CHAPTER 96
Ernie leaned over me, grinning. “My lord Pater said double wages and extra beer for whoever caught the freak, an’ I’m gonna enjoy it, I’ll tell ya!”
I will never live down the shame of how little effort it took them to knock me down and chink my wrists together behind me. It was probably the easiest thing they’d done all week. I was injured, exhausted, had seen Clete die… all of a sudden I felt like I had no idea who I was or what I was doing. All of my confidence and swagger was gone, knocked out of me, just like my wind.
The two servants pulled me behind them with a rope around my neck—the understanding being that if I caused trouble, it’d be easy enough for them to drag me—and other servants cheered when they saw us. I was guessing their lives were super bleak, since catching a teenager was cause for cheering. Or maybe they would be punished for not cheering.
The men took me down a flight of stone steps, past the big wine cellar and cold pantries that Pietro and I had played hide-and-seek in so many years ago. Every so often it gave Ernie a giggle to suddenly tug on my neck rope to make me stumble. So far I hadn’t actually fallen, so screw you, Ernie. Each time he tugged and I managed to keep my feet, I felt a little better. They might be tiny victories, but I was still winning them.
Since our childhood, vidscreens had been added in the hallway every ten feet or so, and of course the McCallum channel was playing nonstop.
“Remember,” McCallum said, wagging a finger at the screen as we trudged by. “If you steal from your employer, you’re really stealing from yourself! And if you see someone stealing from your employer and say nothing, it’s the same as if you yourself stole!”
God, I hated him. I grabbed onto that hate, let it burn like a small fire in my belly, the only thing keeping me warm. At Tetra I’d heard someone call him a megalomaniac, and I hadn’t known what that meant. They had explained it. Now I could confidently think, “What a complete asswipe megalomaniac” as we took another turn and went through a door into an empty room. I’d been expecting a jail cell, so this seemed better. At first.
Maybe this had once been a break room, or the servants’ living room. It was a bleak, run-down shell now, with the plaster ceiling falling in, mold growing in the corners, the floor covered with a thick layer of dust.
Ernie turned me roughly and unchinked my hands, then yanked the rope from around my neck so hard it left burning scrapes in my skin. But I didn’t cry out. It was one more thing I could add to my pride column.
“Be good, girlie,” the other guard said as they left. “Someone’ll be back to get you in a while.” The heavy wooden door closed behind them, and I heard keys turning in the two locks.
“Goddamnit!” I swore, standing still as I adjusted to the dim light. This was not a good situation, and by “not good” I meant it was pretty freaking bad. The only window was a thin slit way up on one wall. I could get to it, of course, what with the wings and all, but there was no way I’d fit through it.
I realized just how much my ribs hurt with each and every breath, and how my poor wing was still dripping some cloggy blood every so often. Large, dark drops fell from my feather tips onto the dirty floor. I followed them down, sneezing as clouds of dust reached my nose.
Okay, think! This is a mess. No one is coming for you. Only you can save your own ass. Get on it!! It’s like my own private McCallum Channel in my head. The Hawk Channel.
Could I fly up to the window, break it, and yell for help? Maybe, but what good would it do if I can’t fit through the window, anyway? I could lie in wait for whoever came to get me, but with a bleeding wing and my breath only coming in short gasps, I don’t know if I could take them—and I doubt there’d only be one. I started to feel deflated again, spinning my finger around one of the drops of my own blood. Some slid under the nail, sticking there. I’d been in tight spots before, and more often than not with other people counting on me, too. Where was my confidence? Where was my absolute conviction that I am Hawk, and I will survive? Where was the brilliant, unexpected show of power and brains that would get my sorry butt out of here?
Stuck somewhere in my mind, that’s where.
I just had to get it out.
CHAPTER 97
Max
“They’re just… so pretty!” Gazzy said, lobbing one bomb after another, making sounds to match. “Pyoon, pyoon, pyoon!” He gave me a cheerful smile, his long blond hair streaming away from his face. “It’s like old times.” Fondly, he looked down at the fires, the multiple explosions that his bombs had made. He sighed, his happiness almost overflowing.
