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But she just keeps crab-walking back from the circle, her eyes wide as we watch Phoenix rise higher and higher in the sky as the dark funnel cloud lifts up with her.
Layden runs over to the both of us. “What happened?” he asks her.
“I don’t know,” she says. “One second, we were at a standstill, and then—” She gestures in front of us.
Layden looks around. Abaddon fled back to his wife and daughter at Vlad’s attack, and Remus is still near them, hovering over Vlad where Kharon tossed them off.
“Vlad just went nuts.” I put my hands on my head. “He said something about giving her the power she needed and went and attacked Kharon.”
Layden and the woman on the ground exchange glances. “How did he find out?” Layden asks.
The woman finally starts getting to her feet, and Layden and I both help her up.
“Find out what?” I ask as I crane my head back to try to see Phoenix. She’s a small speck up in the sky above us at this point.
“Kharon’s a plane-crosser,” Layden says as if that explains everything. “He’s the Horseman of Death.”
The woman’s mouth drops open. “You’re the Horsemen— Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” She shoves Layden in the chest.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” I shout.
The woman looks at me. “Vlad must have figured out that feeding off a plane-crosser might give Phoenix the extra juice she needed.” She gestures wildly behind her. “To help the spirit she contacted on the other side make its way across the barrier between worlds.” She shades her eyes with her hands, looking up in horror and pointing, “Oh my god, she did it. Look!”
I blink against the otherwise white-gray sky, and just beside where I see Phoenix at the top of the funnel cloud, yes, I can make out something emerging. A very big something.
“Is that a whale?” I ask in absolute shock.
“I didn’t think they were real,” the woman gasps, reaching out and clasping onto Layden’s arm as if for support. “What the hell did she think she was doing?”
“It’s done now,” Layden says grimly.
The huge gray whale emerges from the top of the funnel, and then I see another follow it, and another and another. But no, as they separate from the funnel cloud, I can see that “whale” isn’t quite the right descriptor. It’s just the closest thing I have to describe what I’m seeing. They’re creatures of some kind, I think, because they’re sort of swimming or wiggling, and they’re huge.
But when sunlight hits them, they don’t look quite solid. Instead, they’re almost translucent, like jellyfish.
“What the hell is that?” Remus asks, finally rejoining us.
“Devourers,” the woman whispers.
“Sabra,” Layden chides her.
“What?” the woman I assume is called Sabra snaps back. “It’s the truth. I never thought she’d be able to actually bring them through.”
“Then why did you help her with the circle?”
Sabra tosses up her hands. “It sounded like the end of the world!”
“So what’s different now?” Layden asks. “Maybe now we have a chance.” He gestures toward the sky-whale-jellyfish creatures that are starting to move more quickly and taking off in many different directions.
“How does averting one apocalypse make sense if we invite another one?”
“What do you mean?” Remus demands.
“When it was just circle magic, we could contain them. As in, we could call them back after we were through with them and send them home. With what Vlad did by juicing Phoenix up by feeding on a plane-crosser, they just got transported permanently here. Get it? Now we’re stuck with the Devourers on this plane.”
“Fuck,” Layden and Remus say together, staring up as the sky-whales scatter.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would you invite anything called a Devourer here in the first place?”
