Hotbloods (Hotbloods #1)(56)

He staggered in the air, gripping me harder and clutching me to his chest, and then zoomed forward, away from the park, away from whatever invisible thing had almost knocked us from the sky.

We had escaped the park and were flying low, weaving a path in and out of tall buildings, when sharp objects cut through the air, giving me a déjà vu moment of the previous night. I was expecting Navan to pour on the speed to place more distance between us and our invisible attacker, but in a move that almost gave me a heart attack, he soared toward the end of a dark alleyway and stopped at the end of it. He pushed me behind him as two knives hurtled directly at us, and in a moment when I could’ve sworn I saw my whole life flash before my eyes, Navan hauled me downward, the knives slamming into the brick wall behind us and clattering to the ground. I barely had time to look at them before Navan had snatched them up, and faster than I realized what was happening, he had shot the two blades forward with such breathtaking velocity I feared they would travel the entire length of the alley and reach the crowded street on the other side.

But instead they stopped abruptly in midair, less than six feet away. Two bloodcurdling cries rang out, and blood blossomed on the tips of both steel blades, one the color of molten lava, the other dark red. The next second, two figures thudded to the ground.

One was Ianthan, a knife plunged deep into his chest, and the second was a creature who must have been riding on top of Ianthan; the second blade had caught it in the neck. It looked nothing like a lycan or a werewolf—it was thin, hairless like a baby bird, and wiry, wearing an ice blue suit. Its skin was pinkish and so pale it looked almost translucent, and its long hair was almost white. Its hands and feet were far bigger than a human’s, with long and bony fingers, and its bulging eyes were a deep orange color.

“Ianthan,” Navan breathed, dropping to his knees before his friend. “What are you…” His eyes took in the other creature with alarm. “A shapeshifter?”

“Is it dead?” I stammered.

Navan ignored me as he grabbed the creature on top of Ianthan by the hair and threw him aside. He clutched Ianthan’s shoulders and rolled him over, revealing the full extent of his wound. I doubted even one of Navan’s formulas could fix him, but that didn’t stop Navan from reaching into his bag and pulling out two vials. He poured them over the wound, and I assumed they were meant to stall the bleeding, but it wasn’t enough. The blade had wedged too deeply into his chest. Ianthan sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, Navan. It forced me to…” His voice trailed off, his body going still.

Navan’s breath hitched, and then he shook his friend, as if that could bring him back to life. “No, Ianthan,” he rasped, and I realized from the tears glistening in his eyes that, despite Ianthan’s involvement with Jethro’s betrayal, Navan still loved his friend, and would have, in time, forgiven him.

Navan seemed to channel his grief into fury as he turned on the creature next to Ianthan. The “shapeshifter” was still managing to hold out, though from the looks of it, it wouldn’t be for much longer. Blood dribbled from its mouth, its chest contracting erratically. Navan grabbed it by the back of the neck, and the second he did so, the shapeshifter’s body morphed, and to my shock, turned into the spitting image of the homeless man we’d seen the night before, who had taken refuge in Navan’s bunker. The vision flickered, and then changed again, to another human I didn’t recognize. It continued to flicker and blur, from another human form and then to that of a brown Alaskan bear, and then its ability to shift seemed to sputter out, and it resumed its original pale shape. A now dead shapeshifter.

“What just happened?” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribcage.

Navan stepped backward, unsteady on his feet as he stared down at the two corpses before us. His answer came out disjointed, as though his brain was still trying to process it all. “It was him… this shifter. Somehow, for some reason, it had been waiting for us, back in my bunker, to see if anybody was going to come back. And then… followed us, once it found out our intent? It was sent by someone, perhaps, and has been trailing us on and off. They must have kept losing us and finding us again. Using Ianthan as its carrier.”

I stared at him. “What? How could it have followed us? Why?”

“Shapeshifters can adopt any form they like. They can camouflage themselves with the environment, which in effect makes them invisible. They can also impart that camouflage to others, via their touch. Somehow, it got Ianthan, which was why we couldn’t find him. I just… I didn’t know shapeshifters were prevalent on Earth. It makes no sense to me that they would work for the Fed, either, since as far as I’ve always understood, the two have a notoriously bad relationship, almost as bad as they have with coldbloods.” He shook his head. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Well, maybe the Fed made an exception in this case?” I had never witnessed anyone die right in front of me and, even if they weren’t exactly human, it was unsettling.

We didn’t have time to stand there, though, because a crowd had started to gather at the end of the alley.

I grabbed Navan’s arm, expecting him to spread his wings and lift us out of there, but his eyes had fixed on two tall, heavy-set dark figures in skin-tight black suits heading swiftly toward us through the crowd. Steel masks covered their faces, and they moved with a confidence that scared me. Thick belts with sheathed weapons fit securely around their waists.