The wind was picking up with furious intensity. It pried tears from my eyes that froze nearly instantly, flung microscopic shards of ice into my face until I couldn't feel my cheeks or my nose anymore. I tried fruitlessly to shield my skin from the frigid barrage, but what good is a sweatshirt in a blizzard?

Beside me, Harry was shivering, but flying with his feathers puffed out. He saw my gaze at him, and shuddered out, "M-m-maaaxx M-m-mumm." I offered him the best smile I could with my numb lips. "We're almost there, Harry," I slurred.

My keen bird tracking told me we were somewhere in the middle of Alaska, but that didn't matter. All I was counting on was the sense that I needed to find Fang a-sap. It was like there was some radar linking me with him, and my heartbeats pinged harder the closer we got. I'd first felt it in California when I got the inexplicable urge to fly north. And it kept strengthening as we flew over mountains with thawing glaciers and forests that seemed mostly untouched. And I was almost ready to explode as the temperature dropped and Harry and I were plunged into a full-blown late spring blizzard. I knew we were close.

I could barely see anything over the whiteout, but every now and then a jagged peak would appear, wind-exposed rock silhouetted against the snow. I followed them like I was connecting the dots, waiting for a picture of Fang, alive and whole, to appear before me.

But as my internal homing signal grew more and more frenetic, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something very wrong.

And then, carried over the howl of the blizzard, there was the vaguest hint of a drawn-out, agonized scream.

A horrible cold feeling that had nothing to do with the weather dumped into my chest at the sound, spread outward through my veins, and I froze in place. Now I knew what they meant when they said, "bone-chilling."

I jerked my head around to Harry and said, "I'm sorry," before adrenaline kicked in and I closed in at 300mph on the direction of the yells of pain.

There, on the top of a cliff just ahead of me, were a bunch of dark shapes that swelled to incredible clarity in the blink of an eye.

I arrived in a swirl of snow as I skidded to a halt before the most terrifying scene I had ever seen. The snow was spattered with blood. Way too much blood.

In a shock, I realized that Dylan was one of the figures lying unconscious on the ground, with two Erasers on either side of him.

"Dylan!" I cried. "Oh God, Dylan!" I felt elated. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would see him again.

I dropped to my knees beside him and checked him over for injuries. There was a lump forming on his forehead, but he seemed more or less okay and stirred feebly at my touch.

I looked around at the rest of the scene and something black caught my eye.

My first thought was, Fang!

My second thought was incoherent horror as I stumbled over and realized that there was no brooding bird boy attached to his right wing.

"FAAAAAAAAAANG!" I screeched.

I looked around wildly for any sign of him, and saw smears of blood and crumpled snow leading to the edge of the cliff.

I felt ungainly with terror and fury and so many other emotions frothing inside, and as I peered over the edge of the precipice, I nearly lost my balance. There were four dark shapes at the bottom of the canyon. One of them looked leaner than the others. None of them were moving.

I rocketed down the couple hundred feet to the bottom, and landed right beside the boy I loved so much. My throat closed up at the sight of him. He was lying on his stomach, the gaping hole in his back where his wing should have been grotesquely, bluntly visible. It was hard to imagine that any of his bones were not broken – his nose was crooked, one of his shoulders looked dislocated, both of his legs jutted in angles at weird places through his dark jeans. His other wing had the cream-colored shard of bone marking the place where it had snapped under him as he hit the ground.

I collapsed, my hands covering my mouth as I tried to hold in the flood of panic threatening to overwhelm me. My neurons had stopped firing the moment I saw the state he was in. I wanted to help him, but I was afraid to even touch him. I couldn't remember ever feeling so useless.

"Fang…" The word came out in barely a whisper.

Through the tears welling in my eyes, I could see that his chest was weakly rising and falling – shallow gasps of breaths that were farther apart than they ever should be.

One of his swollen eyes opened a slit, and I saw his dark iris find me. A hint of a wince flashed across the half of his face that I could see, and his mouth twitched like he was trying to speak, but he winced again and I suspected his jaw was broken as well.

"Shhh, shhh," I told him.

His gaze was sad as he looked at me. And all at once, I saw fear and pain and tenderness flash in the tiniest movement of his face.

He was saying goodbye.

I was crying in earnest now, and I vaguely registered Dylan's landing beside us, his sharp inhale. "Oh my God," he breathed. He laid a hand on my shoulder, hesitant but comforting.

Harry landed a split second later, dancing in worry around me and the array of bodies. "Max-Mummm…" His warbly tone was grim. He knew death when he saw it.

And, as unthinkable as that thought was, so did I.

I reached out and brushed a damp and cold lock of hair to the side of Fang's face. It was the only part of him I dared touch.

His breaths were coming even slower now.

"I love you. Fang, I love you so much." It wasn't eloquent, wasn't witty, but it was all I could think to say.

A hint of a smile flitted across his battered and bloody face.

I choked on a sob. "I love you, I love you, I love you…"

My mantra faded into the raging wind as I watched his eye flutter closed. He took one last shadow of a breath and was still.

I recoiled, staring at him for a few seconds and then I started screaming. I screamed so loud I could hear it echoing in the canyon, even over the gale of the blizzard. I screamed until I was coughing up flecks of blood that mixed with salty tears on the snow. Dylan had drawn me into his arms and rocked me until I lost my voice. Harry's own cries had mixed with mine, though I think it was more alarm at my reaction than grief over this stranger he would never know.

"Max," Dylan spoke into my hair when I'd finally quieted down, "There may be a way to save Fang. But we have to go now or it might be too late."

I tensed at his words, batted him away in disbelief. "Tell me," I mouthed.

"Follow me," he said, and he scooped up Fang's broken body in his arms and we launched out of there at top speed.