“Talk about that later!” Angel said, clapping her hands. “We need to—”
But it was too late. Giacomo pulled a pistol and took a shot at his own son, his bodyguards spraying the ceiling with bullets as a warning. Gazzy lit two smoke bombs, one red, one blue, and rolled them under the table.
“Duck!” Nudge yelled. I’d learned to do that without thinking when she said it, so I dropped to the floor. She was there, too, leading me to one of the wooden panels of the windowed wall. When she pushed it, it swung open, and we scrambled through as fast as we could.
Then we belly crawled down the carpeted hall to the fire exit, glass spraying all around us as the windows were shot out. Screams of pain and anger were everywhere, but I couldn’t tell if Pietro’s voice was among them. I didn’t know if his father had gotten off a successful shot or not. We reached the fire exit and took off, shooting up into the sky like rockets. We hovered over the greenish-gray clouds for a couple minutes and were quickly joined by Angel, Iggy, Gazzy, Max, and Fang.
Angel looked breathless. They all had smears of red or blue powder on their faces.
“Okay,” she told me. “You know how I said you were there to learn?”
I nodded.
She pointed down, where we could barely see faint wisps of colored smoke coming out of the building. “Yeah. Don’t do it like that.”
CHAPTER 83
Max
Yeah, that had gone well, if you call a total failure “well.” I was surprised—the Angel I knew could pretty much make anyone do anything. Ten years later, I’d figured her personal power had only increased, but it definitely hadn’t worked this time. God, it was so weird to see everyone ten years older. And the first time I’d seen my unhealthy, bony, but clean face in a mirror—well, let’s just say it had been a shock. Fortunately, ten-years-older Fang still loved me. And ten-years-older Fang was hot, hot, hot.
Oops, I realized the Flock had left me behind while I spent too much time thinking about how hot Fang still was—we were circling and changing altitudes a bunch of times to make sure we weren’t being followed by drones. Okay, come on, Max. Use your remaining brain cells. I’d been briefed on the City of the Dead and the people involved. And I was glad that Hawk had brought useful intel.
I glanced over at her, flying in Gazzy’s slipstream. She didn’t fly well. I mean, she was fine, she wasn’t a rock dropping out of the sky, but she wasn’t that smooth or graceful, and it kind of hurt to see my kid struggling instead of just being a natural at flying. Just then Gazzy told her to roll her shoulders back and use those muscles. I saw her try it, then cursed myself for not giving her the tip on my own.
We were here, the three of us: me, Phoenix, and Fang. We were flying together, like I’d dreamed we’d do ever since she was born. I should be bursting with happiness, but instead I was almost rigid with tension. I’d been apart from the Flock for ten years. Once we had been a finely tuned guerrilla unit. I felt we could slip into those roles again, given time. But Phoenix? The last time I’d seen her, she was five years old. If she’d lived with Fang or the Flock this whole time, she might be ready to take her place in our unit. But not like this. She was street-smart and knew the City of the Dead really well, but she didn’t know our ways, and the street was clearly where she belonged; not the sky. At this point, she was basically tagging along.
When Phoenix was about two, and the memories of how totally heinous childbirth was had sort of faded a little, Fang and I talked about having more kids. But we were still living underground, the world was still deep in a nuclear winter, and it didn’t seem like a good idea. I wondered now if we should have. If having a sibling like her might have helped make Phoenix more… well, more like one of us.
“You know—”
Phoenix’s voice startled me out of my memories.
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about Giacomo’s paranoia—that he thought Pietro would try to take over the family business. I mean, Pietro is my age. And I know him. We were pretty good friends. I don’t think he’d overthrow his own father, and I don’t think he’d be supported within the family, either.”
Phoenix wasn’t Phoenix anymore—she was Hawk now, only a few years younger than I’d been when I had her. And she was talking to me like a grown-up. And she was taller than me.
“Max?”
She was looking at me, frowning slightly.
