Like corn in a kettle, one by one the birds eyeballs burst, boiled from within. They were replaced with cherry red embers set deep in their skulls. Their bodies smoldered, but never quite seemed to catch. The effect was something like looking at a blackened log in a fire that was beginning to burn out, the glowing embers rippling along the veins of the soot-black feathers.
They flapped their wings and cawed, a rasping, awful noise like a bird choking on smoke. Fires flared up along the edges of their wings as the air churned from their flapping rushed through the smoldering feathers.
Their beaks dripped with boiling blood that hissed and spattered where it fell, blackening almost instantly and filling the the air around them with the pleasant scent of cooked bird.
They exploded forth from the tower, leaving it a burning ruin, screaming out their hate and circling round, each leaving a black trail of smoke behind it.
The sky above Ballentyne became the broken spiral.