortlessly to the ground by a heavy talon like a tack through paper.
With each breath and scream, the sharp pain dug deeper and deeper.
Through the shadowed white of its teeth, it exhaled fog onto her face against the cold night.
No, she thought. They had done so much, taken so many precautions, to keep him from her. He was never supposed to make it this far.
“NOW!” Aria ordered. A coordinated array of Aria’s anchor bolts launched at the creature from all sides.
The creature roared, then reeled as each bolt ejected its anchor beneath its skin. Flora rolled away, gasping as she realized the wetness on her hands and chest was from her own blood.
The creature bit one bolt out from its side, snapping it in half between its teeth.
It reared and launched itself into the air, but the chains of the bolts held.
It screeched as soldiers reeled the chains back in, drawing the monster back toward the ground.
It pulled back, tugging at the very structure of the weaponry’s housing, pulling nails up from the ground.
“Noec!” Aria called, desperation in her tone.
Before the bolts and their chains could give way, another dark phantom tore into the silvered scythe as it hit the stone. Only the flashing bronze of his talons and the blue of his pinpoint eyes gave him away.
Davy.
While he was tangled with the massive scythe, another flock of smaller scythes touched down upon the wall, lashing at the harpooners and archers and tearing at the artillery.
Davy’s body flailed under the teeth of the large scythe, crimson oozing from his lips.
Another red-harnessed scythe, large and green-eyed, entered from the sky, tearing the monster away from Davy’s body and locking its neck between serrated teeth.
Flora gasped, realizing it was becoming harder and harder to breathe, as each attempt to rise to her feet left her dizzier and dizzier.
Even as her vision tunneled, she did see Davy’s scythe, blue eyes looking back at her as he heaved and twitched on the ground.
New beasts emerged, crashing into the wall in a frenzy of snarls.
They wore ruby-red harnesses and colored eyes, but the polychromes carried the same savagery as the wild scythes, ripping into whatever came close to them.
These scythes must be Aria’s new volunteers, the ones who hadn’t yet completed their twenty-four hours.
Their pupils flickered in and out wildly, their mouths salivating with bloodlust.
“Come on,” the shadow of a man said, bending over to help Flora off the ground. “We need to get you to safety.”
The tall, dark-haired man wrapped one arm behind her shoulders and the other beneath her knees.
He lifted her up against his chest and brought her just inside the stone barracks where Aria had been.
Gingerly, he sat her down in a wooden chair and knelt by her side.
There was noise outside, but Flora felt as though she were trying to hear it from underwater. She was gasping for air, panicked.
But the man placed a hand behind her neck, and whatever fear she had felt seemed to melt away from where he touched her. She looked up and was startled by his eyes, yellow with a ring of fiery orange at the center. This stranger was unsettlingly handsome, like a mirage or a dream.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the gashes on her neck and chest. “They weren’t supposed to hurt you.”
“What... what do you mean?”
A slick grin flashed on his lips. He blinked his eyes, and when he opened them, his eyes were left entirely white. Flora gasped with what air was left in her chest. He blinked once more, and his eyes were an orangey-yellow once again.
She swallowed her shock and cursed, tossing his hand away from her as her head spun. She was losing her mind. “What? I need to help them. They’re going to die..."
His grin faded, and he sighed, lifting her chin so that she might look back into his eyes. Again, the panic faded into a subdued calm at the slight touch, his fiery gaze holding her. With his other hand he brushed a falling strand of hair behind her ear, resting his palm on her cheek.
“This was never meant to become so out of hand,” he said, his voice sweet and bitter like red wine. “Never once did I imagine that they would... protect you.”
The melodious whisper of his voice began to blur, and he held her head steady as she began to lose her balance. He lifted her from where she swayed in the chair, setting her gently on the floor, finding something soft to place beneath her head.
“Come find me, won’t you?” he said, lifting a finger and a thumb.
From his thumb glistened a sharp, silver claw.
With it, he pricked his finger, coaxing out just a drop of dark blood.
Flora writhed as he hovered above her, pushing her head down with his fingers in her hair as he traced the blood along the wound of her neck.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he said with a venom in his tone, “Florabelle.”
He rose to his feet and looked down at her with an expression she couldn’t make sense of, almost shame and almost pity.
One last time, he reached down and touched her skin, and suddenly all the rage and fear coursing through her veins was sedated.
Flora rolled to her side, coughing on blood as he walked out the doorway, her vision fading with the adrenalin in her veins as the raven-like sheen in his hair caught the starlight.