Burning Skies Read online

  Before anyone could get their bearings or say another word, a figure sailed into the middle of the circle, dismounted a hoverboard, and dumped three dead rabbits and a bundle of sticks on the ground next to the fire. The figure pushed back the hood of a rain slicker, revealing a head of black hair and a pair of shining black eyes.

  Everyone stared at her, their mouths open.

  “You didn’t trip the alarm,” Jericho said, both alarmed and perplexed. Slowly, he lowered his rifle.

  The girl’s expression didn’t change. “I watched you make it.”

  “How did you follow us?” Silas asked suspiciously.

  “You’re slow. And you bumble around like stampeding cattle.”

  Willow let out a sharp laugh. She slumped back into her camp chair and shoved her unruly bangs out of her eyes. “You about gave us a heart attack, Raven.”

  Raven was short, though not as short as Willow, who barely reached Gabriel’s shoulder. Her Asian heritage showed on her delicate-featured face, though there was nothing delicate in her fierce, unyielding expression.

  Silas stood up shakily and pointed an indignant finger at the wolf. “Just keep that…that thing away from me.”

  “Shadow goes where he wants. You try telling him what to do. See how it works out for you.” Raven pointed at the animal carcasses at her feet. “We caught dinner.”

  Celeste looked appalled.

  “I refuse to eat a rabbit,” Horne said, aghast, his pompous nose turned up at the very idea.

  “Then don’t.” Raven dropped her backpack with the hoverboard sticking out of it to the ground and pulled a hunting knife from a sheath at her waist. She crouched on the ground, picked up one of the rabbits, and made a small cut along its back.

  Horne stared at her. “I will not be turned into a greedy, mindless animal.”

  “Greedy, mindless animals eat supper.” Raven paused and looked up, meeting Gabriel’s gaze. There was no fear or indecision in her dark eyes. “Do you know how to field dress a rabbit?”

  He shook his head, suddenly embarrassed. Simeon had taught him to hack the government, how to fight, and how to kill people, not animals. He was a city boy. He didn’t know how to hunt or how to cook what he’d hunted.

  Raven tsked in disgust. “Slow and stupid.” She grabbed the rabbit’s fur on either side of the cut she’d made and tugged, pulling the rabbit’s hide away from its body. She quickly chopped off the animal’s head and feet. Her hands moved deftly as she carefully sliced the rabbit’s belly skin from tail to chest. Its entrails slid out in a steaming pile.

  “That poor rabbit,” Finn said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Screw it,” Celeste said, though her mouth was pursed. “I’m starving. Food is food.”

  Horne made a gagging noise. Amelia looked away, her milk-white skin growing paler. Only Willow sat forward, fascinated.

  “How did you learn to do that?” Gabriel was fascinated himself. If they could learn to hunt the local wildlife, they wouldn’t be so dependent on scavenging in dangerous towns and cities.

  “Practice.” Raven moved to the second rabbit, repeating the steps. She worked like she’d done this a hundred times—some skilled hunter and trapper transported from the pioneer days.

  Within a few minutes, she’d skinned and dressed all three rabbits and set up a spit with the bundles of sticks she’d brought. She rocked back on her heels. “Now they cook.”

  Gabriel leaned forward, his cuffed hands in his lap. “How long have you been alone?”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “Then what group are you with?”

  She didn’t bother to answer, just pushed one of the forked sticks deeper into the ground and turned the spit.

  “She means the wolf, you bonehead,” Silas said sullenly from his camp chair, where he hadn’t taken his eyes off Shadow for a moment.

  “How’s he so big?” Benjie asked.

  “He’s a hybrid.”

  “That’s impossible,” Gabriel said. “The scientists said mods couldn’t be bred with normal animals.”

  “The scientists were mistaken.”

  Willow snorted. “Seems to be a lot of that going around these days.”

  He wasn’t sure if he believed Raven, yet Shadow was the largest wolf he’d ever seen. Mods were often larger than their original counterparts, but genetically engineered to be meek and docile. The wealthiest of the elites commissioned mods as pets. Since so many wild animals were extinct now, the remaining zoos, circuses, and aquatic parks were mostly filled with mods.

  Or at least, they had been. Since the Hydra virus unleashed its wrath on the world, the animals had either been released by activists or starved to death in their cages.

