Wow, three chapters in one night, I'm impressed.

Disclaimer: I own it all. Yep, you know it, becuase I'm really James Patterson in disguise, and because I am so depressed with the sixth book (Fang) I have decided that I am going to go onto a teenage writing site and butcher my own work. Yeah, I totally am.

I didn't ask for it to be over, but then again,

I never asked for it to begin.

For that's the way it is with life,

as some of the most beautiful days come completely by chance.

But even the most beautiful days eventually have their sunsets

~ Anonymus

How nice that someone finally noticed. "Perfect for what?" I asked warily.

"We're having a makeover fest! You guys can have total makeovers for free as long as your stylist gets to do whatever he or she wants."

"Like what?" Nudge asked.

"Makeup, hairstyles, everything!"

Bingo. "We'd love to," I interrupted. The rest of the Flock eyed me in complete disbelief, mouths hanging open. Fang looked like he wanted to turn me over to the guys at the funny farm. "Make us over. Make us look completely different."

"That is so cool," Nudge crowed as I spun in a circle to show her my new Army surplus jacket. I sighed, almost regretting having to cut humongous slits in the back to let out my wings.

The first time I saw her, didn't recognize Nudge. They had straightened her super curly hair and cut it in layers, adding some blonde highlights. She had the potential to grow up gorgeous, which was something that I generally didn't notice, but with Nudge, it was impossible, even for people like me and Max, not to notice.

The Gasman had outfitted himself in camouflage, and they had cut his blonde hair and dyed the tips of his new spikes blue. The sides were super short.

Fang had gotten his hair cut short, too, except for one chunk that flopped over his eyes and highlighted a bunch of different shades of brown, making it look exactly like a hawk's plumage. He had changed his basic black ensemble to a slightly different black ensemble.

Angel had been given cornrows and had a pair of cargo pants and a fluffy blue fleece jacket.

"We ready?" Iggy demanded with just a hint of impatience. "Not that I don't just adore shopping."

I grinned at him and brushed my hand over the back of his hand. He couldn't see it, but I knew that he could hear it in my voice. "You look like you stuck your finger in an electric socket," I said approvingly. His strawberry blonde hair had been cut and spiked like Gazzy's, but the tips had been died black.

"Really? Sweet." He had gotten his ear pierced before Max noticed, and if I hadn't already had the almost-maximum amount of piercing I could, I might have been jealous of his thin gold hoop.

My stylist had looked at my waist-long braid, and I had closed my eyes, expecting to hear the snip of scissors behind my ears. Instead, she had cut off about four inches and layered it before highlighting it with thin streaks of silver.

They went to town with makeup, too, so now I looked like twenty instead of fourteen. Great.

It felt fabulous to finally be able to stretch my wings out and just… fly. It was so much better than walking. After a half hour of flying we found a stretch of black beach and crashed for the night. The beach was underdeveloped, with huge boulders sealing off both ends.

Max and Nudge stocked up on supplies while I was still sleeping, and when I woke up I felt restless. There was a storm coming. I didn't know when or how, but it was coming. I felt it. I also felt the need to use my Gifts. If I didn't use them for a while they flipped out and started using themselves, usually in destructive, ostentatious, violent ways, so I moved some boulders to make a circular fort.

The kids and I played capture the flag. Angel found out that she had gills, and scared us all half to death. I was ready to turn the ocean upside-down to find her.

Long after the rest of the flock had gone to bed I sat up, gazing at the stars from the top of a huge boulder.

The feeling of dread had only grown stronger. Something awful was about to happen, and I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to help.

"Will you patrol tonight?" I asked Hunter. He bobbed his head. "Thanks." I looked at the bird closely. "Do you know what's about to happen? 'Cause I sure don't." a chill ran down my spine as I slid off the boulder.

Iggy was sitting up, waiting. "Where were you?" he asked.

"Thinking. Do you feel it? It's like the ax is getting ready to fall. Even the ocean seems subdued."

He nodded. I spread my wings in front of the fire and wrapped my arms around my stomach. The sooty red-black feathers seemed to absorb the light of the fire.

