Page 190 of Blood of Olympus

Velira snarled. They’re gone!

How can they just disappear?

You tell me and we’ll both know, she snapped as her neck twisted in every direction searching for the vanishing duo.

The winds were all that I knew, all that I could understand, as Vel twisted and soared, shrieking her frustration. They howled, tore at my skin, tried desperately to blanket the senses remaining to me.

Thunder crashed somewhere in the distance and I knew, at least distractedly, that Caelus was still okay enough to keep fighting.

The scent of ozone and ice buffeted me as it crashed again, and all at once, the clouds felt heavier — thicker than they had been moments before. I had half a second of warning before they struck. Half a second to grasp the change in the air — a shifting pressure, a burst of ice. Half a second to register the materialisation of Kronos and his beast before they swooped.

Above! I roared, holding Nightbreaker aloft in the hopes that it would deter the vespertine beast.

It did not.

The creature dove at us anyway, no more hindered by my blade than by an errant toothpick. Unfortunately, it was much larger up close. More imposing and foul smelling than I’d thought possible.

Vel screeched and another flash of colour penetrated the endless haze of white: long, arrowlike claws sunk into her haunches, easily piercing the soft skin beneath her scales.

Her pain flooded the bond, so jarring I almost vomited.

Thankfully, she had enough presence of mind to twist out of its grip, sending us spiraling through the clouds with no sense of which way was up. At least not for me.

Her wings flared with an audible snap, stalling our downfall, and coasted along the currents while the world righted beneath her.

“Where are they?” I bellowed. “Can you see them?”

No, but I can smell them.

And I realised I could too. Kronos and his mount emitted a festering, fetid kind of scent, dragged along by the winds from somewhere to our right. Vel clocked it right when I did. She turned sharply, flapping her wings to regain the altitude we’d just lost.

I scoured my field of white for those souls marked to die. The ones toeing the line between death and life. The ones I could almost reach down and pluck without the necessity of my darkest power.

They were everywhere. Skyborn and grounded both — his entire army teeming with the almost-dead. But whether their deaths were imminent, or whether they were drawn out by ugly deeds and ugly minds was impossible to determine.

Perhaps Fate had marked them just for me.

Death purred at the thought.

Not yet, I told her. Not just yet.

A niggling sensation tugged at my temple — the prickle of piercing eyes and the stomach lurch that accompanied the knowledge that hunters had turned prey.

“Right,” I told her and she obeyed instantly. I clung tightly to her thick neck as she banked hard, jamming my ass so hard into the leather harness I thought it might leave a permanent imprint.

Talons snapped shut with a metallic-sounding scrape just inches from my left shoulder and had Vel not moved when she did, I’d have been skewered by them.

“Come now, little Deathbringer. There’s no need for this to get messy. Submit!” Kronos roared over the sound of leathery wings flapping to accommodate our sudden change in direction.

Vel’s head tipped up and her body followed a moment later. She ascended as fast as her great wings could carry us, rising once more above the cloud cover. We passed through them like swimming through fog; dew drops painting my face below the line of the crimson ribbon.

Without warning, she made a hairpin turn, diving sharply back toward the ground. The manoeuvre startled both gods in the vicinity — I swore while Kronos urged his mount out of the way.

The vespertine beast had a mind of its own however, and when faced with the choice to either flee or fight, it chose the latter. It inhaled with a series of syncopated clicks, and then did something neither one of us expected:

A stream of frostbitten fire jetted out of its nightmarish mouth. I felt it before I heard it: the bone aching ice, the shattering of the air as it was torn asunder. I ducked behind Vel’s neck, flattening behind her armoured scales and waited for the deluge to end.

I cried out when it buffeted me, catching my right leg as Vel twisted to avoid a direct blast to her face.