Page 142 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Twenty

Riva

M y head smacks into the box I’m crouched against. For a few seconds, my thoughts spin as pain splinters through them.

Something creaks. Gasps and a few sobs fill the air around me, along with a panicked feline yowl.

I shake myself out of my daze with a hitch of my pulse and peer through the darkness. “Is—is everyone okay?”

I can’t tell if my voice is still strained from the thing the guardians shot at my throat or if it’s all the shock of our crash now. In the dim moonlight that seeps through the windows, I vaguely make out the younger shadowbloods amid the tumbled boxes and crates.

A bag of rice has fallen out and split open, pale grains spilling across the floor. Celine has her hand pressed to her beige forehead, a trickle of blood streaking down from beneath her palm.

“Dominic!” I cry out automatically, and feel his hand on my shoulder.

He squints at me in the dimness and touches the side of my head where I smacked it. The tender spot makes me wince, but there’s no coolness of blood.

“I’m all right. The kids…”

“I’m on it,” he murmurs, and moves deeper into the helicopter’s cargo area with a slight sway to his steps that makes me wonder if he’s completely all right.

“Riva!”

It’s Jacob’s voice, taut and ragged.

I spin toward the cockpit, the direction where I last saw him. “I’m here. I bumped my head, but not too badly.”

Zian staggers to his feet near me. Andreas catches my arm, his fingers curling around my elbow.

Jacob, silhouetted by the faint light through the shattered windshield, takes an urgent step toward me and then glances back at Griffin. His jaw tightens.

He still doesn’t trust his brother enough to feel comfortable leaving him to his own devices. I’m not sure I do either.

I push myself toward them instead. “The pilot?—”

The words snag in my throat. With just a couple of paces, I’ve come close enough to see the full consequences of the crash.

The front of the helicopter rammed right into a thick tree trunk—right at the pilot’s seat. The metal and glass there have crumpled inward.

You can’t tell that the man’s nose was bleeding before because now his entire body is bashed beyond recognition.

My stomach flips over.

Griffin is staring at the pilot from just behind him, blood smearing the back of his hand from a thin cut—maybe from the breaking glass. Hugging his backpack and the quivering cat inside it to his chest, he blinks and glances over at the rest of us.

“I didn’t mean for— I was hoping we could still land properly.”

“It’s okay,” Andreas says in the warm voice that comes so naturally to him. “The crash could have been a lot worse.”

Jacob scowls. “At least this way we know he won’t be reaching out to the guardians.”

With a twitch of his fingers, he summons the phone he wrenched from the pilot’s hand just minutes ago. As his power tugs it through the air to us, his scowl deepens.

Cracks form a spiderweb on the screen. He pushes the wake button just in case, but no light flickers on the fractured surface.

Zian looks around. “Where are we?”

All that’s visible through the windows are the shadowy shapes of more trees. I can’t make out any sign of civilization, not the slightest gleam of artificial light in the distance.

“No way of telling from the navigation screen,” Jacob says. “But we were heading toward a city like Dominic told him to. I could see a big patch of lights in the distance.”

Andreas nods. “North… northwest. It was just to the right of where the sun was setting.”

A flicker of hope rises in my chest. “How far away?”

Jacob shakes his head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t close .”

“We won’t be able to tell which direction is northwest until the sun’s back up,” Zian says.

Griffin’s voice comes out calm but more tentative than usual. “I know where it is.”

All our gazes jerk to him.

Jacob’s eyes narrow. “How?”

His twin gazes back at him steadily. “There are a lot of people there. A lot of emotions. I can only pick up on a general impression, and faintly, but there mustn’t be much of anyone else around, because it’s mostly coming from that way.”

He points at an angle from the windshield, into the jungle outside.

Zian lets out a rough guffaw. “Griffin can be our compass.”

From Jacob’s expression, he isn’t happy about the idea. But we can’t be beggars and choosers.

“He did help with the escape,” I remind Jake. “And we’ve got to get moving in some direction as soon as possible. We’d only just disabled the last tracking device when we started to crash. The guardians might be able to find us here if we stay with the chopper all night.”

Jacob sighs in frustration, but he doesn’t argue. He just shoots his brother another steely look.

