Out for Blood (Blackwell Hawks #3)

1. Cassie

CASSIE

I forced myself not to look back as I raced for the river, Hawk’s words echoing in my mind.

Follow the river.

And then, I love you.

The sun was bright overhead as I raced across the field surrounding the abandoned paper mill. Then I crossed the tree line and the temperature dropped, the shade thick under the fall leaves.

It took me less than thirty seconds to reach the Blackwell River, but it felt like an eternity.

The Hawks were back at the paper mill with the men who’d been sent (by Dimitri Kaprolov? Imperium Fratrum?) to stop us. The explosion I’d heard in the elevator had been muffled, but I’d known what it was: the grenade the armed men had thrown into the lobby where the Hawks and I had been standing.

The Hawks had pushed me into the elevator just in time.

Had saved me by sacrificing themselves.

I stopped at the river long enough to remove my cell phone from the pocket of my jeans. It was risky — if the men in the mill might be looking for me — but the Hawks needed help and they needed it right now.

Except I didn’t have a signal. I was too far from town, in one of the pockets around Blackwell Falls that didn’t have service.

I stuffed my phone back in my pocket with the key I’d found in the ceiling in my dad’s former office. The tape recorder with my mom’s voice (if you’ve found this, something has gone wrong) was in my other pocket, but I couldn’t think about that now.

I needed to get help for the Hawks, and I ran along the bank of the river, following it downstream, thinking of something Poe, one of my brother’s best friends, had told me when I was a kid: creeks lead to rivers and rivers lead to towns.

Low-hanging branches snagged my T-shirt and lashed my face as I crashed through the woods. I tripped on a protruding tree root and went down hard, gasping in pain as a sharp-edged rock sliced into my palm.

I stumbled to my feet, wincing at the pain in my bloodied hand, and kept running.

The fear that gripped my chest like a vise was a strange companion to the peace of the Blackwell Preserve. Leaves fell from the trees in a shower of color, the sun glinting off the river where it made its way through the canopy, and birds sang from the upper branches.

But all I could think about was the Hawks.

My Hawks.

Somewhere along the way the terrifying bird men that had chased me through the tunnels had become the most important thing in my life.

Maybe it had been during the hours we’d been naked and wrapped up in each other’s bodies.

Or maybe it had been after my accident, when I’d been blind and they’d guided me through the house, when they’d forced me into the hot tub, when they’d helped me eat and shower as if I were a child.

I didn’t know, but my fear of the men who’d ambushed us at the paper mill was dwarfed by my terror of losing the three men who’d become my everything.

My chest hurt, my thighs seizing by the time I spotted the first house through the trees along the river.

I stopped, gasping for breath, and tried to orient myself.

It only took me a minute to realize I was on the edge of town, in a neighborhood with large newer houses that backed up to the river.

Some of the rich kids from Blackwell High lived here, kids like Brandon Miller who’d had legendary parties I’d had to sneak to attend because Bram wouldn’t allow it.

That meant I was about two miles from the one person I wanted, the one person who’d always been able to fix anything.

My brother.

Bram.

I kept running, racing through the trees alongside the river, catching flashes of the houses situated near the water, first the big houses like Brandon Miller’s, then the middle-class houses like Sarai’s, and finally the smaller, more run-down houses of Southside.

I watched for the brick buildings that ran alongside the potholed roads at the end of Main Street. When they came into view I veered away from the river, crossed through a dense copse of trees, and spilled onto the cracked pavement near the old train tracks.

Now I knew where I was and I headed straight for Bram’s loft, glad I was at the end of the road where I didn’t have to worry about everyone in town stopping to talk or asking me what I was doing in Southside when usually, I was in the coffee shop at the opposite end of town.

I’d forgotten about the gate outside Bram’s and I frantically pressed the button, knowing the intercom would buzz inside the loft, that Bram or Poe or Remy, or maybe Maeve, would see me on the monitor.

The gate rolled open a second later and I rushed toward the old loading dock that was the entrance to the loft, my breath coming in gasps as I raced up the concrete ramp to the green door.

I’d barely lifted my hand to bang on it when it flew open.

I fell into Bram, who caught me like he always had.

“What the fuck, Cass?” His arms were strong around me. “What’s— ”

“The Hawks…” This time I couldn’t stop the sobs that broke free from my throat. “They need help.”