Flying by his side, my own arms full of IEDs, I saw the destruction, the few dead people who hadn’t gone to the rally, the shattered glass, crumbled bricks, gnarled and twisted metal studs, the plumes of smoke rippling upward. I couldn’t feel the same way, not when I didn’t know where Phoenix was. Or if she was even alive.
“Outgoing!” Iggy said, hurling a bomb down on a parking lot filled with army vehicles—cars, motor scooters, armored vans. One after another they exploded as their gas tanks heated up. “Better than any video game! Gaz, remember that time at the cabin?”
“That was like three lifetimes ago, but yeah, I remember,” Gazzy said. “These schmucks deserve it, too!” Squinting a bit, he took aim, tilted a wing, and hummed a bomb down onto the biggest McCallum screen. It burst into a thousand pieces of glass, shooting sparks into the air and raining shards onto the people below, who screamed and ran for cover.
Gazzy looked first at me, then at Fang and Nudge. “Did you see that? Gotta say, today’s models are a huge improvement over paper cups taped together, with a push-nail igniter!”
“Yep,” Iggy agreed. “These are way more explosive, much easier to aim. And the feathers are a nice touch.”
Gazzy’s newest inventions were shaped like toilet-paper tubes and had three feathers notched into the end, like arrows. They landed where we aimed them, which was something new and different, and also meant less chance of collateral damage.
“Circle back,” I called, angling my wings to turn in a big circle. I tried to ignore the throbbing pain the flare had made on my wing. I could still use it, which was the only thing that counted. Gritting my teeth, I kept moving on. The five of us flew right below the smoggy clouds of the city, searching for new targets. “God, there are already so many fires,” I said, looking down. Smoke was flowing up from just about every city block.
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” Iggy said wryly.
We flew in a big vee, with Fang taking lead. “This isn’t a game though, guys,” he said, speaking mostly to Gazzy and Iggy. “This is war. We might be up here dropping bombs like B-17s, but down there, they’re going to figure out how to shoot us and how to kill us. So keep your guard up. They might be sitting ducks, but don’t forget that the only difference between them and us is that we’re flying ducks.”
“Okay, that’s it for the shit list,” Nudge said, raising her voice so we could all hear. “We hit the dope factory, the death hospice, that horrible empty Children’s Home, a lot of the prison, a whole bunch of the government buildings… what next?”
“I say we join the people below,” Gazzy said. “For one thing, as much as we’ve done, we seem to have missed McCallum’s headquarters. He’s still yapping.”
It was true. Far below us, huge vidscreens showed McCallum’s purple, furious face, as he railed against the protesters and shook his meaty fists at nobody. “I am just like your father!” he was shouting now. “Like your father, you can trust that I know best! And like your father, I’ll be punishing the wrongdoers!”
“Pretty sure he’s talking to us,” I said.
“Can’t believe we missed him,” Fang said, flying over me, touching my back with his cool hands. “We hit just about every place we thought he could be.”
“We gotta find Phoenix,” I said flatly. “Either her or her body. I need to know what happened to her. And, dead or alive, I want her
back.”
Of course everyone nodded, happy to follow my lead. Hell, most of them liked her more than I did. But she was still my kid, and there was zero chance that I was going to lose her again. So all we had to do was comb an entire freaking city, thousands of bodies, tons of wreckage…
“Okay,” Angel said. “You want to do that now, or—”
I looked at her, her unfamiliar grown-up face, her sharp, wise eyes. Long, long ago, she’d been like my baby, my child. Like Phoenix, she’d grown up without me. I hadn’t been there for either of them.
“Maybe we should storm the castle first?” said Gazzy, gliding closer. “If we help the Paters fall, that’ll spell the end for the rest of the Six.”
“I vote Paters, too,” Angel said.
“There’s a huge crowd heading up the avenue toward their estate,” Fang said.
I was a mom and a member of the Flock. I wanted my child back, but I also wanted to finish what the Flock had begun. The two sides were having their own battle, one in my mind to match the streets below. I shook my head, told myself I needed to concentrate.
