With half my body free, I turn back to haul a mostly invisible Miram out after me. She’s still flashing in and out, a light blinking on and off.
That’s when I’m hit. A harpoon grazes my thigh. Pain lances my body. I slap a hand over the torn, wet flesh.
Over their rapid-fire shouts, I fall. Just like in my nightmares. I’m plunging toward the ground. Tangled net and Miram, too.
We land in a winded, broken pile. My lungs heave, contracting with heat, the air around me thin and brittle, ice compared to the intense warmth frothing inside me.
Instantly, they surround us. Black-clad figures with their infrared goggles. Weapons point. They shout in their hard voices. And I see a face. One that I could never forget no matter how much I might want to block it from my memory.
Staring up into Xander’s relentless face, I know who these hunters are. As if there were ever a doubt. I know Will can’t be very far. Except this doesn’t fill me with relief. It’s closer to despair.
What can Will do? He can’t do anything to help me without risking himself, without exposing that I’m more than I appear.
Still, I search—long for a glimpse of him—as I shouldn’t.
More vehicles arrive, screeching to a halt, spraying dirt into the thick mist.
Miram speaks feverishly in my ear, her panic palpable, a hot wind I can taste, bitter and acrid on the air. “Jacinda, Jacinda! What do we do? What do we do?”
“Shut up, Miram,” I hiss, the draki-speech thick in my mouth.
The choppers circle like dark vultures, whipping the trees into a frenzy all around us. My hair blows wildly amid flying leaves.
One of the hunters rips off his goggles for a better look at me. He inches closer and prods me with the sharp tip of his gun. A growl swells up from my too-tight chest, dark and menacing. A sound I did not even know I was capable of. He prods at Miram’s blurring form beside me. “What in the hell . . .” His voice fades as another hunter barks at him.
“Carl, back off. We don’t know what we have here yet.”
The hunter obeys, edging back from us.
“Miram,” I plead, “stay invisible. Focus.”
Her eyes hold mine, the vertical pupils shuddering, vanishing and reappearing with the rest of her. She’s like rippling water, seemingly amorphous, constantly altering, there and then gone again.
Bodies clamber from the vehicles. I tear my attention back to these men with their merciless faces, search among them, looking for a chance, a hope.
Will’s not among them. Even as relief runs through me, I can’t help wondering why. Why isn’t he here? Where is he?
I recognize the man striding at the front of the group. Will’s father. Still handsome and well-groomed even in his hunting apparel. A hot trickle of terror shivers up from my core. Because I know what this man is capable of.
He looks different. Not the cordial man who welcomed me into his home when he thought I was a normal girl. His brutally cold eyes assess me, see me as a creature. Prey. And I see him. Truly see him. He’ll have no problem snuffing out my life.
“What do we have here, boys?”
“We’ve got two . . . well, we think.”
Mr. Rutledge stares hard at us for a moment. Miram’s out of control next to me, and I know it’s useless to tell her to hold it together anymore. She’s too afraid. Too panicked.
I scan the thick press of trees, each beat of my heart a loud, reverberating thump in my chest. My razor-sharp gaze skips over each hunter, hungry for the sight of one face. Against all sanity, I still hope. Will, where are you?
Xander steps close to his uncle and motions to Miram. “That’s one of those invisible ones.” He points at me. “Know what type that one is?”
Mr. Rutledge studies me without answering, his head angled as though he can dissect me with his eyes. And I suppose he can. I have trouble meeting his gaze—this man who is Will’s father, who butchered my kind and infused their lives’ blood into his son. For that he is a monster. But for that his son lives, a boy I love.
It’s a twisted reality, and I can’t help hearing Cassian in my head, insisting that someday that very thing would drive a wedge between Will and me.
Mr. Rutledge stretches out a hand and flicks his fingers, apparently reaching a decision. Instantly, a weapon appears, placed in his hand. A gun of some kind. I know nothing about them except that they hurt. They destroy.
He aims.
Miram thrashes wildly, watching in horror as I do.
Only I cannot simply watch. Not when the core of me is a weapon.
Hot purpose rolls over me. “Stop,” I snarl, for all they can’t understand me, shoving Miram away from me so that I can do what needs to be done. What I’m born to do. But we’re tangled in the net, and she won’t stop clinging to me, pleading in low rumbling draki-speech.
Shaking hair from my face, I part my lips and blow.
Fire fights its way up my throat. My windpipe shudders with raging heat. The steam releases from my nostrils an instant before flames burst from my lips. With a roar the blast of heat arcs across the air. The hunters cry out, dance back from the far-reaching flames.
The net falls from us, incinerated to tufts of ash. The taste of char and cinder coats my mouth. I grab Miram’s arm and haul her up off the ground. She’s uncooperative, dead weight in her fear.
My face tilts to the sky, eager for escape, freedom, hungry for wind, but not without her. “Get up!” I cry. “C’mon! Fly!”
She starts to rise, her movements sluggish. With all my strength, I lift her up, ready to ascend even if it means carrying her.
My feet leave the ground just as I’m hit. Pain erupts in my wing, misery that lances through the membrane. They’re deceptive; draki wings look gossamer soft, but are really quite strong, laced with countless nerves that make them all the more sensitive. I’m in agony.
Twisting my body up into the air, I tear the small harpoon from my wing, fling it until it impales in the soft ground.
I collapse back down, head bowed in pain.
