Then I saw it: a black Humvee, dull with dust and mud, bumping roughly over the unpaved road. My heart pounded. I knew, just knew, that my little one, my Angel, was inside. And she was on her way to a place where death came as a blessing.
It wasn’t going to happen, not while I was breathing.
“Let’s get her!” I cried, then backed up about ten feet. The others scurried out of my way as I ran to the edge and simply jumped out into space.
I started to fall toward the road.
Then I unfurled my wings, fast, catching the wind.
And I began to fly.
7
You see, that nightmare I had is actually hard to tell apart from my real life. My friends and I really did used to live at a stinking cesspool of evil called the School. We were created by scientists, whitecoats, who grafted avian DNA onto our human genes. Jeb had been a whitecoat, but he’d felt sorry for us, cared about us, and kidnapped us away from there.
We were bird kids, a flock of six. And the Erasers wanted to kill us. Now they had six-year-old Angel.
I gave a strong push down and then up, feeling my shoulder muscles working to move my thirt
een-foot wingspan.
I banked sharply, heading after the Humvee. A quick glance back revealed that Nudge had jumped out after me, then Iggy, the Gasman, and Fang. In tight formation, we swerved down toward the car. Fang snatched a dead branch off a tree. He dropped straight down and smashed it against the Humvee’s front windshield.
The vehicle swerved, a window rolled down. A gun barrel poked out. Around me, trees started popping with bullets. The smell of hot metal and gun smoke filled the air. I looped back into the tree line, still tracking the car. Fang smashed the windshield again. Bullets spit from several windows. Fang wisely surged away.
“Angel!” I screamed. “We’re here! We’re coming for you!”
“Up ahead,” called Fang, and I saw a clearing maybe two hundred yards away. Through the trees, I could barely see the greenish outline of a chopper. The Humvee was bouncing heavily over the rutted road. I met Fang’s eyes, and he nodded. Our chance was when they moved Angel from the car to the chopper.
It all happened so fast, though. The Humvee braked awkwardly, sliding in the mud. The door burst open, and an Eraser sprang out. Fang dropped on him, then recoiled with a yell, his arm dripping blood. The Eraser sped toward the chopper, throwing himself through the open hatch. A second Eraser, showing his huge yellow canine teeth, leaped from the car and hurled something into the air. Shouting, Nudge grabbed Iggy’s hand and they pulled backward fast as a grenade exploded in front of them, spewing chunks of metal and tree bark everywhere.
The chopper’s rotor was picking up speed, and I shot out from behind the trees. They were not going to get my baby. They were not taking her back to that place.
Ari jumped out of the car, carrying the sack with Angel in it.
I tore toward the chopper, fear and desperate anger making my blood sing. Ari threw Angel’s sack through the open door. He jumped in behind, an incredible athlete himself.
With a furious roar, I sprang up and caught hold of the chopper’s landing skid just as it took off. The metal was hot from the sun and too wide to hold. I hooked one arm over it, trying to steady myself.
The massive downdraft from the rotors almost snapped my wings in half. I pulled them in, and the Erasers laughed, pointing at me as they closed the glass hatch. Ari was right there. He picked up a rifle and aimed it at me.
“Let me tell you a secret, old pal, old chap,” Ari yelled at me. “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re the good guys!”
“Angel,” I whispered, near tears. Ari’s claw tightened on the trigger. He would do it. And dead, I would be no use to anybody.
My heart breaking, I let go, falling fast, just as I saw a small, tousled blond head shake itself free of the sack.
My baby, flying away toward her death.
And, trust me on this, things much worse than death.
8
We all have great vision—raptor vision. So we had the excruciating pain of watching the helicopter take Angel away for much longer than the average person. My throat closed with a sob. Angel, whom I had cared for since she was a baby with goofy chicken wings. I felt like they had chopped my own right wing off, leaving a ragged, gaping wound.
“They have my sister!” the Gasman howled, throwing himself down. He always tried so hard to be a tough guy, but he was only eight, and he’d just seen his sister kidnapped by the hounds of hell. He pounded the dirt with his fists, and Fang knelt next to him, one arm tenderly around his shoulder.
“Max, what are we gonna do?” Nudge’s eyes were swimming with tears. She was bruised and bloody, her fists clenching and unclenching anxiously. “They have Angel.”