Suddenly, stopping McCallum just seemed so… impossible. I was only a kid. An awesome, kickass kid, but still. What could I possibly do? Right now, I couldn’t think of a damn thing. I didn’t even have one of Gazzy’s bombs to drop down the chimney I’d just climbed up.
I sighed, feeling very tired and sad. Time to leave, before the guards came back and found that room full of soot and empty of myself.
CHAPTER 100
I stretched my wings out experimentally, knowing that flying was going to suck.
“Just do it,” I whispered, and launched myself off the roof, beating my wings hard because I was only three stories off the ground. Catching the wind made the cut in my wing feel like it was ripping, and I shrieked inside my head.
“Hawk!” someone shouted. Pietro.
I glanced back and saw him standing on the balcony outside his room on the second floor. He was waving at me almost frantically, but I shook my head and started to bank to head south.
“I know where McCallum is!” he shouted.
Whaaat? I turned in as tight a circle as I could manage, looking everywhere for hidden snipers or soldiers. I didn’t think Pietro would betray me… but I also didn’t know what I could believe anymore, or who I should trust.
I got close enough to yell, “What do you mean?”
Quickly Pietro put his finger to his mouth, telling me to be quiet, and again motioned me closer.
Not sure if this was a huge mistake, I headed for his balcony, soot sliding off my wings in sheets when I landed. “What do you mean, you know where McCallum is?”
He looked me up and down. “What the hell happened to you? You a chimney sweep now?”
“Later,” I said, and got ready to jump off the balcony.
“No!” he said, grabbing my arm.
I turned to stare at him, and he let go, his face flushing.
“Look, I know where McCallum is,” he repeated. “Where he’s got to be. I can take you there, if you want.”
“Yeah?” I said, sneering. “And why would I want to?”
His brown eyes met my darker ones, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it, even than the night he’d come to talk to me at Tetra. I didn’t know if I trusted him then; I didn’t know if I trusted him now.
“We have to kill McCallum,” he told me, in a voice barely above a whisper. “It’s up to you and me. We’ve got to take him out!”
CHAPTER 101
“Kill McCallum?” I exclaimed. “Trust me, I’d love to! But he’s everywhere… yet somehow nowhere. He’s on every vidscreen in the city, but no one’s ever seen him in the flesh!”
“I think I know where he is,” Pietro said.
“Okay, where?” I asked. “Tell me, and I’ll go take care of it.”
“We go together,” Pietro said. “You’ll take me to him.”
I gawked at him. “Like on my back? Are you serious?”
“Not strong enough?” Pietro smiled, his mouth slightly cock-eyed, like he was teasing me.
“I’m strong enough!” I said, offended. “But I swear, if this is a trick, if you’re leading me into a trap—”
Suddenly Pietro took my face in his hands and kissed me. It might have been nice, it might have lasted longer—but he pulled away in an instant, a black halo of soot around his lips. “Hmmm,” he said.
I rolled my eyes to hide the fluttering in my chest. “You’re gonna get a lot dirtier, if we’re flying together. But if you’re serious, then wrap your arms around me. One over, one under,” I said, showing him. “Keep your body in the exact same line as mine. If you’re off to the side and I’m trying to turn—”
“Yeah, okay, like a motorcycle,” he said, his arms tightening around me. My ribs hurt, but I’d positioned his arms so that he wasn’t putting too much pressure where I was injured. As for the weird fluttering in my chest… I’d worry about that another time.
This was just one more thing in a long list of incredibly stupid things I’d done recently. I didn’t know if I could trust him, and I definitely didn’t know if I should have let him kiss me. Plus, there was a big chance we’d jump off the balcony and go splat on the courtyard below, if he was too heavy. I’d never tried anything like this.