"What does the sky look like?" Iggy asked suddenly.

"Well, it's beautiful. It looks like someone spilled black ink all over the sky and sprinkled baking salt or silver glitter all over it. The moon is a big round egg, like when you stand it up straight on a black marble countertop and look down at it. I can sort of see the craters, and it makes it look like the moon had acne once. The waves are breaking just before they hit the shore. They're like horses running, so rhythmic and white on top of the dark blue-grey of the ocean. The sand is gleaming under the light of the moon, and everything is bathed in a pale, unearthly glow."

He nodded, sort of smiling. "The way you describe it I can almost see it."

I scooted closer to him until my shoulder bumped his. "Can I ask a personal question?"

"Shoot," he said.

I hesitated, biting my lip, then asked, regretting it before the words had even left my mouth, "How did it happen? Your eyes, I mean?"

His face hardened into a bitter mask. "The scientists at the school wanted to enhance my night vision."

I touched his shoulder. "Iggy, I am so sorry, it was rude, I shouldn't have asked –"

"Don't be sorry," he interrupted, "Because I'm about to ask you an equally nosy, painful question."

"What?" I asked warily. There were many, many, personal, nosy, questions that I wasn't ready to answer, but I would try. I would try for Ig.

"What happened to make you so violent and angry?"

My body locked down and I clenched my hands into fists in the sand. "You're right." I said, my voice colder than a glacier.

"That you're angry and violent?" he asked.

"No, that it's a painful, nosy question." I took a deep breath to stop the tremors in my hands, folding them in my lap. "But I suppose it's only fair that I answer you. It's not a pleasant story, and it doesn't have a happy ending," I warned him.

He motioned for me to go on.

"There were five others besides me. We were made at the same time as you were, but by another company Itex instead of the School. We were made differently than you and the rest of the Flock. They didn't use just one species of bird, not even birds that still existed. It was a bit like a Jurassic Park kind of thing. I was grafted with pterosaur DNA, but they didn't want reptiles, so they added raven and falcon DNA to it. And they got me. I turned out to be more than they could handle, though. They made others, too, out of anything that flew. There was Blade. They enhanced him with bat DNA. He was my second, like Fang is to Max. He was a lot like Fang."

I dug my nails into my palms to keep from crying. "Then there was Trinity. She was my best friend. They altered her with chaffinch and kestrel. She talked a lot, sure, but she was an amazing fighter and could borrow anyone's power. It didn't even have to be supernatural. If you were super strong, she could borrow that strength. Same with smarts, or even good looks.

"Rosemary was my little baby. She was part dove, part blue jay. She could control the wind, and having someone like that around certainly made flying easier. She could call up and updraft and we would be able to coast for miles.

"Cipher could hack anything mechanical. If it had wheels, he could jack it. If it was made of metal, he could control it with his technopathy. He was part crow, but they screwed up somewhere, and he could only speak in bird-calls.

"Kieran was the goofball of our little family, and he liked nothing better than to generate a force field right in front of you and watch you squish like a bug on a windshield. I swear he was part woodpecker, or camp robber. A magpie, or something like it.

"Anyway, they put me in charge of themselves. I never knew why. Maybe it was because I was the best fighter, or that I wasn't afraid to take risks to keep us all safe. To sum it up, we kicked butt, took names, and got the hell out of the Institute. Those were the best three years of my life, but one day, Blade and I got into an argument, and for the first time, I didn't stay to patch it up. I went off to mope. By the time I made it back, they were all dead. Even Rosie, and she was only six."

He was silent for a time before pulling me into a hug. I bawled quietly into his shirt. "I'm so, so sorry, Rave. I can't imagine what I would do if any of the flock were killed, not to mention my whole family."

"Do-" I hesitated. "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"Sure," he said, standing up and pulling me with him. He didn't let go of my hand as we walked down the glowing white beach. Not that I wanted him to.

He stopped suddenly, his pale eyes on my face. "Are you happy here with us?"

