The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,100

all its stuffing, and there was so much blood that he felt he couldn’t bear such pain.

Then he remembered why they couldn’t go home.

“This is wrong. The animals—”

“We’re flying!” someone yelled.

Cora twisted around to look, and fear shot through him that she was going to pull away. He dug his fingers into her shoulder and forced words up his throat. “I tried to tell you. We shouldn’t leave, don’t you see? Earth doesn’t need us. They need us here. The animals. The kids. Where’s Pika? And Shoukry? We can’t just leave—”

Cora was saying something he couldn’t make out. Something placating and reassuring about having no choice but to leave, about Cassian being arrested, about the Kindred finding out she had killed Roshian.

She didn’t understand!

“No!” he spit out. “No, there’s another way.” He reached a bloody hand into his pocket for Dane’s torn-out journal pages. “We’ll regret it if we leave them. You think we’ll go home and just forget everyone we left behind?”

She stared at the blood-stained journal with wide eyes.

Other voices crackled nearby.

“. . . don’t see any exit or bay . . .”

“How are we . . . ? Oh . . . shit.”

The voice morphed into a scream. Lucky’s stomach shot to his throat as his head swam. They were falling. Plunging into nothing, rapidly. He’d been on a roller coaster before—the free-falling kind. This was a hundred times worse. The teddy bear tumbled away. So did the journal. Cora was clutching him, or maybe he was clutching her. Falling, falling . . .

And then they stopped abruptly.

The screaming stopped, but the ringing in his ears didn’t. The ship didn’t seem to be falling anymore, though it vibrated in a rumbling sort of way, like a train over tracks.

“Space!” someone yelled. “Look! We’re . . . stars!”

A thunk sounded.

And then—

“Anya!”

Lucky’s vision was blackening around the edges, and the angles all seemed wrong and he couldn’t tell who was talking. Was Anya walking on the wall? No . . . she had collapsed. She was unconscious on the floor.

“Oh god, is she dead?” someone else shrieked.

For a second, a horrifying second, Cora was gone. The cherry tree smell turned to smoke; the petals landing on his ribs singed him with little jolts of pain. He reached out a hand for the fox. Or for Cora. Or for one of the many faces that came to him, the animals and the kids all mixed together.

“Look out for Bonebreak!” someone screamed. “He’s getting control again!”

There was a swirl of commotion, but it mostly stuck to the black edges of his vision. He saw a knife in Nok’s hand. Rolf and Leon hurling themselves toward Bonebreak, who was out of his chair now and had stopped moving in that robotic way.

Mali leaning over Anya’s limp body, shaking her.

Lucky tried to speak. Let him take us back, they need us there! We can fight!—but a ricochet of pain silenced him. No one was paying attention to him anyway. Another searing wave of pain hit his ribs. For the first time, Lucky peeled back the jacket and looked at his side. The safari uniform had split down a seam; there was dark, gooey blood. When he moved, more blood came. He picked at one of the shirt’s knots until it came loose, and pain shot through him, as something else seemed to tumble out of his side. Was that bone?

“I . . . I think I’m dying.”

His voice sounded surprised even to his own ears.

Cora twisted to him, her beautiful blond hair whipping around like wheat on his granddad’s farm. The color of sunlight. The color of warmth.

She looked down at his jacket and screamed.

Then the black around the edges of his vision poured into the center, and there was only darkness.

41

Cora

“NO!”

Cora collapsed onto the floor next to Lucky. A second ago, Bonebreak’s regaining control of his body had been her worst nightmare; but that was nothing compared to the bloody mess spilling out of Lucky’s jacket.

She slid her hands around his neck, scared to touch him too hard. “Lucky. Wake up!” His body felt so heavy. “You have to wake up!”

Behind her, Nok gave a surprised cry. Cora glanced around just long enough to see the others trying to wrestle Bonebreak back under control near the front of the ship. Leon was as good as useless with his dislocated shoulder, and Nok and Rolf each weighed about as much as one of Bonebreak’s legs. They needed help, but Cora didn’t dare tear