Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

4. Crashing Into Green

Bo slammed on the brakes and let her hopper drop to the ground as she hopped off and raced toward the mangled metal in front of her. If the vehicle looked like this, what would the body that had been riding it look like? Her mind shied away from the thought as soon as it entered her head.

The engine of her dad's hopper was cold, which meant the crash wasn't new. The seat was empty. Crouching, she ran her hand along the ground until she found what she was looking for. Tracks. A pair of boots. One side was less imprinted than the other, which meant a limp that her dad had not left the camp with. An injury from the crash, then? A little further on, the tracks were dotted with droplets of blood, confirming her theory.

This was territory she was wholly unfamiliar with. It would be increasingly easy to get lost, and if her radio ran out of batteries or the signal was lost... Well, she knew she wouldn't be finding her way out.

She circled back to the hoppers and checked over the wreckage again. One of her dad's good satchels was nearby, but it had been shredded into strips. Not the sort of damage a crash did. Only wrappers were left of the food that had once been in it. It looked like animals had gotten to it. And even worse... wolf prints circled the crash site. They were clear, but old enough to be at least from the day before. Which meant that she had been attacked well after this crash. Her stomach roiled as she remembered what had saved her. The wolves had just eaten.

Her hand flew to her radio, wanting to tell Aston. He might think of something. The receiver was at her mouth when she paused. Aston might think of something, but he could also demand she return. This new evidence was condemning, and Aston would want to use it to get her to come home. She tucked the radio back onto her belt.

Bo returned to her hopper, and turned it to follow the trail of her father's footprints leading away from the crash. She could see the wolf prints following his, and she only hoped she wouldn't be too late. 

Her vehicle plowed through the forest. She pushed every single ounce of speed out of the hopper in the hopes that she could stop her fears from becoming real if she could just get there fast enough. 

Her dad was the only one who could comfort her when she began her worrying.  He'd smiled and tell her that  all she had to do was calm down and it would be all right. Most of her worries never had a basis, a good enough reason to exist. But what happened when the worries did have a basis? A basis as horrifyingly real as the dark blood stains that she followed. There was no calming down from that.

Bo was so focused on the trail, that it took her a second to realize that reality itself had shifted around her. It was nothing at all magical or flashy; just a feeling of mist against her skin and a slight blurring in her eyes that cleared up almost immediately. But when the blur disappeared, so did the orange forest. It was replaced with a different world.

Coolness was nearly all her senses had time to register as she sped through the damp air. Glimpses of brilliant greens fused together in her peripheral. She took her eyes off the path ahead of her for only a second to gape in wonder at these new colors and textures, and that was when her front wheel collided with a massive root.

She flew over the handlebars, and slammed into the ground with a crunch. Her limbs tangled together as she rolled with the momentum of her ejection. Elbow, knee, foot, hand, head. Everything got its chance. She grunted in pain with each slam until she came to a stop, winded and throbbing. Her lungs struggled to pull in air and all she could do was lay paralyzed.

Her vision swam for a moment as she stared at the sky and tried to stop the feeling of wanting to throw up. But as they slowly began to focus again, she saw that she was looking up toward a million tiny lights. At first, she thought perhaps the impact to the back of her skull had been hard enough to knock them into her vision, but even after she blinked hard a few times they stayed in front of her. Pricks of light against a velvet backdrop.