“They’re asking me to put a lot of faith in a couple of strangers. Guys I’ve only just met.” I wiggled my fingers. Cedric made smaller and smaller circles, glancing over at me now, still not trying to rush me, I knew, but preparing.
Mr. Tom worked in closer, too, and Niamh went low, probably the last resort.
Four people. They’d catch me if my wings didn’t open. They would.
“Oh God!” Not bothering with any kind of count, I jumped out into the nothingness. My stomach rolled and another shot of adrenaline rocked through my body, tingly with fear. My exclamation turned into a scream I couldn’t help.
Gravity sucked at me, dragging me down. My heart clattered and my chest felt light, my brain knowing I was falling, and tacking a to death to that thought.
My reflexes kicked in, but only my body’s reflexes, not my magic. My spindly, featherless arms beat at the air, doing absolutely nothing to fix the situation. My feet kicked of their own volition, as though I were swimming against the current. My speed picked up, my body dropping like a sack of rocks. The ground—still far below, thank God—vibrated through my watery stare as my mouth cranked open to let out the sound of my fear.
“Help,” I yelled. Electricity coursed through me. It blazed across my skin and curled within my hair. It felt like I’d grabbed a live wire, my body tensing up as the current flowed through me, infusing me with power. It pierced down to my core and then pulsed outward again, a peal of thunder commanding Mr. Tom or someone around me to come to my aid.
But just in case they hadn’t felt the magic… “Help!”
I looked around wildly, my body lazily turning in the air, my head pointed toward the ground while my feet faced the sky, the position only increasing my speed.
“No. Oh God. Help! Catch me!” I sent another pulse, stronger, direr, an SOS. “Why is no one catching me?”
A little surge of magic reached me from Ivy House, not obstructed by the distance or any of the many objects in the way.
“Those you summoned are already en route. They will protect you.”
She must’ve been talking about the second summons, because the guys from the first were around here somewhere not doing their job. Definitely not protecting me in my plummet toward the ground.
“I hope this next wave is better than the first,” I said through clenched teeth, still flapping my arms like an idiot, hoping for those wings to sprout. I could really use them. “And I hope they’ve been en route for a while, because I’m running out of time!”
“I have sent help.”
“I already have help! I have four helps. Why aren’t they doing anything?”
Ivy House was now hearing every swear word I’d ever learned.
Wings thrummed near me. “Oh thank God.” It felt like I had been falling forever.
I continued to rotate through the air and lost sight of the rocks rushing up for me. The jagged points that would break me into pieces.
A purplish body swooped down over me, arms reaching. I stretched to grab Cedric’s outstretched hand, but a streak of bright white light cut across my vision, slashing down his chest and blasting him away.
I screamed, looking around wildly, and the next moment my back struck something pliable, like an enormous spiderweb, only it wasn’t attached to anything I could see. The sticky material wrapped around me and jarred me to an almost complete halt, but then the bottom ripped across my back and dumped me out, feet and butt first. Gravity clutched at me greedily, pulling me down again.
Another slash of light zipped across my field of vision. This one slammed into Niamh’s side, the light swallowed by her inky black feathers. She flapped her wings furiously, fighting through the attack and continuing to head my way.
A blast shook me from my right and a shooting rainbow of color exploded into her this time, smashing her back.
“What’s happening?” I gasped out, ever falling, thankful now for the incredible height of that cliff. If we’d done this at Ivy House, I would’ve been smooshed on the grass long before now.
But if we’d done it at Ivy House, we probably wouldn’t have been attacked.
The rocks reached up for me, thirty feet and closing fast.
“Oh no. Oh God, oh no.”
Dark skin dove into sight, Mr. Tom with his hand held out. His wings beat frantically, and it was hopefully just my imagination, but it sounded like the echo hit the rocks below and bounced back up. Trees studded my peripheral vision.
“Edgar should’ve gone first. Wait, crap, I shouldn’t think that thought right now, right before it’s decided if I end up in heaven or hell…”
His hand just barely at my ankle, a searing light pierced his wing, cutting clean through. He wobbled in the air but didn’t relent, his bony fingers wrapping around my ankle.
I didn’t get a chance to say my thanks before he spun, whipping me around.
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. My hair barely slapped the very edge of a jutting rock before I was catapulted upward at an angle, end over end.
“Wings,” I said, my stomach rolling, my bladder threatening release. “Wings!”
