d do was keep them away from the rest of us and hope to get in a lucky swing.
Gazzy was trying to keep the Erasers away from the house and distract the ones that were after Iggy, but one of his wings was slightly crumpled, and he couldn’t get off the ground. Several Erasers had him pinned up against a tree at edge of the woods.
Nudge was screaming like a madwoman, pounding her sneaker into the face of an Eraser who held her by the ankle. But two more were coming up on her from behind.
I didn’t know who to help first. And I had at least ten Erasers taking turns diving at me. As I smashed my fist into another one of their disgusting faces, I realized that I had just gotten Angel back… but I might be about to lose someone else.
Or everyone else.
66
CRIES AND GRUNTS overhead caught my attention. Dylan and Ari were both bloody and bruised, like the rest of us, and I couldn’t even tell who was winning.
Dylan quickly landed five lightning-quick kicks to Ari’s stomach, making him double over and wheeze. But Ari straightened almost immediately and swung a huge taloned paw through the air. I bit my lip as he sliced Dylan’s side to ribbons, sending blood splashing thirty feet below to spatter the trampled, icy grass.
Ari had done that to Fang once. Fang had almost died.
I watched, holding my breath, as Dylan abruptly turned and hurtled toward a tree. He grabbed a strong branch, snapped it off as if it were a twig, and dove back toward Ari. Dylan swung the branch in a deadly arc… just as something collided with my head so hard that I gasped and stumbled. Immediately, I felt blood trickling down my cheek.
Watching the fight above had cost me.
I jumped to my feet and almost fell back down as a wave of dizziness hit me. Wiping blood out of my eyes, I made like a windmill, fists swinging in hard punches that jarred my shoulders, feet shooting out in kicks that were backed by every ounce of my weight. I could hardly tell which way was up or down, but I wouldn’t give up. I could hear someone yelling in pain in the distance. My flock needed me.
“Don’t give up, Nudge! Fang—help Gazzy and Iggy!”
I karate-chopped the throat of my umpteenth Eraser and screamed encouragement to my flock. I won’t let them die. Whirling in a circle, I delivered a kick that snapped an Eraser’s arm before shooting up onto the porch, where three more of them were trying to get into the house. There were Erasers everywhere.
I heard a bloodcurdling howl to my right. Dylan swung the tree branch again, and there was a sickening thud. Blood flew in all directions and Ari shrieked with murderous rage. He started to lunge toward Dylan but faltered suddenly, a fatal mistake.
My heart pounding, I watched Dylan swing the branch again, a cold, grim expression on his frighteningly beaten face. This time, the branch smashed into Ari’s head. Ari’s wings folded and he fell down, down, hitting the ground with bone-crunching force.
I stared at Ari’s contorted, unnatural position—a position no living body could be in.
Dylan—alive and upright—floated slowly downward to land a couple of feet away from me on the porch. He looked dazed, and his shirt was shredded and so wet with blood that I couldn’t tell what color it had been. His face was so beaten up that I mainly recognized him by his hair. He looked exhausted. Older.
“Max,” he began, and gave a little cough. Then he collapsed at my feet.
“He’s dead!” someone shouted. I didn’t know who. I was too stunned by the horror of what I’d just witnessed.
But then, impossibly, miraculously, something else happened.
The Erasers suddenly went limp and crumpled lifelessly to the ground one by one.
67
DYLAN WATCHED WITH half-open eyes from the porch floor. Out of batteries, he thought. Game over. He was so dizzy, and not entirely sure he wasn’t hallucinating. The fight with Ari had taken a lot out of him.
“What the—?” Iggy said mid-swing, as the fist he’d aimed at an Eraser’s face connected with empty air.
“How come they’re all down?” the Gasman asked exhaustedly. “Are they dead?”
“What happened?” Nudge asked, swaying slightly. All of the bird kids were more whipped, more damaged than Dylan had ever seen them.
“It’s like… they were all linked,” Fang said hoarsely. He wiped a hand under his nose, which was running with blood. Both of his eyes were swollen almost shut. “All connected, all ‘wired’ to their leader somehow. So if Ari died…”
“Then they would, too,” finished Max. But her voice sounded funny, and she wasn’t looking at the fallen Erasers, wasn’t preoccupied with them the way everyone else was.
She was on her knees, looking at him, at Dylan, her expression afraid and grateful and so, so tender it made his heart thump wildly in his chest. She did care, then. She had to.