It wasn’t even the fact that these bats had their eyes on her and the cottage (meaning they weren’t just planning to pass by); it was their number. Thousands.
The door behind Emily creaked open. Emily jumped at the sound, her senses already heightened by terror. She turned, hoping to see Aunt Anastacia coming to offer help, but it was Dad, and he had a long gun in his hand.
Emily looked at the pitiful object and almost laughed out of fear. How many did he want to take down with that thing? It looked like an ancient rifle, something that hadn’t even fired in a long time. Emily knew that Dad was an expert marksman, right from his days as a Marine special operative in Iraq and Afghanistan and some off-the-books covert operations that he couldn’t tell her about—but, come on—this was an old rifle, and he was up against maybe three thousand hellish bat-like creatures.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
John Davies slipped out of the house and onto the patio. He gently shut the door and moved to stand beside her. He wore a tight-fitting vest and what looked like slacks. He had somehow scrounged up some old boots, which came up to his shins, where he then tucked his slacks into the boots.
“I’m not letting you go out against whatever is out there,” Dad said, scanning the southern skies where the horrible screech was getting louder and closer. His eyes continued to scan for what Emily could clearly see.
The swarm of death was still too far away to be seen by normal eyes. They were still probably miles away, but they were surely heading to Anastacia’s cottage. Emily wasn’t a good judge of distance and time, but she would wager that she had twenty minutes before they got there.
But what concerned her, aside from the number of bats, was what would follow. She could imagine the Alfreds sending the bats to keep Emily busy while they got ready to attack the cottage. Emily’s hope and prayer that they could survive this night without incident had already been dashed against the rocks.
Now she had to do damage control. She had to think fast; otherwise they would all be captured or killed by that swarm of death.
“Can you see what’s out there?” Emily asked, purely out of curiosity.
Dad scanned one more time, narrowing his eyes until they became slits on his face. It took him a good minute to shake his head. “Can’t see a thing. Just dark clouds and nothingness. I can hear the screech, though, so whatever is coming is still far away.”
Then he turned to her with a questioning gaze. “But you do see it, don’t you?”
Emily didn’t reply.
“That’s why you have that look of terror in your eyes, isn’t it?”
Emily still refrained from answering. She kept her eyes on the evil horde approaching.
Okay, maybe it’s not the best idea to stand idle and let them come too close. Selena’s voice popped into her head. It came so loudly that Emily flinched. Even after all the time she’d spent with Selena—the mental consciousness of her Owl form (go figure!)—she still hadn’t gotten used to the intrusions.
Yeah, well, if you keep standing there and gawking at the clouds, you’re not going to be alive long enough to get used to me, Selena quipped.
2
Why do you always have to be a buzzkill, huh? Emily thought back to her Owl form, Selena.
Because, apparently, you need someone telling you what to do; otherwise, you’ll get skewered into the ground, Selena replied haughtily.
Emily could imagine Selena doing an eye roll to go with her statement—if The Owl had eyes like humans, of course.
A smile crept across Emily’s face. Selena wasn’t wrong. The more she remained inactive, only looking at the swarm approaching her, the more likely it was they were going to get inundated. The best tactic was to take the fight to their aggressors. Emily’s Owl was the edge of the sword. So why not go meet them as far away as possible, so she could thin them well enough before they finally got to the cottage?
The only thing was, Emily didn’t want to go rushing into the face of danger. She knew little to nothing about what kind of bats those were. She didn’t want to make the same mistake she’d made earlier in the evening, when she’d gone with Rina and Joanna to the Alfreds’ house only to lose both friends in one day. And now they faced this swarm of bats because of the same decision.
Emily wanted to ensure that there weren’t better options. Maybe she could listen to her father this time. Even though Dad hadn’t really said anything against her decision to go after Michael that night (Aunt Anastacia had been pretty vocal about not doing so), it was obvious from the way he responded to Emily then that he didn’t like the plan. It even seemed as though he favored Aunt Anastacia’s plan, which, it turned out, was the better one after all.
Emily turned to face her father, wiping the smile off her face. “You don’t see it, do you?”
Dad looked away from the approaching swarm and faced her. He shook his head. “Just a dark sky is all I see. What’s out there?”
“I’m not sure what they are,” Emily admitted. “They look like bats, but they’re slightly larger. They also have bared fangs like vampires.”
Dad nodded. He didn’t appear to have been frightened by her explanation. He didn’t even look surprised. If anything, he seemed to know what they were dealing with. Emily knew her father had been through another supernatural war a couple decades earlier. This wasn’t his
