Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

like they say in the military: plans change once boots hit the ground. Sharlotte and I managed to get into the Stanley, but Micaiah and Dutch both got pinned down by Aces’s men in a firefight. Micaiah knew he could take a storm of bullets, so that’s what he did, to give Dutch time to escape and trigger the explosives in the wall.

Dutch got to us, but Micaiah couldn’t; the ARK soldiers stormed into the spa south of the pool after they blew the wall. Micaiah had been wounded terribly. His spine, his skull, his brain all worked, so he wasn’t paralyzed or dead, but he was hurt. He crawled into a closet to escape the ARK soldiers. There he waited, in agony, healing until he saw a chance to run.

Finally he fled and met Pilate on the bridge above the Colorado River, where Highway 82 started. They couldn’t get to the rendezvous point ’cause the ARK troops were coming. They crossed the bridge, but stumbled in the darkness; they slid down the slope on the western side. That’s when Micaiah lost the bracelet and Pilate had lost his pack, including his stainless-steel mug. He’d managed to retrieve the pack, but not the mug.

Then Praetor Gianna Edger had come rolling in with her convoy. Micaiah and Pilate had no choice but to flee into the night, away from the rendezvous point.

Those boys had been so close to us, not even a hundred meters away, but they hadn’t seen us, hadn’t heard us. Of all the rotten timing and luck.

But then the fog of war, the dark of night, and the snows of a blizzard had hidden us from Edger and her soldiers as well.

And if Pilate and Micaiah had come with us? Would they have been killed in the battle with Marisol on Independence Pass? Would I be mourning them along with Sharlotte, Wren, Dutch, and Rachel?

Maybe it was better we had missed each other.

After the ARK convoy moved on farther south, Pilate and Micaiah knew what they had to do. Couldn’t go east on I-70; they’d be caught for sure. Micaiah had suggested they head west. Pilate had laughed. It was what I would’ve done: retrace our steps, go over the Rockies via Steamboat Springs and Kremmling and avoid I-70 altogether.

Micaiah had agreed. He knew me, knew how my mind worked, and certainly, I would’ve executed such an impossible plan. They didn’t consider Independence Pass ’cause of Edger and her troops. They figured that was where she was headed.

So, Micaiah and Pilate took the long way around. They found bicycles, found people to help them, Pilate charmed his way around innumerable women until they made their way across the Rockies and into the Fort Collins area in the northern part of the Colorado territory. They came upon the Scheutz ranch, but it had been burned to the ground. Not sure who or what had done it, but the Scheutzes were gone. That made me sad and worried for them.

Strangely enough, there hadn’t been a single sign of the Psycho Princess. But they had seen Wind River People in the distance, watching them on painted horses.

Before those girls could come for them, the Moby Dick spied the boys on the plains, drifted down, and whisked them away.

Luck. But that was Pilate—all luck and survival.

Micaiah knew I was bound for June Mai Angel ’cause who else had an army? Who else in the Juniper needed international media attention? He figured June Mai Angel would take credit for finding the cure to the Sterility Epidemic. That didn’t matter; she would have justice for her people, and women would have the cure for the Sterility Epidemic.

I listened, and my hands went to the chalkdrive.

Micaiah watched me. “I know why Pilate gave you back the chalkdrive. He called you a Frodo with hips. It’s a reference to The Lord of the Rings.”

I remembered those old videos. Anju had made me watch them with her. She also insisted I read the books, but I didn’t even try to wade through those thick volumes. I could read technical manuals that fat, but not a fairy story about little people with hairy feet.

And don’t get me started on those Gertrude Goodpenny novels. I’d rather read a dictionary than any of the Wayward Wizardess series.

From The Lord of the Rings video, I remembered how heavy the ring was on Frodo, how it cursed and ruined him, finally driving him insane.

I closed my eyes. “I’ll keep wearing it. That way, if it gets taken, we still have you, and maybe we can use you to get the media’s attention. But the chalkdrive is heavy on me,” I whispered. “Will you help me carry it? Will you help me carry it for a little longer?”

He held me, but I didn’t cry. I’d had a nice rest, but I knew we had to get back on the road, and the thought of more travel, more war, made me feel rocky inside.

“I will help you, Cavatica,” he said in an even voice, so distant, so gone-away from me. “But we cannot be together, can we? Not with how I am.”

“No, we can’t. Once you get your meds, once our lives aren’t running and being shot at, then maybe, but only maybe. Until then, though, we can still be friends.”

But even that was a lie. Most of the time “we can still be friends” is a lie, no matter how sweet and well-intentioned.

He knew it, too. “I was correct in my assumption. If you knew the truth about me, it would make a romantic attachment impossible. Which was why I was reticent in my sharing. Now you see me as a thing, foreign and troubling, and not a person. That is correct. I am not human.”

All of those big words spoken in a mechanical tone drove home his point. I remembered Rachel telling how the ARK had been splicing the DNA from other creatures. She wasn’t human, and neither was Micaiah.

Only, he could