Electricity shocked through me, and I pushed it out, shock waves filling the sky. Ivy House answered.
“Almost there. I have you.”
“I need my wings!” I fisted my hands, shoving them out to the sides, and flexed my back—which was when I hit the peak of my arc and started falling again.
“Noooo!” I went back to flapping my arms.
A heavy throp-throp-throp caught my ear, almost like a helicopter, the rhythmic noise was so powerful. I couldn’t see where it was coming from.
A brown gargoyle—Alek—rolled away on my far right, moving through the air like a tumbleweed in the sky. A stream of light soared up through the trees, aimed at me. It would be too late, though. By the time it reached me, I’d be a smear of red pulp on the rocks.
“C’mon, wings,” I pleaded, seeing none of my people. Not able to properly look around, not able to look away from the mottled gray rock ten feet beneath me. Five.
I scrunched up my eyes, willing my wings to work, knowing they probably wouldn’t, the rhythmic throp-throp-throp filling my world.
10
Strong arms wrapped around me, bands of steel trapping me to a wide, heavily muscled chest, the skin basalt gray with a light sheen, the color gorgeous, the fact that I was alive to see it even more so. Huge, heavy wings strummed the air around us, mighty and powerful. They sped up, throp-throp-throp, lifting us into the air at an incredible speed.
A jet of light shot straight at us from the trees. The gargoyle tilted and spun, dizzying me with the maneuver so that the world seemed to circle us. He straightened, beating the air with his wings, and turned to face the attacker hidden within the trees, seemingly fearless.
I was terrified. If one of those zips of light hit him, it was back to the rocks for me.
“Go, go, at least get higher,” I said, my magic pounding around us, doing absolutely no good.
Those incredible wings, mightier than any I’d seen thus far, their breadth incredible, had us a hundred feet above the ground in a blink with seemingly minimal effort. That was when I noticed the others.
Gargoyles streamed around him, some large and powerful, some smaller and incredibly quick, their skin in all colors and shades. One of them paused twenty feet away, its coloring overall a deep gray but cut through with tan in various places, and looked up at us.
One of the arms holding me peeled away.
“Oh no. No, no!” I tried to twist around and grab his neck. I assumed this was the protector sent by Ivy House, but even if I was wrong, I didn’t care—I was going to hang on for dear life until our feet were on the ground. His one arm held me firm, though, absolutely no give.
He pointed with the other hand at the trees where the zip of light had originated. The gargoyles took off, flying for that spot, fast and effective in the air.
Zips of light met them, arching through the blue sky, the enemy seeing the coming attack and defending against it. The gargoyles tilted and spun, barely missing the magical assault. The one who was holding me pushed higher still, soaring out of harm’s reach.
A neon-pink gargoyle reached the trees first, a blast streaking across his shoulder and punching through his wing. He tucked his wings in close and dove through the canopy.
Purplish skin caught my attention—Cedric, a jagged gash across his torso and his pants halfway ripped off. He stopped in front of us, his wings needing to pump faster than the gargoyle holding me to keep him afloat.
“Help,” I said before I’d thought it through.
Ivy House’s magical communication echoed in my mind. “You are with help.”
“Never mind.” I waved Cedric away as Niamh’s alicorn body rose on black wings from the canopy of trees near the enemy’s location, her crystalline horn and hooves catching the dying light. The struggle to rise was clear, one wing tattered and something dripping from her back leg. Blood, it must be.
A dual-colored gargoyle rose from the same area. A man dangled from his hand, held by the ankle, his body limp. A long cape swung down, clothing, not wings. More gargoyles rose around him, three of them also carrying a dangling person.
Niamh, the effort to stay in the air plain, reached us, her red eyes staring at the gargoyle who held me.
“It’s okay,” I yelled over the throbbing wings around us. “Ivy House sent him. Where are the others? Alek and Mr. Tom?”
She neighed and tossed her head. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
I peeled away the block I’d put up to give her privacy, and a wave of pain, frustration, and impatience blasted me through her magical connection. She wanted to go home. Right now.
Fair enough.
As my gargoyle rescuer wrapped his other arm around me to further tighten his hold, I peeled the other blocks away to check on Edgar (obviously safe but worried) and Mr. Tom (wallowing in agony). There was no way I could get a reading on Alek, who hadn’t been granted Ivy House magic, so I’d have to find him the normal, and much harder, way.