“We should split up,” Ben breathed. “Kailyn and I will lead half of the Hawks down to the lower levels to clear them out. And I suggest you and Lucas lead the rest to take over the control room.”
“Agreed,” I murmured.
Thus we split up. It didn’t take Lucas’ and my group long to find the control cabin, though a door shut us out of it. Aiming our guns, Lucas and I fired at the door at once. We shattered the lock mechanism and I was able to force it open with a powerful kick.
Nobody was inside. Two abandoned chairs sat behind the navigation panels. A window in the far left of the room was open.
“Looks like they’ve escaped,” Lucas muttered. He moved to the window and looked down toward the ocean. “Or they could have—”
His speech was cut short by a hail of bullets from above him. He managed to pull his head back inside before a bullet could hit him. The next thing I knew, a group of six hunters had swung down from what I could only assume was a ledge above the window. Shattering the windows, they crashed inside while firing full blaze. I dropped down beneath one of the chairs, using it as a shield, even as one of the Hawks who’d entered with us was hit. I would have reached out to help him—drag him back through the door along with Lucas and me—but it was clearly too late. My brother and I leapt back out of the door, slamming it shut behind us.
As we leaned against the reinforced door, keeping it shut tight against the hunters’ attempts to push it open, I realized that Hawk had not been the only one to get hit.
My brother’s face was contorted in agony as he leaned next to me, his right hand above his right hip. A slew of curses escaped his lips. He was bleeding profusely.
“Christ,” I breathed.
As the hunters banged more forcefully in their efforts to get out, Killian and two other Hawks relieved Lucas and I of the pressure. They pushed themselves against it, allowing us to shuffle away.
I lifted my brother’s hand from where it was cupped around his wound to gain a better look. It looked deep. Worryingly deep.
“We’ve got to get you back to The Shade,” I told him, rising to my feet and gazing around at the other Hawks. The fastest way would be for him to travel with Ben. Lucas could climb onto his back. Fae were far, far faster than Hawks. But first I needed to find my son.
Placing an arm around Lucas, I shifted him away from the door and planted him in the midst of four Hawks further down the hallway.
“Keep an eye on my brother,” I told them sternly, before racing to the flight of stairs that led to the deck beneath us. My gun at the ready, I hurried down the steps to find the floor alight with battle. Bodies of hunters lay strewn across the carpet, along with one Hawk.
I ducked as a hunter at the opposite end of the corridor fired at me. I shot back at him, my bullet meeting its mark and lodging into his skull.
Ben. Where is Ben?
The struggle continued all around me, slowing my search for my son. I ended up getting caught in the thick of the battle and stayed caught up in it until I’d felled the final hunter.
Then I caught sight of Ben. He was climbing up a staircase along with eight other Hawks. He had a fresh wound across his right cheek, along with a swollen eye. The Hawks behind him looked no less ruffled, their feathers sticking up in odd places, though none appeared to have been shot.
“What’s going on? Have you cleared this level?” Ben asked as he hurried toward me.
“Yes,” I replied. “So are the decks beneath us clear now, too?”
Ben nodded. “We think so. There weren’t so many down there. Kailyn and a couple of other Hawks are doing a final check, but we’re pretty sure we cleared all of them. What about the control room?”
“There are still about six hunters up there we need to get rid of. But Ben”—I reached out and clasped his shoulder—“you’ve got to return to The Shade with Lucas. He’s been shot, and it looks bad. Really bad.”
My son’s green eyes widened. It was in moments of concern that I saw Sofia in him most. “Where is Lucas?” he asked.
“Upstairs, outside the control room. Come with me.”
I led everyone back upstairs to find the Hawks still successfully keeping the hunters on the other side of the door. Although they were equipped with guns, it seemed that none of them had it in them to tackle the men in my absence.
We found Lucas slumped where I left him. He looked worse than ever. His breathing was ragged and beads of sweat dripped down his forehead.
My son lowered to Lucas’ level. He grabbed one of his arms and placed it around his shoulders. “You’re going to have to climb onto my back, Uncle,” he told Lucas. “I’ll fly you back home.”
Lucas winced as he strained to haul himself onto Ben’s back.
“After you’ve dropped off Lucas,” I said, “you must return immediately with the witches. Also bring jinn, if you can find any quickly.”
Ben nodded before sweeping my brother away, back along the corridor and upstairs to the open deck.
I resumed my focus on the door of the control room, my eyes darkening.
“Right,” I said through gritted teeth, tightening my grip around my gun. “Let’s get rid of these bastards.”
Lucas
As Ben soared away from the ship with me, I was having double vision. Although the bullet wound was local to my hip, it felt like the pain was spread throughout every limb of my body. I could barely even think straight through the agony.
It brought back the less-than-pleasant memory of the last time I had been shot—by Aiden. The bullet that had ended my vampire life. I couldn’t exactly say that my pain now was worse than that—when his damn UV bullet had made me burst into flames like a phoenix—but this was biting in a different way. It dragged on.
I ended up closing my eyes, trying to numb my brain of the pain, trying to think of anything else but the piercing throbbing in my hip.
