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But they could fight for me.
And fight they did.
Some late arriving Svarestri broke through the water, looking a little disoriented after the rage of the vortex, and never had a chance to adjust. The humongous cloud descended on them as soon as they breeched the water, pelting them like missiles, ripping at them with feet and claws and teeth, and screeching so loudly that the echoes alone were pain. They drowned out the river and bounced off the thick packed trees, almost as well as they had off the cave walls below.
The echoes were awful.
Someone screamed at the reverberation of all those screeches against the great wooden walls, piling up on each other, higher and higher and over and over, until it felt like being in hell’s kettle drum. I thought my ear drums would burst. I thought I might go mad. And then the almost machine gun sound of all those tiny bodies hitting the water, the screams of the fey as they were ripped apart, and Ray’s curses were added to the mix, and I knew I was.
I started laughing, possibly hysterically, but I didn’t know because I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything but fluttering, half crazed bodies. I couldn’t smell or taste or feel anything but water and the ammonia reek of bats and the coppery tang of blood, although whose I didn’t know.
And then the wave parted, as if unzipping down the middle, leaving the stream almost clear as they rose up in the air. The great plume wasn’t all of them; I could see the trees rustling, could see bright flashes of red when another fey was torn apart, could hear voices screaming at each other, and then being suddenly silenced. But it was enough.
Then they dove, spearing down toward the small group around the leader, like the fist I could no longer wield. He saw it coming, saw death in flight, and to give him credit, when he ran, it was not away. It was toward me, taking off across the water along with three of his men, who must have had a little Green Fey blood in their veins.
Because they were not swimming.
They ran instead, their feet barely denting the waves, their swords out and slashing, battling to reach me through a thickness of fur and teeth and fangs. The leader was the quickest, surging across the stream with great strokes, crossing the churning waves in seconds, his eyes burning, his face terrible.
He almost made it.
“Fuck me,” Ray’s mental voice said quietly.
The bats must have been the flesh-eating variety, because the fey were eaten alive while still moving, stripped of every ounce of flesh on their bones as quickly as if they had swum into a group of piranhas. But piranhas don’t levitate their prey into the air, don’t eat the face of their victims while it is still screaming, don’t drench bystanders in a wash of blood that had Ray cursing in my head and me just lying there, watching bones splash down into the current and be swept away.
The leader was left until last. I did not consciously request it, but perhaps subconsciously, I had wanted this. The only thing I want from you is blood!
Yes, that sounded right.
What was left of him finally slipped below the waves, all of a yard from his goal. There was blood, enough to turn the waves pink and frothy as they carried him downstream. I stared at it as if entranced, marking his journey by the color he left behind, and only realized how exhausted I was when my eyes started to lose focus.
There were still bats above us, as well as all along the river, a great mass of them turning and twisting and battering each other as they fought over scraps of flesh. But I could barely see them. The world went dim and swimmy, and I would have slipped off the raft had Ray not caught me.
“Dorina! Dorina!”
He was somehow still functional, in spite of everything. I did not understand how. But I understood one thing.
“Get us out of here,” I slurred. “I can’t . . . hold them . . .”
Ray said something back, but I did not hear it. Blood was rushing in my ears, my vision was blurring, and my heart was threatening to pound out of my chest. I had only ever held one animal at a time before, and had found that to be difficult. I did not know how I was doing this at all, and was desperately afraid that I wouldn’t be for much longer.
And when I wasn’t, would they turn on us?
Would they do to us what they had just done to the fey?
“Hold on,” Ray said, as water splashed us and the rain of blood from above doused us, and the remains of countless fey went rushing downstream pursued by screeching black clouds, still feeding. I watched them, feeling my control slipping away.
Then it snapped, my hold over the murderous colony above us completely gone. I watched them through bleary eyes as they spiraled up into the sky, almost as one, just as I had seen them do right before they attacked the fey. And then they dove—
Straight for the caves and crevasses from which they’d come, desperate to get away from this awful, lighted world and back into the cool dampness of home.
I watched them go, half disbelieving. And then exhaled a shaky breath, and sagged against Ray. He sagged back, having freed the raft but being too exhausted to paddle.
We let the river carry us downstream.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dory, Hong Kong