  The wolf stood next to Raven, refusing to lay down or relax, wary and vigilant. His ears were pricked, hackles slightly raised, his sharp eyes constantly shifting.

  “How did you tame a wolf?” Benjie asked, awestruck.

  Raven’s expression was impassive. “Who says he’s tame?”

  Shadow yawned then, showing off a dramatic set of teeth. Benjie’s eyes widened even further.

  “Where did you find him?” Gabriel asked.

  She didn’t answer for a long moment, as if weighing how much to tell them. She looked like someone used to fending for herself. Someone used to being alone. “I saved him,” she said finally. “Then he saved me.”

  She wasn’t afraid, but she also didn’t seem comfortable. Her eyes kept darting back to the shadows past the campfire. She gripped her knife in her right hand. And she kept her back to the fire, keeping as many of them as possible in her sight.

  When the rabbits were ready, Benjie scavenged the abandoned house for plates and forks. He even brought out napkins. Raven chopped the meat into strips and passed it around, offering Benjie the first plate. As she moved, Gabriel noticed she heavily favored her left foot. At Sweet Creek Farm, she’d barely stepped off her hoverboard.

  The fire crackled and popped. Everyone ate in silence, enjoying the hot, juicy meat and licking their fingers. Even Horne and Finn appeared to have overcome their misgivings. Celeste dug in, forgoing her cultivated manners to tear into the meat with her teeth. “This is amazing.”

  Gabriel ate hungrily, ravenously. He’d never tasted anything so delicious. It was stringy, but also rich and gamey—nothing like the faux foods and cloned meats he was used to. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed a truly filling meal. Maybe not since the Grand Voyager.

  At the naval base in Jacksonville, he’d been treated like a terrorist, beaten and starved. He pushed those memories out of his head. They served no purpose but pain. He had plenty of that already.

  The wolf rose to his feet and nudged Raven’s shoulder with his snout. She tossed him a chunk of meat. He gulped it down in one bite, teeth flashing. He turned his great head and regarded Gabriel with those keen amber eyes.

  Gabriel remembered those eyes from the night Nadira died, when he’d dug her grave in grief-stricken silence. The wolf had come, standing still as a statue at the edge of the woods, simply watching him as he plunged the shovel into the earth again and again, blisters forming on his hands and pain rupturing his soul. The wolf had kept vigil, a witness to it all.

  And when Gabriel had longed for death, challenging the wolf to come for him, to end him, end his guilt and shame and misery, the wolf had refused.

  Gabriel moved his cuffed hands together and carefully shoved one hand into his pocket, fingering the folded cloth. He’d torn a small section from Nadira’s eggshell-blue headscarf to keep with him, to remind him of the sacrifice she’d made.

  Nadira, who was sweet and tender and one of those rare people who was genuinely good-hearted. In the midst of everyone’s hatred and suspicion, even his own brother’s, she alone had treated him with gentleness and respect. As though her god, Allah, could forgive the likes of him, as though he hadn’t fallen so far that he couldn’t climb back up again.

  She’d believed he coul
d earn redemption for his sins. She’d offered her life for his, ensuring that he wouldn’t throw his own away.

  He gritted his teeth. She haunted him now, both in his waking hours and his dreams, joining the dead of the Grand Voyager—joining the little girl in the yellow bathrobe, shot to death on the storm-tossed deck, her black hair fanning around her tiny face like a halo. He was responsible for their deaths.

  The life he lived now must be worth something. He would spend it seeking redemption. Maybe someday, if he was lucky, he would find it.

  Raven ripped off a piece of meat with her teeth and chewed noisily. “You shouldn’t go to the city. There’s a settlement. Northwest of here, a seven days’ hike. My mother lived there before the break. She’s not there anymore, but there are more people now. Good people. They’ll take you in.”

  Gabriel wasn’t sure if they would survive another community. Sweet Creek Farm had seemed welcoming enough, but in desperate times, people saved their own. They wouldn’t stick their necks out for strangers. Why would they? He wouldn’t. “If it’s so great, why aren’t you there?”

  Raven tossed a rabbit bone into the fire. “Too dangerous for Shadow. He can’t be fenced in. Neither can I.”

