A Shade of Vampire 32: A Day of Glory (14 page)

As we returned to the area outside the castle where the witches, werewolves and ogres were waiting, I thanked the dragon guards and said that they would likely be wanted in the castle now.

My gaze swept over the ogres. They let out silent sighs of relief as the dragons placed distance between them and disappeared into the castle. They looked infinitely grateful to move on.

Everybody gathered close together and the witches transported us away from The Hearthlands.

When our feet hit solid ground again, we were surrounded by the sweltering heat of Aviary. We had arrived in the midst of a jungle.

I turned to Ibrahim. “Now, I suggest that you wait here with the witches, werewolves and ogres, while Horatio and I go to gather the Hawks.”

The last time we had been here together in Aviary, we had only brought back fifty Hawks. There were many more we could find use for now.

Horatio rose with me in the sky. We gazed over the ocean of treetops, trying to get our bearings. Horatio, thankfully, had a better sense of direction than I did. It took us less time than I had feared it might to locate the new city of Aviary, if the makeshift colonization could be called such.

As we passed the rickety homes, we called out to the Hawks. Many of them recognized me from the speech I had made only a short while ago. I requested all of them to head to the same circular platform as before, and once several hundred had gathered around, I began to address them. I explained to them that The Shade and their fellow Hawks who still remained with us needed their help urgently, and all who came with us would have The Shade’s, and indeed, Earth’s, eternal gratitude. Even as I spoke, I couldn’t get over how strange it felt to be requesting Hawks to become guardians of the Earth, when only several decades ago they had been practically as manipulative to humans as the Elders.

But they agreed. They agreed, I supposed, because they heard the passion in my voice, the sincerity and earnestness with which I called them to arms. Even though they were shadows of their former selves in terms of confidence and aggression, I trusted that, when the time came and we were all together, they would rediscover the strength that had once made them feared warriors.

Finally, the IBSI would receive the comeuppance that was long overdue.

As soon as a large group of the Hawks had assembled, Horatio and I returned with them to where we had left Ibrahim and the rest of our army. After introducing them briefly—barely having time to watch everybody’s reaction to our new members, particularly the witches, who had a history of discord with Aviary—I announced that it was time for us to return to The Shade. There, we would reunite with the rest of the Hawks, along with the dragons who should have arrived by now. And finally, I would touch base to see what had been happening with my son and the rest of the League. They were supposed to be infiltrating the media and should have done a thorough job by now. They’d had plenty of time.

When we all returned to the island, naturally, we had to bypass our usual rules of having witches check that nobody was an imposter—I knew that they weren’t, and it would be far too time-consuming now. Ibrahim allowed us inside, and our army lined up on the beach by the Port, where the dragons were thankfully already waiting—including Theon and his brother Altair. I noticed only three ice dragons among them, which was probably wise, given the mutants we might be forced to face.

I told everyone to wait on the beach for my next instruction, and had Horatio stay to keep an eye on everyone, while Ibrahim went to transport weapons and armor from the Armory.

I first hurried to Eli and Shayla’s apartment, which he had left open for me. He had access to more television channels than anyone on the island, but as I began to flick through them, all of the major ones were blank. I had to switch into channels located outside of the United States to discover what had been going on, and as I watched the reporters relaying the news, I swore beneath my breath.

The IBSI had brought down the borders of not only Chicago, but New York and Los Angeles.
Dammit!
At the back of my mind, I had been fearing that Atticus would do something rash like this. My heart pounded. We had to get a move on, and my gut instinct was telling me that our first port of call had to be Chicago. That was where Ben and the others were first due to head.

I hurried out of Eli’s apartment and fetched the rest of the Hawks, who were staying in temporary accommodations. I directed them to wait by the Port with the others before I dashed to the Black Heights to see if any of our resident dragons were here. None were.

I hurtled back to the Port, and, standing atop the jetty which gave me a vantage point over our entire army gathered on the sand, I bellowed, “We must leave as soon as possible!”

Ibrahim had already returned with what looked like our entire stock of weapons and begun distributing them to the Hawks along with armor. Ibrahim demonstrated how to use the guns, something that took patience I didn’t have in this moment. The ogres had brought their own weapons with them, and as for the werewolves, they couldn’t hold weapons anyway in their wolf forms.

