A Long Way Home

by Becky Doughty

  Before I returned to her, I caught my breath as the red lights flashed over the emptying streets. The chaos would disappear with the sunset, but it wasn’t gone yet. We weren’t safe, and it’d probably be up to me to find shelter.

  I ducked back into the alleyway and jogged around the corner, half-expecting to see the girl wobbling away with a makeshift crutch but she wasn’t. She stayed where I left her, sitting against the brick building as if it were the only thing holding her up. Which, it probably was.

  As I approached, her gray gaze focused on the sky without really focusing at all. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Ignoring her question, I winced as I examined her damage. Her scalp was torn, but her leg was worse. Her ripped pants exposed shredded shin. I could see the bone. It wasn’t broken, but I had to prepare myself.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said, reaching out to touch her leg.

  She shot forward, but I pushed her back. “Calm down,” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”

  I was a bad blood after all, and I healed people. The only fault in it came with the exchange of energy. Anytime I healed someone, I was hurting myself. It was the only time I felt pain. It also exhausted me.

  Her face drained of color. “Don’t touch me—”

  But it was too late. I laid my finger on her skinned leg, and the electricity in my veins vibrated into her blood. That’s when it happened. My muscles burned, my head spun, and my tendons tensed. Everything in me pummeled until she squirmed away. When my vision blurred, she was all I saw. The slit on her brow began to close, and in what seemed like seconds, her massive injuries died out with her unsteady stare. Her wild eyes lost the fire in them. I had seen the look once before. When I couldn’t control my healing abilities, my powers killed a person I touched. Healing everything drained all the energy from their body. I’d only done it to one person before. Twelve years later, I was seeing the same expression on this girl’s face.

  I caught her before she slumped over. “I didn’t do that.” Panic forced my words out. “I didn’t heal you that much.”

  “You’re a bad blood,” she managed through a shallow breath.

  That’s when I understood. She had healed herself with my abilities, and now that she had them, she didn’t know how to control it.

  “Concentrate on something else.” I told her how to restrain the power, but she looked past me. “What’s your name?” When I grabbed her face, she found my eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Serena.” The healing slowed down. “I’m Serena.”

  I kept my fingers locked around her chin. “Just hold on, Serena,” I repeated her name, hoping she would continue to concentrate elsewhere. “You’re going to be okay,” I promised, and as if she could defy my promises, she went limp in my arms.

  ***

  I shifted Serena’s weight from my right shoulder to my left. Despite my lack of energy, I managed to carry her two blocks. She didn’t weigh much. I tried not to think about what had happened to her in the blood camp. Torture and all kinds of heinous things. Everyone knew the rumors, but the rumors were her reality, and carrying her made the rumors too real to ignore.

  “You can do this.” I talked to myself as I concentrated on my pain instead of hers. My shoulder burned. Over a decade had passed since my injury and it still ached up a storm before it rained.

  When Calhoun’s crooked apartment finally came into view, deep relief filled me. Until I saw it. Shadows twirled around the lamppost and curled off the ground. Light didn’t affect it. The shadow, existing on its own, camouflaged into the dark alley masterfully. The only difference between this shadow and the rest of them was one thing: she had a name.

  “Vi.” I stared at the crevice where she attempted to hide. It reminded me of the first time I had found her. “I know you’re there, Violet.” She didn’t move. “On the count of three—”

  “All right. All right.” The girl’s voice rose from the ground as the shadow split into two arms. When it spun, it formed a preteen girl. Her feet were hazy, and her long hair flew around her shoulders like shadow-clad snakes. Even then, her pale skin mimicked the moon against a night sky.

  “What are you doing?” I scolded her presence. The red lights were still on. It was more than illegal to be out, and Violet knew it. In the least, she should’ve been inside with Calhoun…or working harder at hiding from me.

  “And what are you doing?” Her dilated pupils pointed to Serena.

  “You know the rules, Vi.”

  “How do you expect me to follow the stupid rules if you don’t?” Her skinny arms worked her hair into a ponytail. “I stayed close.”

  When I stepped forward, Vi followed me, her footsteps never making a sound. “Is she—?”

  “She’s alive,” I said, although I didn’t know how alive Serena was.

  “I was going to ask if she was the one who escaped.”

  My muscles tensed as I neared Calhoun’s door. I had broken his rules, and until I confronted him, I couldn’t tell Vi a thing.

  I made my way up the steps one at a time. “Go home, Vi.”

  “But—”

  “No arguments,” I interrupted. “Go home, tell Michele I’m fine, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Michele was the mother figure of our flock. She had premonitions, but they weren’t clear. She might have seen the trouble I was in but not how it turned out, and Vi was among the ones I trusted to travel safely at night, even if she was thirteen.