I scramble back to the cargo area where Dominic is tending to the younger shadowbloods’ injuries. Devon and the spiky-haired kid who hit the pilot were tossed back by the impact, squatting on opposite sides of the bay now.

Devon winces and then relaxes as Dom grips his ankle with a healing hand. The spiky-haired kid, who can’t be more than twelve, watches with darting eyes.

His gaze catches on me, and his shoulders curl in on himself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to run right into him. I didn’t mean to hop at all. It just happens when I’m worried.”

I’m not anyone to criticize people for having erratic control over their powers.

I crouch down across from him. “Hopping—is that what you call it when you flash forward like you’re not even there for a second?”

He nods. “The guardians said it’s teleporting. But they were always mad I couldn’t go farther.”

Of course they would have been. Skipping a few steps isn’t going to make that much difference on a mission.

“We’re here now,” I tell him. “And we’re going to keep going. What’s your name?”

He swipes his hand across his eyes like he’s rubbing away tears before they fully formed. “George.”

When I turn around, Dominic has finished healing Devon, and Ajax has come over to help his boyfriend to his feet. Booker and Nadia are standing close together, his hand at her back, her face tight with worry.

Booker rakes his fingers through his pale hair, his expression too serious now to conjure the surfer dude impression he gave me when we first met. “What now? Can the guardians find us here?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “So we’re moving out. But…”

My gaze travels over the jumbled assortment of supplies, and I manage a small smile. “At least we shouldn’t have to worry about going hungry. Let’s quickly dig through all of this and grab whatever’s easiest to carry and doesn’t need cooking.”

A girl whose name I haven’t caught points toward the back of the helicopter. “There are some things that look kind of like backpacks that would help for carrying stuff. I think they might be emergency parachutes, but we could tear the parachute part out.”

Celine, the scratch on her forehead sealed, lets out a tinkling laugh that doesn’t hold much real humor. “If we can even see what we’re doing in here.”

Nadia perks up, the tension falling away from her face for the first time since we ran to the helicopter. “Finally, it’s my time to shine! Literally.”

As she grins, her brown skin lights up the way she showed me before.

In the daylight of the clearing, it was hard to tell just how potent her inner light is. Now, the warm glow washes over the entire interior of the storage bay as if the overhead lights have turned on.

“Wow,” Booker says with admiration that’s obviously genuine. “You’re really something, Glowworm.”

As we all get to work digging through the boxes and crates, Dominic turns pensive. “Can you adjust how strong the light is? To make sure you don’t wear yourself out—and so it’ll be harder for anyone to spot us from above?”

“Oh, sure.” Nadia pauses, and her glow fades as if she’s pushed down a dimmer switch to halfway. “Is that good?”

Andreas shoves open the hatch and takes in the jungle beyond. “I think that’ll be safe enough. The tree cover is pretty thick, at least right around here.”

In the end, the six of us “Firsts” end up carrying most of the supplies in the limited number of makeshift backpacks. I stuff mine full of crackers, cheese, apples, carrots, and a couple of jugs of juice.

We might be relying on that to stay hydrated, since it doesn’t appear that the supplies included water, and we have no way of making sure any streams or ponds we pass are safe to drink from.

Each of the younger shadowbloods gathers a small assortment of their own, tying swaths of parachute fabric around their backs and shoulders however feels most comfortable as makeshift carry-sacks.

When we’re all loaded up, I glance over our motley group again, holding tightly to the spark of hope that lit when Jacob said he’d seen a city.

“Is everyone ready to go?”

There are nods and murmurs all around. They don’t exactly sound enthusiastic, but then, I don’t think any of us would take this trek if we had the choice.

We just know it’s better than the alternative.

Nadia leads the way with her innate light, Booker sticking close to her side and Zian tramping along at her flank in case we encounter any threats. The rest of us Firsts spread out through the procession, monitoring the kids for signs of faltering.

I end up at the rear of the line, making sure no one falls behind. Andreas eases back next to me as we tramp over the uneven ground, weaving between the trees and scrambling over jutting roots.

“We won’t be able to keep this up all night,” he murmurs. “None of us has slept since yesterday.”

The stress of the escape has worn at my nerves enough that exhaustion is already nibbling at the edges of my awareness. “I know. But we should get as much distance from the crash site as we can.”