Page 50 of Loving Nightmares
“Sweet.” Saint scoffed, and Blackwell grunted in agreement. One downside of Cy, Amun, and Zain leaving was that they were far more rational than those of us left. Razar, Blackwell, Saint, and hell, even myself weren’t the most controlled with our tempers. Ashur was unproven in my mind, although he seemed relatively calm—he had just offered to kill hundreds of humans in one sweep of power.
Not a bad ability to have on your side when it came to moments like this.
Ashur, ignoring Saint’s comment, walked to the edge of the cliff, and in an easy pulse of power, the ground itself shifted, toppling some of the landscape, but it wasn’t close enough to hurt the humans. Stairs grew from the cliffside, looking as if they’d been personally carved for us. I guess they kind of had been. Not only were they fairly wide, but they weren’t very steep, which made me feel a hell of a lot better about the fact that Arabella was already walking down them.
Fuck.
I snapped in front of her and offered a scowl, lifting her with my tail and setting her back five steps. “You do not go first, cherry blossom.”
Her eyes narrowed on me. “Don’t use that growly voice to distract me. I’m going down there—now.”
I blinked, trying to remember exactly what my voice had sounded like since she seemed to enjoy it. As I unwrapped my tail from her waist, her eyes tracked it sadly, but then she put her chin up and tried to walk ahead. Luckily, Blackwell and I were able to lead the group as we made the several-story climb down.
The reality of just how large War’s body shield was didn’t hit until we were looking at it from about ten feet up, paused on the stairs. An eerie, uncomfortable feeling worked its way over me as all of the humans’ blank gazes slowly turned to us.
I had a feeling War was watching us through them.
“Where’s the entrance?” I asked, looking around to reorient myself.
“I’ll create one,” Ashur stated, and almost immediately the massive wall, similar to the one I had been shot on while trying to scale it, broke into tiny pebbles. It wasn’t a huge opening, but it was enough to reveal a second layer of humans standing outside the main building of the camp where War was probably hiding. I didn’t know for sure, but considering how it was guarded and the magic radiating off it, I was going to take a bet and say that was the case.
“He’s in there.” Razar looked at Saint for confirmation, and he nodded sharply.
“Before we walk forward,” Blackwell said, looking down at Arabella, “We have no idea what the humans will do when we step into their territory. They may attack us. We’re going to do our best to not kill them, but—”
“I know it may happen,” Arabella said, steeling herself. “Let’s just try to get there and push through the best we can—the sooner we stop him, the less deaths have to occur.”
Looking towards the humans, I narrowed my gaze at their posture, watching for tension and the will to attack. I didn’t see any right now, but that meant nothing.
“Arabella, stand in the center,” I instructed. “We’ll surround you.”
She nodded and moved between the six of us, Blackwell and I still leading the group. As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I let my magic out to wrap around her protectively, the others doing the same.
I took the last step from the staircase to the ground.
I wasn’t positive what I expected…maybe a massive attack all at once? Instead the humans silently watched us as we continued to move in a unified effort until we were all off the stairs, the entire base absolutely silent. Not even nature was speaking right now.
“Let’s keep going,” Arabella suggested softly. The path to the opening in the wall stretched for about a hundred feet or so—not that far of a distance, but enough that we wouldn’t be able to get back to the stairs with ease if something happened.
At first, nothing happened. In fact, we made it halfway to the wall before an odd shuffling had all of us looking back.
“Fuck that’s creepy,” I growled. Every single human had turned to watch our progress, some even having shifted to block the opening Ashur had created.
“Just keep going—”
A high-pitched whistle sounded.
A sonic blast of power had me tugging Arabella underneath me as heat scorched my skin in a flash.
Then the humans attacked.
“Shit,” I snarled and immediately shifted into my large form as the hundreds of humans began to converge upon us. I lifted Arabella above the melee as we pushed past the humans, their expressions rabid as they released almost feral noises and laughs. I knew the others weren’t trying to kill them, and Ashur was even creating small half-walls on our path just to stop them, but the humans just climbed over them.
“Damian!” Arabella squeaked as a human appeared out of nowhere, launching itself through the air from the wall we’d finally reached. I used one hand to bat the fucker out of the way, wincing as he slammed right back into the wall.
A shrill shrieking added to the chaos as we passed into the second tier of the base and neared the building. The humans began to fight more violently, and while we were holding them off fairly easily, their mass of numbers was draining as they began to climb on top of one another, blood spewing from injuries but no one even noticing, let alone stopping to deal with it. War clearly had a heightened level of control that he hadn’t been using before.
“War!” Arabella’s voice surprised me as I looked at the delicate woman in my arms, her face filled with fury. “Come out here now! STOP THIS!”
