Page 22 of Ravenous Prophecy
“I don’t know! I didn’t do anything. I just… You didn’t hear that buzzing in your head?” I pressed my hand to my temples, which still ached from the echo.
“What?” Griffin shook his head. “No.”
“We should still get out of here. We need to let MEA know that something is going on here.” I pulled out my cell phone, but it had gotten cracked when I’d grappled with Wallace.
Griffin started to pull out his phone when the tent began collapsing around us, the poles on one side pulled loose. He yelled for me, and I followed his voice outside into chaos.Everything was fast and bloody, and at first I couldn’t tell who was who, except then it became glaringly obvious what was going on.
The men with guns were surrounding a group of oracles, their expressions blocked by their helmets. Runes ran from the back to the front over the strange-colored headgear. I didn’t even see glass for them to see out of, it looked like it was made entirely of metal.
Griffin pulled us away. The men didn’t seem to notice us in the chaos, but one of the oracles turned, her red eyes blinking rapidly as she raised her head, and I winced, ready for the vibration, ready for the painful chaos that was about to crush my head, but Griffin stepped in front, his knuckles gleaming silver and he struck the nearest helmeted man.
The oracle broke off, her head tilting, andallof their heads tilted, as though the strange puppeteer controlling them was thesamepuppeteer, and all their strings were tied together. The oracles that had been in the tent with us struggled out and began screaming when they saw their friends.
“No!” one of the men shouted, and then, as though he wasn’t wearing flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt, he leapt at one of the masked men, using only a piece of a chair as a weapon.
The man with a gun stumbled back, clearly as surprised as I was, and then he raised his gun, and oh no. Flip flops and board shorts were no defense against ensorcelledbullets.
“No!” I yelled, and I wasn’t even sure the word had come from me, but the buzzing was back, and I could feel it like a tide, like ants swarming over my brain. I ran towardthe man with a gun, aware I was going to be too late, but what kind of person would I be if I didn’t do anything?
But before I could even reach the man, the red-eyed oracles leapt on him, their bodies covering his, weighing him down. A gunshot went off, and the oracles stepped back, but they were fine and the man was still.
I skidded down, landing on my knees. The oracles watched me with interest, their red eyes flickering between me and the man.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, gesturing to the other helmeted men. “Stop them!”
The oracles grinned at the same time, and I didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t help shudder as they converged on one of the other men, and he realized too late that even ensorcelled bullets couldn’t save him from being torn apart.
The helmet. The helmets had to be related to whatever was happening. My fingers shook so hard that I could barely get the latch off, one of my nails tearing as I struggled. When I finally got it free, I looked down, and the man was… well, a person. Without his helmet, he looked real, he looked normal, and he wasdead, and I’d watched it happen, I’d been about to takepart.
The runes on the helmet were written in an ancient pre-Edwardian language, and it took me a second to recognize it when it wasn’t on the pages of an ancient manuscript or an artifact in a museum. This was… this was the same language ancient Hive texts were written in.
The helmet vibrated under my hands, and I looked up just in time to see all the infected oracles freeze. The men with guns had all raised their hands to their helmets as though they were better offense than guns. The infectedoracles all turned, blinking red eyes as they looked at Griffin and the band of oracles fighting back.
“No,” I breathed. In my hands, the helmet vibrated, and that had to be how they were being controlled, the runes would have to be the mechanism, but how to break it? How to free them like the ones that had broken free in the tent?
I stared at the helmet in my hands, hesitating just a second, barely long enough to run through all the impossibilities. Then I slammed it on my head.
All at once, the buzzing was back, only this time it wasn’t ants crawling over my brain, it was a thousand voices yelling at me, a million eyes sending every bit of information into my optical nerves. I could see everything, hear everyone. And over them all, a single thought.
Kill. Consume. Take. Kill. Consume. Take. Kill. Consume. Take. Kill. Consume. Take. KillConsumeTakeKillConsumeTake.
Stop.My own thoughts were a whisper in the chaos, a breath of air in a tornado, and I couldn’t make anyone hear it over the noise. Only… it wasn’t just noise.
I looked over, and the other helmeted men were calm, the voices in the storm telling who to kill, who to consume, what to take…
“Griffin!” I yelled, unsure if he could hear me. “The helmets!”
If he could take a few of them out, maybe I could make my own voice heard over the chaos, maybe I could save some of the oracles. There was a resounding crack, and a hundred eyes saw Griffin leap through the air, his fist smashing into one of the helmets, cracking it neatly in two, his knuckles gleaming metallically as he turned.
Help him.I thought desperately.Help him. Help. HelpHelpHelp.
And a dozen hands turned on another helmeted man, clawing at it, tearing it apart, fingers breaking, blood flowing. I couldn’t watch.
Stop, I thought desperately. Another crack as Griffin took out another helmet, and I kept up the mantraStop, Stop, Stop.
No one was listening, and finally I screamed, the buzzing so loud it was going to make my brain spill out my ears, my nose, every orifice.
STOP.