“Let’s go blow up the Paters,” I said slowly, and angled my wings to turn east-northeast. “Let’s reduce their castle to rubble!”
And that decision, right there, was the turning point for everything.
CHAPTER 98
Hawk
I was in the bowels of the Pater homestead, locked in a room. For all of the thousands of fights I’d been in, I’d never, not ever, been trapped. Never been without an escape route. I knew this whole city from the air and underground, and I’d memorized escape routes from every possible place I could be cornered.
I’d just never counted on being cornered under the Pater mansion. The City of the Dead was a wrecked place where you could count on rot and rust to help you out of a tight spot, punching your boot through a weak spot.
But this was different. This place was built to hold people. There was the one heavily planked door, double locked, and one weensy window way up high that was too narrow even for a tall superthin bird-kid to slip through. That was it.
I’d paced patterns into the dusty floor—circles, like a chained dog, my blood mixing with the dirt to create filthy footprints. There were two places where the plaster was broken away down to the skinny wooden laths, and I’d tried punching through them. My knuckles were scraped and raw. It would have taken about a thousand more punches to get into the next room, which for all I knew looked just like this one, with another locked door. Besides, I didn’t have the strength to break through a wall. My sides ached, my breaths coming in gasps.
The only other thing in here was a fireplace—not a huge, ornate one big enough to roast an ox, but a small one, big enough to almost warm mistreated servants. I imagined them crowding it during the long winters, the fire producing more smoke than heat.
Hm. I kneeled to look at it better. Yeah. It was tiny. Squinting, I lay on my back, slid into the hearth and looked up. And saw—maybe saw—a tiny bit of light, very, very far away. Could that could be sky? Maybe. Maybe not. I was underground, and the mansion went on for another three stories above me. That would be a long freaking chimney. And one hell of a tight climb.
But I was desperate. The jerks who’d locked me in had promised that someone would be back to get me soon. I assumed it wouldn’t be to give me tea and cookies.
Oh, my god, tea and cookies would be so, so good right now. So would a little bit of medical attention, I thought grimly.
Getting stuck in a too-narrow chimney would be bad—they’d only have to shoot up or shoot down and I’d be a goner. Or worse, I could get stuck and die slow.
I measured the opening with my hands. There wasn’t a lot of space, but whoever was coming back for me might have something worse in mind. And it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where I had gone, either. I needed to move, now. Taking a breath, I scooched into the hearth and tried to stand.
“Achoo, achoo, achoo!” Just standing up I had knocked so much soot off the chimney walls that I was black from my head down to my hips, which was where I was stuck. I mean, I could still probably get back out, if I wanted to. My shoulders were scraping each side of the chimney, knocking loose more grimy soot. I wasn’t sure if I could climb higher, or not. I was starting to feel… terrified.
I had to try. And I had to do it now. I sank down to gather my muscles and gave a big jump upward! Automatically my wings tried to snap out… and became feathery chimney brushes, sending a storm of soot into my eyes as I ascended. But not far.
Now I was about three meters up, braced in a small chimney with my hands on one side and my feet on the other, my wings pressed tight against my sides. My injured wing was bleeding again, the dark drops falling down below letting anyone who showed up know exactly where I’d gone. My ribs hurt so much that I would have cried, if I was the crying type. But crying wasn’t going to get me out of this. Only upward motion would.
I reached forward, feeling for a fingerhold. Right above me, the chimney narrowed, probably to make a hearth for a fireplace on the first floor. I bet it was a much bigger fireplace, one for the family, not the servants. If I could climb out, I might be able to find a window. And if I found one of those, I could fly to freedom. But if there was a hearth, why didn’t I see any light?
Carefully, dislodging approximately fifty kilos of soot with every movement, I crept upward. Soon my eyes were level with the hearth, but… this one had been bricked in. Of freaking course. That’s why there wasn’t any light. The Pater family had probably updated the whole damn mansion. For all I knew the fireplaces were just for show, and not actually connected to the chimney.
