The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) by Travis Simmons Page B

Fire was an indication.
    But now this?
    The shiver that ran up her spine had nothing to do with the cold this time, and everything to do with the memory of what she had witnessed.
    “Mom, what’s that?” Justice asked, setting his cards down and pointing out the window and to the west.
    Hilda had finished her move before looking out to where her son was pointing.
    “I don’t see anything, Just, why don’t you finish your hot cocoa?” She pulled the housecoat tighter around herself and checked the front door. She would have to have it replaced soon. When it was windy out she could feel the cold cutting through the house.
    “No, there’s definitely something happening,” he told her, his eyes following a point through the sky that she hadn’t seen.
    Again, she went to the window and searched for what he was trying to show her, but this time it didn’t take long. Hundreds, maybe thousands of points of light were trailing through the sky from the west, gaining height as they went. She’d seen things like this before, but falling from the sky, never ascending into it.
    The points of light left smoldering trails in their wake, like puffy clouds or vapors straggling behind them. As the objects climbed higher Hilda realized they were reaching a point nearly right above her house. Indeed, she was watching them so intently that she was now crouching down and looking up.
    And then a bright flash nearly burned her eyes. She yelped against the jab of pain, and then sank to her chair when the roar of something she could only call thunder shook her house. The noise was tremendous.
    Hilda began to shake. And then something large slammed into the ground outside her home.
    “Look!” Justice said, standing on his chair and pointing out the window.
    The smoking creature wasn’t the only one. For minutes afterward, several more of them landed around her home. Thankfully none of them landed on her home. They sat there, watching each beast fall from the sky like smoking boulders heaved out of the Ever After to crack the land below.
    “Stay here,” Hilda told Justice, her hand resting protectively on his shoulder even as her eyes studied the creature outside. She unlocked the door and stepped out into the bitter air, pulling her house coat closer to her. The door thumped closed behind her.
    Hilda looked up, but there were no more objects racing toward the apex where the others had met their end. There was also no more falling debris. Her feet took her ever closer to the twisted form that puffed black smoke into the still afternoon air.
    Black feathers were the first thing she noticed. Black feathers and charred human flesh.
    Hilda stumbled back as the shape of the figure became apparent. A blonde woman lay on the ground before her, her hair melted and tangled from fire, her wings nearly bare of the black feathers that had been scorched away from some attack high in the heavens. She looked to have been wearing a length of black cloth wrapped around her, but it was now mostly burned away.
    She was broken and bloody, her body twisted in an odd way that couldn’t have happened if her bone structure was still intact. In her hand she held an ebon blade, and Hilda reached for it, before pulling her hand back. There was something perverse about that blade, something that twisted her mind petulantly.
    The almost perfectly white skin was charred so badly in some places that Hilda, now close enough to discern the form better, could see splotches of blood and raw meat where the skin had cracked with heat.
    With a hand to her throat, she turned. For a moment she could have sworn she saw one of the lumps on the ground move.
    This can’t be happening, she thought, her eyes traveling over each of the numerous forms smoking on the ground around her small log cabin.
    “Justice,” she called, racing back to the house. “Start packing your things!”
    The door was open. Why was the door open? Hadn’t she closed it when she came out?
    Hilda burst