Hawk - James Patterson Page 0,102

to get us a couple thousand feet in the air. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Pietro was only a few centimeters taller than me but at least twenty-five kilos heavier? It was only my bird-kid super strength that kept us from plummeting to the ground like sooty rocks.

“We’ve never been this close before,” Pietro murmured into my ear.

“Nope,” I agreed, deciding not to remind him about the time I took a bath at his house. We might not have been as close then, but I was certainly wearing less. I turned my head so my words wouldn’t be torn away by the wind. “Where are we going?”

“Downtown, close to Industry Park. Where the tall buildings are.”

I nodded and adjusted course slightly, uncomfortably aware of the heat of his body. His fingers moved over my rib cage slightly, which hurt, then one hand moved to hold me around my hips. I’d never felt anything like this and wondered what he was doing. Was he adjusting his grip so that he wouldn’t fall? Or was he flirting?

“You know,” he said, leaning close to my ear, “you’re amazingly skinny. I can feel all your bones. Even through the soot.”

“That’s it,” I said, leaning into a steep bank. “You’re going down.”

“No, no!” Pietro said, clinging tighter and wrapping his legs around me.

“Don’t do that! I can’t balance. Or steer!” He unwrapped them.

Our motions had dislodged more soot, and he sneezed onto my neck. “Oh! Sorry!”

“Just tell me. Where. Exactly. Are. We. Going.”

“The Marble Tower.”

The Marble Tower. I knew it—everyone did. Once it had been really beautiful—the tallest building in the city—where every vidshow or talkie program was made. Sometime in the last decade, a lot of its middle had fallen out, leaving just the skeleton of its metal structure. Its once gleaming marble siding was as gray and graffitied and filthy as the rest of the city. I thought it’d been abandoned years ago.

“Huh,” I said.

“Yeah. It used to be this… shining masterpiece,” Pietro said. “I’ve seen pictures of it from when it was first built. It was supposed to be a beacon for the City of the Dead. Now it’s just covered with grime and is halfway destroyed.”

I circled as we approached what was left of the building. It was a colossal wreck, steel beams visible in places where time—and probably the crap air quality up here—had eaten away at it.

I kept dropping, circling the building, checking it for signs it was being used. I saw nothing—no soldiers at the bottom or middle, no lights on, no movement at the windows.

“If you’re lying,” I said slowly.

“If I’m lying, you can drop me, right now.”

“Do not tempt me,” I said—and then I saw it.

CHAPTER 102

Max

A thousand feet below us, the Pater estate was mostly in ruins. We’d seen at least thirty servants fleeing the destruction.

“We gotta do a couple more passes,” Fang said as we circled high overhead. “I can see some structures underground, and he might have an escape tunnel.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Two more sorties and then we’ll regroup, make plans. Gaz?”

Gazzy flew over me and I held my hands up. He quickly dropped three IEDs and I caught them, stashing two in my pockets.

“Be fast,” Fang reminded me. “They got their hands on some old guns.”

“Got it,” I said, starting to drop. “See you in a few.” I flew strongly in a wide circle, well out of range of any soldiers, then started dropping altitude quickly, aligning myself with my target. I worked up speed, dropping and flying as rapidly as I could. I held one bomb and at the last second pulled the string and hurled it down into what I could see of a basement. Instantly I rose in a steep climb, hearing rifles being shot, and then feeling the hissing heat of bullets as they got way too close to me.

When I was a kid, this kind of stuff hadn’t fazed me at all—it was only now, when I realized what I could lose—that I was squeamish.

Not that I would ever admit it to anyone.

I had two more explosives and decided to concentrate on the western end of the estate that was still relatively intact, so I circled once more and got ready to dive. Even from this height, I could see all the guards and soldiers, their weapons trained on me. Not everyone had been able to find an old rifle, but I still needed to make this snappy.

Folding my wings in back of me, I