James Patterson - Maximum Ride Forever

He caught her eyeing his scabbed knuckles, and then the scratches on his wrist, snaking toward the touch screen embedded there. She finally spoke.

“Is it done?” This time, the smallness, the meekness, was gone from Angel’s voice.

Horseman paused and nodded. “Fang is dead,” he said, and knelt at her feet.

“Nooo!” I woke up gasping, and the word came out strangled as I inhaled.

I couldn’t get enough air and I was having heart palpitations like I’d just run a marathon.

I thought I might throw up.

I couldn’t remember the details of the nightmare, but I knew I’d been falling. It wasn’t one of those falling-off-the-couch dreams, either — I had been falling for miles.

I’d been having that kind of dream a lot lately, but this time, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was very, very wrong. Blinking, I reoriented myself — me, check. Harry, check. Woods probably somewhere around the Washington-Canada border, check. Sanity? Maybe a bit iffy.

Maximum Ride is next.

I held my breath, certain I heard the rustle of branches or shoes shuffling through the fallen pine needles not too far away.

“Did you hear something?” I whispered, and elbowed Harry next to me, but his only response was making twittering noises in his sleep.

So much for his evolved reflexes.

I listened again, trying not to breathe, but the only thing I heard was the hoot of an owl somewhere in the distance. Okay, maybe I was being paranoid. The adrenaline had kicked my senses into overdrive. I just needed to calm down and try to get back to sleep.

But it had gotten so cold. It felt rooted deep in my body, and I was shivering too much to relax. Since Harry was asleep anyway, I scooched closer to him, trying to get warm. His wings folded forward to encircle me, and for a moment I almost convinced myself that they were Fang’s wings, guarding me from whatever might come.

My breath started to slow...

Suddenly my face hit the dirt as Harry yanked his wing out from under my cheek. When I scrambled to my knees, he was already hovering in the air, alert. The kid had my back after all, and I would have smiled in appreciation if I hadn’t been so concerned with what had set him off: a figure materializing out of the trees.

A guy.

With wings.

Seeing the outline of feathers, Harry relaxed a little, but the sight made my pulse race faster.

I thought of the way my gut had been telling me to come this way all along.

The way I’d been so sick with worry I’d barely been able to eat.

I knew I would find him.

But...

“Dylan?”

“Hey, Max,” he answered, as if he’d just run to the store and was back now. I’d thought he was dead all this time.

“Max Mum?” Harry asked uncertainly.

Dylan looked past Harry to where I was still sitting on the ground, but all I could do was blink back at him dumbly. After my silence lasted a beat too long, Dylan asked, “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Yeah. I just. I thought,” I said haltingly, still out of sorts. “For a second you looked like... Fang.”

Dylan’s entire posture stiffened, but his face seemed to crumple, his gaze falling to the ground.

Nice one, jerkface. Real sensitive.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted, starting to recover from the shock. “I mean yes, of course! ” I scrambled to my feet and ran to him. “I am really happy to see you, Dylan.”

Now I was a grinning idiot, so freaking relieved that he was safe. When he folded me into a hug, I loved the way he squeezed me a little too tight, held on a little too long. I sighed against him, but I was confused by the way my heart was leaping like a frog on speed when just a minute ago I’d wanted so desperately to see Fang.

I had to pull back.

“Everybody thought you were dead!” I said. I was gripping the sides of his arms, and his muscles were bigger than I remembered, more solid. His hair was changed, too — cropped close to his skull — and his eyes, which had always been so clear and bright, looked strangely cloudy.

“Why do you look so different?” I asked, my gaze traveling down from his black coat to his heavy combat boots. “And why are you dressed like you’re in a biker gang? You even have gloves — so much more prepared for this weather than me.”

Rather than answer me, Dylan turned behind him, and a smaller figure stepped forward.

“Oh, my God! Angel! ” My heart lit as it always did when I saw her. I rushed to her, saying, “I was on my way to join you! I can’t believe you’re here, too!”

But Angel wasn’t smiling, and the expression on her face stopped me in my tracks. Something wasn’t right.

“What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?” I frowned.

Angel pressed her lips together, like she was trying to hold something in tight. “Max...”

That cold feeling returned, flooding my whole body, and my voice rose shrilly.

“What’s wrong?”

Then Angel ran to me, crashing into me, almost bowling me over.

“Oh, Max!” she cried. She wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her face in my shirt as her too-thin body shook against me.

I rubbed her back, smoothed her hair. I was so relieved to be holding her like this, so grateful to have my littlest girl back with me that I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to ruin that one happiness.

But I had to know.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” My voice was flat, certain. “The rest of the flock is dead. Fang, Nudge, Iggy, Total...”

Angel pulled back from me, her eyes red.

“No.” She wiped her nose with her palm and shook her head. “Nudge is okay. Iggy. They’re not all—”

“I saw on the blog. They said Gazzy...” My voice cracked and I swallowed. “I guess if you screw around with explosives for long enough, that’s what happens.”

“It’s not true,” Dylan said, stepping forward. “The deaths were faked. The kids are fine.”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” I said bitterly. “I can handle it.”

But Dylan had always been one of the most honest people I’d known — he was often a little too truthful about his feelings — and I saw he was serious now.

“ I faked their deaths,” he clarified.

“You wha—” I stared at him incredulously. I thought about the misery I’d felt reading those words, the wrenching uncertainty of the past few days. I narrowed my eyes, and my voice was razor sharp. “Why would you do that?”

Dylan sighed and shook his head. “I had to convince the Remedy I’d killed them, so he wouldn’t send the other Horsemen.”

I looked at him sidelong, confused at first. And then I understood, and my eyes flew open.

“The other Horsemen?” I repeated. I stepped closer to him, already balling my fists. “ You’re one of the Horsemen?”

“Not exactly...”

Dylan built a fire, and over the next hour, he explained what had happened when he’d left us — how he’d been trying to find the water jugs by the lake and had gotten disoriented.

“I guess it was the toxic gases from the volcano. I just kept stumbling around, retracing my steps. My shoe got stuck between rocks, and when I yanked my foot free, the shoe was completely charred. I knew I had to get out of there, but by then the smoke was so thick I could barely see, and my ears were still fuzzy from the blast. So when I heard someone shout my name, I thought it was one of you.”

The knot in my stomach tightened.

“When I turned,” Dylan went on, “a metal pipe smashed into my face. I fell forward onto my knees, and then someone stabbed my neck with a syringe.”