Page 2 of Blue Arrow Island (Blue Arrow Island #1)
If you’re taken to the ground, don’t panic. Prioritize protecting your head and finding enough space to get up as quickly as possible. Use leverage. The ground is not a good place to be.
Excerpt from a police training manual written by Ben Hollis
I was five years old when my father gave me my first self-defense lesson. He taught me where to kick to inflict the most pain and how to shove my thumbs into an attacker’s eyes and push until they squish back.
And how to scream like a warrior. My voice, he always told me, is my greatest weapon. I use it now.
The raw, visceral sound that travels up my chest and out of my mouth takes the person grabbing me by surprise. I stomp on her foot and swiftly kick her knee back. She drops with a swear that’s half grunt.
I crouch, taking in the chaos around me. A massive man with long, tightly woven braids is fighting someone, blood spraying through the air as the huge man lands a punch to the other guy’s nose. A prisoner is crawling out from between them, frantically trying to clear the sand from his eyes.
The peaceful beach has become a battlefield. I don’t even know who’s on which side. The people waiting for us are all dressed similarly. Some have their faces painted with dark smudges.
“Come with us!” a woman cries, her expression as terrified as the prisoners’, even though she has a spear in her hand. “We’ll get you to safety!”
“Stop fighting me!” someone says, using a staff to block punches.
“Leave me the fuck alone and I will! I got sent here for murder and you’re about to be next.”
He swings at the staff wielder and hits him square in the jaw. A flying arrow lodges in his upper thigh and he howls with pain, dropping to his knees.
“Briar!”
I turn toward the voice and see Amira taking off toward the jungle. I follow, but I only make it a few steps before a powerful arm wraps around my chest and picks me up.
“I’m here to help you,” a deep voice growls. “Don’t fight me.”
Yeah, right. The guy whose head is bleeding all over the sand a few feet away might have believed that, but I don’t.
I squirm, kicking him as hard as I can with my feet in the air. He starts to walk, my panic rising. I won’t be dragged into the jungle and violated. These people are savages, but that’s nothing new to me. The only novelty is the tropical island location.
Wait, though. I remember another one of my father’s lessons and I reach for my attacker’s balls, my hand landing on his thigh. I feel my way there, then twist and squeeze until there’s a painful burn in my fingers from the force.
“Fuck!”
He drops me and I scramble upright, running. If I can get to the jungle, I can hide. Evading capture kept me alive for more than three years after the virus until my luck ran out when Lochlan saw me at a market. I was there to trade for food; he was there to stomp on people who couldn’t fight back.
“Listen to me! We won’t hurt you!”
The blond woman from the second group is standing on top of a huge boulder, yelling. She’s lean and muscular, her expression earnest. I don’t know if she’s crazy or arrogant for standing up there without any weapons. Maybe both.
“Get behind this rock and we’ll protect you! You have my word!”
Words are worth as much as hundred-dollar bills in New America. An arrow slices toward her, and she dodges to the side to avoid it, somehow not falling off the rock. Another follows it and she dodges again, glaring in the direction it was shot from.
The giant man I saw earlier extends a hand to me, blood and sweat swirling together on the deep-brown skin of his face. “Come. Please. We’re here to help.”
I back away. A bearded man barrels toward him, knocking him to the ground. I take the opportunity to run, moving around a woman wailing on the ground, her arm bent at an unnatural angle.
The jungle’s dense foliage should allow me to blend in quickly. As I race toward it, I frantically look around for Amira. Maybe she already made it into the jungle. Together, our chances of surviving are better.
I see her and my heart plummets into my stomach. The dark-haired man who had been standing in front of his group is now carrying her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. She’s punching him in the back, but it’s not fazing him. He breaks into a run, calling out orders to the rest of the group.
They’re leaving. And Amira’s not the only person they’re trying to take prisoner. Others are resisting as people work together to tie them up with what looks like wire.
Sweat rolls down my brow as I consider my options, the blazing sun a torch I can already feel burning my skin.
