Page 361 of Shadowblood Souls
And then what?
“If we push them to total exhaustion,” Andreas murmurs, “it’s only going to?—”
Zian’s excited shout cuts him off, an eager squeal from Lindsay mingling with it.
“You’ve got to see this,” he calls back to us.
We all hustle forward, breathless remarks passing between the younger shadowbloods. My pulse kicks up a notch, partlyspurred by the whiffs of anticipation lacing the air from the group.
Zian and Lindsay have stopped up ahead, eased off into the thicker vegetation to make room for the rest of us to come up alongside them. The gasps and exclamations of our younger companions as they reach that spot wash away most of the gloom that’d fallen over me.
The three of us arrive at their heels, and for a second I lose my breath.
The landscape below us is draped in the same black as the shadowed jungle around us—except for a broad patch of gleaming lights piercing the night. In the darkness, I can’t tell how far away from the hills it is, but it’s definitelythere: a big, vibrant city.
We’ll be able to get food and water, one way or another. We’ll have access to vehicles and phones.
The worst part of the trek is nearly behind us.
The kids let out soft whoops, grabbing each other in a jumble of hugs in their relief. Andreas shoots me a grin.
“Guess I didn’t need to worry after all. Let’s figure out a good place to hunker down for the night and who’ll take first watch.”
“I’ll go first,” I offer automatically. “I’m too keyed up to sleep right away anyway.”
Jacob nods. “Then I’m with you. We’ll get one of the older teens too—that should be enough eyes.”
Settling into camp is a chaotic business. We hand out a little more food from our stash and try to make sure each of the kids has a decently comfortable patch of ground to curl up on.
We brought some sheets from the hotel, but anything heavier like an actual blanket would have been too much cargo. They bundle part of those up as thin pillows and drape the rest over their bodies.
The jungle terrain hardly makes for a cozy bed. I know that from our first night.
But everyone makes the most of it without complaint, maybe with dreams of finding actual beds again by the end of tomorrow.
I pick out a perch on a stump overlooking the other side of the hill and the city below. Jacob is still prowling around the perimeter of our camp, checking for immediate threats, but I suspect he’ll stick close to me once he’s done.
At the rustle of brush, I turn my head, but it’s Nadia venturing toward me, her statuesque frame giving off a faint glow to help light her way.
“Hey,” I say, abruptly hesitant. Nadia is probably the closest to a new friend I’ve made among the younger shadowbloods, but I have no idea what she thinks of me now. “Did you want to take first watch?”
She rubs her mouth. “Yeah. I’ll keep an eye on things at the other end of the camp once everyone’s settled. I just wanted to look at the city a little more first.”
I can’t hold back a smile. “Sure. I get that. If you want to take this post, I can cover the other side and?—”
Nadia cuts me off with a shake of her head. “Nah. I’ll get too distracted if I have that view in front of me the whole time. But… thank you.”
She sounds a little uncertain too. I shut my mouth and simply gaze off over the darkened landscape with her, trying to chart the path we’ll take even though that’s impossible when I can barely make out the trees.
After a minute or two, Nadia inhales audibly. “The other Firsts… Do you all have abilities like what you did to the tiger? I mean, that strong?”
Oh. Yeah, it does make sense for that question to be on her mind. She’ll never have seen any of her facility-mates pull off something like that.
“We’ve all got different powers,” I say carefully. “But they’re all pretty strong. That’s the only reason we were able to escape—before and now. Jacob had to basically set off an entire earthquake to get us out, you know.”
“Wow.” She gazes at the city lights for a few beats longer and then looks at me. “None of the rest of us can pull off anything like that. At least, I’ve never met any shadowblood my age or younger who could even get close to that kind of impact.”
She hasn’t asked a question outright, but it’s implicit in her words. I roll my answer around in my head, debating how much to tell her.
