“Nudge?” I whispered.
Closing her eyes, she swept her sensitive fingers over the lock several times. I didn’t know how or why she could affect metal with her touch, but I was glad she could. Her fingers trembled with both effort and emotion, and we all clung to the hope that there might be one more place we hadn’t looked.
The lock sprang open in her hand, and we yanked the doors open.
A narrow metal staircase led down into darkness.
I went down first, my senses screaming with alertness. It took my eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the lack of light, but at my first quick scan, we seemed to be in a small room.
An empty room.
I felt a terrible pain in my chest as my heart constricted with grief. There was nowhere else to look. Angel was either dead or being rushed to another secret facility, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to withstand this torture until we could find her again.
The tears I had been holding back during our search suddenly started streaming down my face. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to fly out of there and never come back. Let the world take care of itself from now on. I was done.
As I turned to rush out, my eyes fell on a small back room, behind the stairs we had just come down. I reached the doorway in two strides.
A feathery, dirty heap was strapped to a table in one cold corner.
“Angel?” I whispered, not letting myself believe it could be her. We knew there were other winged kids out there. It would be too good to be true….
I took a few more steps toward the figure, and then collapsed to the floor beside it. I knew that face, that hair, no matter how wrecked they had become.
Trust me, it’s impossible to describe the rush that happens when your whole soul shifts, in an instant, from despair and loss to realizing that maybe it was all just a horrible lie, a nightmare—that hope is truly alive.
“Angel!” I cried, sobbing and stroking matted curls away from her grimy face, while Fang immediately started dismantling the clamps. “Angel! We’re right here. We came to get you. Angel—wake up!”
I gently cradled her head, which lolled back. Was it really her? Or just… her body?
I got no response. As soon as Fang was finished with the clamps I gathered her up, and it felt like I was holding Styrofoam. There was hardly anything there, as if she hadn’t eaten since Paris. Numerous puncture wounds dotted both arms. How many times could my baby be torn from me and survive it?
The massive tsunami wave of joy I’d felt moments earlier was already rushing back out to sea.
“Angel, please,” I begged, cuddling her close. “Please be okay. We’re all here now. Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, Dylan… we’re all right here. You’re safe. We’re all together. Please, sweetie, please wake up.” My words were coming in gasps.
Then—had I imagined it? Had her too-thin, too-light body shifted?
She made a tiny sound. Her eyelids fluttered.
“She’s alive!” Gazzy’s voice was hushed but thrilled.
A fierce joy swelled inside me. She was alive! She really was!
And she was going to stay that way, at least while I was on this planet. No matter what, I would never, ever let her out of my sight. We would never be separated again.
56
MY BRAIN WAS on a drunken loop of joy, disbelief, shock, ecstasy.
This is really my Angel, my own Angel….
The others crowded around and tried to touch and embrace her, so they, too, could truly believe what I was still trying to absorb. But I wouldn’t let go of her.
“We need to get her out of here,” Dylan instructed, gently pushing his way in close to help me lift her body. I hardly registered Fang’s irritated look. Nothing in the world mattered to me at that moment except keeping my little girl safe with me.
I stood up and carried Angel upstairs, into the light. Someone had padlocked her in that underground room—there would have been no way for her to get out. Someone had left her there to die.
“Max?” Her voice was barely a breath.
“Yes, sweetie,” I said, trying not to leak tears on her. “I’m here. We’re going to get you somewhere safe, get you all patched up, good as new.”
Her small head shook. “I’ll never be as good as new,” she whispered weakly. “They messed up my eyes. They clipped my wings.”
“What?”
“I’ll never fly again,” she whimpered sadly. Tears slowly streaked the dirt on her face.
Quickly I traced down her primary feathers to her flight feathers, fanning them gently in my hand. They looked fine.
“No, your feathers are okay,” I reassured her, understanding the kind of crazy confusion the whitecoats’ drugs could cause. “You’ll be fine—I promise. You’ll be flying in no time. We’ll take care of you.”
Her eyes opened slightly and she looked into the sky, past my head. “They experimented on my eyes, Max.”
A cold fist grabbed my heart and yanked. “What?”
“Like Iggy,” she confirmed, and I was seized with fresh horror. “Jeb was here—he said it was for my own good.” Her voice was weak—it was hard to make out what she was saying.
“Tell me, Angel,” I said urgently, pulling Gazzy to my side. “Who is standing right next to me? Tell me. Don’t tell me you’re blind.”
“I—I—” She blinked. And blinked again. We were all holding our breath. “My brother… Gazzy…” She breathed. “Is that you?”
Gazzy threw his arms around her and sobbed.
“Everything is kind of a blur,” Angel whispered as Gazzy pulled away.
“Shh, sweetie,” I said. “Don’t try to talk. You’re waking up from a drug-induced nightmare. We’ll make sure you’re okay. We’re going to take you home now.”
Again she shook her head, opened her eyes. She peered up at me anxiously, her eyes not quite focusing. “Max, your mom was there. I saw her. Dr. Martinez. She’s… she’s one of them.”
I looked up to see the flock recoiling in shock.
