Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who reviews, favorites, and follows my story. Also, if you would like to see something happen in the future of the story or have any plot ideas for me, please tell me, they help me write more frequently and update faster. XOXO- Skai!
After plates of all kinds of food were piled high onto our table, the flock and I began to talk. I usually enjoy talking and chatting, except when it's about me. And in that moment, I was being bombarded with questions, extremely personal ones as well.
Nudge was the first to ask, "Did you have any pets growing up." The question caught me off guard. "Yeah, a dog." "Ooh! What kind?" She squealed. I was confused as to why she would care, but I answered, "An Alaskan Malamute."
"Oh-my-gosh! I-!" Max interrupted, "Hey, Nudge, sweetie, let's let Skylar be for the morning without any yelling, squealing, or freaking out. Can we do that?" I expected Nudge to take it the wrong way and get hurt, but instead she just smiled, "Okay."
I got several stares and glances from everyone over breakfast, not including Iggy, but I continually ate in silence, answering and talking only when I was spoken to. "How old are you?" Sixteen. "Where do you come from?" California. "What's your favorite color?" Red. "How do you use your ice powers?" Ice powers, I like the sound of that, it's like having ice water in your veins and just pushing all of it towards one part of your body. "Does using it hurt?" A bit at first.
Most of the inquiries came from Nudge, Angel, and Gazzy, but a few of them came from Max. Throughout our discussing, the flock devoured more food than I even thought possible. I ate slowly, not wanting to vomit from lack of food for a long time. Eventually, I managed to eat half as much as Max, which is quite a lot.
After Max got her credit card back from the waiter, I didn't ask where she got it, we went back up to the hotel room. "Okay people, let's pack up and get going."
We had been loading whatever we needed into bags, I was given a small satchel to sling across my torso when the phone rang. "Hello," Max answered. All the color drained out of her face. She slammed the phone back into it's receiver and announced, "Jeb's here."
How could things have gone wrong so quickly?, I asked myself. He was here for me, I knew it. Fang was trying to open the window but discovered it didn't open at all. "Can we break it?" I asked. "No, we better not." "Let's take the stairs." Everyone nodded in agreement.
Max clasped Iggy's arm and lead him ahead while the rest of us followed. Fang and I were the last one's through the door of the stairwell, and as we let the door swing closed behind us, we saw Jeb and a group of Eraser's exit the elevator. "Go, go, go!" Fang whispered.
We didn't need to be told twice. We shot down the stairs in what was probably record time. We heard the slam of the door behind us. "Skylar!" I would recognize his voice anywhere.
I attempted to slow as I dared a glance back, but Fang's hand pressed into the small of my back, pushing me forward. I knew what I had to do. I shrugged Fang's hand off, "Go, all of you now!" A few of them looked like they were about to argue with me, I added, "I'll be fine, just get out." And with that they continued to run, some of them with their eyes trained on me as I turned around to face Jeb.
"Always so selfless, aren't you Skylar?" I didn't respond. "Take me, just leave them alone." "Oh, I'll gladly be taking you, but I won't leave them. I'll never stop pursuing them."
Two of the eraser's lunged toward me. I ignored the sharp pain in my forearm and blocked one of their vicious blows. I had to think fast. Think, I told myself silently, just think. My eyes darted around the stairwell until they came to rest on a window, a few feet up. "Wait! Just wait," I pleaded, putting up my hands in surrender. "I need to say one thing before you take me back to The School."
"Get on with it, Dear," Jeb's voice dripped with sarcasm. I took a deep breath and readied myself. "Go to hell," I unfurled my wings and shot up to the window. I braced myself before flying at the window with full force.
The glass shattered around me but I never stopped flying. A shard cut my cheek and a few other cuts peppered my arms but I was fine. Although, I didn't have long. A few yards ahead of me, the flock hovered in the air, their wings flapping. "Come on!" Max called. I flew to them as eraser's began to file out of the broken window into the air.
"Everybody, I need you to go full speed to the west in three seconds." I wasn't given time to react, just to fly, as we all took off, speeding away. Blood leaked from my cuts and droplets of the scarlet substance were moved across my body, courtesies of the wind. I knew that streaks of dried, flaky blood would be left all over my body.
We were flying for what felt like forever. Dropping into forests and shooting into the clouds, all with the eraser's trailing after us. After two hours of flying, the erasers lost us. Max raised her hand in signal to stop flying and called out to Iggy softly. Everybody was breathing heavily and exhaustion lingered on every inch of their bodies.
