Chapter 87 - Peeps

  I dropped a Drain Life on the avian trying to kidnap the kid. I was surprised—it didn’t just drop, which was new. Most monsters just went down with one hit from that spell these days. This one was tougher than the average, it seemed.

  “Kara, try to nail some of the other ones flying around,” I shouted as I waited for the spell to reset. “Watch out for the car windows, though!”

  “On it.” She already had her bow out and was nocking an arrow to her string.

  I sent Sue the mental command to hit the ones fluttering over the car with a Fireball. It was too risky to hit the ones close to the car, but the spell smacked into one of the flyers, knocking it clear out of the air.

  We’d gotten their attention for sure. All six remaining avians whirled toward us and started our way. Kara took one in a wing with her arrow. It let out a cry of pain and then dropped to the ground in a barely controlled crash. I focused on the one I’d already injured, hitting it with a second Drain as soon as my timer was up. This time, it was enough to finish the job. The avian went down, its life energy flowing back and filling me with new vitality.

  Kara sent another arrow into another wing, grounding a second avian. It joined the other in crashing to the ground, then staggering to its feet.

  These creatures looked odd. They weren’t humans with wings; they were birds that had grown somewhat more humanoid. They’d grown arms with hands, in addition to their wings—but the arms were covered with downy feathers. Their legs were bent backwards from a human’s, and ended in birdlike claws that reminded me more of a velociraptor than a pigeon! Their heads were the most unchanged thing about them, still looking almost the same as a regular bird’s head, just a hell of a lot larger.

  Sue shot a Fireball toward the approaching avians. They dodged, wheeling through the air to let the spell pass between them. It sailed on to smack into the side of the hotel, adding to the flames there. I shrugged. The place was gonna burn down anyway, so it didn’t much matter.

  The enemy seemed like they’d had enough, though. They broke off their approach, sailing back into the air, gaining enough altitude that arrows and spells couldn’t reach them. The two wounded ones had removed their arrows and took off again, fluttering more weakly than before, but still able to take to the sky. They really didn’t care for Sue’s Fireball power.

  One of the wounded ones took off toward the northeast, wingbeats slow but steady. That was the direction the airport was in, which meant it was headed for home base. Was it so wounded it was calling it quits? Or had it gone for help?

  “Kara, keep an eye on them. I’m going to go check on those folks,” I said. I passed the same command to Sue, ordering the dinosaur to defend us if the avians came in closer again. “Watch out for any reinforcements, too.”

  “You got it,” Kara replied. She still had an arrow on her string, although her arm was relaxed. “Be careful. We don’t know these people.”

  I tried something new, dismounting from Sue. First I untied myself quickly, then I grabbed the rope in both hands and dove off, using the rope to swing under Sue’s ribs and land solidly on my feet. That was awesome! Not something I could have even thought about doing back in the old days, but I wasn’t the same person as I had been then, and it was useful to remind myself of that.

  I had a tier five Agility crystal. By virtue of that, I was way more dextrous than I’d ever been before. There probably wasn’t a parkour master or gymnast in the old world who could keep up with me now. Of all my powers, though, that was one of the ones I used the least. It was something I needed to change, because at this point I couldn’t afford to be ignoring any of my skills and abilities.

  On the ground again, I strode quickly toward the car, keeping one eye on the birds, who still circled high overhead. I called out as I got nearer. “Ma’am, are you okay? We heard you shouting and came to help.”

  She was out of the car now, facing me with the bat between us, held like it was a sword. “Who are you? What is that thing?”

  Oh, she was looking at Sue. I flashed her a grin. “I’m Selena. I was a med student at UVM when all of this craziness started. That’s my pet dinosaur, Sue. I get the fear, but it’s okay. You’ve got nothing to fear from us. We came to help.”

  She relaxed a little as I spoke, the tip of the bat dropping some. “Thank god. Between the weird creatures and other people, we’ve had a bad week. I just want to get my kids somewhere safe, you know?”

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  “I do. I totally understand. I don’t have kids, but if I did I’m sure I’d be doing the same thing,” I told her.

  My thoughts were already moving ahead toward just what we were going to do with her and her kids. Looking at her, I already knew she had some crystals inserted—the woman was tier three, so she’d been killing some monsters and could defend herself at least somewhat. But from what I was seeing, a tier three was no longer strong enough to wander around alone. That one avian who’d survived my first Drain was tier three, too, and he’d brought friends.

  The only real solution I could think of for them was to bring them to the Guard base. Turner was my port in a storm, and his place was the only one I knew for sure people would be relatively secure and cared for. It’s why I’d sent Alfred and his people there.