Miram breaks from my side, stumbles, lost from me in our fall.
Will’s dad steps closer, his weapon aimed at me. His eyes are cold. He feels nothing.
There’s a whistle as I’m hit again. In the thigh. This time the pain is less, not another harpoon. My gaze jerks down, rests on the dart protruding from my red-gold flesh. I yank it free and glare at it, see that it contains a vial. A now-empty vial.
A second whistle cuts the air. My gaze swerves, watches as the dart hits with a solid thunk into Miram’s body. She screams. The sound is bewildered, stunned only as one who’s never endured physical pain before can feel.
And yet I know it’s more than the pain. It’s the fear, this horror of being treated like an animal without worth. Something to be hunted, caught, and ultimately destroyed.
I drag myself to her side. She slumps against me, her tears moist on my shoulder, a chilling hiss on my scalding flesh.
I shout at the hunters even though I know that I probably appear more animal to them with my strange, growling sounds. More the beast that needs exterminating. I cringe, wither inside at the sensation of their cold, apathetic eyes on me.
In moments, my vision grows fuzzy. My head feels warm, insulated. And somehow I don’t care anymore. I feel good all over, tingly.
The hunters descend, smudges of dancing black. A roaring fills my ears, but not loud enough to cover Miram’s gasping sobs. Those I hear. Those I will always hear.
I squeeze her hand, or at least I try to. My muscles are so tired, feeble and sluggish. I’m not sure I do anything more than cover her fingers with mine. Then, she’s no longer with me. They take her, drag her from my side. I stretch for her, but I’m too slow. Her talons claw through the earth, leave deep gouges in the soil. Her screams don’t sound so close anymore, but they’re still there, fading in the distance like a dying wind.
“Where are you taking her?” I shout in my guttural tongue. “Miram! Miram!”
Then they come at me with their groping hands.
“Careful that one doesn’t burn you,” one of the hunters advises.
Blurry figures surround me. I fight the drugging sensation that makes me want to curl into a small ball with a smile on my face and sleep.
I rise up to my knees in a final attempt to escape . . . to get away, flutter my wings and take to the skies. I cry out and fall back down, face-first in the loamy earth. Useless. Raw pain fires through the membrane of my wing, deep into my muscles.
Warm blood flows, gliding down my back, and pooling at the base of my spine. I feel its trickle. Smell the richness.
I drop my head. My hair falls in a fiery curtain around me. And I see it. See the telltale shimmer of my blood, a lustrous purple dripping like spilled ink to the ground.
Still, I fight the numbing lethargy threatening to swallow me. My arms shake trying to lift myself back up. My body is so heavy. Lead.
What was in that vial?
Desperate fury pounds through me, blistering along my veins. I want to unleash myself, burn them all, punish them for what they’re doing to me—and all they plan to do. Things so terrible we’ve never been directly told. No one sits us down in primary school and explains what really happens once a hunter captures us and turns us over to the enkros, but I know. I saw Will’s father’s study—the furniture covered in draki skin.
I open my mouth and release another gust of fire—my last hope. A thin thread of flame spills past my lips. This time the fiery breath withers almost the moment it’s released, dies in a trail of steam.
“Will,” I croak, my eyelids heavy, impossible to hold up anymore.
Hard hands grip me on all sides, lifting me up. I turn my face and try to blow flame on the arms, but only choke out a weak rivulet of steam.
What did they do to me?
They bind my hands, my wrists squeezed so tightly blood ceases to flow. Even groggy, I feel this new pain. I’m flipped on my stomach, straddled. Again, I’m just an animal, a beast. A scream rises in my throat as my wings are bound tight to each other, preventing them from moving, preventing me from flight.
I’m tossed through the air, striking hard, smooth ground. The surface is cold and frigid against my hot flesh. Not dirt then.
Doors slam. I’m in the back of a vehicle. A van. It begins moving, bumping over the ground, weaving through trees and clawing foliage. Taking me farther from the pride. Farther from home.
I can’t fight anymore. My lids sink over tired eyes. Even with my body’s discomfort, with the sting pulsing in my wing, vibrating deep into my shoulder blades, I can’t resist the drug’s soporific effect. My cheek presses down on the cold metal floor and I slip into sleep.
Chapter 18
Pain greets me when I wake.
I take several slow blinks before I manage to fully open my eyes. The torment in my head rivals the intense throbbing everywhere else in my beaten and broken body and I have to close my eyes again for several moments before opening them again.
My wings throb. I try to move the gossamer sheets, and the pain jolts deep, radiating along my entire length. I’d forgotten they were strapped together. I curl up into a small ball and moan my misery.
After a while and several deep breaths later, I lift my head, peel my cheek from the cold metal floor of the van. I shake my head, wondering if I’m even awake, wondering if this is all a nightmare.
I catch the sound of a whimper nearby. I turn, spot Miram pressed along a far wall of the van. With great effort I lift up, so glad to see her that for a moment the pain doesn’t matter. At least we’re together in this metal box.
“Miram,” I whisper, dragging myself closer to her, relieved that she’s here.
She’s visible, of course. Her eyes lock on mine.
I wet my dry lips. “What . . .”
“What happened?” Miram finishes my question. “You,” she says. “You always happen. I suppose it’s not such a surprise this would be your fate, but I can’t believe I’m here, too. That you’ve dragged me into this . . .”