Page 41 of On Brutal Thrones

The urgency in his voice makes all of us freeze.

Thorian’s sword is off his back almost instantly. “Where?”

“Above.”

I look up. At first, all I see is blue sky. Then something shrieks. The sound tears through the air so suddenly that I duck on instinct. A black shape plummets toward us, wings folded tight against its body.

“Nyx!”

Fenric yanks me sideways just as the creature opens its wings.

A bat.

Except no bat should be that large.

Its wings stretch wider than my arms, thin membranes glowing red where sunlight shines through them. Its mouth opens as it dives, revealing rows of tiny pointed teeth.

Fenric thrusts his spear upward. The sharpened point catches the creature through the chest, stopping it in midair. Its wings beat frantically as Fenric jerks the spear sideways and flings it off. It hits the blood several feet away, shrieking and thrashing against the surface.

Then the sky goes dark.

“Oh, fuck,” Talon says.

There are dozens of them, maybe hundreds, pouring over the field in a twisting black swarm.

“Together!” Thorian shouts.

Everything happens at once. Thorian turns his back toward me, sword raised, while Fenric moves into position on my other side with his spear pointed toward the approaching swarm. Talon closes the remaining gap, dagger already in hand. Before I fully understand what they’re doing, all three men have surrounded me again, their backs toward me while I stand in the middle.

“I can fight!” I protest, fumbling for my dagger.

“Then fight!” Thorian calls back. “Just stay inside the formation!”

A bat dives through the space between him and Fenric. I slash at it and miss completely, but Fenric whips the end of his spear upward and catches it before it can reach me.

“We need to keep moving to get out of here,” Thorian says. “We won’t last out in the open for long.”

Everyone seems to be in agreement, knowing that somehow we have to fight and move toward the other end of the bloody field at the same time.

For the next several minutes, the world becomes wings, shrieks, blood, and chaos. Bats dive at us from every direction. Thorian’s sword flashes whenever one gets close enough, while Fenric uses the reach of his spear to strike them before they can get near us. Talon fights closer, his dagger moving in quick, precise strikes whenever one slips through.

I do my best to watch the gaps between them, stabbing and slashing at anything that makes it inside our circle.

Not all the bats are attacking us.

One plunges toward the field, its mouth opening just before it reaches the surface. Instead of crashing into the blood, it skims across it and scoops up a mouthful before climbing back into the air.

My stomach turns.

Another follows.

Then another.

“They’re drinking it.”

“I did not need to know that!” Fenric shouts.

The bats rise again with blood spilling from their mouths, running down their bodies and dripping from their claws. Warm droplets splatter across my cheek, and I wipe them away frantically. As we continue shifting to the other side of the field of blood.