there,” Fang interrupted me. “But there were feathers covered in blood, and more blood in a trail to the street.”
“Then what?” I asked faintly as my own blood seemed to leave my head in a rush. I shook my head and tried to clear away the fog taking me over.
“Then nothing,” Fang said. “I didn’t see her body—we don’t know she’s dead. But she’s injured, for damn sure. I don’t know if she was taken captive… or what.”
Every single stroke of my wing felt like it was being hit with a blowtorch, over and over. Plus, it was now weaker than my other wing. Which meant I had to force it even harder to go up, go down.
We were flying right below the noxious city clouds and could easily see hordes of people swarming up the main avenues, looking like honeybees. They split off into different directions and I assumed they were heading for the Sixes’ home bases. We had whipped them up into a frenzy, and now they were going to try to overthrow their corrupt overlords.
Even though guns weren’t working, the soldiers had shown that rifles could still maim and kill, and now they were shooting flares and rockets. Lines of broken and bloodied bodies showed where the crowds had been. Even with my raptor vision, I couldn’t pick out a body with a black mohawk, piercings, tattoos, and army boots.
That was good, right?
Fang’s strong hands reached down to rub my shoulders, pushing aside my hair. “She’s okay,” he said. “I know that it’d take more than an army with tanks to stop her. She’s strong.”
“She’s untrained,” I said. “She’s naive. She doesn’t have the exper—”
“She’s kept herself and her friends alive for ten years,” Fang said.
I didn’t say anything but yanked the string out of my lime-green bomb and hurled it down onto the hospice with every bit of anger and fear I had. It took out a quarter of the top two floors, shattering windows, flinging bricks and mortar into a sunless courtyard.
“That’s my girl,” Fang said, dropping his own bomb.
“What do we blow up next?” I asked.
CHAPTER 95
Hawk
I’d been walking for almost an hour, just to get way north, to where the Paters had their estate. I’d tried jogging and running, but it’d made my wing start bleeding again. My jacket was soaked, and I was definitely leaving an easy trail behind me. I’d also had to wade in icy water up to my chest, then stoop and walk almost bent double for almost a kilometer, my ribs pressing against my lungs and nearly stopping my air flow.
So now I was walking as quietly as I could. The worn leather soles of my boots were surprisingly silent, even over trash, tile, and wet cement. Every so often when I crossed beneath a manhole close to the surface I would stand and listen, careful not to let the dots of sunlight fall on me. I still heard angry hordes. I still heard the rumble of tanks and thousands upon thousands of feet as they tromped north. There was a huge contingent headed for the Paters’. I’d never seen anything like this, where all kinds of people from the City of the Dead joined together with one goal. Max had done this. Max and Angel. “It’s what we do,” Max had said.
Could the City of the Dead even actually be liberated from McCallum and the Six? I didn’t know. I only knew that after today, things would never be the same. I would never be the same. And Clete would still be dead.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks, no doubt leaving trails through the dirt and blood. I should be getting to the Paters’ soon. I had a choice of five manhole covers or sewer grates that I could climb out of—I picked the one hidden by bushes in the Paters’ private kitchen garden. From there I could hop the fence out into the street and join in with the crowd.
I found the spot and looked up. It looked a lot smaller than it had when I was a little kid. Pietro and I’d climbed in and out of it all the time, pretending to be spies or soldiers or whatever. Now it looked really, really narrow. Yeah. I hadn’t climbed through it in about six years. Ever since Giacomo had pointed a knife at me and said if I ever brought my freak self around again, he’d kill me. I’m paraphrasing. The next time I’d seen