The Final Warning

53

FLYING IN HIGH WINDScan be the most exhilarating thing in the world. You just put your wings fully out and coast, doing micro-adjustments as needed to stay aloft. It’s a lot like surfing at the beach, riding the waves, except, you know, without the water. Or the beach. Or the surfboard.

At least, it’s fun like that when you don’t have to go anywhere and can take all the time in the world to enjoy Mother Nature’s roller coaster. If you need to go inany other direction, you’re screwed.

Fang and I are wicked strong, and our wings are, uh, not superhuman- I guess super-avian would be the term. But these were some freaking stiff winds, and on top of that, it was, to put it in words that won’t get edited out for younger kids, exceedingly cold.

Fang and I broke through the wind as best we could. We tried going above it, but before we got high enough, we realized we were so far up that we couldn’t see squat on the ground, even with raptor vision.

Teeth clenched, windburn tears streaming out of our eyes, we headed back down, staying close to each other. We started in small circles, then made them increasingly larger. And saw nothing. Nothing but whiteness. Ice. Rock. Snow. Right then, global warming seemed like a great idea.

“Hypothermia,” Fang yelled over the wind, and I nodded, biting my lip. Dealing with regular oldfreezingness was one thing, but being caught somewhere, unable to move and keep warm, was something else. If Angel had fallen through some ice or had gotten trapped somehow, it wouldn’t take long for her to freeze to death. Total, being smaller, would last even less time.

We kept seeing more of nothing. I realized that the wind was probably scouring away any tracks as fast as they could be made. I was so, so glad that Fang was with me, that we were doing this together. I looked over at him, his face focused and intent, and I felt a pang of- what? I didn’t know. Sort of longing mixed withmiserableness.

Feeling my eyes on him, he looked over at me, and his gaze seemed to go right inside my head, like a laser. I felt as if he could see right into my heart, see all my emotions, and I didn’t know what to do. His expression softened, and he looked a bit surprised, but then he gave me his lopsided smile, and suddenly I was less miserable.

“We’ll find her,” he called. “We always do.”

I nodded, and our moment was gone.

It seemed as if we’d been flying forever, though it had probably been about fifteen minutes. But the coldness, the battling with the wind, the worry about Angel- it felt like a week since I’d decked Brian.

Then… I blinked several times and peered downward. Was that…?

“There!” I said, pointing. “Are those tracks?” Below us, I thought I saw faint gray outlines of very small tracks.

“Penguins?” Fang guessed. The prints were being scoured away by the wind even as we watched. I glanced ahead at where they were going, and sure enough, about a half mile away, I saw a huddled black-and-white blob of penguins grouped together to stay warm.

“Yeah,” I said, disappointment burning in my chest.

Then I thought:penguins.

“Penguins!” I shouted at Fang. He heard me, despite my voice being ripped away by the wind. My eyes felt frozen open, and my mouth was incredibly dry.

“That’s what I just said!” he yelled back. Though he was only eight feet above me, I could hardly hear him.

“No, I mean, Angel wanted a penguin!” I shouted through cupped hands. “I’m going down!” Fang nodded, and we angled downward, seeing the ground rushing up at us.

Please, please let Angel somehow be in the middle of the penguin huddle, keeping warm.

54

THE LOSS OF HIS MAIN CONTACT was a regrettable obstacle,Gozen thought, but at least she had succeeded in placing tiny homing devices on the quarry before she was so unexpectedly terminated. NowGozen watched his small screen as the green beacons began moving across the ice. He and his troops had been about to set out to find the beacon that had suddenly stopped and become dimmer, but then others had appeared, meaning more of his quarry had left the station. He’d wait till they stopped, then go out to meet them.

Head tilted on his gargantuan shoulders,Gozen listened to the wind. The storm was intensifying. Fortunately, neither he nor his troops would be much affected by it. It could even play into their plans.

He turned to his troops. “Prepare for combat.”

55

NO, FINDING ANGEL huddled inside a warm mass of penguins would be too easy.

The second we landed, Fang and I were almost knocked off our feet. I quickly pulled in my wings and leaned into the wind. My face felt like it was being sanded with tiny ice crystals, and my cheeks were already burning.

Still, I tried to keep my eyes pried open enough to see the last traces of penguin tracks. Dropping to my knees, I looked carefully. Were those boot marks amid all the faint penguin footprints? There were no dog prints as far as I could tell. Any sign at all was being obliterated. Still, it was the only thing we’d found. I’d follow the tracks to the clump of penguins and then- like, question them or something.

I motioned to Fang and he nodded, reading my mind as easily as he always did. Not in an Angel-really-reading-my-mind kind of way, but in a Fang-knew-me-too-well kind of way. He stumbled slightly getting up, and I grabbed his hand and held it as we made our way toward the penguins.

Together we staggered forward, leaning into the wind, trying to keep on the trail between us and the penguins. Regular kids wouldn’t have made it- they would have had to lie down to keep from being blown away. It was getting harder and harder to see, but the flock has a built-in navigator system that allows us to find our way places, even in the dark, even across huge distances.

It seemed like we’d been searching for hours. I was freezing, trembling with the cold, and really starting to panic. I was just begi

“Help!”

“Angel!” I screamed back, not knowing where her voice was coming from. I looked around blindly but could see nothing that would hide even a small bird kid.

“Max! Help!”

“We’re here! We’ll get you!” Fang kept his arms around my waist while I cupped both hands around my mouth, shouting into the wind. “Where are you?”

“Down here!” came her little voice. “You just kicked snow on me!”

With that, Fang and I both dropped cautiously to our stomachs and inched forward until we saw the deep hole my foot had gone into. I brushed away some snow, and the hole got much bigger, fast.

“You’re dumping snow on us!” Angel cried.

“I’m sorry!” I called. “I have to find you first! We can’t even see where you went in!”

Finally we brushed away enough snow to see the deep, deep crack in the ice, maybe a yard across at the surface, then plunging steeply down in an ever-narrowingvee. It was way too narrow for her to fly out, or for us to fly in. I remembered my flip reply toBrigid, that I would just fly out of a crevasse, and saw immediately that none of us could have flown out of there. No room.

“Get the rope,” I told Fang, but he was already uncoiling it. “Angel? We’re going to drop a rope down to you. Just hold on tight and we’ll pull you up, okay?”

“Uh…,” Angel said, her voice weak and tired.

“What?” Fang asked.

“My foot’s stuck,” she said, sounding scared. “And I have Total andAkila with me. They can’t hold on to a rope.”