“No, sweetie,” I said, my mind reeling. “You’ve been hallucinating. Your feathers are fine, and my mom isn’t one of the baddies. It was all just weird hallucinations.”
Angel shook her head. “No. Your mom was there. She helped them. Dr. Martinez is on their side.”
57
I TRIED TO keep my emotions under control as we flew home, but sometimes I could barely see through the tears.
Angel weighed so little that it was no problem for Dylan, Iggy, Fang, and me to take turns carrying her on the flight. We also picked up Total on the return trip. I knew he’d want to see Angel right away, and I was right—I’d never heard him bark so wildly with joy.
As soon as Angel was settled—cleaned up and in fresh clothes, but still pale and worn out—I left her sleeping peacefully, with Nudge and Gazzy in charge and Total curled up at her side. I needed to be alone in the woods for a minute to get my emotions under control—otherwise I’d be a crying mess when Angel was finally ready to talk about what had happened.
So it wasn’t necessarily the best timing when Fang crept up quietly behind me, just like he always used to, and scared the stuffing out of me.
“We need to talk. About you. And me.”
I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks. “There is no you and me, per your instructions,” I said, my jaw clenching.
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
“Oh, please. You left,” I said accusingly. “Twice, actually. You threw any us we had in my face! Then you decided to get all hot and heavy with Maya.” That last part came out before I could stop it, and I cringed, remembering what Ari had said.
“Maya’s dead,” Fang said tensely, confirming what I already knew. I winced at the grief in his voice. “And this isn’t about her. It’s about the connection you and I have—will always have, no matter what.” I opened my mouth to retort, but nothing came out, so Fang forged right on, breaking my heart with his honesty.
“I heard a Voi
ce, Max,” he said, gripping my arm, pulling me closer, “and it told me I needed to come home to you. Even though I had to practically walk the whole way. Even though I was close to dying. I came back. To you. And I wanted to tell you—maybe I never told you very clearly before…”
My heart was racing so fast I thought I was having a heart attack.
“I wanted to tell you that I—”
“Stop!” I cried, putting my hands over my ears. “Just don’t, okay?”
But Fang looked determined, and there was only one thing to do when he looked like that. I took off.
If I pour on the speed, I can hit almost three hundred miles per hour while flying—faster than any recombinant life-form I’ve ever heard about. Faster than anyone. Except Fang.
I was probably already a couple of miles away, still sniveling and cursing, when I felt a hand grab my sneaker. He stayed with me, matching me stroke for stroke without releasing his death grip on my ankle.
Finally it was too hard to stay balanced, so I put on the brakes. I banked steeply and whirled around to face him.
“Fang, I can’t hear this right now!” I shouted, tears streaming down my face. “My life is hard and confusing enough without you making it harder! Everything’s just really, you know, complicated, and…” I trailed off, thinking of the complicated things in my life. The other complicated someone.
“I’m not trying to make it harder or more confusing,” Fang said quietly, smiling that lopsided smile of his. Warm emotion showed in his black eyes, and for a minute I actually had to concentrate on staying airborne. “I’m trying to tell you what you already know. I just… need you. We need each other.”
“But I just can’t do this.” I flailed my arms around, indicating whatever this was—encompassing everything. “With you. Not now, not today, not after everything we’ve been through with Angel, so…” I swallowed, trying to ignore my stupid heart. “Just don’t say any more,” I whispered. “Please.”
But if I could hear the catch in my voice, I knew Fang had picked up on it, too.
He had moved closer. We were nose to nose now, our wings almost overlapping as each stroke took us up ten feet, then down again. We’d been flying together our whole lives, and keeping in perfect rhythm was second nature to us. My arms were crossed over my chest, my elbows almost brushing against him, and Fang reached out and held my arms, below my shoulders. He let his thumbs brush against my skin, slowly.
I shivered. Fang’s touch was so familiar. How many times had he done this? Old times and new all jumbled together. Emotions and memories became indecipherable. The only thing I knew was that we’d grown and changed. It was almost like he was a new Fang. I felt almost like a new Max. Could we still… fit together?
“Max.” He said my name like it was a life raft. Like it was a religion. His warm fingers stroked up and down my arms.
“What?” I whispered. Or had I even said it aloud? I didn’t know what to do, so I stared into his eyes for the answer. And I let them rest there. I didn’t want to be the first to look away.
I reached out and put my hands on his shoulders, felt his strong, light bones under his skin. I remembered what he had carved into a cactus once.
MAX + FANG—4EVER.
58
TEARS POURED DOWN Dylan’s face. He dashed them away angrily with the back of his hand, flapping his wings powerfully and putting as much distance between himself and them as he could.
He’d been in a tree a good half mile away from them—not spying, just… seeing. Seeing his past going up in flames, his future crumbling into dust. He wasn’t about to stick around to watch Max and Fang finally have their little private reunion party.
He’d thought what he and Max had was starting to grow into something… real. She’d let him sleep in her room. And that night in the tree house… He remembered the feel of Max’s skin under his fingertips, her wildly tangled hair brushing against his cheek, the look she gave him just before their lips met….
He could live and die inside that single look.
