Bad Bloods (26 page)

This was my flock now.

I lifted my glass, and the room waited. “For
Robert,” I said.

Eyebrows lifted before their glasses, but
everyone repeated what I had said except Melody. She had her own
toast. “For sissy too.”

Serena. Everyone had seen her during the
speeches, but I tried not to dwell on how far away we were, how far
away she was from everyone.

“For sissy.” Everyone repeated Melody’s
nickname for Serena, and the room erupted into laughter before more
and more toasts were called out.

“To the future.”

“To bad bloods.”

“To bloods”

“To just being human!”

When we were done calling out, we dug into
our food as if we hadn’t eaten all week. It didn’t even take ten
minutes for everyone to finish. But no one stood up to clean.

Knocking prevented that.

“Daniel.” Robert’s voice spoke through the
door, and my stomach lurched to my throat. He’d come back after
all.

“Robert’s here!” Huey exclaimed, jumping to
his feet before Kally dragged him back to the ground. Her action
made me realize what Huey and I hadn’t. Robert wasn’t one to
knock.

I stood up, slowly, and glanced at Michele.
She shook her head, clueless, so I searched Catelyn. She bit her
lip. Steven met my eyes instead.

“He’s just as much one of us as he was a week
ago,” I said, swallowing back my own emotions. I never thought I’d
face him again, especially not so soon. “I’ll get it.”

“Daniel.” Michele’s voice. When I turned
around, her eyes were yellow, but her mouth hung open as if she had
been frozen, right when she was about to speak.

I stopped and waited for her to come to, but
she didn’t move.

The knocking continued, and the doorknob even
rattled. “Daniel.” Robert’s voice spoke through the door. “It’s
me.”

“Niki.” I met her red eyes. “Watch over
Michele. She can have fits sometimes.”

She nodded, and I crossed the room to the
door, unlocking it before Michele started screaming, “Don’t!
Daniel, don’t open the—”

It was too late.

There, standing right in front of me, was a
group of people in riot gear, guns drawn, badges blazing. But it
was the woman I saw first. A woman with orange skin and bug eyes,
still speaking when our eyes met. “Daniel.”

She was a bad blood, working for the police,
and she could mimic voices. She sounded like Robert when she said
my name again.

The first gunshot went off.

A sharp pain seared my left shoulder, but I
found the strength to slam the door shut and lock it. Two kids
screamed and dove under the table as bullets ripped through the
wood and into my back. The large window behind Steven and Catelyn
shattered, and darkness fell over the room.

“Run!” I shouted, and the pain in my back
worsened. The door pulsated against my spine, but I knew it was too
late. The window was open now. “It’s an ambush. Run!” I screamed
again before the door shattered into a million pieces. The first
door of my first home I ever walked through shoved me to the
floor.

My cheek hit the wood as I watched Catelyn
grab something and sink through the floors to the basement. I
rolled under what was left of the door as a black ball landed in
the room, and blue smog spewed from it. I barely had time to cover
my mouth before my eyes began to water. My nose began bleeding.

Poison. They wanted to take us out in one
silent blow. They would only come in once the fog cleared. I’d seen
it before. But there was something they’d forgotten—or perhaps
never figured out—since the Western Flock’s ambush. The poison
didn’t kill us. It only disoriented bad bloods.

Perhaps we weren’t so human after all.

My head spun as I scrambled to my feet and
ignored the agony of my body reconstructing itself. A bullet fell
out of me, but not before it tore open what had already healed to
get out. I stumbled toward the living room clenching my teeth. In
the smoky fog, I could see their shadows, all the kids who hadn’t
moved yet, but it took a squint to see who was who.

“Run,” I said, trying not to alert the
officers with my scream, but my throat burned as I pushed Peyton
ahead of me. I had to shake Ron and drag Huey who fought me.

“What about you?”

“Just go!” I shoved him, and he stumbled to
his knees before Kally grabbed him. So many of them hadn’t even
moved yet. They weren’t used to the fog like I was. Or something
was wrong. Maybe it was paralyzing them. Maybe the cops had
learned. Maybe—

The ceiling exploded, or something exploded,
and I closed my eyes as my whole world spun. I even blocked my
face, unsure of what else to do, and my home turned into a
suffocating cloud of dust and debris and bullets.

