Before I could even attempt to shove him away, the windows suddenly shattered. Sound exploded around us as splinters of glass rained down.
What the fuck was happening now?
I was too weak to lift my arms to protect my face, and Jones jolted up, shouting. I felt the sharp shards of glass cut into my skin, heard screams and running footsteps all around me, but all I could do was stay huddled on the floor, trying to catch my breath.
Before the glass could finish falling, the violent wind was back, but with it was the sound of angry birds shrieking, their caws piercing my eardrums.
Lifting my head, I looked up and saw shadows streaking into the room, flying in from the windows. The black tendrils converged into hundreds—or maybe even thousands—of crows, their cries echoing off the walls.
The elementals started trying to fight them back with air barriers, but there were too many birds, and they hadn’t stopped them in time. Even when they managed to push back half a dozen through the window, a hundred more were there to take their place.
So many crows flew inside that soon, I couldn’t see past them. I felt them everywhere, every flap of a wing added to the hurricane of wind as their beaks and feathers and claws scraped against me. I was going to be suffocated by birds. I was choking on rising panic and feathers, trying to make sense of what the fuck was going on.
I turned my attention to Stiles, but he was fighting off birds, batting them away with his hands. The moment he swatted them away, they flinched and squawked then dropped dead on the floor.
What the fuck?
At the sound of an agonized scream, I turned to see one of the Spector men being completely overridden with crows. Every inch of his body was covered with them as they dug their claws into his skin and pecked at him with their beaks. His infested body flailed around until his cries turned to gurgles, and he was left twitching on the ground, the crows merciless as they continued to attack him.
A shot of fire suddenly cut off my view of the dying Spector man, and a blaze of heat licked across my face as a huge fireball landed three feet away from me. I crawled backwards, scrambling away from the flames, only to realize that it wasn’t a fireball from an elemental. It was the necromancer student, and his entire body was ablaze.
He struggled to get to his feet from where he’d landed in front of me, his skin curling up with burned edges before growing back again as the destroyed flesh dripped off his slender body. The crows flapped their wings around him, but they weren’t attacking him like they did the Spector man. If anything, it looked as if they were trying to put the flames out.
That sight, along with the realization that the crows weren’t attacking me either, spurred me into action. I was going to use this interruption to get the fuck out of here.
“Motley!”
Stiles was at my side, pulling me to my feet in an instant, his suit ruined with bloodied holes and tears all over the fabric, and his face covered in nicks and scratches.
“Stiles—”
“We’re under attack,” he said, cutting me off.
I shook my head. “No, the crows are trying to help us. I need to get out of here.”
Stiles looked at me like I was insane. “You’re not leaving,” he said.
I ripped my arms from his hold, staggering back. “You’re delusional,” I shouted at him. “They forced us to be possessed by demons! How can you be okay with this?”
He opened his mouth to argue, but a shrill scream cut him off. I used the distraction to turn and sprint away, only to smack into the red-eyed Jones. Crows were dive-bombing him, their black bodies hooked into his clothes as he kicked and swung at them to get away.
As soon as he saw it was me who’d run into him, he clamped a hand around my arm and started tugging me forward. “Get the rest through the portal now!” he shouted, though I had no idea if any of the Spector people heard him over the wind and birds.
I struggled to pull away from him, but he was strong. Much stronger than I in my current weakened state. He pushed us through the room, using me as a shield so that the crows wouldn’t attack. I tried everything to get him to let go of me. I kicked, I punched—I even sunk my fangs into his hand where he was holding me. But nothing I did had him letting me go.
As we inched closer to the wall, I noticed the doorway had been turned into a portal, and there was a Spector man already tossing one of the other students through it.
Panic seized me. I couldn’t let them take me. I knew that in the fiber of my bones. I may not know who sent these crows, but it was better than the people who had forced a demon possession on me.
Before he could drag me to the portal, I suddenly caught my heels on the floor and then made my entire body a dead weight. The move caught him off-guard, and it was just enough of a surprise for me to slam my foot on his toes and elbow him in the gut. A puff of air left his chest as he flinched and bent over. I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and started sprinting away.
“Catch her!” Jones’s voice bellowed behind me.
The crows seemed to act with one mind, because they immediately converged around my body, blocking me from his view. Then, dozens of crows descended upon Jones, burrowing inside of his
