Page 141 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Especially because feet are thundering in the halls behind us. The guardians must be regrouping, preparing to recapture us.

There’s no time to go back and try to convince the others to join our escape if we want to escape at all.

“Up the path!” I shout over the racing of my pulse, jabbing my hand toward the narrow, shadowy track that weaves back and forth up the mountain over our heads.

Jacob and Andreas push to the front of the crowd, dragging Griffin with them.

“Follow us,” Jake calls out, and the kids start to stream after them into the thickening dusk.

Good. Whoever reaches the plateau first will need to deal with the helicopter’s pilot, and my guys are more equipped to do that than the kids. I should have thought that part through more carefully.

But when did we have time to put our heads together and really plan?

I hustle along at the back of the group, ushering the kids ahead of me with Dominic and Zian on either side. When the spiky-haired boy I noticed earlier stumbles, Zee grabs his elbow to steady him.

We’re not moving fast enough. As we swerve around the first bend, some of the kids already slowing as the unexpected climb saps their energy, a squad of guardians hurtles up the path toward us.

I spin around and let out a shriek, but one of our pursuers fires a weapon at the same time. A projectile whizzes through the evening and smacks me right in the throat.

My voice fizzles out with a squeak. I try to force another sound out and only rasp.

Shit.

As a chilly wave of panic washes over me, Zian throws himself at the guardians—only to hurl himself backward, barely dodging the bolt of electricity that shoots from one of their batons.

“Go, go, go!” Dominic hollers to the kids ahead of us, urging them onward, but my stomach has started to sink.

More shots blare through the night. Zian smacks a dart to the side with a swing of his hand.

Another plunges into the back of a kid just beyond him. The boy crumples, and I stumble as I avoid stepping on his slack form.

We can’t afford to stop and try to carry him, or the guardians will be on us.

One of them must hit a control, because the next thing I know, a section of path in the middle of our frantic procession crumbles away. Three of the younger shadowbloods tumble down the mountainside to a thick net that’s waiting to confine them below.

“Jump!” I manage to force out in a thin voice. Zee and I catch Dominic between us and spring at the same moment.

It’s at least a five-foot gap, but we clear it. Unfortunately, the guardians were prepared for that possibility too.

One of them jabs the side of the mountain, and a new ledge of rock protrudes to fill the gap so they can continue their pursuit. Another arc of electricity whips through the air, close enough that my fingers jitter.

I cough and try to propel a shriek from my mouth, but my throat is throbbing from the impact. The strangled noise that pops out of me does nothing at all.

Just in front of us now, Tegan sways on her feet, her fawn-brown hair sticking to the sweat that’s broken out on her neck. Her breaths are so ragged I can hear them over the pounding footsteps around us.

I’m considering swinging her small form onto my back—or gesturing for Zian to do it—when she spins around. Her eyes have stretched even wider, but her mouth is set in a line of total determination.

“I can stop them!” she says. “I can give you enough time.”

She squeezes between us before I can say a word. When I jerk around, she’s already facing off against the guardians—with her mouth open as she exhales in a rush.

I never asked what her power was. Now I get to see it up close.

A current of dark smoke like the shadows that bleed from our veins gushes over her lips. The cloud sweeps over the guardians, setting off shouts of alarm that make me think it’s doing more than obscuring their vision.

“Tegan!” I rasp, taking a step back toward her, but Zian tugs me in the opposite direction.

“We have to let her. We might not make it otherwise.”

I know he’s right. But the sense of abandoning her yanks at my heart with every step I take away from her toward the top of the cliff.

As we veer around another bend and race the last distance to the top of the mountainside, Dominic’s breath breaks into panting. I’m not sure how much longer he can keep up this pace.

But we’ve arrived. We burst onto the air strip in the midst of the cluster of younger shadowbloods who’ve made it this far—who are staring at Jacob where his hand is pressed against the helicopter’s windshield, lit by the glow of its running lights.

It’s a huge chopper with a propeller on the tail as well as one over the long main cabin. The pilot gapes at us from inside, both in shock and because Jake’s power has a grip on his throat.

