Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

When it came time for me to wrap myself around Navan again, I blushed in a way I hadn’t done before, recalling the bed incident, even though it was silly since I had been squeezed up close to him for possibly over ten hours across all our travels. Still, the context of a bedroom had made things feel… different.

He glanced at his compass, consulting his map again, and then we took off. I braced myself for the harsh wind as we broke through the treetops, and Navan zoomed forward at what felt like three times the speed of his former pace. Clearly, the rest had done him good. And though it made for a much more uncomfortable ride, as my stomach was constantly clenching and my eyes watered as I tried to breathe, it was a needed change—we had lost time to make up for.



It took even less time than I had anticipated for the bright lights of NYC to come into view—a little over an hour. Navan’s skin was already resuming its gray hue as he slowed down. We approached the high-rise buildings, and I felt a slight ache in my chest on seeing home. It made me wonder where Jean and Roger were, what they were doing in this moment. At least they were blissfully oblivious to what I was doing. If they knew, they’d have a heart attack.

Like I almost did, as a heavy object hurtled past my right ear. A second later, a window in a nearby building shattered. Whatever that was, it had come within inches of my head.

“What was that?!” I gasped.

Another whoosh came from my left, shattering a second window. An alarm went off, followed by loud voices coming from the building, and I could have sworn someone said the word “knife.” Navan dropped into a freefall, zooming down the length of the building, even as strange objects—knives?—continued to fly past us.

“What the hell?” I screamed.

Navan leveled out, surging ahead through the darkness, weaving a path through the maze of buildings, and traveling so fast we would have been a blur to any surveillance cameras.

The objects stopped flying after us, and I was left with the same unnerving feeling from earlier today, only amplified tenfold. There was nobody in the sky tonight, just as there hadn’t been earlier. But it was either that, or Navan and I both were losing our minds. I had seen the shattered window, though, and heard the sound of surprised voices. This could not be just my imagination.

Navan flew for another ten minutes, weaving a complex trail in between buildings, as if trying to shake off an invisible follower. He finally landed on the roof of a twelve-story building, his eyes wide and alert as he set me down and gazed around the evening’s sky, before pulling me toward a service door. We crouched down next to it. The worry I had noted earlier in his eyes had returned.

He didn’t say anything about it, which made sense, since what was there to say? We stayed down for a long moment, scanning the empty sky, and then he pulled me up, and we took off again.

We weren’t flying for long this time, as he headed straight for Central Park, which was only a few streets away. He settled us down in a dark, quiet spot, then pulled in his wings, adjusting the hood of the sweater he was wearing so that it cast long shadows over his face.

“Okay,” he said, leading us toward the park’s exit, and I couldn’t miss the nervousness in his tone. “I have no idea how to explain that, but we should avoid the sky, for now—and we need to get straight on with the plan. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we get out of danger.”

“Do you think it could be the actual Fed following us?” I asked. “Do they have the technology to be invisible, and they keep picking up on our trail somehow? Could they have been the ones to fire on us, back in Alaska?”

Navan exhaled, looking deeply concerned. “They might have invisibility tech, but the Fed weren’t there when we arrived at the bunker. By the looks of it, they were long gone. I don’t know how they’d start tracking us… But whatever the case, we have to continue with the plan. If it’s the Fed behind this, then we’ll find out soon enough—though, were going to have to take some extra precautions now.”

“Like what?”

“We need to be more careful. Even if they are flying around in some invisible machine, intermittently picking up on our trail, we probably still have a chance to make peace with the chief. At the moment, they’d simply be trying to eliminate me as a coldblood discovered on Earth’s territory, and they don’t yet know anything about the blood sample on its way to Vysanthe. I’m hoping that information will be a game changer. It’s got to be,” he added, almost more to himself.

I sucked in a breath. “Yeah, it had better be.” They seemed to be more than willing to sacrifice my life, too, in order to get to Navan. “I wonder if they did get Ianthan after all?” I said in a hushed tone. “Maybe we just didn’t find the body.”

Navan swallowed. “Maybe… Whatever the case, let’s keep moving.”

“So should we go straight to an internet café then?” My voice shook a little as I realized just how much danger we were in. “We can, uh, figure out logistics,” I added, trying to keep my tone calm.

“Better we do that first, then look for somewhere to rest.”

We left the park and walked through crowded streets, keeping our heads down—Navan especially—looking for an internet café, which we found after a few minutes. It was mostly empty. I went in first with some cash to reserve a computer, and then chose the one closest to the window, and gestured for Navan, who had been waiting outside, to discreetly slip in. He took a seat next to me, his back facing the counter.

After half an hour searching the web, analyzing maps, and looking through lists of local events, we figured our best bet would be an outdoor music festival that was being hosted tomorrow evening. That seemed like a long time to wait, but Navan and I needed some time to scope the grounds out, as well as prepare ourselves mentally.

We printed off a detailed map where the event was being held—at a park in Brooklyn that was… kind of close to Jean and Roger’s place. I had to hope they wouldn’t be attending the festival in some odd twist of events—not that they were likely to find me in a sea of faces, anyway.

We left the café and began a search for someplace to sleep. We ended up in another hotel, in a cheaper area, which didn’t turn us down without my ID. They had a room with two twin beds available, so I wouldn’t end up cozying up to him by accident again. This time, however, we had to be a little creative about Navan’s entrance. His skin was too noticeable under the bright lights of the hotel lobby, so once I had checked into the room, I came back down to Navan who was waiting outside and informed him which window he needed to fly up to. It looked onto a side alley, which made his flight up a little less noticeable, but still, I was nervous somebody would see him clambering inside. We did the job quickly, and soon, we were both settling into the room, sitting opposite each other on our respective beds.