I had better not die again, I thought foggily. I had better not become a ghost.
I’d had enough dying for one lifetime. Been there. Done that. Gotten the postcard.
I was barely conscious when we finally arrived outside the borders of the island. Barely aware as Ben yelled for one of the gatekeepers to let us in. Barely cognizant of being transported to the hospital. Then, as I felt myself being lowered onto a bed—a warm, soft bed—I gave into the pain and exhaustion… and the world went black.
Something pleasantly cool pressed against my forehead, relieving the tension around my temples. I became aware of my breathing again, but strangely, not of the pain in my hip.
Then I remembered what had happened. Where I was. Ben had brought me to Meadow Hospital. A witch must have treated me already…
I lifted my eyelids slowly. Through my blurry vision, I could make out a brown-haired female leaning over me. I immediately assumed that it was Corrine. But as my eyes sharpened, I realized that it definitely was not Corrine. This woman’s hair was not entirely brown—it was streaked with blonde, in fact.
I was gazing up at Marion. Marion, in a light summer dress, sitting by my bedside and holding a cold towel to my forehead.
Her pretty face lit up on seeing me awake. “You are back,” she announced.
“Yes,” I murmured dreamily, “I suppose I am.”
“You were sleeping a long time,” she remarked.
Drawing in a breath, I propped myself up on my elbows and slowly sat upright. I removed the sheets that had been tucked around my body to see that my waist and hips had been wrapped in bandages.
My eyes returned to Marion’s hazel irises.
“H-Have you been here with me the whole time?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Oui,” she replied. She glanced over her shoulder toward a cot that had been placed a few feet away from my bed. Her baby girl lay asleep. “When I hear that you return, I come,” she explained.
She eyed the buttons of my shirt before reaching out and undoing the first three. She bared the top of my chest before pressing her fingers ag
ainst my skin. “You are hot,” she said. Her fingers slipped up to my cheek.
“Uh, yeah.” I realized I was hot. But I wasn’t sure that the reason for that was entirely medical… “I should probably take a shower,” I said, moving to swing my legs off the bed.
She stood up to help me, wrapping one arm around my waist and walking with me to the ensuite bathroom. As we approached the door and she was still holding me, for a moment I wondered if she was going to take me inside.
Then her arms loosened.
“You stand okay?” she asked. She cocked her head, her locks of hair swinging to one side as she eyed me with concern.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I wait here for you, Lucas.”
“Sure… you do that.” I cleared my throat, shutting the bathroom door.
Apparently getting shot does have its perks.
Ben
After dropping Lucas off at the hospital, my most urgent priority was to return to the ship. I didn’t even have time to check in on Grace. I had to immediately gather some witches to protect the boat before the hunters could arrive—something that could happen any moment now. I hurtled to the Sanctuary, where I found Ibrahim, Arwen and Shayla. I figured they would be more than sufficient and I need not go searching for the help of jinn too.
And so we left the island and sped back to the ship. The witches magicked us to the approximate area, and from there, we scoured the waves. We spotted the cargo ship quickly. Thankfully, at least from our bird’s eye view, it didn’t seem like any other hunters had arrived. We dropped down to the ship, and the witches immediately cast a spell over it.
We sank to the lower decks, where we found my father, Kailyn and the Hawks waiting in and around the control room.
“We’ve put up a spell already,” Ibrahim assured my father.
“And you got rid of the last of the hunters?” I verified.
“Yes,” my father replied. “The ship is clear now for us to return to the island.”
Return to The Shade with these Hawks. Now that was an interesting proposition.
I had already explained briefly to the witches that we—or rather my father—had managed to gather an army of Hawks, but that forewarning didn’t stop the witches from looking stunned as they saw the Hawks standing peacefully with my father. The Hawks returned the witches’ stares, eyeing them suspiciously at first, but seeing that the witches were accompanied by me, the Hawks kept quiet. Hawks and witches weren’t exactly known to be the best of friends. Then again, I wasn’t sure of any species which would be considered natural “friends” with the Hawks.
“I’m glad you arrived when you did,” my father went on. “We were getting nervous. I managed to intercept the radio system here, and apparently the hunters are only a dozen or so miles away.”
“Ibrahim,” I said, as we began to navigate the ship back home, “any progress at all on your tree and Bloodless experiments?” I’d been in such a rush to bring them back here to the ship that I hadn’t yet asked the burning question.
Ibrahim and Shayla shook their heads.
Although I knew I should have been prepared for that answer, my stomach could not help but plummet.
“Well,” my father said, gazing straight ahead at the ocean as we glided, “at least we have secured the trees. Did you notice in the lower decks, there are massive freezers preserving the leaves? They should remain in good condition. “
Yes, I had spotted those, but I had been too preoccupied with eradicating the hunters from the ship to think about it at the time.
“You’re right, Derek,” Ibrahim said. “We just have to keep trying. At least we’ve gotten the trees safely out of the hunters’ grasp.”
“Oh, look,” Arwen said, pointing up at the sky overhead. “Here come the hunters.”
