Angel (Maximum Ride 7)

I peered closer, then remembered Dylan’s vision was way better than mine. “You’re asking me?” I said.

“Looks like a campfire.” He squinted. “Bunch of people sitting around it.”

“My guess is a hellions’ hootenanny,” I said, and Dylan chuckled. “A what?”

He shook his head. Even in the dark, I could sense his rather, um, adorable smirk. “Let’s check it out,” he said, and we started down, the others following.

Anyone looking up and paying attention would have seen us, seven dark silhouettes against the moon. But these people weren’t paying attention to us. They were gathered around their campfire, singing songs and roasting marshmallows. We circled silently overhead, descending lower and lower, and I think we all spotted her at almost the same time.

“Ella!” Total shouted but shut up pretty quick when I elbowed him in his furry ribs. The culties seemed too lobotomized to notice.

My half sister was sitting there, holding a skewered marshmallow over the fire, singing along with the others. I didn’t recognize the song. They’d put new words to something traditional, and it took several minutes for me to make out the refrain:

“We’ll all go out together when we go

Yes, we’ll all go out together when we go

Oh, how the world will die

In great fire from the sky

Yes, we’ll all go out together when we go.”

“Call me old-fashioned,” Total huffed, “but I’ll take ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain’ over that anytime.”

“Yeah,” said Nudge. “I mean, grim much?”

We climbed about a thousand feet so we could talk normally. “Ig, have I told you lately how happy I am to have you back from loony land?” I said. He smiled, but it was clear he was really shaken up about Ella. “Okay, flock. Suggestions?”

“A raid!” Gazzy said. “A blitz! I’ll make a diversion, a little ways away, you guys swoop down, grab her—”

“They’re pretty far away from the facility, but we don’t want to do anything that might show up on surveillance,” I interrupted him.

“Basic hand-to-hand combat?” Dylan suggested.

“That would work, but then we’d have a bunch of beaten-up kids with stories to tell,” I pointed out.

“I have an idea,” said Iggy.

44

AND SO IT WAS that the Great White Spirit descended from the heavens and appeared to the lost pilgrims in the desert.

Iggy floated gently down through the smoke. With the firelight shining on him and smoke plume

s wreathing around his head and wings, he did sort of look like a scruffy angel. You know, if God had a sense of humor about it.

Now, Iggy is nearly six feet tall and superskinny. He has really pale skin, reddish-blond hair, and practically colorless blue eyes (when he takes off his shades). Basically, he looks kind of freaky even without the fourteen-foot wings. So to see him coming down from the sky, out in the middle of nowhere, probably turned at least a couple of kids into budding evangelists.

The crowd scrambled to its feet and looked at Iggy as a beacon of hope. Which, considering the screwed-up mental place these kids were in, he was.

“Welcome back, Iggy. I was worried when your family kidnapped you,” the kid who seemed to be leading this little séance said. I recognized him as Josh, the guy who’d given Dylan and me the flyers at Ella’s school.

“They’re buttheads,” Iggy said, obviously having a little fun.

The rest of us were lurking in the shadows not far away. I made a face at Nudge, who clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

“Iggy, you’re the future of humankind,” Josh went on. “You’ve adapted to the requirements of a harsher New World. We’re the future too. Join us!”