tattoos, the piercings, the black eyes…
“Don’t you guys carry knives?” she snarled, pulling a long blade out of a sodden boot. In a second she had sliced the net open from my head to my feet—I almost fell out of it. “Better split,” she advised, and spit, picking some ash off her tongue. “They’ve still got some hell up their sleeves.” Then she pushed down with powerful wings, wings that were black on top and brown on the bottom, with white primaries at the tips.
I got tunnel vision and felt cold all over. “Is that…” I managed, and then I fainted, for only like the thousandth time of my life.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 75
Hawk
“No,” I said, not bothering to smile. The woman named Danae gave me a pleasant, confused look. This deep in the canyons of Tetra, people mostly used candles instead of electric light, so there was a warm, cozy feeling in this room. I could feel the steam wafting off the deep bath—but I had no intentions of going anywhere near it.
“I’ve put healing herbs in it,” she offered, like that would make me change my mind. “You’ve got some burns on the side of your body that could really use the aloe in that water.”
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Danae looked like she’d never had an unwilling bath-taker, and maybe she hadn’t. Until now. But I had taken a long, horrible bath in a cold, horrible ocean only like ten hours ago, and there was no way I was gonna dunk again.
“It’s nice and warm?” she tried. “And I have some nice clean clothes for you?”
I didn’t bother to respond.
A loud rap on the wooden door made both of us jump.
“For god’s sake, Hawk, take the goddamn bath!” Gazzy shouted. “You smell like a goddamn ox!”
There was silence for a few moments.
I jerked my head at the hooks on the wall. “You can leave the clothes.”
The last luxurious bath I’d taken had been in Pietro’s house. Both times I’d been injured; both times had been/were embarrassing and fabulous. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t wanted to get into this water; thinking about Pietro and our one kiss was just too hard. Still, I almost fell asleep in this bath. Danae was right. The hot water was nothing like the ocean, and the herbs were doing their work, soothing the burns from almost getting struck by lightning. But finally I got out, dried off, and put on the first clothes I hadn’t stolen.
“Where is she?” The voice was startlingly familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew it from. Then my breath caught in my throat. Max.
Maximum Ride, my possible mother, the one I hadn’t accidentally blown up.
There was a knock on the door, but I was already opening it. She, too, had been cleaned up and bandaged, her matted, rats’ nest of brown hair now untangled. We stared at each other.
“Phoenix,” she said softly.
“My name is Hawk.”
She nodded and swallowed. “The last time I saw you, you were five years old.”
“You missed all the exciting stuff,” I said with a sneer.
“Fang has… explained to me,” she said, her voice breaking. She put one hand over her mouth and shook her head, then tried again. “I didn’t know about anything that had happened until ten minutes ago. Fang told me.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Has he told you?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“I was dying,” she said simply. “I was bleeding out. Fang couldn’t carry both of us. We had a good, loyal friend, Rose Simmons. Fang saw her running toward you, there was no reason to think she wouldn’t get to you. She waved us away. Fang picked me up, we took one last look at you, and then we left.”
Her face was very pale and she was so skinny that her cheekbones jutted out and her shoulders were like right angles. For a moment she put a hand over her mouth again, then went on. “We thought it would be for two or three days. Long enough for Fang to drop me off somewhere safe where I could get patched up and then he’d be back for you. Two nights at the most, we said.”
“Someone told me to stand on that corner every day, for a half hour,” I said harshly. “You know when I quit? Like four days ago! When I met them!” I moved my head to mean the rest of the Flock.
Max’s clear brown eyes bored into mine. I saw depths of pain and hurt—the same things I