I don’t owe Amira anything. I hardly know her. If I go into the jungle, I can save myself. If I go after her with no weapons, we’ll both get captured—or worse.
“No!” she screams, slapping and punching at her captor’s lower back as she hangs upside down. “Briar!”
For a single second, I close my eyes. Shit. Why did I tell her my name? There’s something so unbelievably difficult about hearing someone crying out for help from me specifically.
We’re all linked together, Briar. From the tiniest little microorganism to the impossibly vast cosmos, life is connected. It’s beautiful when you think about it.
My mother was a scientist, and her words to me when I was young flood back.
I’ve thought of them many times in the five years since losing my entire family.
She felt connected to nature. So I try to sense her there when I’m at my lowest, in the canopy of shade created by massive oak trees or the peaceful birdsong at sunrise.
I clench my fists, both inked with permanent warnings to the world that I refuse to be used. I’m proud of what the tattoos represent. My parents and sister would be too.
Amira is still alive right now, and we’re connected. If I don’t try to help another woman who also stood up against evil, risking her life to do so, there’s no humanity left in me.
My feet sink into the sand as I set off in a run, going after her.
There’s a spear on the ground, and I bend and reach down to swipe it up.
My father taught me how to use guns and knives, but I don’t know anything about fighting with spears.
It’s pretty self-explanatory, though: Stick the pointy end into the bad guys.
I reel backward, the spear flying from my hand. Something powerful pulls on my midsection, the air in my lungs whooshing out in a rush. I’m lightheaded, fumbling my hands around my chest to figure out where I’m hit.
“Relax,” a deep male voice says from behind me. “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to protect you.”
My fingers find a rope. I’ve been lassoed, like a fucking farm animal.
My arms are locked at my sides, immobilizing me.
I turn and lunge toward my attacker, planning to headbutt him.
He reacts quickly, putting a palm out to absorb the impact.
My head throbs from the force of the hit, and his hand doesn’t even move.
“You’re okay.”
I scowl at him. He looks about my age, his wavy, shoulder-length brown hair and lean, muscular build making him look more like a surfer here to catch waves than a warrior capturing prisoners.
“I know this is a shit show, but the Dust Walkers will kill you. I’m saving you.”
“I didn’t ask to be saved,” I snap. “Leave me alone.”
His expression softens. “You can’t survive alone here. If we don’t take you with us, the Dust Walkers will chase you into the jungle and kill you.”
“You’re the one who just tied me up.”
A smile plays on his lips. “I get it. But you’ll be untied when you get back to our camp. I swear, this is for your own good.”
“And I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t let me go.”
It’s an empty threat from a helpless woman, once again tied up and unable to defend myself. And my throat is so dry and sore I can hardly talk. When I try to lunge at my captor, a wave of dizziness makes my world spin. I fall to my knees instead.
“She’s probably got heat exhaustion,” a female voice calls. “Let’s go!”
My captor bends down beside me. “My name’s Pax. What’s yours?”
“Eat shit.”
He chuckles lightly and scoops me up with hands beneath my back and knees. My resistance is weak, my arms leaden.
“You can’t keep up with us in your state. Try to relax. We’re going to take care of you.”
Nausea hits like a tidal wave, making me cringe and curl into myself. I’m drenched with sweat and on the edge of passing out. As much as I want to argue with him, it takes all my energy just to breathe.
“Good. Try to relax. The worst is behind you, I promise.”
I don’t believe him, but I’m too drained to fight anymore. I got minimal food and water in prison, and I’m still groggy from whatever the guards used to knock us out.
Fighting is all I have left, though. Every day, I silently consider all the ways I can make Lochlan pay for what he’s done to me. It’s been my driving force since the day his soldiers captured me at the market.
These people who are taking me back to their camp aren’t my enemies. Lochlan is. I have to rest up, gather my strength, and come up with a new plan. I’ll find a way to get home and look him in the eye one last time—as I’m ramming a dagger into his chest.