Indeed, a fleet of black wasplike helicopters hurtled our way, clearly looking for us. But because of the invisibility spell the witches had cast over us, they flew right on past, continuing their fruitless search. Apparently they weren’t carrying supernatural radars strong enough to detect us beneath the spell. Good riddance.
I remained tense for the rest of the journey and said very little, my mind refocusing on Grace.
As we entered The Shade’s boundary, I rose up from the ship, leaving the others to navigate the giant boat to the Port and figure out where the best place was to store the trees safely.
I needed to check in on my daughter. Although it had only been a matter of hours since I’d last seen her, it felt like an eternity.
I sped to the hospital and up to the floor where Grace’s room was located. I stopped outside and knocked.
“Come in.” River spoke up, a tad choked. At least it was comforting to know that River had come to consciousness again. And if she had, I hoped that all the others who’d been affected by the gas would have also.
I pushed open the door and hurriedly stepped inside.
Any small relief I’d felt on hearing my wife’s voice, however, evaporated as my eyes narrowed in on my daughter.
She was sitting upright, leaning against the headboard, eyes half open, while River sat by her side, clutching her hands.
There was something so different about my daughter's appearance that I found myself doing a double-take.
Her hair.
She had lost every strand of her hair.
Lawrence
By the time Grace, Horatio and Ben left my room, there was not long to wait until dawn, when my father had instructed me to buzz him.
I, of course, could not even conceive of resting, even though my body needed it, given the task ahead of me. I needed to think through and plan my every step meticulously. I could not afford to slip up even in the slightest—not the slightest misplaced word, or the slightest uncharacteristic behavior. My father was sharp. Sharp as a hawk. And I could not afford to give him a single reason, however small, to suspect that a part of me might not be fully on his side. I had to continue being his enthusiastic assistant, his puppet, which was the role I had found myself in since the moment I’d woken up in this strange, powerful new body.
And so I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out at the mist-filled jungle. The mist was thick as ever, even hours after it had been let loose. I wondered how long it would take to lift—I was not sure of that exactly, but I was sure that when it did, the trees that it had engulfed would be as good as dead.
Once the first trickles of daylight escaped through the trees, I headed to the bathroom and hunched over the sink. Although, thanks to Grace’s waterboarding antics—which couldn’t help but evoke a small smirk even now as I recalled them—my face had received a thorough washing during the night, I spent the next few minutes dousing my skin with water in an attempt to freshen my appearance.
I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. I still looked tired and worn. I could see the worry behind my eyes, but I would have to do all that I could to camouflage that on greeting my father. I did have a legitimate excuse for looking unrested this morning, at least. My father had arrived in The Woodlands late last night, and I had been forced out of my room on an emergency rescue mission. I’d led a group of IBSI members riding atop mutants to locate my father and retrieve him from the grasp of The Shade’s people, whom at the time I had seen as simply rebels without a cause. So, even if Grace had not been here keeping me up, my sleep would have still been unfulfilling.
I allowed myself a few more moments to mentally prepare before moving to the phone near my bedside. I picked up the receiver and buzzed my father. He answered momentarily.
“Lawrence,” he said, his voice husky but alert, the way it sounded after he’d had his first two or three cups of morning coffee.
“Yup,” I replied.
“How did you wake up this morning?”
“Naturally, of course,” I said, frowning. “Nobody came in to wake me.”
“Good. Your sleeping is well on its way to getting lighter.”
“Right,” I said. I remembered at the start
, soon after I’d woken up in this powerful body, it had been awful. It was hard to even wake up naturally. My body just craved sleep, as much as it could possibly get. My father had had to resort to similar methods to Grace’s, pouring water on me, and in one case even chucking me into a pool.
Over the past few days, I’d been sleeping more normal hours and waking up by myself.
“So what’s going on?” I asked.
“We’re leaving. I’ve packed my stuff and informed everyone else. Some have already traveled through the portal.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be outside your room in three minutes.”
I had virtually nothing to pack up anyway, just my toiletries and a few sets of clothes, and the gas mask my father had left for me. I put the mask on, stuffed the remaining items into a duffel bag, and hurried to my father’s room. His suitcase was propped neatly in one corner. I found him in the bathroom, applying the last fresh bandage to the wounds Benjamin had inflicted on him the night before.
He caught my eye in the mirror, his expression businesslike, before twisting around.
“We’ll leave now.”
I realized that I had been overly worried about him noticing something off about my appearance. He was preoccupied with the move.
He swooped for his case, put on his own gas mask, which rested on a shelf, and we headed to the jungle ground. Out in the open, he led me to a motorcycle, leaning against a trunk. He took the driver’s seat while I sat behind him. The motor roared to life and we began trundling through the smoky jungle.
We passed other hunters along the track that led to the portal—yes, I realized I’d started calling them “hunters” in my mind now, rather than IBSI members, thanks to Grace’s influence. All of them were in gas masks, too, and most of them were traveling by foot.
As we passed a group of mutants, splayed unconscious on the ground, I realized I hadn’t even thought of the effect the smoke would have on them. It had knocked them out, likely even killed them. But none of the IBSI batted an eyelid. The mutants, our monstrous slaves, were just casualties, like the trees.
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