Something was very wrong.
70
“ALMOST EVERYONE’S SAFE.” Angel spoke carefully.
I frowned. “Is someone hurt? What happened? Is it Nudge? Total?”
“It’s Fang,” Dylan said softly, not looking at me.
“Yeah? What about him?”
“He’s… dead, Max.”
You’d think those words would’ve laid me out, but they didn’t.
Because they simply didn’t make sense. I had once thought Angel was dead. It had been bad. I had feared that Dylan was dead, since we’d left the island. I had worried about each person in my flock, worried until it ate away at my insides and destroyed my sleep. But I’d never, ever imagined that Fang would actually ever be dead.
Ever.
Not until I was dead, too.
“I don’t understand,” I said stiffly. “There must be some mistake.”
Tell me it was a mistake. Tell me the reports of Fang’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
Tell me.
“I knew it was gonna happen.” Angel’s voice sounded like it was underwater. “I’ve known it forever, and now it’s real.”
Real. Dead. Fang, my Fang, was no longer in this world. The world was still turning somehow, but without Fang.
My body seemed to understand the words before my head did. Just like this morning, I couldn’t get enough oxygen, and my heart and lungs were working double-triple-overtime. This time, my heart was physically breaking.
“Why do you think that?” My voice was remote.
Dylan hesitated. “It was the Horsemen—upgraded Erasers.”
“No. Take it back,” I choked out.
Make this feeling stop.
“Take what—” Dylan started to ask, but I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and slammed him against a tree, pressing my forearm tight against his throat.
“Max!” Angel gasped.
“Take it back!” I repeated in a shrill, maniacal voice I didn’t recognize.
Dylan looked back at me helplessly, his beautiful eyes full of anguish.
“Say he’s not dead!” I roared, and shook Dylan harder.
Stop it, Max! Angel said. She had weaseled her way inside my head, and I felt my fists unclenching despite what I was telling them to do. Let. Him. Go.
My arms fell to my sides, Dylan fell to the ground, and then I dropped to my knees, crying so hard I couldn’t breathe.
71
I SAT ALONE in the dark, leaning against the trunk of a tree, pressing my face into my knees. My eyes were bleary from exhaustion and tears, but I wouldn’t lie down. I couldn’t go to sleep.