“Sorry,” I told her. “Lost in thought. But I’m listening. What about Uncle Felipe?”
“I don’t think the rest of the family would want someone so young in charge,” Phoenix said. “And then there’s all of the Six. Are they McCallum’s bitches, or what?”
My daughter talked super rough. The same way I did when I was her age. Of course, she’d had to grow up rough, on the streets. Alone. Somehow she had survived. Probably by developing the same kind of skills I’d developed as a little kid. No line too far to cross. I shuddered a little bit, thinking of the things I’d had to do, wishing my kid hadn’t. The guilt swelled up from inside, heavy like a rock. I was surprised I could keep myself aloft.
And now I was doubting her, after everything she’d been through. I tuned in again to listen to her voice—a little husky, sharp as a knife when she wanted it to be.
“Nah,” she was saying, thinking out the answer to her own question. “McCallum would never share power with anyone else. So how did the Six manage to carve the city up? Why does McCallum let them have any power at all?”
I looked at her. “Point your toes,” I said. “Keep your body up and high, parallel to the ground, and point your toes.”
One black-eyed look at me. One blink. Then she pointed her toes, or as much as she could in her heavy black army boots.
“It’s about being as streamlined as possible,” I said. “Like a missile.”
“Uh-huh.”
Maybe I had been a bit abrupt. “Tell me more.” I went on. “You know this city so well. You know all the players.”
That earned me a “God you are so stupid” look. So my mom skills were right on track… and so were her teenager skills. Looks like I’d better stick to what I know best. Flying.
“Okay, this sounds like it’s not true, but it is,” I said. “But you go faster by taking long, deep strokes with your wings, instead of shorter, faster ones.”
Her face closed, anger erupting at yet another tip from me. “Gosh, too bad I didn’t have any goddamn parents to teach me all this crap when I was little!! Then maybe I’d know how to do it right!”
And with short, fast strokes, she zoomed away from me, from the Flock, headed for Tetra.
“Sweetie, I love you,” came Angel’s voice inside my head. “But my god are you a freaking idiot. Leave her alone, for god’s sake!”
“How can I leave her alone?” I screamed. “She’s a total rookie! She’s gonna get us killed!”
Angel was silent.
CHAPTER 84
When I finally dropped through the narrow gap that led down into the entrance of Tetra, I was in a totally pissy mood and felt ready to let that kid have it. Like, my childhood hadn’t been a picnic, you know? I didn’t exactly have anybody holding my hand, either. Basically it had sucked, then been awful, then terrifying and heinous, enlivened by little bursts of horrible! None of the Flock ever had parents, so where did Hawk get off acting like she was the only traumatized person in the whole world? Boo-hoo for the poor orphan!
I was stomping toward the quarters we’d been given when I ran into Angel.
“Please,” she said seriously, standing in my way. “Have some chocolate. I’m begging you.”
I opened my mouth to bite her head off, but she popped a piece of chocolate into it instead.
I hadn’t had chocolate in fifteen years, since the world had exploded. My taste buds blew up, that unmistakable scent of cocoa and fudge and chocolaty goodness flooding my mouth.
“Oah mah dod,” I said, chewing with my eyes closed.
“Listen,” Angel said,
now that my jaws were practically glued shut with chocolate. “I hear you, about Hawk. No, she’s not a perfect puzzle piece in our little family. She’s not a trained sniper, she can’t swim, she’s not a great flier. But you said it yourself. She knows this city, knows the players. She’s tough, can fight, has a knife in her boot. You need to cut her some slack.”
I swallowed, then said, “Ange—what if cutting her slack gets us all killed? Believe me—she’s my baby. When we left her it tore my heart out, and I made myself sick, thinking about her, wanting her back, hoping she was okay and with Fang. But this is now, and now we have an important mission to do, a dangerous mission. You know that a weak link means people die.”