“Go!” Pietro said. I took a deep breath to fill my lungs and extra air sacs, moved my wings up and down to test their strength, and then one, two, three…
“Jump!” I said, and we both pushed off from the balcony. Sure enough, we sank very, very low before I got into a rhythm and beat my wings with everything I had. We rose, gaining altitude just as soldiers came tearing around the house. They took aim, then lowered their guns: if they shot me, Pietro would fall hundreds of feet and die. If they missed me but hit their master’s son, they’d be in for a world of hurt at Giacomo’s hands.
Concentrating on a strong upward move and an even stronger downward one, I managed to get us a couple thousand feet in the air. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Pietro was only a few centimeters taller than me but at least twenty-five kilos heavier? It was only my bird-kid super strength that kept us from plummeting to the ground like sooty rocks.
“We’ve never been this close before,” Pietro murmured into my ear.
“Nope,” I agreed, deciding not to remind him about the time I took a bath at his house. We might not have been as close then, but I was certainly wearing less. I turned my head so my words wouldn’t be torn away by the wind. “Where are we going?”
“Downtown, close to Industry Park. Where the tall buildings are.”
I nodded and adjusted course slightly, uncomfortably aware of the heat of his body. His fingers moved over my rib cage slightly, which hurt, then one hand moved to hold me around my hips. I’d never felt anything like this and wondered what he was doing. Was he adjusting his grip so that he wouldn’t fall? Or was he flirting?
“You know,” he said, leaning close to my ear, “you’re amazingly skinny. I can feel all your bones. Even through the soot.”
“That’s it,” I said, leaning into a steep bank. “You’re going down.”
“No, no!” Pietro said, clinging tighter and wrapping his legs around me.
“Don’t do that! I can’t balance. Or steer!” He unwrapped them.
Our motions had dislodged more soot, and he sneezed onto my neck. “Oh! Sorry!”
“Just tell me. Where. Exactly. Are. We. Going.”
“The Marble Tower.”
The Marble Tower. I knew it—everyone did. Once it had been really beautiful—the tallest building in the city—where every vidshow or talkie program was made. Sometime in the last decade, a lot of its middle had fallen out, leaving just the skeleton of its metal structure. Its once gleaming marble siding was as gray and graffitied and filthy as the rest of the city. I thought it’d been abandoned years ago.
“Huh,” I said.
“Yeah. It used to be this… shining masterpiece,” Pietro said. “I’ve seen pictures of it from when it was first built. It was supposed to be a beacon for the City of the Dead. Now it’s just covered with grime and is halfway destroyed.”
I circled as we approached what was left of the building. It was a colossal wreck, steel beams visible in places where time—and probably the crap air quality up here—had eaten away at it.
I kept dropping, circling the building, checking it for signs it was being used. I saw nothing—no soldiers at the bottom or middle, no lights on, no movement at the windows.
“If you’re lying,” I said slowly.
“If I’m lying, you can drop me, right now.”
“Do not tempt me,” I said—and then I saw it.
CHAPTER 102
Max
A thousand feet below us, the Pater estate was mostly in ruins. We’d seen at least thirty servants fleeing the destruction.
“We gotta do a couple more passes,” Fang said as we circled high overhead. “I can see some structures underground, and he might have an escape tunnel.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Two more sor
ties and then we’ll regroup, make plans. Gaz?”
Gazzy flew over me and I held my hands up. He quickly dropped three IEDs and I caught them, stashing two in my pockets.
“Be fast,” Fang reminded me. “They got their hands on some old guns.”
“Got it,” I said, starting to drop. “See you in a few.” I flew strongly in a wide circle, well out of range of any soldiers, then started dropping altitude quickly, aligning myself with my target. I worked up speed, dropping and flying as rapidly as I could. I held one bomb and at the last second pulled the string and hurled it down into what I could see of a basement. Instantly I rose in a steep climb, hearing rifles being shot, and then feeling the hissing heat of bullets as they got way too close to me.
When I was a kid, this kind of stuff hadn’t fazed me at all—it was only now, when I realized what I could lose—that I was squeamish.
