Island Shifters: Book 03 - An Oath of the Children (42 page)

He looked up through heavy eyes and saw Maks and the Vypir rolling across the square in a white ball of struggling fury.
It was his first look at the beast. A protracted ribcage
and pale skin pulled tight over its skull gave the Vypir a skeletal appearance.
Tuffs of white Elven hair poked up through its head in sickly patches.
Lashing out with muscled legs that ended in claws, the
Vypir
managed to get loose from Maks, only to be surrounded by a hundred other Draca Cats, slinking around the beast as they searched for an opening to attack.

That was when Kellan noticed the beast’s tail had been slashed off at the tip.
He
looked down in alarm. The portion of the tail with the fangs was still embedded in his throat. Still sucking the blood and magic from his body and spurting it out
onto the cobblestones.

“Hold on!” It was Kane and he grabbed the offending appendage with two hands and tried to
yank it free. It would not budge. It kept slurping and sucking.

“Get…it…off,” Kellan said weakly and tried to lift his hand to help, but his arms felt like they were
made of
lead weights and he could not move them.

“It’s not coming off!” he heard Kane scream.

Gregor
Steele
pushed Kane away and
pressed his sword against Kellan’s neck to try and pry the tail piece loose.

“Dracas,” Kellan whispered.

Somehow,
Kane heard his
feeble
appeal.
Jain! Come quickly!
A warm hand grasped his tightly. “Hold on, brother. Help is coming. Hold on!”

Kellan felt movement around him and then hot air on his face. Large golden eyes filled his vision.

Kane’s eyes.

Jain’s eyes.

The magic of the Healing Breath misted over his face and into his lungs. The benevolent vapor traveled through his body with purpose, healing small injuries, infusing him with energy. Then, the sinuous magic focused on the protrusion
in
his neck and attacked.
Kellan gasped deeply and his chest rose in the air as the Healing Breath directed a forceful strike against the foreign object.

“Jain! What is happening?”
he heard Kane shout.

He
was dying.
The magic struck again and he bucked off the ground under the
intensity of the battle raging inside his body.

Jain! You’re
killing him!

From far way, Kellan could taste the froth at his mouth, could feel the violent convulsions.

I am doing what I must,
Jain replied
.
This beast is
created of very
ancient sorcery. But, then, so am I.

Jain’s
Dracan magic assailed the quivering Vypir tail for a third time.
Grab it, Prince!

Kellan felt Kane lean over and with a last vigorous pull and
a
revolting
wet
sound, the appendage popped free.

Quickly now, stem the blood flow
from outside while I heal him from within.

Again, Kane followed his bondmate’s orders and Kellan felt another strong breath on his face
and a cloth pressed hard against his wound. Instantly, he felt the throbbing pain in his neck dissipate.

When the
big snowy head lifted away from him,
Kellan
took a long
and ragged
pull of air into his lungs
and sat up against the
outer wall.
He
tried to form the words to
thank
Jain
for saving his life, but
they came out garbled and
incoherent. It did not matter. The cat
was already gone, back into the fight with the Vypir.

Kellan looked on in shock. The beast was so fast!
The muscled creature took leaping bounds from one portion of the square to
another
somehow managing to avoid
the spiked tails
and
sharp claws of the Draca Cats.

A group of defenders by the gates screamed out as the pouncing Vypir slammed into their
position. Kellan got to his feet in horror as the beast ripped limbs from sockets
and tore flesh from bone. Blood sprayed into
the air in gruesome strings of red death.

Kirby Nash bellowed out
a
challenge
and
sprinted
to the
defense of the
defenders. His curved Saber
a
slashing blur, he
was able to
cut two long gashes into the Vypir’s abdomen. The beast shrieked in pain, turned, and leapt onto the outer wall. Digging sharp hind claws into the stonework, the Vypir scaled the wall with the agility of a spider.
Fireshifters hurled fire at the creature, but none of the flames
came close and it almost seemed to Kellan as though the creature had some sort of
magical
shield around it.

Then,
the Vypir scrambled over the top of the wall and disappeared into the night.

Chaos erupted as demands for the gates to be opened
filled the air. Ellvinians joined with the Massans as they prepared to go after the Vypir although if they could not kill it in the confines of this walled
city
square, it would be impossible to find it outside. Especially, if it managed to get to the Grayan Forest.
The same forest where the citizens of Northfort were making their harrowing escape.

Over the cries of pain and shouted orders, Kellan suddenly heard a sound far more
disturbing.

He put an arm out to Kane. “Listen!”