  “Thank you for the suggestion, but we can’t.” Amelia’s voice was soft, but there was iron running through it. “We need to beat the Headhunters to the Sanctuary to rescue my mother, Elise.”

  Raven stood up quickly and shouldered her pack. “Have it your way.”

  “Are you leaving already?” Willow looked disappointed. So did Benjie. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  “No.”

  “Yet you came all this way,” Gabriel said, studying her. “Surely it wasn’t just to feed us dinner.”

  Her mouth tightened. Her eyes were shards of obsidian reflecting the firelight. “We’ll meet you on the other side of the city. If you make it.” She walked over to Benjie, limping with her left leg. Was it a wound that predated the end of the world, or a more recent injury? He doubted Raven would tell him if he asked. She was taciturn, a loner who kept her cards close to her chest.

  She shoved her hand inside the pocket of her pants and thrust an object at Benjie. Benjie turned it over in his hands, his face lit with awe. Gabriel caught a glimpse of a wooden shape—carved wings, an elegant head, and curved beak. A bird. Likely, a raven. A ghost of a smile passed across her face. “Keep it safe for me.”

  Benjie nodded solemnly and protectively tucked the carved figurine inside his own pocket.

  She turned to Jericho. “You’ll follow I-575 once you’re through Atlanta. There’s a small town, Ball Ground. Exit 27. We’ll wait for you there.”

  Raven yanked her hoverboard out of her pack, activated it, and set it on the ground. It hovered six inches above the grass, beating down the dry, brown blades with tiny, whirring rotors. “Be careful of the rats. They’re scared of fire. Be more careful of the Pyros. They make the fire.”

  Unease twisted his gut. Harmony had warned them of the same gang. “What do you mean? What do you know about the Pyros?”

  But she didn’t answer. Raven stepped onto her hoverboard and whisked out of the clearing, passing between Silas and Horne, who both stared after her like she was some sort of ghostly apparition.

  “You forgot your dog,” Silas said, his expression petulant.

  “He’ll come when he comes,” she said over her shoulder. She weaved expertly between the shadowy hulks of cars and houses and trees. The wolf heaved himself to his feet and bounded silently after her. Just like that, they were gone.

  “Good riddance.” Silas glowered at the fire.

  Willow just laughed.

  Micah stood up abruptly and crossed the clearing, stepping around the fire and coming to a stop in front of him.

  Gabriel looked up in surprise. They’d barely spoken in the week since they’d left Sweet Creek Farm. Though Micah hadn’t seemed quite so angry, there was still a deep tension between them, a yawning chasm Gabriel wasn’t sure how to cross.

  He had lied to his brother and betrayed him—the brother he’d sworn to protect all those years ago when their mother had died of cancer and their father had wasted away from grief and Silk. Back when it was only them against the world.

  Every night before he slept, Gabriel repeated to himself the words he longed to say and hear in return: Just us. Always. He wasn’t naive enough to believe he’d ever hear his brother say those words again. But he held them close to his heart anyway.

  “What is it?” he asked now.

  “Can I trust you?” Micah said evenly, his face tense, his expression unreadable.

  “Yes,” Gabriel said without hesitation. He couldn’t hope for anything. He wouldn’t allow himself to hope, to believe…but he sat up straighter, his heart beating fast.

  Micah turned to Jericho, who stood half in darkness, turned toward the house but still listening. “I think we should uncuff him.”

  Everyone else fell silent, watching. Gabriel didn’t move, didn’t speak. Some part of him was afraid to break this spell, whatever it was. What was Micah doing? What was he thinking? His face was still inscrutable, the firelight reflecting in the lenses of his glasses.

  Jericho rubbed his square, stubbled jaw and stared at Micah for a long minute. He was broad-chested and muscular, his brown skin gleaming darkly in the firelight. Jericho was tough and no-nonsense, a stickler for the rules, and the reason Gabriel was still a captive locked in cuffs. “You believe he can be trusted?”

  Micah cleared his throat. “I believe he has proven so with his actions. He had plenty of chances to run, but he didn’t. He had plenty of chances to turn on any one of us, but he didn’t. He fought with us.”

  “To protect his own life,” Horne spat.