“Open the fucking doors!” Jacob snarls.

Griffin steps up beside him, his presence weirdly calm amid all the turmoil. “Force isn’t working. Let me try.”

Jake narrows his eyes at his twin. “You?—”

Andreas cuts him off with a grasp of his shoulder.

Griffin doesn’t appear to be paying much attention to the other guys anyway. He peers through the window at the pilot, and my skin prickles with the sense of exuded power.

The pilot’s expression shifts, loosening other than the worried slant of his mouth. “What do you need? How can I help?”

Griffin only offers the slightest of triumphant smiles. “Open the doors and let us on.”

The hatch halfway down the body of the chopper opens up. I wave the remaining shadowbloods on board, my mouth gone dry.

Will Griffin really be able to manipulate this guy into doing everything we need? Should we even believe Griffin is looking out for us?

But then, how else are we going to get a flight out of here? Jacob and Zian can’t beat the guy into submission and then expect him to coherently direct an aircraft.

If it seems like something’s wrong during the flight… we’ll just have to deal with it then.

We squeeze into the dim, metallic-smelling space alongside several plastic crates and cardboard boxes that must be the supplies the guardians were expecting. Griffin comes around to the cockpit, leaning against the back of the pilot’s seat.

Jacob stations himself right beside his brother, poised for potential trouble.

“Take us into the air,” Griffin says in a voice that’s almost hypnotic in its smoothness. “We need to leave this spot.”

He may as well have hypnotized the pilot from how quickly the man moves to follow his suggestion.

As the helicopter lurches into the air with a whir of the blades, Griffin glances back at me. His backpack wobbles as his cat squirms inside it, her head ducked down in the chaos.

“Where do we want him to go?”

God, that is the question, isn’t it? I can’t see anything but darkness beyond the windshield right now.

I freeze up, both because I’m not sure what the right answer is and because I don’t know if I could say it loud enough for Griffin to hear me anyway.

Dominic catches my hand and answers for me. “The nearest major city on the mainland. As quickly as we can get there.”

Griffin nods at the pilot. “You heard him.”

The helicopter swings around with a bob of the floor beneath our feet. I snatch at the corner of a box for balance and glance around at our fellow escapees.

A few of the kids I know have made it—Nadia and Booker, Celine, Ajax. The spiky-haired kid is here. And then a few others I haven’t specifically noticed before.

They’re all huddled together in the cramped space.

Booker is gripping Nadia’s hand like Dominic has mine, but she looks too frightened to appreciate the gesture of affection.

Ajax has wrapped his arm right around another boy who looks about the same age, with dark hair, brown skin, and features that make me suspect the human part of his genetic heritage is Middle Eastern.

“What do we do now?” Celine asks from where she’s sitting against a stack of crates, her normally perky voice gone a bit shaky.

I swallow and find I can speak a little more loudly, though it’s not much better than a croak. “I guess we get to the city and get our bearings, and then make more decisions.”

I can reach out to Rollick without telling him where we are. Find out exactly what went down after our break-in at the other facility.

Zian stiffens abruptly. “Tracking devices.”

I stare at him for a split-second before my gut lurches.

Right. When we made our first escape, he’d figured out that we all had trackers embedded in our teeth.

We got rid of them by yanking the molars out of our jaws—or having Zian do it, for those who didn’t have the same brutal strength. The thought of asking all these kids to do the same makes me queasy.

But if we don’t take care of them quickly, the guardians will be able to figure out exactly where we’ve gone even without Griffin’s help.

Celine has gone rigid too. “What?”

Andreas comes up beside me, resting his hand on my back. “We all had tracking devices in our teeth. We dealt with ours before, but you probably still have them. We’ll need to do something about that.”

“Something like what?” Booker asks in a wary tone, adjusting his grip on Nadia’s hand.

Dominic answers in a gentle tone. “Zian pulled the tooth out for each of us. It isn’t fun, but I can heal you all up as soon as it’s done.”