Once Ibrahim was done with the demonstration, he and Horatio arrived at my side.

“We need to head to Chicago,” I told them. “We can meet near the same news station Ben and the others were due to head to first. Horatio, you should accompany the dragons. They will travel fast, but not fast enough for the rest of us. Guide the dragons there. Ibrahim and I, along with everybody else, will travel by magic. Is that all right?”

Horatio and Ibrahim nodded.

I barked out orders to everybody. The dragons parted from the crowd and approached Horatio, while Ibrahim and I mingled with the rest of the army.

A few seconds later, The Shade disappeared.

* * *

A
rriving at our destination
, it was clear that things had gone even worse than I thought they had. Much worse. The building had been blown up, ash and debris coating the street that lined it.

What happened here?

I needed to scope out the city to figure out what was going on. I took to the sky on the back of one of the Hawks, rising above the buildings, where I witnessed even more destruction. In the distance, the residential area of the city was ablaze—buildings smashed and charred, bodies strewn everywhere. And then, still further, near the river, I spotted a massive horde of hunters riding atop mutants. In front of them were my people. It was clear that the League was under the protection of a spell, for the mutants could not approach closer than a dozen feet.

I flew with the Hawk back to where I had left the others and climbed off the Hawk.

“Right,” I said, my heart hammering. “We can’t wait for the dragons. We’ve got to go in now and eradicate the IBSI.” I explained that I wanted to do this in stages. In waves. First I would arrive with the Hawks. We would launch the attack on the mutants in the sky, draw their attention toward us. And following us immediately would be the witches. Only once we had managed to successfully take the hunters out of the sky could we have our ground army of ogres and werewolves surge forward and sweep the streets for survivors, assisting any innocent humans, while felling any IBSI members—assuming they did not surrender.

But where was the press now? It was vital that the scene was recorded so that the public could see our strength. I noticed some helicopters in the distance, but I wasn’t sure what they were.

“Ibrahim.” I addressed the warlock. “I would like you to keep an eye on the stages of the battle. Let everybody know when to enter in turn. And once everybody here has left for the battlefield, stay here and wait for the dragons. They shouldn’t take too long. When they arrive you can send them to us immediately, and you can join us too. Is that all right?”

“Yes, Derek,” Ibrahim replied.

I drew in a breath before turning to the Hawks. I climbed onto the back of a Hawk who carried two guns. I took one from him and held it in one hand. As we rose up, I fished in my pocket for my phone and switched it to camera mode. In case there was nobody else recording, I could capture everything from a close-up perspective. A very close-up perspective.

We flew over the buildings and hurtled toward the river. My Hawk flew at the front of the flock, and there were so many of us, we stretched out in the sky like an ominous cloud. I pointed toward the direction of the mutants. We sped up, closing the gap, even as everyone prepared their guns.

We managed to make good ground before the IBSI noticed us. I caught sight of my daughter, her eyes trained on me, a few moments before everybody else looked in our direction.

“Brace yourselves,” I roared, as the hunters began firing. It was difficult to shoot properly with one hand, but I was going to have to manage it for as long as possible.

If we could show that we were strong enough to defeat the IBSI in their own territory, then we were strong enough to defeat everything that the IBSI was capable of defeating.

I was grateful to Ibrahim for taking the time to train the Hawks. As swift and vicious as they were capable of being—and I had first-hand experience of their strength while saving Sofia from the clutches of Arron, many, many years ago—they were not scaled like dragons and were still vulnerable to bullets.

We fired our guns toward the IBSI. I was focused on the man who appeared to be leading them all. I couldn’t be sure who it was, for he wore a mask, but I wondered if perhaps it might be Atticus.

As the hunters’ firing intensified, the mutants’ screeches piercing the night, the witches surged behind us. They quickly created a massive invisible shield around us that caused all the bullets shooting our way to bounce off and go hurtling in the opposite direction—some even making it back to the IBSI.

Let’s see how much you feel like firing now.

The hunters’ confidence broke. They stopped rushing toward us so quickly. Gripping the reins of their mutants, they pulled them back, retracing their flight in the sky. The League behind them took advantage of the distraction we had caused and began to close in on them from their side, too. Realizing that we were trapping them in a deadly sandwich, the hunters began to drop down to the city for shelter.