  Gabriel didn’t speak. It wasn’t his place. This decision was out of his hands. He gritted his teeth and waited, though every bone in his body thrummed with dark energy.

  “And others,” Micah insisted. “He almost died saving Amelia.”

  Gabriel’s heart constricted. He hadn’t died like he was supposed to. Nadira had died instead.

  “Maybe we could give him a chance,” Finn said amiably. He stuffed a hunk of rabbit in his mouth, then tore another chunk off the bone he was holding, which looked like a toothpick in his large hands.

  “He’s a New Patriot.” Willow shot him a look, daggers in her gaze. “A terrorist. Don’t forget what he did.”

  “I’m not forgetting,” Micah said quietly but firmly. “But we’re going into a dangerous city and we don’t know what we’re up against. We need every fighter. And Gabriel is good at keeping people alive.”

  “When he wants to,” Willow muttered under her breath.

  Gabriel ignored her. He knew why she hated him. His people had killed her sister and her mother on the Grand Voyager. But her hatred was harmless. He already loathed himself more than she ever could.

  “I trust your judgment, Micah.” Jericho gestured for Gabriel to hold out his cuffed hands. Jericho swiped in the code. The cuffs released and fell to the ground. As simple and easy as that.

  Gabriel flexed and unflexed his fingers and rubbed his chafed wrists. He knew better than to believe this meant more than it did. He was strong. He knew how to fight. He was an asset to the group, but not in handcuffs.

  They trusted him not to kill them in their sleep. That was still a far cry from earning their respect. Or their forgiveness. “Thank you.”

  Micah returned the cuffs to Jericho. He gave Gabriel a grim smile. There was something in his eyes. Not absolution, but something else. His gaze didn’t hold as much bitterness or recrimination as before.

  The realization hit him. Amelia must have told Micah the truth about the Hydra virus. He’d hated that Micah believed him capable of such an atrocity. He was guilty of great evil, but not that. He already had a lifetime of sins to make up for.

  Gabriel glanced sharply at Amelia. She stared back at him, unflinching. Her beautiful face was carved in alaba
ster, her white-blonde hair cut into a ragged, wispy fringe, her ice-blue eyes steady.

  He nodded in thanks. And then, amazingly, she nodded back.

  He tried to ignore the tightness in his chest, the tingling that spread through his whole body when she looked at him. He wanted to push her hair behind her ear, to tilt her chin toward him, to feel her breath on his skin and her lips on his. He longed to hold her and never let her go.

  But that was an impossible dream, futile and useless. The sooner he stopped wanting it, the better. The truth was, some things couldn’t be fixed once you’d broken them—no matter how much you regretted it, no matter how deeply you wished things were different.

  He knew this. Yet it was so easy to forget.

  Jericho rose to his feet with a sigh. “Get some sleep, people. We need to rest as much as possible.”

  “I’ll take the first watch,” Gabriel said.

  He took a shovelful of dirt and threw it on the fire. Sparks danced in the air like a hundred pairs of red eyes watching them in the night.

  3

  Willow

  It wasn’t the way Willow would have chosen to spend her eighteenth birthday, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Not these days.

  Amelia and Jericho’s waning SmartFlexes still recorded the time and date, though they did little else. The morning of December eighth dawned cold and brittle.

  Willow had made Benjie wear three layers of long-sleeved shirts they’d scavenged from someone’s garage several miles back. He wore a turquoise knit hat low over his eyes. The bright color bobbing through the world of gray and brown made her heart ache. Turquoise had been her sister Zia’s favorite color.

  The sky was overcast, thick with a dreary, drizzling rain, and clotted with pillars of smoke. What leaves remained on the trees were shriveled and brown, clinging to their barren branches in defiance of coming winter. A white haze of frost filmed the overgrown grass and weeds choking the edges of the asphalt.

  Two days ago, they’d abandoned the trucks just past Hartsfield-Jackson airport to the west. The road was too clogged with vehicles. They continued on foot, trudging past signs for communities with names like Lakewood Heights, High Point, and Summerhill. As they headed into South Atlanta, townhouses and tenement tracts gave way to restaurants and shops, infotainment stores and grocery delivery warehouses. Above them, gleaming corporate towers, dazzling luxury apartments, and soaring skyscrapers cast long shadows.