Page 81 of Of Blood and Fire
They’d obviously been roosting them in a separate area to the main encampment.
Fuck.Kaia.
See. She snapped her wings and went left hard, arrowing toward the rising birds. These riders, like many others, were half dressed, but most had tubes in their hands, and those tubes were aimed at us.
Kaia barreled toward them, not stopping, not flaming, fury in her mind. She didn’t want to flame. She wanted to kill them the old fashioned way—to rend and tear and bite.
And she wasn’t going to listen to reason.
I swore, raised both arms, and sent two large fireballs tumbling toward the birds directly ahead of us. Just before they hit, I splayed my fingers, and the flames responded, exploding up and out, creating a sheer wall of fire between us and them. It wasn’t intended to kill them. It was simply a means of hiding our position.
Kaia rumbled her approval, flicked her wings, and dove hard. The ground came at us way too fast, and I was tempted to close my eyes. At the last possible moment, just before it seemed we were going to crash, she banked sharply, swept under the flames, and rose into the midst of the birds. She crunched three before they realized she was even there, smashed five others with her tail, sending them hurtling to the ground, and cindered the remainder.
Then she cindered the ones she’d sent to ground, just in case any remained alive.
As she banked and flew back to the main encampment, movement caught my eye. Men, on a platform to our right, aiming the large cannon mounted on its top our way. I threw another ball of flame, and the mote in my eye popped, making it hard to see properly through the blood. But I didn’t really need both eyes in this case—the tank holding the acid was large, and it was sitting right next to the tube. My fireball hit, and a heartbeat later, it exploded, taking the tube, the men, and the platform with it.
Kaia rumbled in satisfaction, flamed the remaining men on the ground, then rose above my fading firewall.
As we did, a drakkon screamed in pain and devastation.
Kaia bellowed an order, and six drakkons spun as one and flew into the heart of destruction. That’s when I saw Rua tumbling from the sky, one wing utterly destroyed and the other barely working.
And Hannity was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
She hitthe ground with bone-breaking force, and the remaining riders swarmed toward her. The other drakkons were desperately trying to reach her, but there were birds in the air, many of them unmounted, and they were using claws and beaks and their smaller size to dart and weave across the drakkons’ paths.
Kaia bellowed and dropped low again, sweeping her flames left and right, destroying anyone and anything in her path in a desperate effort to reach the younger drakkon. I scanned the ground, looking for Hannity, looking for any gathering of riders that might suggest where she’d fallen.
There was nothing. Absolutely nothing, and I really didn’t want to think about that. Really didn’t want to believe the bright, bubbly woman who’d been so eager to ride her own drakkon could be dead.
Even if I knew it to be the truth.
Above us, a war raged as the drakkons fought the remaining swarm of birds. Acidic rain fell all around us, hitting my coat and Kaia’s wings, raindrops that pockmarked skin and scale and membrane but didn’t cause enough damage to stop our flight or our speed.
Rua was desperately sweeping her flames right and left, but there was a huge chunk of scale, skin, and muscle missing from the area where Hannity should have been, and it seemed to be hampering her ability to move her neck. The riders had her surrounded now, and they were pumping their acid at her, burning her tail and her body and... oh Vahree help her, she was a raw and bleeding mess.
Kaia...
Burn them, she said furiously, ignoring what she saw in my heart, what she knew we would have to do.Burn them all.
Kaia, Rua is dying.
Healers help.
No. Hannity is dead. Look at her neck. Look at the wound.
Hate them. Kill them.She swung right savagely and began a fire run, cindering every single rider and acid tube on the right side of Rua with such precision that no heat touched the younger drakkon, then swung around and repeated the process on the left. She circled Rua again, her head snapping left and right, looking for movement, looking for someone, anyone, else to kill.
There was nothing and no one left on the ground. Nothing but smoking ruins.
I glanced up. Saw Yara and Aarvi catch the final two birds with their flames.
Kaia, tell the others to spread out and sweep the island for possible strays.