I barely held onto a thought as officers
flooded in through both the window and the door. I tried to tackle
one, but I missed, and he swung the butt of his gun at something. A
crack shattered through the room as I realized what he hit. Jake’s
head. The twelve-year-old hit the ground, and his black hair turned
white from dust. I crawled to the ground and grabbed him by the
collar before the plan ever occurred to me.

“Get them,” one officer yelled as a wall of
bullets blasted against the far wall.

I dragged Jake away as if we stood a chance,
slapping his cheek as we went, but it was futile. He wouldn’t wake
up.

An officer found us in the darkness
immediately. “The leader.” If I could see his face behind his mask,
I imagined he’d be smiling. “What’s it like to have your brother
leave you again?”

Robert. He hadn’t told. He wouldn’t have. Not
even if they tortured him.

“How do you think we knew his voice?” the
officer continued, raising his gun to point at my face. I doubt I
could heal from that. “I hear bad bloods don’t have souls.” He was
enjoying his moment. “What’s it like to die without one?”

“You tell me,” I said, grasping onto the last
object in the world I ever thought would help me. The snowflake
lamp. As soon as I had it, I swung it, and it collided with the
officer’s helmet. It knocked him off guard, just long enough for me
to hit him again. And again. And again until I couldn’t
anymore.

Another officer was there before I realized
it. Her gun was in my face and then out of my face. Adam replaced
her, dropping the dead officer to the ground, and his eyes, black
like Calhoun’s, searched mine. “You okay?”

I nodded, and he grabbed me. “Hold on. I’ll
get you out of here—”

“You can’t carry me,” I growled, tearing my
arm out of his grasp. We both knew he was weak from yesterday.
Despite healing his injury, his blood count was still low. “Get the
kids,” I said. “That’s an order.”

For the first time in his entire life, Adam
hesitated to listen to me, but when he nodded, he was gone,
trailing up dust and debris where he ran, only as fast as a normal
human could run. He was hurt.

Someone screamed as I sank back to the ground
and searched my memory for the voice. Was that one of my kids or
one of Robert’s or an officer? How did I sound when I screamed?

My heart pounded too loudly in my ears to
hear anything else, but I could see—only bits and pieces—and I
stared at the darkness like it was the only familiar thing I knew.
When an officer ran by, so close I could’ve touched him, I realized
what was happening. The officers hadn’t cut our power. Vi had. The
shadows lurched, stretched, and consumed each officer, one at a
time. She defended what she could. With her abilities, I doubted
their night vision did them any good.

The only light came from the blasts of the
guns as they discharged, and I shuddered away, feeling through the
darkness for Jake. When I found him, I pulled him into my lap and
slapped his cheek again. “Wake up,” I pleaded for the preteen in
the Southern Flock, the one who showed me his powers first, the one
who could double himself. He wasn’t just one bad blood; he could be
as many bad bloods his powers could manifest. “Come on,” I said,
hitting him one more time, and his eyes fluttered open.

And stayed open.

Jake was gone.

I fought back vomit but lost. I had barely
gotten away from Jake’s body before losing all control. And that
was when someone kicked me in the face.

My world spun, but the officer must have
thought my world had stopped moving completely, because he was
kicking Jake, not even realizing his battle was done. My body
healed faster than it ever did before. It took one breath for me to
stand up and tackle the man.

“Leave. Him. Alone.” Every shout tore out of
me as I removed the officer’s helmet and punched him in the face,
allowing the back of his head to hit the floor, only to ricochet
back up so I could punch him again.

It was over in a minute.

I wouldn’t let what happened to the Western
Flock happen to this one. I couldn’t. Not again.

Additional gunshots echoed around me, and I
stayed low as I crawled across the hallway toward the table. When I
saw a knife, I grabbed it, and when I saw the dead officer, I
stopped. His throat had a puncture wound, his fingers rigidly
wrapped around his injury where he had failed to prevent himself
from bleeding out. I glanced at the blade in my hand but didn’t see
any blood.

