The Hunt - Megan Shepherd Page 0,102

she didn’t know anymore who she was trying to convince. Lucky’s eyes were closed. His hand—fingers so weak, like an old man’s—slid down to cradle her hand. “We have to give up.”

He took in a long breath, then breathed out.

And he didn’t inhale again.

“No!” she threw herself back on top of him. “No, you can’t leave me! I can’t handle this, Lucky. I can’t do it . . . I can’t go back there.” She sobbed into his bloody chest. It wasn’t true, the things he was saying. At some point, the battle was too great to be fought. Besides, she did have a purpose on Earth. Being with her family was as good a cause as any, wasn’t it?

Another sob shook her. She thought of her dad watching the news on the downstairs television; her mother drinking wine on the porch. She could see it so clearly. There would be framed photographs of her on the walls, a shrine of cards and newspaper articles. They had lost their child; wasn’t that cause enough to go back to them?

Wasn’t it?

His body was still warm. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend he was just asleep, but the taste of blood reached her mouth and she gagged.

A slow sound started to come from Bonebreak’s mask. It started as a high-pitched note; then it grew louder and louder: “. . . kill you childrens!”

And then he was lunging for her—a shadow out of nowhere, fractured mask eyes and clawing fingers. She screamed and rolled out of his way. His hands were still sluggish, but he was moving rapidly, fury propelling him forward.

“I will kill you!” he hissed. “All of you childrens! I will break your bones!”

He lunged for her again. The inside of the ship was too tight; there was nowhere to go. Lucky’s body. So much blood.

Bonebreak loomed over her. He held up his fist with glee.

Mali lunged forward to help, but the ship pitched sharply with no one at the controls, and she fell back against the wall.

A teddy bear tumbled across Cora’s line of vision. What the . . . ? She felt like she was in a dream; no, a nightmare. It was all wrong. Lucky . . . She couldn’t even look at him. And his words in her ears: This is our place. This is our cause.

The teddy bear tumbled onto something silver. Cora’s heart thumped. The gun! Anya must have had it. She scrambled for it. Bonebreak was hissing behind her, tailing her like a shadow. At last, her fingers curled around the familiar shape. It was smaller than the ones she’d fired with her dad at the NRA rally, but it couldn’t be that complicated. Aim. Squeeze. Fire.

She spun around, aiming the gun at Bonebreak. He came hissing to a stop, but then cackled. “That is Kindred technology. You cannot operate it.”

“Try me,” she hissed back, hoping the lie sounded convincing, and jerked her head toward Anya’s unconscious body. “She moved you around like a toy, or don’t you remember? She isn’t the only with those abilities.”

Bonebreak’s head cocked slightly, as though considering her words. Something warm seeped into her clothes; Lucky’s blood. It had rolled all the way to the other side of the ship, and her stomach lurched, but she forced her hand to keep the gun steady.

“Yes. I remember.” Bonebreak’s voice turned hard. “But none of the rest of you are capable of telekinesis, or else I wouldn’t have gotten my mind back.” He chuckled to himself, a grating high-pitched wheeze.

The blood thumped in Cora’s ears. He’d called her bluff. She tried pulling the trigger, but nothing happened. She prodded the inside of the gun with her mind, wrapping her thoughts around the intricate mechanics. If Anya had figured out how to fire it, then surely she could too. But Anya was a prodigy. A few sessions with Cassian and a pair of dice hadn’t prepared Cora for this.

“Cora,” Nok said, low and warning. “Your nose.”

Cora tasted the bite of her blood on her lips but ignored it.

“I can fire it,” she insisted, spitting blood.

Bonebreak snorted. “Then fire.”

Her mind prodded and prodded. How did it work? Magnetics? Moving parts? She thought of the training steps: moving the dice, then levitating them. She had barely made it past nudging, let alone . . .

Levitation.

The last time she’d trained with Cassian, she’d levitated a die six inches. A far cry from a five-pound gun, but it was a starting point. Concentrating as