“Max! Get Total!” Angel shouted after me, her voice panicky.
“No, I’m dropping straight down through clouds just for fun,” I said to myself. I know people always fantasize
about dropping through clouds or walking on clouds, landing on clouds. The thing is, clouds are wet. Wet and usually chilly. And you can’t see anything. So, not as high on the fun scale as you might think.
I followed the sound of Total’s howling, letting myself fall toward the earth. Suddenly the mist cleared and I saw the ground, green and brown, below me. Plus a bunch of white—
“Aaahh!” I cried, as I dropped out of the cloud and practically onto the back of a glider plane. My feet actually brushed its thin skin before I pulled my knees up and angled my wings sharply. I slightly scraped the plane’s right wing before I could pull enough to the side, then I moved my wings powerfully and rose up several yards, out of the way.
Gliders are virtually soundless. That was the lesson for today. This close I could hear the wind whistling against the smooth, streamlined plane, but there had been no sound to tip me off. That had been close. If I’d dropped in front of it . . .
I could no longer hear Total. Dang it! My eyes raked the air below me. I tucked my wings back and aimed downward again, shooting like a rocket instead of just letting myself fall. I poured on my new supernatural speed and roared toward the ground, and suddenly Total was in view and getting larger fast.
He was still howling pathetically. There was no time for me to slow down, so I just shot toward him, scooped him into my arms, then pulled out of the steep, steep dive about two hundred feet from the mountainside. Raising my face to the sun, I rushed upward, my wings feeling like steel, like fusion rockets. I looked ahead to make sure there was nothing above me, then I finally glanced down to check on Total.
He was crying. Large tears made wet streaks through his black fur. “You saved me,” he choked out. “I couldn’t fly. I was falling. But you got me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t let you fall,” I told him, and rubbed behind his ears. Still weeping, he licked my cheek gratefully. I clenched my teeth.
The rest of the flock was circling overhead—Fang had made Angel stay with him. She was peering down anxiously, and as soon as she saw me coming she hurried to meet me. “You got him!” she shouted happily. “You saved him!”
Total wiggled excitedly in my arms, and I let him go over to Angel’s embrace. He weighed almost half as much as she did, so she couldn’t hold him long, but right now they were crying in each other’s arms. Fine. Let him lick her. I rubbed my cheek against my sweatshirt shoulder.
Angel was actually crying herself, I realized. She almost never cried—none of us cried easily, and Angel was unnaturally stoic for a six-year-old. The fact that she was crying because she’d almost lost Total told me that she was majorly attached to him. Which wasn’t great. I mean, I liked Total fine, but we still didn’t know much about him. I wasn’t 100 percent sure we could trust him.
Or me, actually. My chip.
“Oh, Total,” Angel cried, her tears soaking his head. “I was so scared!”
“You were scared!” Total said, burrowing deeper into her arms. “I thought I was gonna plotz!”
“Okay, I better take him,” said Fang, holding out his hands. Total crept cautiously into his arms and tucked himself neatly into the crook of Fang’s elbow.
“I need wings,” said Total, still sniffling. “I need my own wings. Then things like that wouldn’t happen.”
Yeah, that was all I needed. A flying talking mutant dog.
99
At last, at last. Ari strode through the doors of a Best-Mart, feeling huge and powerful. Dad was going to let him have Max. She would be all his. Dad could have the others. Ari would have a chance to make Max like him. He remembered when they had fought in the sewer tunnel, in New York. That had been really bad. Max had acted as if she hated him. But now they would be friends. Soon. Very soon.
The Best-Mart was crowded—Atlanta was a big city. Ari and a couple of Eraser troops had hunkered down at a cheap hotel on the highway, waiting for dark. In the meantime, Ari had decided to celebrate.
Now he looked around the store. It was huge. Too bright, too noisy. Hot and full of people, all around. He wished he could drop a bomb on this whole place, watch it light up like a bonfire. He could do it—but he would probably just get in trouble. Again. And get the “don’t call attention to yourself” lecture. Again. Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out of the question!
But anyway, this place was full of cool stuff. Ari deserved to have something really cool. This was the clothes department. Bor-ing.
Housewares. Bor-ing.
The automotive section, which seemed as if it should be interesting but was actually bor-ing because all it had was, like, oil and windshield cleaner.
Oh, so gross, the underwear department. There was a lady right there, holding a bra! Out in the open! Oh, my God—was she crazy? Ari turned away and kept walking, fast.
Finally—here, at the back of the store. Electronics. Ari’s heart sped up as his eyes darted past the rows of TVs, all tuned to the same station. Maybe thirty of them. It was so awesome. Ari could sit here all day, watching them. But that wasn’t all. There were boom boxes, cool phones, Walkmans, MP3 players. It would be great to be able to listen to cool music all the time.
Then he saw it. The huge Game Boy display. There were eight Game Boys, all different colors, cabled to a shelf. Next to them was a TV, and it was playing videos of all the different Game Boys, like, having adventures. The blue one was surfing, and the red one tried to break out through the TV, and the silver one got a tattoo. It was the coolest thing Ari had ever seen. He stood there, mesmerized, for a long time.
“Uh, sir?”