Half Lost (The Half Bad Trilogy #3) - Sally Green Page 0,37
will be invisible unless they’re attacking or think they are in danger so I’m hoping to catch sight of them soon. My breathing is slow and controlled. Uphill now. It’s hard, but we’ve got to be gaining on them, though Nesbitt has dropped well back.
Then I hear it: a hiss.
And over the next rise I see them. Distant black specks. Lots of them lined up at the edge of the bare rocks ahead. They’re going through a cut.
I go invisible and run as hard as I can. Not thinking, just running. Eyes fixed on the line of black Hunters getting closer but also reducing in length.
I can see the figures clearly now: there are nine, then seven. All in black except one. Annalise!
I’m running hard. Breathing hard. Legs burning.
I’m staring at Annalise, but then one more Hunter disappears and so does she.
There’re four figures . . . three . . . two . . .
One.
And I recognize her. Jessica. But I’m too far away to hit her with my lightning. She looks toward me but doesn’t see me. I’m still invisible. Then she disappears.
I keep my eyes locked on the cleft in the rock where she was standing. My legs are giving out now but I push them on and on and then I’m there. I slide my hand through the air, feeling for the cut.
Nothing.
And again. Nothing.
And again.
And again.
Finding cuts is hard enough when you know exactly where they are. And I know it’s been too long. They’ll have closed it by now. But I keep trying. Sliding my hand through the air.
I was so close to them. So close to Annalise.
“Shit, shit, and fuck!”
I try again and again.
Nesbitt drops beside me, breathing heavily.
It doesn’t matter that we were right behind them. The cut is closed.
They’re gone.
Every Second Is Precious
It’s raining heavily as me and Nesbitt walk back to the camp. Celia and Adele are there, cautiously walking around. Donna is standing by one of the tents. She looks somber. Everyone is quiet, taking it all in: death and destruction, and the ground turning to mud. I go to Kirsty. Gabriel’s jacket covers the top half of her body; one of her legs is bloodied and bent horribly.
Gabriel is sheltering under a tree. I tell him, “Van’s dead.”
“Yes. But we can’t move her. Can’t bury her. Can’t even put a blanket over her in case her body has been booby- trapped.” He looks up at me and asks, “How can people do this?”
And I think of the Hunters I killed in their sleep and say, “I don’t know.”
But I know how to do it, how to be a brute, and Gabriel’s done plenty of it himself. And then I realize that’s what he’s thinking: that we’ve done this before, he’s done it before—killed groups of Hunters and left ten or twenty bodies.
“And Annalise?” Gabriel asks.
“She’s alive. I saw her in the distance. They’ve taken her prisoner.”
“Or just taken her,” Gabriel says.
And I know he’s right. She’ll either be chained and tortured, or showered with praise and glory: a prisoner or a hero. But much as I hate her I still don’t believe she’s Soul’s spy.
Gabriel says, “Let’s go away. Leave. Now. There’s nothing to keep us here.”
And maybe the sensible thing is to walk away but I’m not sure where I’d go. And much as I want to live in a quiet place by a river, to do that while Soul carries on killing and torturing doesn’t seem possible. This is about more than Annalise; it’s about Soul and his system of persecution and terror.
Celia comes to stand by us and asks what I’ve seen. I tell her about Annalise and how close we were to the Hunters.
“Did they see you?” Celia asks.
“No. I was invisible.” But then I add, “Nesbitt wasn’t. They might have seen him. I don’t think so but . . .”
Celia rubs her face and looks around, saying, “They can’t have planned to come back or they wouldn’t have closed the cut. But, still, if they did see Nesbitt or hear the explosion . . . We need to leave anyway. There’s nothing we can do here.”
Me and Gabriel go to find Nesbitt. He’s sitting on the ground by Van. I crouch down on the other side of her body and glance at him, expecting to see tears, but there are none. The rain on Van’s face makes it look like it’s her who’s crying.