Джеймс Паттерсон: Hawk

Of course everyone nodded, happy to follow my lead. Hell, most of them liked her more than I did. But she was still my kid, and there was zero chance that I was going to lose her again. So all we had to do was comb an entire freaking city, thousands of bodies, tons of wreckage…

“Okay,” Angel said. “You want to do that now, or—”

I looked at her, her unfamiliar grown-up face, her sharp, wise eyes. Long, long ago, she’d been like my baby, my child. Like Phoenix, she’d grown up without me. I hadn’t been there for either of them.

“Maybe we should storm the castle first?” said Gazzy, gliding closer. “If we help the Paters fall, that’ll spell the end for the rest of the Six.”

“I vote Paters, too,” Angel said.

“There’s a huge crowd heading up the avenue toward their estate,” Fang said.

I was a mom and a member of the Flock. I wanted my child back, but I also wanted to finish what the Flock had begun. The two sides were having their own battle, one in my mind to match the streets below. I shook my head, told myself I needed to concentrate.

“Let’s go blow up the Paters,” I said slowly, and angled my wings to turn east-northeast. “Let’s reduce their castle to rubble!”

And that decision, right there, was the turning point for everything.

CHAPTER 98Hawk

I was in the bowels of the Pater homestead, locked in a room. For all of the thousands of fights I’d been in, I’d never, not ever, been trapped . Never been without an escape route. I knew this whole city from the air and underground, and I’d memorized escape routes from every possible place I could be cornered.

I’d just never counted on being cornered under the Pater mansion. The City of the Dead was a wrecked place where you could count on rot and rust to help you out of a tight spot, punching your boot through a weak spot.

But this was different. This place was built to hold people. There was the one heavily planked door, double locked, and one weensy window way up high that was too narrow even for a tall superthin bird-kid to slip through. That was it.

I’d paced patterns into the dusty floor—circles, like a chained dog, my blood mixing with the dirt to create filthy footprints. There were two places where the plaster was broken away down to the skinny wooden laths, and I’d tried punching through them. My knuckles were scraped and raw. It would have taken about a thousand more punches to get into the next room, which for all I knew looked just like this one, with another locked door. Besides, I didn’t have the strength to break through a wall. My sides ached, my breaths coming in gasps.

The only other thing in here was a fireplace—not a huge, ornate one big enough to roast an ox, but a small one, big enough to almost warm mistreated servants. I imagined them crowding it during the long winters, the fire producing more smoke than heat.

Hm. I kneeled to look at it better. Yeah. It was tiny. Squinting, I lay on my back, slid into the hearth and looked up. And saw— maybe saw —a tiny bit of light, very, very far away. Could that could be sky? Maybe. Maybe not. I was underground, and the mansion went on for another three stories above me. That would be a long freaking chimney. And one hell of a tight climb.

But I was desperate. The jerks who’d locked me in had promised that someone would be back to get me soon. I assumed it wouldn’t be to give me tea and cookies.

Oh, my god, tea and cookies would be so, so good right now. So would a little bit of medical attention, I thought grimly.

Getting stuck in a too-narrow chimney would be bad—they’d only have to shoot up or shoot down and I’d be a goner. Or worse, I could get stuck and die slow.

I measured the opening with my hands. There wasn’t a lot of space, but whoever was coming back for me might have something worse in mind. And it wouldn’t take them long to figure out where I had gone, either. I needed to move, now. Taking a breath, I scooched into the hearth and tried to stand.

“Achoo, achoo, achoo!” Just standing up I had knocked so much soot off the chimney walls that I was black from my head down to my hips, which was where I was stuck. I mean, I could still probably get back out, if I wanted to. My shoulders were scraping each side of the chimney, knocking loose more grimy soot. I wasn’t sure if I could climb higher, or not. I was starting to feel… terrified.

I had to try. And I had to do it now. I sank down to gather my muscles and gave a big jump upward! Automatically my wings tried to snap out… and became feathery chimney brushes, sending a storm of soot into my eyes as I ascended. But not far.

Now I was about three meters up, braced in a small chimney with my hands on one side and my feet on the other, my wings pressed tight against my sides. My injured wing was bleeding again, the dark drops falling down below letting anyone who showed up know exactly where I’d gone. My ribs hurt so much that I would have cried, if I was the crying type. But crying wasn’t going to get me out of this. Only upward motion would.

I reached forward, feeling for a fingerhold. Right above me, the chimney narrowed, probably to make a hearth for a fireplace on the first floor. I bet it was a much bigger fireplace, one for the family, not the servants. If I could climb out, I might be able to find a window. And if I found one of those, I could fly to freedom. But if there was a hearth, why didn’t I see any light?

Carefully, dislodging approximately fifty kilos of soot with every movement, I crept upward. Soon my eyes were level with the hearth, but… this one had been bricked in. Of freaking course. That’s why there wasn’t any light. The Pater family had probably updated the whole damn mansion. For all I knew the fireplaces were just for show, and not actually connected to the chimney.

Soon I worked out a system of moving hand-hand, then foot-foot, and made it up to the hearth on the second floor, which had been partially closed in and replaced with a gas heater. I heard people talking and eagerly listened, but it was a couple of servants, anxious about the crowds they could see off in the distance. I wanted to scream, Clean the goddamn chimneys once in a while, will ya, goddamnit? But I didn’t. If I got caught again, locked up again, I didn’t know what I’d do.

I kept climbing. Ideally, I would have been able to jump four stories high, popping out of the top as fresh as a just-picked apple, but I couldn’t. My legs had nothing to push off of, and were exhausted anyway. Flying upward also would have been great, but my wings were almost four meters across. I couldn’t spread them, and I didn’t know if my injured wing would support me, either.

Third-floor hearth, also bricked in. Freaking awesome.

But now there was definitely light above me. My muscles were shaking and I’d slipped a bunch of times. Soot was in my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth and had trickled down my neck beneath my shirt. I could feel it in a fine layer across my entire scalp. I would probably never be clean again. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I’d been all that clean for the past ten years, anyway.

“Keep. Going. Hawk!” I hissed, and made myself move hand-hand, then foot-foot.

I heard pigeons. They made little cooing noises, calm and soft.

Suddenly the light above was mostly blocked! Had they found me? Was this where I would die? All someone had to do was lean over the chimney stack and fire!

Feeling like my blood had left my brain, I looked up. And saw… pigeon butts and little pigeon feet. Several fluffy gray pigeon butts, partially blocking the flue. How did they keep from getting sooty?