Not that I would ever admit it to anyone.
I had two more explosives and decided to concentrate on the western end of the estate that was still relatively intact, so I circled once more and got ready to dive. Even from this height, I could see all the guards and soldiers, their weapons trained on me. Not everyone had been able to find an old rifle, but I still needed to make this snappy.
Folding my wings in back of me, I took out both bombs and held them close to my chest, then let myself point downward. Let’s see how they handle six hundred kilometers per hour, I thought, seeing the world streak by below me.
They pointed, they shot. I ripped the strings out with my teeth and aimed the bombs, dropping them when I was barely twenty meters off the ground.
And, up! I raced toward the sky, hardly able to see because of my speed. Then I heard a whistle and something hit my head. It knocked me sideways, dazing me. There was tremendous pain, and suddenly I was falling, my wings out, making me spiral like a pinwheel as I plummeted downward.
CHAPTER 103
Hawk
Pietro had felt me stiffen. “What? Did you see something?”
“I think so.” I tilted my head, automatically rising, wrinkling my nose at the smog I was sucking in. A thousand meters later I said, “I’m pretty sure I saw some soldiers in the deep shadows of the bombed-out middle. And the upper floors—when we went past a corner, we couldn’t see through the windows to the other side. They’ve got the windows covered or blocked. They’d only do that if they were trying to hide something.”
“Whoa,” Pietro said. “Good eyesight! From the ground those black windows don’t stand out at all.”
“People expect ’em to be dirty, like everything else in this city.”
“Okay,” Pietro said, letting that opening for a crack pass. “Drop me off at the middle? I’m going to try to get to the top floors.”
I caught an updraft and floated on it for a minute, resting my wings, thinking things through. The long tail of my mohawk streamed out in back of me. Flying is… beautiful, and part of me was dying to bank and head west, back to Tetra. Leave the City of the Dead behind me. Take Pietro away from Giacomo. Both of us starting fresh—not to mention clean—someplace new. That would be so—wonderful. Great. Awesome. Every other good word.
Instead.
“I’m going to rush into the middle superfast and then put on hard brakes,” I told Pietro. “Get ready to jump or fall off as soon as we’re over something solid. Then we’ll take out the soldiers and head upstairs.”
“Okay,” Pietro said.
I banked, turning in a big circle that would give me enough time to build up some speed, even with this tremendous weight on my back. “Hang on!” I aligned my body with the building, pointed my toes the way Max had told me, and gave my wings everything I had. A fresh shot of adrenaline coursed through me, and my fatigue and pain faded away. Only one thing mattered now: to stop McCallum. Any way I could.
Pietro may have made some little sounds, but they were lost to my speed, my power. There was a big empty circle in the middle of the Marble Tower, as if it had been shot by the biggest bullet in the world. That’s where I was heading. I felt Pietro’s grip increase, felt his face burrowing into the crook of my neck.
In maybe three seconds we were there. I shot into the empty space at probably two hundred kilometers per hour, then backbeat my wings, dropping low enough so my boots could skid along the floor. Pietro rolled off as I continued to slow—and just as my toes reached the edge of the other side of the building, I stopped.
Turning, I folded my heated wings quickly, then rushed back to where Pietro was jumping to his feet. Almost instantly, two guards ran at us, their long rifles held like clubs.
I jumped sideways, hitting one in the chest with both feet. He staggered backward and I whirled with a roundhouse kick at his rifle, which clattered to the floor. A snap kick at his helmet made him reel backward, followed by a powerful uppercut punch under his chin that made his eyes roll up into his skull. He fell like a sack of rocks.
I looked up to see Pietro standing over his guard, holding something small and black. “Taser,” he said, wiggling it at me.
“Nice. Take the easy way out,” I said.
Pietro only shrugged. “It was a Christmas present.”