Angel took the other half of the chocolate bar and bit off a small piece. Her face wasn’t melting with pleasure the way mine had. I knew my words weren’t landing well with her, chocolate or not.
“I’m not saying she can’t be valuable,” I said more calmly. “She knows everything about this city. She can provide useful intel. She can stay hidden and help coordinate communication. Or something.”
Angel gave me the sideways glance that still made me nervous.
“She and Clete have important roles in the rally tomorrow.”
“Huh?”
“The rally,” Angel said. “Remember? That we’re planning? It’s tomorrow and I’ve gotten confirmations from a lot of people that some of the main players will be there. I want Hawk to help identify them. And she has to be with Clete when he brings the city down.”
“Why does she have to be with Clete?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.
“Clete functions better when Hawk is around,” Angel said. “And I need him to be in the middle of the rally. So that’s where Hawk will be, too. It’ll be taking place in the city’s largest open space—Industry Park. We’ve worked hard to get the word out.”
I snatched the rest of the chocolate bar. Angel didn’t deserve it. “I don’t want her there,” I said. “And you shouldn’t, either, if you cared at all about the safety of the Flock.” With that, I stomped off, the chocolate suddenly bitter in my mouth.
CHAPTER 85
Hawk
Did Angel have a dark side? I really wanted to ask one of the Flock but didn’t want to piss anyone off… especially Angel if she did have one, because something tells me it would be super bleak. If she was really like she seemed, then she might be my favorite person ever, which of course, just makes me more suspicious of her. Nobody can be that good. Not in my experience.
I mean, she can’t be my favorite person ever, anyway, because I still have my lab rats. And Nudge. Nudge was definitely in the top two grown-ups who were my favorite—neither of which were my parents.
Max—well, Max just got on my nerves.
I was headed to the Care Center when Fang appeared out of the shadows so suddenly I took a swipe at his face. He dodged it easily, which only made me more irritated.
“Yeah?” he said cautiously.
“Creeper!” I said. “Don’t just lurch out of the shadows at people!”
One side of his mouth rose slightly. He smiled even less than I did, which was saying something. “I’ve always lurched out of the shadows at people. It’s what I do. There’s someone above that wants to talk to you,” he said, pointing up to the narrow opening that led to the outside world.
I crossed my arms and tried to stare him down, but it didn’t work. “Who could possibly be above that wants to talk to me? Everyone I know is down here.”
“It’s that kid from the meeting of the Six,” Fang said. “The one whose dad took a shot at him. He came here in an ultralight about an hour ago.”
Pietro? He had made it out of there alive, after all! How had he found out about Tetra? I looked at Fang’s dark eyes, wondering if Pietro’s coming here meant Tetra was in danger. Having any one of the Six here could be bad news. Fang must have seen the worry in my eyes.
“Is he your friend?” Fang asked.
I frowned. “He was when we were kids.” The truth is, I didn’t know what we were now. There was a weird kissing moment, but I also couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer. Both things made the question of whether or not Pietro was my friend pretty complicated.
“Go talk to him.” Fang said.
So far, nothing the Flock had told me to do had been bad. Crazy and dangerous, sure. But not bad. They hadn’t steered me wrong. They seemed to mean everything they said. Even Max.
“Fine,” I said, and took a couple steps before I jumped up in the air and snapped my wings out with a satisfying whoosh. When I glanced down at him, he had a weird look on his face. What was it? I soared through the opening into the night air and then I realized what I’d seen on his face.
Pride.
I landed—I’d been working on landing silently and gracefully, like the Flock.
“Hawk,” came a voice out of the darkness. “Thanks for coming.”
I didn’t answer him right away, instead just looked at Pietro, trying to get a read on him. Had he really been trying to overthrow his dad? If he had, then this was a dangerous meeting—not only for me but for Tetra. As far as I knew, no one in the City of the Dead knew about Tetra. I certainly hadn’t. How had Pietro found it?
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I wanted to tell you… something.”
