Page 39 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
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Nora choked before whispering,“I’m now glad that Ezra convinced me to bring you along as a guard.”
Her heart was pounding so hard that it might have been fighting to get out of her ribcage, and her skin crawled as she watched the creature claw its way up the wing of the plane, getting closer to the main body by the second.
Adam glanced around frantically.
“By the Titans’ tentacled testacles!” He swore loudly enough to wake up their row mate, an elderly lady whose eyes went wide with shock as she glared at him.
“Sorry, just realized I forgot something,” he offered by way of explanation. That satisfied her as she closed her eyes again and Adam turned back to Nora.
“I don’t have a weapon with me,” he whispered into her ear, making Nora draw back in shock, doing nothing to help her still accelerating heartrate.
“You’re supposed to be my guard and you didn’t bring anything to fight with?”
Adam shushed Nora, her rising hysteria having made her careless with her volume.
“I can’t exactly get a sword through airport security. Not to mention the Shadow hasn’t attacked you while you’ve had a guard before. We figured just having one of us here would be the equivalent of a nuclear deterrent for them.”
“Did you just compare yourself to a nuclear weapon when you didn’t even have the sense to bring anything to use to protect yourself?” Nora hissed.
Adam chanced a glance out the window toward where the Shadow was halfway up the wing. “Now is not the time for scolding, Nora. We need solutions.”
Nora furrowed her brow as she observed the creature’s progress. “It won’t be able to get inside the plane anyways, will it? The fuselage is designed to be airtight.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. That is a Shadow born of wind and storm, and they don’t have a particularly high regard for the laws of physics. What I need is something to fight it with.”
Nora wracked her brains.
“Coffee pot? You could smash it and use one of the shards as a dagger?” she suggested.
Adam nodded. “Maybe we should have let you continue to use household objects as weapons. I’ll go to the galley in the back to grab it, but I need you to create a distraction so the flight attendant who’s back there doesn’t stop me.”
Before Nora could ask what he had in mind for a distraction, he was out of his seat and striding to the back of the cabin. The creature was mere feet away from the body of the plane, and she unbuckled her seatbelt as quickly as she could, improvising as she went. The sudden spike in adrenaline made her fingers as useful as raw sausages, but she freed herself and launched into the aisle.
She hesitated a moment before doing the first thing she thought of that would get everybody’s attention and not end with her in handcuffs. She gave a dramatic gasp before crumpling to the floor as loudly as possible in her best impression of a faint. The hand pressed to her forehead might have been a little much, but she was fully committed to the role of damsel in distress.
The reaction in the cabin was instantaneous and feet pounded down the aisle towards her from both directions even as she kept her eyes closed. It was only a few moments before cool hands grasped her shoulders and there was an announcement over the communication system.
“Could any licensed medical professional on board please report immediately to the back of the aircraft?”
The hands on her shoulders rolled her over, but she let her head loll limply to the side, still feigning unconsciousness. She needed to keep all eyes on her for a few moments longer. It was difficult to stay limp when every muscle in her body strained for any indication that the Shadow had boarded the aircraft.
Just as fingers searched her neck for a pulse, a violent bout of turbulence shook the cabin so forcefully that Nora slid into the base of the seat next to her, hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. The fingers flew from her throat from the motion and a crash came from the back of the cabin. Nora prayed that it was Adam smashing the coffee pot even as she wheezed to catch the breath that had been knocked from her.
As soon as she heard voices screaming, Nora sat bolt upright and whipped her head around. Swirling down the center aisle from the back of the plane was the Shadow, this one the dirty grey of the tornados Nora saw on TV. It looked like a nightmare of storm clouds and dust, but with the same glowing eyes and demented shape of its fiery counterparts. Catching sight of her where she was sprawled on the floor, it advanced down the aisle, and Nora scrabbled away from it as best she could in sort of a demented crab walk. The skin of her hands burned as they dragged against the carpet.
Just as the Shadow was within arms-reach of her, so close that Nora could practically taste the death and dust that made up its flesh, there was a wild cry from the back of the cabin. Adam barreled down the aisle, a long shard of glass clutched in his raised fist. The sound was enough to draw the Shadow’s attention, and it whipped away from Nora, the motion causing hot wind to lash across her face so hard that she almost fell backwards again.
Adam’s battle cry had given the Shadow just enough warning of his position. It flung a long arm out and caught Adam by the throat even as he attempted to charge forward. He was lifted clean off the ground, the toes of his loafers scrabbling for purchase on the rough carpet of the aisle. He made a terrible gargling noise and swung the glass shard wildly with one hand, the other trying to dislodge the creature’s grip on his neck. The Shadow just held Adam away from its body, its arm long enough to keep Adam at a distance where none of his attacks could connect.
Nora sprang to her feet, ready to go at the Shadow with her bare hands. The flight attendants yelled behind her, but she didn’t spare a moment to look at them. She drew her arm back, but before she could throw a punch that would make Ezra proud, Adam’s eyes began to roll back in his head. With his last flail, he managed to fling the glass straight at the creature’s chest, where it embedded itself.
The Shadow let out an earsplitting screech, dropping Adam to the ground with an ungraceful thud. Nora lunged towards where he lay crumpled in the aisle, but she never reached him.
The Shadow creature, which had begun writhing in its death throes, coalesced into a swirling ball before shattering apart with a clap like thunder. The force of the detonation threw Nora to the ground and shook the plane even harder than the continuing turbulence.
There was a horrible sucking sound that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once, and Nora clapped her hands to her ears, which exploded in her head. Within seconds, yellow masks dropped from the bulkheads and people hurried to put them on. Nora was already lightheaded, and she scrambled to her feet to snatch the one above her unoccupied seat, clutching it to her face.
