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. Eyre reached for the emergency button, but her armswouldn't move.Hundreds of thoughts swirled, but shecouldn't fully grasp onto any of them.How can I have childrenif I can't move? The ground rushed up and smacked her inthe face.She could taste blood.They say 8,200 is a luckynumber.It's my chance to finally have a child.It was getting hard to breathe. How many do you think they'll manage to release? theNidhogg said.He sounds worried, Eyre thought wildly.Whyaren't they helping me? We can handle it, the Mite said. We just need to makesure those damn weapons are taken from the humans. They may end up in the stomachs of one of those beasts. Yes, the Mite said, That is a concern.If that happens,we'll have to retrieve it. Yes, sir, Uzkiev said.Eyre's last thoughts were of her children, all 41,000 ofthem.She had names for them.Each and every one.337 The Shivered Skyby Matt DinnimanChangeYehppael aimed his weapon carefully at the metal claspburied in the hairy hide of the razer.It wasn't really a collarin the specific sense of the word the razer didn't even have aneck but that's what it was called nonetheless.He pulled thetrigger, and the control mechanism exploded.The beastscreamed and unleashed a torrent of needles flying throughthe air at the access slit he had used to aim his weaponthrough.He dove down as a few of the six-foot bladesshrieked through the air.The beast howled again, its one eyefocused squarely on him.Behind him, a needle had completely pierced a stone pillar.He took a deep breath.He didn't know they could do that.Yehppael still couldn't believe the security down in the settwas so lax.Maybe they thought the creatures themselveswould be enough of a deterrent.The most feral of them wouldbe almost impossible to stop, especially without their controlcollars.He moved into position.Tamael found her way into histhoughts.He prayed for her.Since the onset of theirrelationship, this was the longest they had spent apart.Thestrong emotional reaction surprised him.Longing.You wouldnot approve of this plan, would you? he thought.Hewondered what she was doing right now.It was unlikely to have survived, but Yehppael had senther a message about the plan in a mini-drone.Like many ofthe other objects he kept on him at all times, the mini-drone338 The Shivered Skyby Matt Dinnimanwas a failed or never fully realized invention of the engineers.It was the size of a fingernail, originally designed as a weaponof military assassination.It homed in on a particular radiofrequency and exploded when it reached the target.But thefew demons who attacked before the Fall who used radiosdidn't have a compatible frequency for the weapon.It waschanged to home in and give a short message, whispering itupon the helmet screen once it was within a few hundredyards of the target.The problem was the range of the machines.They wereintended to resemble and mimic a common bug; however,the devices adapted the range of the bug as well, just abouthalf the distance this device needed to go.Once it ran out ofits power source, it would just fall.Once the secondary powersource died, the message would be erased forever.Since they couldn't cover great distances, and the alreadyin-place system was deemed infallible, the project wasscrapped.Only a few thousand of the mini-drones were everdeveloped.Yehppael was given one by an engineer whom hehad given advice on a grip design for the new Stilettos.But even if she did receive the message, it was too latenow for her to do anything for them.He could just hear hernow.You dimwitted son-of-a-demon!He'd just smile back at her and say risks were necessarysometimes.Some risks, however, are greater than others, he decidedas he looked up at the black mound of the razer.Each bladeof its hair was like a sword, sharpened to a point, as long as339 The Shivered Skyby Matt Dinnimanan angel.Its impossibly blue eye was close to the ground, itsmassiveness towering over the rest of it like a mountain. You're going to try to eat me, aren't you? The giant eye,bigger even than him but still disproportionately smallblinked hungrily.On the other side about two blocks away, Gramm stood,his hand on the control.Yehppael couldn't make out thehuman's expression, but it couldn't be anything other thanfear and determination.He had struck him before, knockedhim out.The boy held a grudge, but it seemed to be fading.Through all their self-indulgence and righteousness, humanshad an unassailable sense of honor.They adapted easier, nomatter what any other angel said, and they bonded togetherand formed relationships harder and faster than any angel
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