Some shelter they’ll find down there.

Ibrahim was supposed to be monitoring the scene, and seeing them descend should trigger him to send in our ground warriors… though, on second thought, it was still too early for that. We hadn’t managed to injure enough mutants yet. Not nearly enough. Although they were closer to ground level, the hunters were still using the beasts to shoot about, either by running or by flying low to the ground. I feared that it was still too dangerous for the ogres and werewolves to come in. They were no match for the mutants’ fire.

Forced to pause my filming, I dialed Ibrahim’s number. He picked up after a single ring.

“Wait before you send in the rest,” I told him. “We need to weaken the mutants first and get more IBSI members on the ground before we’re ready for them. Though as soon as the dragons arrive, you can send them in.”

Ibrahim agreed to keep everybody on standby. I hung up.

“Where are you going?” I bellowed down to a group of hunters scattering with their mutants around the buildings. “Come back and defend your right to rule!”

It was a smart move on their part to move to the ground, at least as smart a move as they could make given the circumstances we’d put them in.

It was easier for them to spread themselves out here. They could hide behind buildings and pop out at unexpected moments. It was hard for the League’s army to travel together in one solid, shielded block because of this. We were forced to split up in order to go chasing after the hunters. The landscape divided us, making us weaker. But not weak enough.

Yells and bullets ricocheted off the buildings, the atmosphere alight with tension.

The hunters might have made this a more drawn-out process for us, but they weren’t going to escape now. Going into this, a part of me had been hoping that they would flee the scene of the battle when witnessing the scale of our people, flee back to their base, which would be basically admitting surrender to us. But these hunters were tougher, more stubborn than that. It looked like they planned to stay and fight to the very end.

I caught sight of Sofia riding atop Neros. Relief shone in her eyes as they locked with mine.

I addressed the Hawk. “Can you transfer me to that dragon, please?”

Once the Hawk drew close enough, I leapt onto his back, sliding myself behind my wife. I slipped an arm around her waist, pressing my lips against the back of her cool neck.

“I thought you’d failed,” she said breathlessly.

I squeezed her,
tsk
ing. “And I thought you knew me better than that, Mrs. Novak. Failure is not a word in my dictionary.”

E
veryone let
out audible sighs of relief when Derek’s army came into view. He’d made it. Late. But he’d made it nonetheless. Now we were going to have to do the best that we could to salvage the situation.

As the fighting started up again and we launched at the hunters with renewed strength—myself sharing a dragon with Kiev—I glanced over at the press helicopters. They inched a tad closer as our new flurry of activity started. I hoped that they would draw closer still.

Although the dragon was leading us to rejoin the battle, I had something more important to do first. I requested the dragon to drop me off on the roof of a building about a mile away—away from the epicenter of the danger. I broke open the door to a stairwell leading down into the building and took a seat on one of the steps so that I could make a phone call without distraction.

I dialed the old government official’s number. Fowler was his name.

I feared that he might not even pick up. But he did, after five rings.

“It’s Lawrence,” I said immediately. “Don’t hang up. There’s been a development. Our backup has arrived and we’re driving the IBSI out of their own territory as we speak. We will win and take control of the Chicago situation. We will then do the same with New York. Get back over here, and you can witness the same for yourself. Or, better still, allow the reporters to continue doing their damn job. You never should’ve shut them down to begin with.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. I could hear the man’s uneven breathing. “I-I’ll have a reporter stream footage to us,” he said, “so we can verify the situation for ourselves.”

“Be our guest,” I told him.

With that, I hung up. A feeling of satisfaction swelled within me as I gazed down at the phone.

I knew that Fowler would not waste time in verifying the facts himself. They were just as desperate as we were to see the backs of the IBSI. They wanted us to take over; they simply needed us to prove that we were capable of it.

And finally, we were.

Once he’d verified the situation, we should be back on track with our original plan.

I slipped the phone back into my pocket and returned to the roof. I gazed up at the sky, looking for a dragon, a witch, or even a Hawk, who could swoop down to pick me up and allow me to rejoin the battle.

With a deafening shriek, something did swoop down—sooner than I even saw it coming.

The next thing I knew, I was trapped within the talons of a mutant, and hurtling over a several-hundred-feet freefall.