Soon I worked out a system of moving hand-hand, then foot-foot, and made it up to the hearth on the second floor, which had been partially closed in and replaced with a gas heater. I heard people talking and eagerly listened, but it was a couple of servants, anxious about the crowds they could see off in the distance. I wanted to scream, Clean the goddamn chimneys once in a while, will ya, goddamnit? But I didn’t. If I got caught again, locked up again, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I kept climbing. Ideally, I would have been able to jump four stories high, popping out of the top as fresh as a just-picked apple, but I couldn’t. My legs had nothing to push off of, and were exhausted anyway. Flying upward also would have been great, but my wings were almost four meters across. I couldn’t spread them, and I didn’t know if my injured wing would support me, either.
Third-floor hearth, also bricked in. Freaking awesome.
But now there was definitely light above me. My muscles were shaking and I’d slipped a bunch of times. Soot was in my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth and had trickled down my neck beneath my shirt. I could feel it in a fine layer across my entire scalp. I would probably never be clean again. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I’d been all that clean for the past ten years, anyway.
“Keep. Going. Hawk!” I hissed, and made myself move hand-hand, then foot-foot.
I heard pigeons. They made little cooing noises, calm and soft.
Suddenly the light above was mostly blocked! Had they found me? Was this where I would die? All someone had to do was lean over the chimney stack and fire!
Feeling like my blood had left my brain, I looked up. And saw… pigeon butts and little pigeon feet. Several fluffy gray pigeon butts, partially blocking the flue. How did they keep from getting sooty?
“Sorry, guys, coming through,” I whispered, and poked one with my finger. The bird jumped up with a squawk, which alarmed the other birds.
When I hooked my fingers on the flue’s edge and pulled myself up, several indignant pigeons were giving me the stink eye, hopping around and making it clear that I was in their territory, and they weren’t happy about it. Too bad. I was out in the air again. And that, my little pigeons, belongs to everyone.
I hauled myself the rest of the way out the chimney stack, to fall to the red tile roof. I just lay there, facedown, feeling my sweat rolling,
cutting dirty paths through the soot all over my body. Carefully I spread my wings out—they been squished against me for a while and were numb. I wished I could just go to sleep here. I wished there wasn’t a revolution. I wished I knew where the Flock was.
I wished Clete was alive.
But, thank sun, I was out.
CHAPTER 99
It took a minute, but other noises started to get past the soot in my ears, other noises that were louder than the pigeons, who had finally settled. I shook my head to dislodge the soot, making the sounds clearer. Oh, good: What I was listening to was McCallum. Because he never shut the eff up.
“This misguided betrayal will only backfire onto you all!” he was ranting. “Where would you be without me?”
“Definitely someplace else,” I whispered, my eyes still closed.
“What would you be doing? Who would be taking care of you?” he demanded.
“Definitely something else,” I decided. “And, myself.”
“You citizens need to stop this pointless foolishness and go home!” McCallum said. “If you do, I may possibly forgive you in time. Who knows? Possibly. So drop your weapons and go home! What you’re doing is treasonous!”
I raised myself up a little and peered over the roof to the big vidscreen mounted on the building across the street. McCallum, red-haired and red-faced, was pointing at the camera. He leaned back, took a breath, and went on, “Are you serving your city, your home, right now? Or are you attacking it? If you’re trying to attack your city, then you’re attacking me and you’re committing treason! Who am I going to take care of? Treasonous people or patriots? People who love their leader, or not? Huh? Who? You tell me.”
Oh, sun, I hated him so much. What a bastard! What an unholy creep!
Peering over more, I saw soldiers, some of them wearing Pater colors, wandering around in the streets. They were prepared for a fight—but their guns looked weird. I squinted, peering down to get a better look. Their guns were old—not the new ones with the chips that Clete had disabled! Old guns didn’t have chips—so they weren’t disabled. They could shoot! I edged backward on the roof before someone spotted me. Crap! I needed to warn the Flock, wherever they were! And I needed to not get shot myself—I already had a gash in my wing. I was just hoping I could still fly.
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