  I glanced skyward again. Those avians weren’t going anywhere. They circled just out of attack range, too high to chase off, but low enough I still heard their angry squawking. One of the damned things pooped in mid-air, and the splat barely missed me. Not cool! I glared daggers at them, then returned my attention to the woman.

  “Do you have any idea why they came after you?” I asked her. “They seem really determined. Usually they run off if the prey isn’t as easy as they thought.”

  She flushed furiously, turning bright red. Okay, clearly she did know, and I had a feeling I was about to hear a whopper of a lie. She looked down, still blushing, and then mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  “What was that?” I pressed. I needed to know what was up. If she’d done something to piss them off bad enough, we could end up facing a lot more avians in a few minutes.

  “My kid. Caught a bird. Thought we could have it for dinner.”

  I was confused at first, not sure what she meant. They’d caught some sort of animal to cook, and…what? The avians were offended? Did they see all birds as being like them, or something?

  Then I heard peeping from inside the car. I took another step closer. The woman raised her bat another inch, back to a half-guard, but she didn’t seem especially threatened. It was more like an instinctive motion. Once I was a little closer I could see the back seat with the three kids more clearly.

  The woman had clearly shoved them all inside as best she could, in hopes of using the car as cover. In reality, that hadn’t been very effective. The bird people had simply smashed in the windows and then reached into the car. They’d been trying to drag one kid out through a window when we arrived on the scene, and probably would have managed it if we hadn’t stopped them.

  One girl was quite young, maybe pre-school age. There was also an older girl, maybe twelve or so. The third kid was more interesting to me, though. He was maybe ten, and he had something wrapped up in a jacket on his lap. Whatever it was, it was moving. And that’s where the peeping sound was coming from, too.

  “The bird you caught, is that what’s wrapped up in there?” I asked the woman. I took a step nearer, and the bat raised a bit more. I held up my hands in front of me, trying to act as unthreatening as I could. “I’m just here to help you all, but I can’t do that unless I know what’s going on.”

  “Selena! We’ve got company coming!” Kara shouted.

  I looked back her way and saw immediately what she was talking about. A storm of avians was headed this way! There were dozens of them, all still far enough off that they were just dots in the sky, but those dots were getting closer fast. They’d be here in minutes. We could hold our own against a bunch of monsters, but this was a lot, even for us. Unlike the zombies, we couldn’t outrun these guys. They flew faster than Sue ran.

  “Look, you need to help me help you,” I told the woman. I pointed at the sky toward the oncoming swarm, making sure she saw. “They’re coming in force. Gonna be here faster than I’d like, and we’re not fast enough to get away. They hit us with all of those numbers, I don’t know if we can keep you and your family safe. We’ll try, but… There’s a lot of them, and only a few of us. I know a safe place I can bring you, but we need to get clear of the avians, first.”

  That seemed to wake her from her fear a bit, if only because the avians were a much more obvious threat than I was. “My name’s Jess. You really know someplace we can go? Someplace safe for my kids?”

  I sure hoped the Guard base was safe. It was the closest thing to safety I knew about, anyway, so I nodded. “I do. Why are the avians after you? I’ve seen them attack humans before, but they usually back off if we put up a fight. These ones not only stuck around, they went and got help. They really want to take you down. Why?”

  My gut told me the answer even before she showed me. I think I’d known from the first ‘peep’ I heard out of the car, and definitely from the moment Jess said they’d caught a ‘bird.’

  Jess went around to the back door and opened it, then reached into the car. Her son balked when she tried to pick up the wrapped bundle, though.

  “No! Peeps is mine! I want to keep him!” the kid cried.

  “Not now, Evan. We need to let Peeps go,” Jess told him.

  He struggled a bit more, and the edge of the jacket came loose, revealing what was wrapped inside.

  As I’d pretty much expected, it was a baby avian.

  The baby was too young to fly. It had the puffy feathers I’d expect to see on a very young bird. How it had gotten out where this kid could catch it in the first place, I had no idea, but now I knew precisely why the avians were so pissed at these people.

  “You kidnapped one of their children!” I hissed at the woman. Of all the idiot, stupid, annoying and obnoxious things to do… Of course they saw the cute baby bird and thought it would make a good family pet. Or dinner. I wasn’t sure which the plan was, since the kid seemed to think it was a new member of the family and the mom had mentioned eating it.

  Either way, we had a lot of very angry avians bearing down on us, and frankly? I couldn’t blame them.

  “Peep?” the little bird chirped again, raising yet more agitation from the ones circling overhead.

  Oh, this wasn’t going to be much fun at all.