Celine shivers, and the boy Ajax is embracing cringes in his arms. Ajax looks down at his friend—boyfriend?—and then his gaze jerks up to meet mine.

“Devon might be able to do it another way. The devices are made out of metal, right? He can create heat… Not a lot if it’s a big space, but if he concentrated it on something really small, he should be able to melt circuits.”

He glances down at the other guy with a fond but concerned expression that clearly indicates boyfriend . “Don’t you think so? If you want to try.”

Devon lets out a halting sigh and offers a crooked smile. “I guess it’d be better than having my teeth yanked out. How do we know which tooth it is?”

Zian’s shoulders come down at hearing there’s an alternative to him disfiguring all these teens and preteens we’re trying to save. He moves over to the young couple. “I can find it. Let’s start with the two of you to see how it goes.”

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Zian’s eyes flash as he uses his X-ray vision to locate each tracker and then confirm that it’s sufficiently melted by Devon’s power. The knots in my stomach gradually unravel.

Maybe we’re actually going to be okay. Maybe the worst part is over.

It doesn’t matter that the radio crackles with questions about where the pilot is going. Jacob silences the device with a bash of his power.

It doesn’t matter that I’m not totally sure about what we’re going to do once we’ve landed. We’ll figure it out once we’re there.

This time, the guardians don’t have Griffin as an ace up their sleeve. They tracked us down once without his help, but only after we’d stayed in the same place for a whole week.

Then Zian steps away from Celine, who submitted herself to the heat treatment last, and she points a finger at Griffin. “What about him? He’s got a tracker too, doesn’t he? He never ran away before.”

We all glance over at the twins. Jacob shoots his brother a grim look.

“She’s right. Let’s destroy whatever you’re carrying too.”

As Zian and Devon move to flank Griffin, who raises no protest, Booker raises his eyebrows. “Are we sure we should have this guy along at all? He was helping Clancy.”

“If we left him behind, then he’d have been able to help track us down,” I say in my roughened voice.

Griffin turns toward Booker. “I’d rather be here with all of you. Clancy misled me about his plans too. I apologize for anything I’ve been a part of that’s harmed you.”

“You don’t sound sorry,” one of the other kids mutters.

“I—I’m working on that.”

Griffin opens his mouth wide for Zian and Devon to do their work. Watching them, Booker abruptly pushes to his feet.

I don’t know if he isn’t satisfied with Griffin’s answer—I don’t think I am.

Whatever his intentions, the movement must distract Griffin. Because just as Devon turns away, the pilot yanks on the controls.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jacob demands, his gaze snapping around.

The kid who muttered about Griffin being sorry jumps up. “He pretended to be on our side, and now he’s letting the guardians catch us again!”

The pilot whips a phone I didn’t know he had to his ear. “Yes,” he gasps out in the frantic tone of a man who knows his time is limited, “They’ve got me?—”

I don’t really know who’s to blame for what happens next. Jacob whirls all the way toward the pilot and sends the phone flying from his hand. At the same moment, the spiky-haired boy launches himself toward the cockpit with a cry of, “I’ll stop him!”

He blinks a few steps forward like I saw him do in the hallway and slams into the pilot’s seat as he appears, his arm whacking the guy across the back of the head in a blow that doesn’t look totally intentional.

As the boy yelps, the pilot careens forward. His head bashes into the controls.

The helicopter heaves. Those of us standing bang into the walls and boxes.

Griffin’s even voice cuts through the chaos of gasps and exclamations. “You can still do this. Get the helicopter steady.”

The pilot has straightened up a little, but he lets out a pained moan. Blood is trickling down his forehead and from his nose.

“I can’t—I can’t see—it’s broken.”

“Just try. Try your best. There, you’re doing so well.”

It doesn’t feel like anything’s going well. The next lurch tosses me right onto my knees.

“Hold on to something!” I call out hoarsely to the kids.

A plummeting sensation melds with the forward momentum. The darkened sky beyond the windows tilts.

We’re falling—faster, faster, rushing onward at the same time. All at once, branches crackle against the windows.

Then there’s a boom of impact, and we slam to a sudden halt.