It looked a little bit like a bat but with jerky, oily rags for wings. As it flew closer, Baird saw that its mouth was more of a snout and it had long, curving silver fangs between its black lips. In fact, its head looked rather snake-like, he thought numbly.
The bat-snake thing seemed to see them too because its fiery red eyes fastened onto the people sitting at the Council table and it opened its mouth and let out a piercing shriek that penetrated even the nearly sound-proof plasti-glass of the dome.
“What is that thing?” another human member of the World Council asked.
“And what does it want?” one of the members who was attending by hologram demanded.
“I think it wants us,” Baird muttered, frowning. He had a bad feeling about this in the pit of his stomach, a very bad feeling indeed.
As if to make his point for him, the oily black snake-bat thing smacked into the plasti-glass of the Crystal Dome with a flat, whack!
“Oh my goodness gracious sakes alive!” gasped Kimberly Perce, Aldus Perce’s wife, and several of the other people at the table let out little screams.
“Well, whatever it was, it’s dead now,” someone tried to joke, but no one at the Council table laughed because at that moment the green gash in the sky seemed to flex open wider and more of the black flying snake-bats came pouring out of it—a lot more.
Some of them smacked into the clear sides and ceiling of the Crystal Dome but then they seemed to see an easier target than the World Council.
Waiting outside for the Councilors and Kindred to come and give a comment, was the army of reporters who had greeted them on their arrival. As Baird watched with horror, the snake-bats landed on them and began tearing at their heads and faces with their long, silver fangs.
Baird could hear their terrified cries even though the plasti-glass. They were flailing their arms, trying to keep the black snake-bat things off of them. But it didn’t matter what they did—there were too many of the things and they were too determined.
Like a hungry swarm of ants determined to consume everything in their path, Baird thought numbly.
The bat-things covered the reporters, striking again and again with their fangs. Some of the hapless humans fell to the ground, rolling over and over to try to squash the horrible alien predators and some ran screaming right off the edge of the building, to plunge to their deaths below.
“Stop them! Save them!” Sylvan exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “We have to get the human reporters in here and keep them away from those things that flew out of the gash!”
“Are you out of your mind?” Aldus Perce screeched. “Guards, keep the doors closed!” he shouted to the human security detail. “I don’t care what this fool of a Kindred says, keep it closed! And shoot anyone who tries to open it!”
“General-Secretary!” one of the World Council members who was attending via hologram shouted. “I have to tell you, New York isn’t the only place this is happening, whatever this is! A rip in the sky has also appeared above Beijing!”
“There’s one above Stockholm, too!” someone else shouted.
“And New Delhi!”
“There is one above Melbourne, too!”
“Sounds like the whole fucking Earth’s been surrounded,” Baird sent to Olivia. “Come here and stay close to me, lilenta.”
He wished like hell he had his blaster, but they hadn’t been allowed to bring weapons into the World Council meeting. However, he was prepared to use his own body as a shield if necessary—anything to keep the female he loved safe. Olivia came to him and he rose and put an arm around her protectively, ready to fight or run at a moment’s notice.
“This is your doing!” Aldus Perce shrieked, stabbing a finger at Sylvan. “You Kindred—you did it on purpose because we denied you the right to call brides from Earth anymore.”
“Actually, we had nothing to do with this.” Sylvan’s voice remained calm, but Baird could see the strain in his brother’s pale blue eyes. “I very much fear this is part of the same phenomenon I was trying to educate you about earlier.”
“You mean the rips in the different universes?” one of the human Council members asked. “But you never said anything about these…these things coming out of them!” He gestured to the flocks of black snake-bats which were circling in the air and dive-bombing the hapless people below.
“I am not certain, but I believe these may be the Darklings that Commander Rarev of the Monstrum Kindred told me about,” Sylvan said. “And if so, there is not much we can do about them, though I will mobilize the Kindred fleet and ask them to try.”
“You’d better call them quick, Brother,” Baird said grimly. “There are more of those fucking things every minute!”