I spotted a metal staircase and nodded toward it. Pietro went in front of me, stopping at the first stair to turn and face me. “This is gonna be my fight,” he said. “You should clear out while you can. Thanks for getting me here. I won’t forget it.”
“You can either start climbing or get out of my way.”
“Look, Hawk—”
“Move it!” I said. “My last Christmas present was a shank, and I’ll use it if you don’t zip your lip and start climbing.”
CHAPTER 104
Max
Old habits forced me to straighten up and fly, damnit! I broke the free fall, but with both hands holding my head. A thick trail of blood spun away from me, and it felt like if I moved my hands, I’d be holding pieces of my skull.
“You got it?” Fang asked, appearing right under me. “Want a ride?”
“Man! Yeah,” I said. “But let me puke first.” I turned my head and did exactly that.
“Hate to be down there right now,” Gazzy murmured.
Gratefully I landed on Fang’s back, hardly making him sink, as if I were no more than a wish flower. I closed my eyes, held on to him with one hand, and kept the other one on my head. Blood streamed down his neck, falling to the ground like rain. It would leave a trail that anyone with half a brain would be able to follow.
“Relax,” Fang said. “They can’t reach us, even with old guns.”
The Flock landed on the top of a tall building right at the edge of the city. Iggy grabbed me as soon as Fang’s feet touched the ground and lowered me to the red tiled roof.
“Okay, move your hand,” Nudge said, taking my wrist.
“My brain will fall out.”
“If it does, I’ll push it back in,” Nudge promised, and pulled my hand away.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said, somewhat weakly. “We’re at war, and we need to find Phoenix!”
“You’re totally right,” Nudge said. “Try to bleed slower.”
I scowled, but that was hard to do because I was also half smiling.
“Got the first-aid kit,” said Iggy, kneeling by me.
“You got hit by a bullet,” Nudge said, her careful fingers parting my bloodied hair. “It looks like it impacted pretty hard, but it just grazed you. You got a hell of a hematoma, though. Wouldn’t be surprised if it cracked your skull a little, underneath.”
“So… she’s literally so hardheaded that a literal bullet literally bounced off her skull,” Fang said.
“So funny,” I muttered.
Nudge smiled a bit as she clapped a wad of cotton onto my wound. “Hold this,” she told Iggy.
Quickly, deftly, she wound a surgical dressing around my head.
I sat up, waves of nausea making my head spin. I concentrated on not puking again. Iggy gave me some tepid water to
drink. I did, then wiped my mouth on my sleeve.
“We still haven’t hit McCallum, apparently. He’s still broadcasting,” Angel said, putting one hand gently on my head. “Close your eyes for a second.”
I closed them. She kept her hand on me and gradually my breath and heartbeat slowed. My thoughts changed from staticky, smeared pixels to cohesive sentences and pictures.
“Okay, you’re fine,” she said, and I opened my eyes, feeling 1,000 percent better.
“Let’s go find Phoenix,” I said, and one by one, we ran down the slippery tile roof and leaped into the air.
CHAPTER 105
Hawk
From the middle of the Marble Tower to the top was about thirty floors. I took the steps three at a time, passing Pietro at one point and leaving him way behind. My bird-kid systems of strength and oxygen delivery just worked better.
Soon I stood at the bottom of the stairs to the sixtieth floor and looked up. Like twins, two hefty guards armed with new guns stepped into view. I’m sure they were very impressive to the uninitiated, but I’m about as initiated as one gets.
“Hi, boys,” I said. I dug a scrap of paper out of my pocket and scrutinized it. “This says the geocache is up here somewhere. Did you guys beat me to it?”
“Private property!” one of them snarled. “Get lost!”
I climbed a couple steps. “This isn’t private property—it’s an abandoned building! And it’s got my geocache in it! Now get out of my way!”
Very quietly, Pietro’s tired footsteps reached my ears. He’d finally made it.
One of the guards aimed his gun at me and sighted down the barrel.
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