Years of Max-enforced training kicked in as adrenaline sped through the Gasman’s body. Door blocked. Window blocked. They were surrounded, with no clean escape available. It was goin
g to be a fight, he realized, already preparing himself.
More than likely a fight to the death.
34
Nudge woke up four times before she finally rolled over and pried her eyes open.
It was barely dawn. Fang was gone. First Angel, then Max—now Fang.
Gone! Nudge looked around, crawling to the opening of the cave on her hands and knees. There’s nothing like panic to really wake you up, get all your senses going. Nudge felt keenly alert, frightened, too many thoughts starting to rush in her brain.
Movement caught her eye, and her head swiveled in line with a loose formation of hawks wheeling through the crisp, white blue sky. They were so beautiful, powerful, graceful, completely one with the sky and the earth and the rough cliffs.
One of them was Fang.
Nudge stood quickly, almost bumping her head on the low ceiling of the cave. Without hesitation, she leaped off the cliff edge, out into the sky. Her wings unfolded and caught the wind like sails, and suddenly she was a small brown boat soaring across an endless blue sea.
She approached the hawks, and after hard, glinting glances at her, they moved so she could join them. Fang was watching her, and Nudge was surprised by his face—how alive he looked, how . . . untight. Fang always looked very tight, somehow, taut, like the string on a bow. Now he looked loose and free and alive.
“Morning,” he said.
“I’m hungry,” said Nudge.
He nodded. “Town about three minutes away. Follow me.” He tilted his body in a new way that led him up and away without moving his wings. It was cool, like a plane. Nudge tried it, but it didn’t work as well for her. She would practice.
Below them was a thin two-lane highway, clotted with a last few shops and businesses before the road wound away into the desert. Fang dipped his head: A fast-food place had a large Dumpster out back. Even from up this high, Nudge could see a worker tossing cardboard boxes of stuff into it, getting ready for a new day.
They circled a couple times till they were sure the worker wasn’t coming out again, then dropped quickly, like bombs, tucking their wings in tight with just the feather tips guiding their descent. Thirty feet above the Dumpster, they blew their wings out again, braking sharply, then they landed, almost silently, on the metal edge of the Dumpster.
“Nirvana,” Fang said, pawing through food that was still good but not sellable. “Burger?”
Nudge thought, then shook her head. “I don’t know—after watching the hawks shredding little animals—oh, but look, here’s a couple salads. And some apple pies! Bonus!”
They tightened the drawstrings of their windbreakers around their waists. Then, working fast, they started stuffing food inside their jackets, anything that would travel. Three minutes after they’d landed, they were airborne again, lumpy and smiling.
It was amazing how much better Nudge felt after eating. She sighed and sat cross-legged in the cave entrance, watching the hawks fly.
Fang finished his fifth thin hamburger patty and wiped his fingers on his jeans. “You know, I think the way they swoop and stuff is like a message to the other hawks,” he said. “Like they’re telling them where there’s game or where they’ll be or something. I haven’t figured it out yet. But I will.”
“Oh.” Nudge sat back on her heels and spread her wings out, enjoying the feel of the sun warming her feathers. She tried to be quiet and not disturb Fang, but after five minutes she was close to meltdown.
“Fang? We’ve just got to go find Max,” she said. “Or should we go on and try to find Angel?”
Fang pulled his attention away from the hawks with difficulty. “We’re going to circle back, look for Max,” he said. “She must have—run into something.”
Nudge nodded solemnly, unable to define what kind of something would have kept Max from them. She didn’t want to think about it.
Fang stood, tall and dark against the weathered sandstone of the rock cliff. He looked down at her, his face calm and patient, his eyes reflecting no light whatsoever. “You ready?”
Nudge jumped to her feet, brushing sand off her butt. “Absolutely. Um, where do you think we should—”
But Fang was already gone, snatched away by the wind, borne upward by air rising from the canyon below.
Nudge took a small running leap off the cliff after him.
“Tarzan!” she yelled. Whatever that was supposed to mean.