Dylan shook his head, flapped his wings harder. Faster. He took the next turn too tightly and lost control, dropping hundreds of feet before he could level himself. He saw the forest ahead. Tall trees, growing thickly together. He narrowed his eyes and dove down.
He wove crazily in and out of the trees, at top speed. He scared birds, startled a group of deer, and still he went as fast as possible, so fast that the wind would dry his tears.
Again and again he flipped sideways to fit through narrow openings. His sneakers smacked against tree trunks. Bark raked the skin on his hands and face raw. Branches caught at his feathers, and he felt some get yanked out, but he didn’t even wince.
It felt good, the pain. He wanted more.
All this time he’d tried to be good. He’d followed the rules—or at least the rules Max had set. He had learned to fly and to fight, had followed her lead. He had given her space, and then pressed a little closer when she seemed to want it. He’d done everything he was supposed to, when he was supposed to. He had thought if he could just be perfect, Max would love him.
But she loved Fang instead. Fang, who seemed to break every rule in the book. Dylan set his jaw. Fine, he thought. She wants a bad boy like Fang, I can do that.
Bam!
He brought his feet down, hard, on the roof of a car that was driving toward town, making a huge dent.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Three more cars suffered the same fate. Dylan felt a rush of thrill and fear: This was the best he’d felt since Fang had come back.
On the next car, Dylan dropped down even lower. Snap! One quick kick took the side mirror right off. Crash! A rear windshield was smashed to smithereens.
It was an incredible feeling of power, a power he’d never felt before.
He rose a bit and banked sideways dramatically, hearing car horns honking, people shouting. He wheeled around the store on the corner, then swooped down and grabbed the store’s banner with one hand, ripping it from where it had hung across the sidewalk. It landed on a car driving underneath it, causing the driver to lose control and crash into a telephone pole.
But Dylan was already halfway down the street, ripping street signs from their posts and hurling them like Frisbees. People were yelling at him now. A baseball whistled past his head. He could hear sirens behind him.
Over and over, he dropped down suddenly, kicked over a mailbox, a trash can, a trellis. But the pain in his chest was returning. He reached up and ripped the electrical wires strung along the street from their poles. Sparks shot everywhere as the live wires fell to the ground, igniting the bulging trash bags that lined the curb.
At last Dylan realized he was weeping again. He could hardly see. What was happening to him? Nothing was making sense—least of all his behavior.
He rose gracefully, powerfully into the air, leaving behind a roiling fire that was beginning to streak through a destroyed neighborhood.
This isn’t the answer, Dylan, said his Voice. You know what your job is. You know what you have to do. Dylan shook his head, as if he could shake the Voice loose, make it go away forever.
A thought flitted through his brain like the light fingers of a practiced thief. He turned around slowly and tasted bile in his throat.
No. He couldn’t. Could he?
It was the answer to so many of his problems. What he couldn’t do was what the science teacher had demanded on that awful day in the lab at school—he couldn’t turn Fang over for the whitecoats to experiment on, no matter how much he hated him at that moment. He would never condemn anyone to such a fate.
But if he didn’t turn Fang in, someone else would. And if what Dr. Williams had said was true, they would hurt—possibly kill—Max as a result.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Dylan’s mind spun. Maybe this awful thought… maybe this was the right thing to do in the end. It would spare Fang from a horrible life of tests and scalpels and torture. It would save Max’s life. She would be gra
teful; maybe she’d even come to love him for it… someday.
Dylan swallowed. The Voice was right. He did know what he had to do. He had known all along.
He had to kill Fang.
59
“OH, MY GOD, it’s Dylan.”
My head swiveled sharply at Gazzy’s words and I practically ran to where he sat on the couch. He was pointing at the TV screen.
“What ‘oh, my God’?” I demanded. “What ‘Dylan’?”
“He’s… he’s… gone wacko,” said Gazzy.
I turned my attention to the news broadcast, which was showing a grainy, shaky cell phone video… of a bird kid rampaging through town. My mouth dropped open as I saw Dylan—and he was totally, prosecutably recognizable as Dylan—smashing windows, ripping down signs, kicking cars, knocking over mailboxes.
“It doesn’t seem like him at all,” said Gazzy. “He’s always so laid back. Maybe it’s, like, a clone or something?” he offered.
“No,” I murmured, anxiously watching the screen. “No, I think it’s really him.” But why was he on this insane destructive streak? What had happened since I last saw him? I tried to think when that was….
He’d been with me all day, right up until—oh. Suddenly it all became horribly clear, and my stomach clenched. Dylan had been near the door when I’d gone outside to be alone. He must have seen Fang follow me, which meant he’d seen Fang and me fly off, out of earshot of the house.
What else had he seen?
“This is all my fault,” I muttered, grabbing my jacket. “I’m going to find him.”
Before Gazzy could say anything, I’d leaped off our balcony and was streaking toward town.
60
I WAS AT the edge of town before I realized that I had no idea what I was going to say to Dylan when I found him.
Dylan had had my back when I didn’t really have anyone else, and he was the last person in the world I wanted to hurt. He was… Well, he was a great guy, and I knew exactly how much he cared about me. He’d worn his heart on his wing, and he deserved honesty from me in return.