Someone had killed him with a different
knife, and I realized it was Steven.

His back was pressed against the table, and
his head hung down as he stared at his hand, his fingers shaped
into a knife with his own flesh. I grabbed his arm. “We have to
go,” I said, starting to shake him only for my worst fear to come
true.

Steven fell forward. The back of his head was
missing. He was dead.

I didn’t throw up this time. I didn’t feel a
thing. I didn’t have the life left for it.

My hands released Steven and found the ground
again. This time, I kept moving. No vomit. No killing. No anything.
Just survival. Just concentration. Just focus on finding someone
who actually was alive, on someone I could save.

I found Ron next, curled up by the kitchen
door. An officer stood in front of him, even picking up the boy as
if to safely carry him away, but I threw the knife, only to have it
clatter against the ground. Throwing knives always looked easier on
television. In fact, the officer didn’t even notice me at first.
When he turned toward the door, our eyes met.

I realized what was different about him. He
didn’t wear a helmet. Young guy. Brown hair like Steven’s.

“I won’t—”

He didn’t get a chance to defend himself.
Shadows curled around the officer’s feet, and he screamed as they
were both dragged into Vi’s dark void. My nails curled against the
ground, hoping Vi would at least recognize her own. I even waited
for her to take me, but nothing came. I kept moving.

In the kitchen, a worse scene awaited me.
Blood and bodies covered the floor, but I didn’t dare to look and
see who it was. After all, everyone would’ve come this way. The
back door was the quickest exit. It was probably that reason an
officer was waiting, Justan in his hands, a gun pressed to Justan’s
temple.

Justan was the calmest of us three.

“You,” the officer yelled at me, and his
voice shook, as if he had the right to be afraid. “You stay right
there.”

The officer never even knew what hit him.
Hands snaked out of the nearest room—Floyd’s bedroom—and grasped
onto either side of his face. The officer’s neck broke in a second,
and the man crumbled to the ground. Justan never even flinched.
Instead, he watched, his head cocked to the side.

I stumbled forward as Floyd appeared. “You
okay?” we asked the younger boy at the same time.

“Jake’s dead,” he said, the light in his eyes
vanishing.

I didn’t understand how he knew, but I did
what I had to. I looked at Floyd. I asked him for help.

“I’ll get him outside,” he said, dragging
Justan out the back door. It was in pieces, swinging on the hinges
Kally had replaced less than a month ago. Cold wind twirled the
wood around like a cloth kite, and I turned my back to the exit
before I heard him.

“Daniel.” Adam latched onto my right
shoulder. “It’s over.”

Gunshots rang out in the rest of house. From
the hallway, additional smog rolled into the kitchen. An explosion
rocked the foundation. A scream. A blink. Adam shook me.

“We have to go,” he said. “Now.”

Nodding, I obeyed, and Adam ran out the door
as fast as his remaining powers could take him, which wasn’t that
fast at all. I followed, stepping as slowly as my feet would take
me, and I wondered how long it would take the world to pass me
by.

“Help.”

My thoughts left me when I heard her voice. I
even froze, only turning to see her dark eyes through a crack in
the cabinet beneath the sink. A fallen chair and a familiar body
had blocked the girl from getting out. In death, her scales had
disappeared, but I recognized her all the same. Briauna. The newest
member of the Southern Flock. She had blocked them from seeing the
one in hiding, the one who was still alive.

I scrambled for both of them, even taking the
time to check Briauna’s vitals, but she was gone. I moved her as
quietly as I could, but I kept my eyes on the trapped girl. “Tessa.
It’s me.” I shoved the chair to the side and opened the door,
keeping my body in front of Briauna’s so she didn’t have to see,
even though I bet she already had. Still, she almost smiled when
she saw me, and I surveyed her injuries in a second.

Tessa’s arm was broken. Her hand crushed. The
same hand that brought life to the dying. Her cheek was even
bleeding, but none of it explained the amount of blood in her hair.
When I reached for her, she began to cry.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled, picking her up as
quickly as I could. “You’re okay,” I said and kept saying it as I
ran out of the kitchen with the nine-year-old in my arms. I didn’t
look back again.