Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

Having unzipped and shrugged off the leather jacket, she put it back on over the woolen sweater. She could easily fit a heavier waterproof jacket over it. “Do they have sleeping bags?”

“No. I found pallets in a small room down that corridor.” He paused. “I think I saw a jacket that might not swamp you.”

Zaira made her way to that room while Aden stuffed the daypack with the last supplies and extra ammunition. The heavy hooded jacket she found hanging on a hook on the wall must’ve belonged to the short, slight guard who’d run outside after Aden. It was still large on her, but not so large as to be unmanageable. Seeing another thick, weatherproof jacket crumpled in the corner, she picked it up and shook it out, then scanned the room until she located a pair of gloves.

Aden had just finished packing the supplies when she got back. Nodding thanks for the jacket and gloves, he snapped closed the clasps on the daypack and began to get into the jacket. Her senses prickled fifteen seconds later, while he was zipping it up. “Let’s go. I hear a chopper.”

Aden didn’t argue, both of them aware her hearing was more acute than his—a simple genetic quirk that often gave her a slight advantage in stealth operations. Her father had once credited a long-ago changeling ancestor for that familial genetic trait. Zaira didn’t know if that was a true assertion or not, but she appreciated the usefulness of it.

Slinging on the daypack, Aden led the way out. The bodies of the guards sent to find him lay on the ground outside, their eyes staring at the sullen night sky and their skin leached of color. Ignoring them, Zaira and Aden made straight for the cover of the dark green firs that spread out in every direction around them, birch trees with lighter green leaves scattered in among them. Right now, intel wasn’t as important as survival.

Chapter 3

THE GROUND WAS uneven, rocky, as they ran, the air cold in her lungs but not knife sharp. Of course, that was now, right after she’d had an infusion of energy thanks to the drinks and the bar she’d eaten. The real test would come in an hour or two, when her injury began to make itself felt again. “Chopper’s about to land.” She could hear the jets that made it a high-speed vehicle. “Has to be a clearing nearby.”

“Probably a natural one. Nothing to raise suspicion to anyone doing a flyover.”

Shouts carried on the air soon afterward, but while this terrain might make for a good holding pen, it was so thickly forested that it also made for a very bad area to search. Especially when hunting two Arrows. Except one Arrow was badly wounded to the point that she was a liability.

“I’m slowing you down,” she said, her breath coming too hard and too fast for someone with her training and endurance.

Aden’s answer was to point down, to what she was just able to make out as flowing water. A river. Seeing his point, she headed in that direction, slip-sliding down the hill covered with small flowering shrubs and leaving a visible trail on purpose. Aden did the same. With luck, their pursuers would think they’d both slid right into the river.

Going in a straight line to the river once they’d reached the bottom, she and Aden scuffed up the dirt near the water’s edge to further the illusion that they’d fallen in.

“If we get wet,” she said, “we’re dead.” The water was a hard rush, as if swollen by rain upstream. Not even the strongest swimmer could fight that current, keep from being smashed up against rocks or into broken tree trunks caught in the torrent. That is, if the cold didn’t stop the heart first.

“Rocks,” Aden said, pointing out the jagged stepping-stones she’d missed in the darkness. If her hearing was acute, Aden’s night vision was just as sharp. It had made them an excellent team on the rare missions they’d worked together.

“We get to the other side and we have a much higher chance of survival. They won’t expect it.”

“Because I can’t make it.” She knew her balance was off, her body weak; she currently didn’t have the physical agility to cross the “bridge” of stones, especially when each stone was covered with a thin and no doubt slippery layer of wet green moss. “You go that way and I’ll lead them left.”

Aden took off the daypack, gave it to her. “Put it on.” When she went to open her mouth, he said, “For once, Zaira, don’t argue.”

“I only argue when you’re wrong.” She put on the pack against her better judgment because time was their enemy. “You need the supplies and I can’t go far.”

He turned his back to her. “Get on.”

“Aden, that’s a bad decision. We’ll both go into the water.” The sounds of pursuit were getting louder. “Go. I’ll lead them off.”

Looking over his shoulder, he held her gaze, the deep, liquid brown of his irises so intense it felt like a physical weight anchoring her where she stood. “Either we both go or neither one of us goes. Choose.”

“I’ll challenge your leadership the instant we’re out of here,” she threatened, then jumped onto his back, locking her legs around his waist and sliding her arms up under his own to clamp over his shoulders.

She knew she was comparatively light, probably weighed around half of Aden’s body weight, but she also carried the pack, and he was walking across a river in the dark on stones that weren’t exactly meant to be used as steps. Focusing only on staying as relaxed as possible, so as not to throw him off, she breathed in the chilly air and thought about all the ways she would torture those who had taken her and Aden.