I turned and walked out into the desert. Unlike the City of the Dead, where it was never really night, out here nighttime was a deep, velvety blackness, with no streetlights or stoplights or store signs or anything. I walked out into the dark, leading Pietro away from the entrance to Tetra. He didn’t need to know any more than he already did—which was already too much.
The dirt beneath my boots was hard-packed, dotted with dead brush. Pietro followed behind my long strides, trying to keep up. Was Pietro my friend, like Fang had asked? Could I trust the boy following me out into the darkness, or was he a danger to both me and this city—the one place I felt safe? My thoughts made me tense, my shoulders hard as iron as I walked.
But Fang knew where I was, and with who. He wouldn’t have sent me up here if he thought Pietro was a threat. And he’d be on guard to keep Tetra safe, just in case.
“Hawk!” Pietro called from behind me. “Wait! I need to tell you something important!”
CHAPTER 86
“Yeah? Like what?” I called over my shoulder. “Like how that supposed peace meeting with the Six turned into a bloodbath?”
Even in the dim starlight I saw the anger on Pietro’s face. “That was my father, not me!”
“Why were you even there?” I demanded, still walking, my eyes sweeping the area around us. It seemed like I was alone, at least.
“I was there because my father was out of town,” Pietro said. “Damnit, stand still for a second!”
I stopped. He came to stand in front of me, put his hands on my shoulders.
“My father was out of town,” Pietro said more calmly. “I thought he was staying out on purpose in order to miss the peace meeting, so that nothing could be accomplished. I went, so at least someone in the Pater family would be there. Then he showed up.”
He dropped his hands and walked away from me, his back rigid. I waited.
“Now I wonder if the other five knew that my father wouldn’t show—or maybe just some of them did,” he said, turning back to me. “Some of them might actually want peace. But the Chungs, the McLeods, and the Paters,” he said bitterly. “We don’t. My father didn’t want me ruining everything by brokering peace with his enemies.”
“Because… it would interfere with business?” I probed, hoping to gain some useful information out of this to take back to the Flock.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen to him?” I asked. “Or his business?”
“Those are one and the same,” Pietro said, looking unhappy. “You can’t separate my father from the business. They feed off each other.”
I tried not to let the look on Pietro’s face get to
me, tried to keep this meeting strictly a fact-finding mission, nothing personal. But what had never occurred to me was that you could have a dad and still be unhappy. Pietro clearly was.
“Okay,” I said. “So what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
Pietro looked up. “Peace.”
My mind raced ahead, wondering what that meant, following a logical path to get to the answer. I was so lost in my own thoughts that Pietro’s next words took me by surprise.
“If only I could trust you,” he said.
“Trust me?” I exclaimed, my eyes wide. “You don’t trust me? How can I trust you? I saw that Chung kid dead in the street, remember.”
Now Pietro looked surprised. “I told you that wasn’t my fault! And you must have believed me. Who did you come to when you were hurt?”
I clenched my hands in my pockets so my fingers wouldn’t automatically go to the C-shaped scar on my cheek. C for Chung.
“I came to you because the Chungs thought I was your girlfriend! I figured it was partly your fault it happened at all. You might as well be part of the cleanup!” Also because I hadn’t thought I could fly twenty more meters without dropping from the sky. That, too.
“Oh.” Pietro frowned and looked back toward where the City of the Dead made a fungus-like orange blob on the near horizon. “I had hoped it meant that you trusted me.”
“Trusted you?” I shook my head. “We haven’t really been friends since we were kids,” I said, and he winced, causing a twinge of guilt in my gut. Time to change the subject. “What did you want to tell me? You said it was important.”
He looked at me again, his face sad and older than it should have been. He shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. It isn’t important after all. And you’re right—we don’t really trust each other.”
I gaped after him as he took off toward his ultralight, first walking fast and finally running, as if he couldn’t breathe the same air as me for one more minute.
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