The rushing noise sounded distant at first and then grew louder. Like a violent clap of thunder directly overhead, it struck a spike of fear directly into
Kellan’s heart.

Reilly Radek made it the ocean and he was doing exactly what they
discussed
on the wall.

He was flooding Northfort.

C
HAPTER
34

A
IRSTRIKE

“Nooo!” Kellan took off at a sprint toward the wharf, pushing through the thousands of Ellvinians. Maks, realizing where he was going, dodged in front of him and
growled
out a
threatening
roar
that
scattered
the dark Elves out of the way.

Kirby Nash, Gregor Steele and Kane chased after him.

“What is going on?” Kirby shouted as they ran.

“Reilly is flooding Northfort! He doesn’t know about the
truce!
We have to stop him!”

Jain raced by and helped Maks clear the path. Unlucky Ellvinians who did not see the Draca Cats coming paid dearly as they were trampled underneath their
huge paws.
Several times during
their
headlong flight,
Kellan had to jump over
the
prone
bodies
left in their wake.

A
sudden
shift in the crowd
caused Kellan to realize that those in the
rear, closer to the wharf,
were
now
pushing
their way south.

“Run!

“Tidal wave!”

The
Ellvinians’
shouts of
terror
turned the mob en
masse as they
caught
their
first glimpse of Reilly’s
shifting.
Masks of horror
carved
their faces
as
they
wrenched
at each other in desperation to
flee
the threat bearing down on them.

Now, even the Draca Cats were unable to make much progress through the massive number of
Elves, and
Kellan felt his body being carried away backwards under the press of bodies.

“Let go! I have to get to the wharf!” With two mighty swings, Kellan knocked away the Elves closest to him. Maks and Jain filled the gap and snapped at any who got too close.

Standing
alone
in
a
small island in the river of Ellvinians streaming past, Kellan looked up
in sheer
hopelessness.

The entire northern horizon was
now
a wall of blue water. Gushing straight up out of the sea at least two hundred feet in the air, a tower of ocean
loomed over the ill-fated
Northfort.

Large three-masted Ellvinian ships swept up in the swell looked like children’s toys as they bobbed on the top of the wave’s crest.

“Demon’s breath!” Kirby cursed behind him.
“What is he doing?”

“What I told him to do,” Kellan
whispered.

The
panicked Ellvinians
poured
over
their position, and
Kellan
was
knocked to the ground under a crush of
humanity.
No one stopped to help, they just passed over him, their running feet pounding
over
his back and legs.

Incongruously, in the midst of the screams and shouts and the swelling waves,
and
with his cheek pressed
into the
cobblestone road, he heard laughter.

A great hearty bark of laughter.

What could possibly cause someone to laugh at a time like this, he questioned to himself as another
passing boot struck him in the head. Who would laugh as their very life was about to be extinguished for all time?

It was Kane.

“Dear Highworld, that sister of mine sure knows how to make an
entrance.”

* * * * *

As
Kenley
soared toward Northfort, she tried to make sense of what she was seeing
far below.
Outside the gates, a thousand Draca Cats paced before the wall. Inside, tens of thousands of
dark Elves
blanketed three quarters of the
northern portion of the
city.
Comparatively, only one
hundred
or so
Massans stood at the southern end in front of the outer gates.

Dead bodies,
almost entirely
Ellvinian, lay between them.

She wondered if her brothers and the other children were down there. If so, how had they managed to hold off the enemy with so few?

Hurried movement in the north drew her attention. The Ellvinians were pushing forward. Were they attacking?
Anger surged through her as she
poured
on the speed, the wind slicing forcefully over her body.
She
banked to the left to
circle the city
and that was when she heard the roar.

Her head snapped out to sea.
A wall of water rose straight out of the ocean sending ships toppling—most,
thankfully further out to sea, but some crashing
into the pier. The deadly swell grew in size until the inevitable arc at the top
shaped into existence and the
water made
a
slow, terrifying
descent toward the city.

Her heart pounding inside her chest, she
plummeted downward toward the gigantic
tidal wave. Grasping the windstream coming out of the west, she flattened the
thermals into
a solid wall of air
and
slammed it against the
oncoming
water. Teeth gritted in determination, she
pushed.
With hands thrust out in front of her and screaming with
effort, she
pushed with every bit of
elemental
power that rushed through her pureblood veins.
Sweat popped out on her head from the strain, and her arm muscles trembled
from the
amount of
strength
necessary to hold the water back.

Her wall of air stopped the onward momentum of the wave, but it did not fall back. No matter how hard
she threw herself at the water, it stood firm.