They laughed. They hissed. They drooled. They rutted in the sky, groaning, screaming, bat wings beating. They flew onward on the hunt, nostrils flared, inhaling the scent of the world they had not seen in so long. "We are free!" Leyleet shrieked, voice rolling across the landscape. "Free to hunt! Free to breed! Free to taste blood and suck marrow from bones." The moon vanished behind the clouds as if it too feared the Rancid Angels. No stars shone. But the eyes of the fallen were sharp, piercing the night. Their ears picked up the stir of every mouse in the fields below, the scent of every living thing that cowered. And as the Sixteen flew over the fields, their dark wings spread wide, and all the land below cowered. Insects burrowed deeper underground. Birds awoke in their nests, frozen in fear. Those seraphim who lived outside the city of Shayeen, dwelling in villages and villas upon the hills, woke from their slumber, drenched in cold sweat, not knowing the danger but sensing it in every bone.
