Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)

The wind had picked up, and I shivered even though I had the jacket zipped up all the way. The shifter seemed unaffected by the temperature, and I hated that I was the weak link here, that I was the one who couldn’t deal with the cold.

“You okay?” Navan asked, his brow furrowed in concern.

I gritted my teeth in an attempt to keep them from clacking together. “I’m fine.”

“You’re cold,” he said. He looked at the shifter, who was probably about ten feet in front of us. “You better be taking us the right way,” he warned.

The shifter cast a casual glance over its shoulder. “Don’t worry,” it said. “If the girl dies out here, I’ll happily dispose of her body.”

Navan jerked the chain so hard the shifter fell back, gagging. “Keep moving, or I’m going to dispose of you.”

The anger ebbed on Navan’s face as he looked back at me, and though his protectiveness was comforting, a larger part of me didn’t like feeling as though he needed to take care of me. I tried to think of being in a hot tub, of drinking tea, a warm bubble bath, wool sweaters, down comforters. Anything that might help generate some body heat.

Luckily, we didn’t have much further to walk. After several more minutes, the shifter stopped.

“We’re here,” it said. “See? That took about fifteen minutes. We would’ve made it in ten if you hadn’t been walking so slowly.”

“Where is it?” I asked, ignoring that last comment. All it looked like was another forest clearing.

The shifter sneered. “We’ve protected the area with an invisibility shield. I highly doubt that any humans would be intelligent enough to stumble upon our settlement, but we knew the Fed might be lurking.”

I glanced at Navan, who was staring straight ahead, as though he actually could sense something there in the clearing.

“It’s telling the truth,” he said finally.

The shifter grinned, clearly pleased with itself.

“Great,” I said sarcastically. “So you told the truth. Now what?”

“Now,” the shifter said, “you are going to have the chance to look inside. And I can all but guarantee that you are not going to believe your eyes.”

Navan rolled his eyes. “I highly doubt that.”

The grin on the shifter’s face widened, exposing those yellow shards of teeth. A wave of revulsion washed over me, and an uneasiness rose in my stomach, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Our mission was almost complete—shouldn’t I be feeling something closer to relief?

The shifter took a few steps forward and then stopped, holding a hand up. It pressed its palm into the air, and though I couldn’t see anything, it was clear that its hand had come to rest upon something.

“Here,” it said, and suddenly, the air started to shimmer, and I could see the outline of a huge dome. The shifter swiped its hand to the side and a gap in the dome appeared. “Have a look.”

I started to step forward but Navan put a hand out and stopped me. “Let me look first,” he said. “We don’t know if this is some sort of trick.”

He leaned his head in first, but I was right behind him. With our heads inside the boundary of the invisibility shield, we could suddenly see everything that had been previously hidden. Navan inhaled sharply, his whole body going rigid. There were plenty of shifters, all wearing the same blue uniform the one in the alley had been wearing, all with the bulging eyes and broken glass teeth. It was a repulsive sight, but all things considered, not that unexpected.

It took me a second to realize why Navan had reacted like that.

There were coldbloods mingling with the shifters.

I blinked, but the picture didn’t change. The coldbloods were walking amongst the shifters, their black wings out, on full display—also clad in blue uniforms.

“What the . . .” Navan said, before yanking his head back. I pulled my head back too, and the gap in the invisibility shield closed.

“Were those coldbloods?” I asked.

Navan nodded slowly. “That wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me,” he said. “You saw it, too.”

“But . . . but . . .” I let my voice trail off, not wanting to state the obvious, but unable to quite wrap my head around it.

“But there aren’t supposed to be any other coldbloods on Earth,” he said.

“Surprise!” the shifter shrieked, and it lunged toward Navan, tearing at his wings. Navan stumbled back and lashed out at the shifter, but it had managed to catch him by surprise and Navan’s swing missed. While Navan and I had been looking through the invisibility shield, the shifter must have managed to free itself, because the chain now lay in a pile on the ground.

“Navan!” I gasped, rushing toward him. The shifter jumped back and evaded another of Navan’s swings. It cackled as it slipped through the invisibility shield, disappearing from our sight.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, “are you okay?”

He nodded, a grim expression on his face. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Now. And activate that suit.”

“But—”

“Just do it!”

The urgency in his voice sent a shiver of anxiety up my spine, so I pressed the button and we took off. He had a gaping tear in his right wing that slowly oozed blood. As we ran, I saw another shooting star arc across the sky . . . And then another. The second one was closer, close enough that I realized it wasn’t a shooting star at all.

It was a ship.

Much like Navan’s ship, actually. And they were headed straight for us.

Or for Navan, rather.

“Look out!” I screamed as one of the ships zoomed precariously close. It seemed unfathomable that it could have caught up to us so quickly, but there it was, its unearthly surface shimmering.

Navan tried to take flight, but with his injured wing, he couldn’t. He landed heavily on the ground and tried to run, but the ship was upon him. I raced over right as two coldbloods flew out and grabbed Navan. He managed to pull one of the guns from the holster, but one of the coldbloods knocked it from his hand before he could shoot. He tried to fight them off, but they easily overpowered and disarmed him, then threw him onto the ship. It started to lift away, but I lunged at the last second and caught hold of the door, pulling myself in right before one of the coldbloods slammed the door shut.

They threw Navan down on the ground and fell upon him, thrashing him. He fought back, but he was no match for them. I hid underneath a bench, scanning the interior of the ship for something, anything, that I could use to help him. If only I’d had more knives! But the space we were in was almost sterile in its emptiness, and there was nothing, except for my bare hands.

But I couldn’t just sit there.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind did Navan look across the floor toward me. His coldblood senses must have been particularly sharp compared to the others, because he seemed to detect me in spite of the suit. He lifted his head, even as the blows continued to rain down, and looked right at me, shaking his head. It was such a slight gesture it was almost imperceptible, but it came across loud and clear. If I got caught by the coldbloods, they’d kill me, and Navan would be defenseless.

Right now, there was only one choice: I had to stay where I was.





Chapter Twenty-Six