  “Don’t mention her.” I gestured to Serena. “Don’t even hint at it.”

  “Fine.” Vi bit her lip before her face melted into shadows, looking like a skull before she was gone. Her darkness disappeared, and the rain began to pour. Gloom and doom, it always followed Vi. And for once, I wasn’t concerned about the kid or the sudden storm.

  I adjusted Serena and stared at Calhoun’s door. The man who had saved my life by taking me off the streets was a father to me. He taught me everything I knew, and he made sure I taught the children in my flock the same lessons. I may have been the designated leader of the Northern Flock, but Calhoun was the real leader—the one who began it all. I owed him my life, so, naturally, I thanked him often by breaking his rules.

  Act like you belong; then, make yourself belong. Don’t stick out. Don’t think irrationally, but always make sure you’re thinking. Be prepared before you prepare yourself more. Above all else, be safe, and don’t risk everyone’s safety for one.

  Before I had the chance to knock, the door swung open and smacked against the brick wall. An enormous man filled the entrance. The muscles in his left arm were hard to ignore, but the sleeve that should’ve been tightly wrapped around his right arm was dangling at his side, limbless. Despite his injury, Calhoun wasn’t troubled one bit. A shotgun swung outside and pointed toward my chest.

  I cursed. “It’s me.”

  “Daniel?” He cursed back. This was how we said hello. “Why are you standin’ out here like a stranger?”

  I didn’t budge because I knew he had seen Serena. His eyes had adjusted to the night by now. He didn’t curse this time.

  “She escaped,” I managed.

  Before I could explain, Calhoun propped his gun against the wall inside and helped me up the stairs. He closed the door behind me, and I heard the deadbolt lock into place as I laid her unconscious body on the couch. Cal didn’t have to order me to check the two layers of curtain. They were always closed and tacked to the walls, but it didn’t hurt to double check the clips keeping the outside world outside. There was nothing quite like lights in the middle of the night to raise neighborhood suspicions.

  “What the hell happened?” Cal asked as he stomped into the kitchen.

  I didn’t have to ask him to grab a Diet Coke for me. He tossed me one before he even shut the fridge. I opened the drink and gulped it down. When I was young, Calhoun explained how the chemicals in the soda combined with my bad blood’s gene. It boosted my immune system almost instantly. Most days, I couldn’t su
rvive without it.

  “I’m guessing she caused the red lights,” Cal said.

  This time, I nodded.

  “And you?”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” I promised. “I just saved her.”

  “That means you had something to do with it.”

  I stooped down to Serena and pressed the cold can against her face. She didn’t react, so I laid my forefingers against her throat. I held my breath until I felt it. Her heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there.

  “She’s alive.”

  Cal’s expression didn’t budge. I knew he was disappointed. Everyone in Vendona saw the newscast, and I could only imagine what he was thinking. He was far from naïve. He had fought in the war following the discovery of bad bloods, and he had encouraged the Separation Movement from the human side. Back then, he was a high-ranked official, and his goal was to destroy the gene, including any child who held it. It all changed when he saved me. My life altered his. Cal fought for our side now. Even then, he had firsthand experience in a blood camp, and he knew what every citizen did. No one survived a blood camp. Not until today.

  The government wouldn’t let Serena go without a chase and a fight. I risked my flock by saving her life.

  “I thought it could’ve been one of the kids,” I said, accepting my panic for what it was: foolishness. None of my kids had been taken. Not ever. But I was quick to assume it was their fate.

  “I know.” Cal tilted his head toward the single hallway in his cramped apartment. “Get some sleep.” My bedroom was waiting. “We’ll figure this out in the mornin’.”

  “But—”

  My gaze landed on Serena. When I first saw her, I thought she was a brunette, but her blonde hair blazed beneath the soot in the murky light.

  I didn’t know anything about her. I didn’t know where she came from, and I definitely didn’t understand her powers. All I knew was how much I had risked and how much I didn’t regret it, even though every part of me wanted to. I didn’t understand, but Calhoun always seemed to understand more than I did.

  “Daniel,” he interrupted my thoughts without hesitation. “Go to bed. I’ll take care of her.” His military tone was impossible to ignore, but I couldn’t budge. I couldn’t leave.

  “I won’t kill her,” he added.

  I looked over at the man who could’ve easily killed me years ago, and I saw the same gaze he held when he realized what I was. He would save her like he saved me, but we didn’t know if she would save us in return.

  We would have to wait until she woke up to find out.

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