I was taken aback, but sure of my answer. "Of course."

Iggy was silent for a long time, and when he spoke again, there was a light blush over his fair cheekbones. "Are you "

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I had just enough time to throw myself flat, dragging Iggy with me, before bullets whistled overhead. I cussed violently, then rolled, screaming at the rest of the Flock to wake up. I swore again. Iggy was on watch duty. I shouldn't have let myself be distracted, or distract him.

We had no chance. In seconds, the rest of the flock and I were held by at least twenty Erasers.

"Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," I thought angrily to myself. It was an old Catholic confession, meaning: my fault, my most grievous fault. "To love is to destroy." This is what happened whenever I touched something – it turned to ash in my hands.

Then Iggy sagged in the Eraser's grip, his breathing shallow, and I felt my blood turn to an icy sludge in my veins. A dark stain was spreading from the wound in his side, and his face was deathly pale.

I panicked, struggling, stomping on an Eraser's instep before tossing him over my shoulder into the group of Erasers holding Nudge and Gazzy who instantly shot straight up into the air. Good, at least they were safe.

The shadows along the shoreline sprang to life, dancing across the pale, moon-washed beach where shadows had no place to be. They flew down the throats of the wolf-men holding Max and Fang. Angel had used her newly developed, creepy powers to get them to let her go, and now the whole flock – excluding Iggy and myself – was hovering a safe distance above the ground.

Fangs pricked my lips, crimson droplets of blood rolling down my mouth, mixing with the venom from the two hypodermic needles that had replaced my teeth. Talons sprouted from my fingers, sharp as razors.

I was still fighting my way to Iggy when one of the Erasers stiffened and barked an order to the rest of the pack. Just as fast as they had come, they were gone, melting into the forest at our backs.

"Iggy, Iggy, are you okay? Stay with me, please, please, don't leave, don't leave, I just found you –" I choked on my tears as I gathered him into my lap, tearing off my jacket to make a makeshift pad to put pressure on his wound.

It seemed like it had missed most of his major organs, but I couldn't tell because I was too stressed out to really focus my Gift.

"We need to get him to a hospital," I rasped, my voice hoarse from unshed tears. "This is beyond me, unless I gave up my entire Grace, and even then something might be horribly, irreparably wrong in the end because I wouldn't be around anymore to focus it."

"Well, do it," Max demanded. "At least he would still be alive."

I looked her squarely in the face. That was my point. I would give it all up, if I thought it would help. "Do you think he would want to live the rest of his life with an arm growing out of the back of his neck and his organs on the outside of his body?"

Max looked away, but in the end the decision was decided for us when a too-eager-to-help bystander saw the spreading pool of red around Iggy, my blood-spattered face, and the panicked expressions on our faces and called 911.

The ambulance arrived in minutes. It took a little convincing for me to simply relinquish his care over to people I didn't even know, but as long as I could stay with him I could handle it.

"He's fibrillating," one of the doctors said. "Get the paddles."

"Not unless you want to kill him," I snapped, grabbing the assistant's wrist, digging my fingernails into the tendons. "His heart always beats that fast."

They might have listened to me and they may not have, but it didn't matter because at that moment we arrived at the hospital and they wheeled him down the hall, me jogging beside him the whole way, holding his hand and trying not to cry.

Well, how's that for ya? This had better satisfy you for some time, because my muse has just been eaten by my neighborhood "Aqua Apes" whom I had to babysit for 5 hours. I sprained my ankle, fell into a thorny wild rose bush, got an eraser burn on the back of my left hand for falling asleep - those brats - and burned off the skin of my wrist on the stove.

Whoop-de-freakin'-doo.

So be happy.

I am.

Totally.

Yeah... Really.

Whatever. I'll have the next chapter out before my b-day, hopefully. (That means that I have 34 days, which should be long enough.)

Hope you enjoyed it and all that crap, please R&R. (That is so stupid. I can't say R&R, because that means "Read and Review," and if you've gotten this far you've obviously already read it, so reallyjust what I am asking you is to review.)