Page 339 of Shadowblood Souls
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’tclose.”
“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 justhappenswhen I’m worried.”
