Chapter 9
I was flying. It felt so good to be up in the air again, swooping, soaring, gliding, diving. The pleasure built up inside my chest until I couldn't help it: I screamed out loud in exhilaration. I felt completely weightless. On a whim I decided to try something, doing a somersault in the air while I dropped for a few moments before pushing myself back up again with my wings. It was so juvenile that I would never, ever have done it in front of the flock. But they weren't here right now, and since I knew that they were safe I didn't have to worry about them.
I was over a city now, a large one, but I didn't know quite what city it was. It was pretty big with a lot of tall, grey skyscrapers that blended in perfectly with the dim sky. It wasn't cloudy, exactly, but the sun didn't light up the world below quite like it should. That fact didn't bother me, though, because I somehow knew that it was normal for this place.
After a while I noticed a building that seemed to stand out from all the others. Instead of grey it seemed to be dark, dark blue in color. For several floors it rose up from the ground in a wide rectangle, the stone around its dark windows carved with swirling baroque shapes. But the floor above those was roofed on the left half by a huge, solid dome that rose above everything else around it, and the other half had a perfectly flat roof. The thing that was most intriguing to me, though, was that under the place where the two roofs converged there was an arched…doorway? Was that the word for it? The arch seemed to go all the way through the building, since I could see what was beyond it, but the shadows inside it prevented me from seeing what was within. And that was something I knew I had to find out.
I swooped down towards the arch, angling myself so that I would land inside it. When I was still a couple hundred feet away, I heard a clunking noise and pulled up fast, my heard speeding up with anticipation.
Suddenly a dark shadow shot out of the arch, seeming human-sized at first but then abruptly much bigger. A light turned on near the figure, casting its shadow over the entire building, and I knew who it was.
It was Fang. The light was raking his cheekbones like it had done seemingly so long ago in that old abandoned house, and just like then with his wings fully spread he looked like the Angel of Death. He opened his mouth slowly, and a voice that was his but even deeper boomed out from it:
"Ever once and ever there
Nod but once to trip the snare
Meet your doom inside the arch
The door therein unlocks the key."
Okay, thanks, but what the heck was that supposed to mean? Before I could ask, Fang suddenly diminished in stature and flew back into the arch, turning off his light as he did.
I heard a gunshot and felt sick to my stomach, and then I was falling, falling, falling and my wings wouldn't work. I knew I was going to hit the ground and go splat any moment now. Falling, falling, falling…
I woke up with a start, my heart racing and sweat beading on my forehead. Fang was leaning over me, and so was the rest of the flock. Oh my God. He's alive. We're alive. There was something kind of uncomfortable under my head and neck. I shifted a little, trying to find a better position, and then blushed slightly as I realized that my head was in Fang's lap, his long legs folded pretzel style.
Then I noticed that my hand hurt. Like hell. Only worse. I started to move it to a position where I could see it, but Fang pressed down lightly on my elbow to stop me.
"Just let it stay still for now, Max," he said. I could see the others nodding in agreement.
"Why?" I asked, starting to panic. "What's wrong with it?"
"Fang's right," Gazzy said. "Take our word for it, please?" His sweet little face looked tired and worried.
"What's wrong?" I demanded, not able to stand their sympathetic faces. I tried to move my arm again, but Fang exerted more strength on it.
"Max, don't," he pleaded. Fang doesn't plead. He just doesn't. Which meant this had to be really bad. Like, ah-the-world-is-about-to-explode bad. Or almost, anyway.
"Tell me."
"You really need to - "
I yanked my arm up, not waiting for Fang to finish his sentence. I guess if he'd really wanted to he might have been able to stop me, but that would have hurt me. As soon as I saw my hand, I knew exactly why the flock hadn't wanted me to.
"Oh my God," I groaned, letting my poor hand fall back down and wincing as it hit the ground. "Oh my God…" You want to know why? You really shouldn't want to know, but I'm betting that you have some sort of sickly morbid curiosity, right? So I'll tell you. My entire hand was swathed in a red bandage, only it used to be white. The bandage wrapped around my thumb, my index finger, my middle finger - and then a short little stub, followed by my pinky. You see that? A stub. Not a ring finger. A freaking stub. Because my finger was gone. And that was the pain I had felt before I blacked out.
I felt sick. "Oh my God," I moaned once again.
Fang looked like he wished he could take the pain away with a word. Total had his paws over his eyes. Nudge and Angel had started crying, and Gazzy was trying to hide the fact that he was too but it wasn't working because he had snot dripping out of his nose. And Iggy…
"Where's Ig?" I asked, taking a break from my pity party.
Fang raised his eyes from my own and silently motioned his head over to the left. I turned my head a little and saw Iggy hugging his knees a little way off, and my heart broke for him. Because you see, I knew now that Fang kissing me had been real, not some weird heavenly dream vision, and Iggy must've somehow found out about it even though he couldn't see, and now he was in the position that Fang had been in before. Except in his case, I wasn't choosing him like I had chosen Fang. So even though he would have been more likely to listen to me than Fang had been, I had nothing to say to make him feel better. Oh jeez, Iggy...I'm so sorry.
Iggy doesn't matter, my Voice said at the most perfect moment. You need to focus on saving the world, Max.
How can you say something like that! I shot at it.
I'm only trying to help you.
By tearing up my flock? You're the whole reason I kissed Fang last night, you provoked me with that stupid image of that stupid Red-Haired Wonder, and now that Iggy's all messed up because of that you're saying he doesn't matter!
Maximum, you would have come to realize your feelings for Fang with or without me. It's part of growing up.
What if I don't want to grow up? I thought defiantly. Just to bug the Voice.
There's no such thing as Neverland.
I didn't ask you if there was. Just shut up okay?
"Max? You okay?" Fang's deep voice cut into my nice little conversation, reminding me of what dream-him had told me. It didn't make any more sense now than it had then.
"Should be eventually," I said sheepishly. "Listen, we shouldn't stay here much longer. Still up for that island…what is it called, again?" I glanced around at all the Eraser bodies, wondering how many more of those things the whitecoats had right now.
"Rum Cay," Fang answered.
I almost grinned, using his shoulder as a support for my good hand as I pushed myself up to a sitting position. "Drink up me hearties, yo ho." Yes, I still remembered the song that the stupid little robot pirates in Disney World sang. And I'm not likely to forget something like that very soon.
"You sure you're up for flying?" Fang asked. "You lost a ton of blood."
"No, I wanna keep playing the poor little damsel in distress," I said sarcastically. Only the thing is, I was acting a lot more cheerful than I felt. Like, a million times more cheerful. Like some demented doll with a fake smile plastered to its plastic face that just keeps smiling even if you throw it off a building or something. I mean, I had just lost a freaking finger, you know? I was pretty attached to it. Literally.
The flock started getting ready to go, getting Iggy up to speed on the plan and all that, and Fang pulled me to my feet by my unhurt hand.
"Any idea where we are?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Nope."
"That's my rogue buccaneer," I said. He flashed me one of those rare, beautiful, heavenly, handsome, hot, sexy - WOAH there, Max! - smiles of his, lighting up my world.
My eyes darted around, checking to see if the others were looking - especially Iggy. They weren't. I quickly gave Fang a peck on the lips, but before I could draw away he put his hand on the back of my neck and pulled me closer, kissing me less desperately than usual for just a few moments.
"And what are you…the girl stowaway who falls for the pirate?" he whispered.
"Something like that."
I felt his hand drop from my neck as the others came closer. "It's gonna be okay, Max. Let's go."
Author's note: So sorry it took so long to finish this! Please review. I'm not so sure I like how this chapter turned out so…please let me know what you think.