"Why," Max panted, "do they want you so bad." I took a few breaths before answering, "There were two parts to my experiment, Dylan and I were supposed to become the strongest human-avian hybrids there ever was. Both mentally and physically. Dylan's dead. I'm all they have left to salvage."
"Dylan, were you close to him?" The question came from Angel and years of memories flooded my mind. "Very," it was all I could say to not cry.
I'm sorry, an unknown voice appeared in my mind. I jerked away from everybody else and glanced around me. Everyone appeared confused.
"What was that?!" It was hard not to hear the panic that shrilled my voice. Fang looked at me darkly, "What is it?" "It was me," Angel voiced.
"What?" "I can read minds, and communicate through your mind." Oh god, I thought. "You saw my memories?!" At this point I was distraught, slightly mad, a little confused, and a bit saddened.
"I did, but I wanted to say I'm so-." "Get out of my head!" Angel didn't seem to get the message, either that or she just didn't care. "I know how you feel, I can see how you-." "Enough," Fang told her, moving closer to me and placing a hand on my shoulder. Even though I was shaking with emotion, I had to try to ignore the warm feeling that spread over me when he touched me.
"You can't tell her how she feels, nor are you in any place to look into her head." The look he gave her was enough to make her fall silent. I noticed everyone was watching us carefully.
I took a breath and calmed myself before speaking, only my hands were trembling now. "What now?" I found myself asking that far too often for it to be healthy. "Well," Max began. "I'm not sure... Let's just... keep flying." I raised my eyebrows but didn't say anything.
We did just that, flying for a couple hours then stopping momentarily to get food. Angel apologized and I forgave her on our fifth hour. When the sun began to set in the sky and I felt like I could possibly fall asleep while flying, Max announced, "Let's sleep here."
She gestured to the vast forest beneath us. We all began to drop lazily down to the ground, it was obvious we were tired.
I was gathering some berries that I knew weren't poisonous when the pain of my forearm and cuts came over me in waves. I gritted my teeth and hissed. You're fine, I told myself, you'll live.
Fang, who was sifting through some leaves nearby, heard my hiss. He turned, "Are you okay?"
'"Fine," I called back a little too quickly. He padded over to me. As his hand closed around my injury, I had to bite back a yell of pain. "We need to clean it, and probably all you're other cuts while we're at it."
"I said I'm fine," even I could hear the stubbornness in my voice. He grinned, "We're not going to do this again, are we?"
I was softened by the fact that he cared, but that didn't mean I needed help. I opened my mouth to protest as he slung his backpack off his shoulder and got out a water bottle and some gauze. If there was one thing the flock was, it was prepared.
I realized this wasn't an argument I would win and fell silent. I slowly began to peel off my bandage. Tears blurred my vision but I refused to let them fall.
Once it was all the way off, I noticed the fabric was stained with blood, it was scarlet and sticky, fresh. The bandage was just the half of it, my arm had gotten the worst of it.
Three long gashes marred my flesh and blood was oozing out of it. Fang turned his attention from the backpack to my arm. I could tell he was holding back a wince at the sight of it. "Here," he instructed, "hold out your arm." Taking my wrist in his hand and holding out my arm to it's full length, he began to trickle water over it.
The coolness of the liquid was refreshing until it got into the wound. My arm began to sting and soon felt like it was on fire. I tilted my head toward the sky and shut my eyes tightly. I could feel the water move from my arm to all of my other cuts.
The pain slowly subsided and I met Fang's gaze. His eyes actually seemed to convey the words, I'm sorry. I nodded and he began to wind a bandage around my arm until it was wrapped tightly and efficiently.
He ripped a bit of bandage off and doused it in water. He came towards me, "Your eye." I knew he was referencing the cut I had gotten just below my eye, it stood prominently on my cheekbone. I nodded again.
Slowly, like approaching a wild animal, he brought the bandage up to the cut. It stung but I tried to ignore the pain of it by looking directly at Fang.
Every so often he would meet my gaze but then flick his eyes back towards the cut and continued to work on it. It was a tense silence, but I didn't know why,
Maybe it had to do with his close proximity. He stood barely an inch away. Or maybe it was the way he stood with a strong gentleness, a practiced one. His muscles were tensed and his hand over my cut was deft.
He stepped away, "That should do it, just try not to touch any of the cuts and you should heal fairly fast." "Thank you," it seemed like the least I could have possibly said, but it was all I could think to say. "Don't worry about it," he replied, and went back to sifting through leaves, looking for something to eat.
After a dinner of unappetizing, scavenged food, I found myself settled in a tree. The rest of the flock loitered on different branches all around me. I craned my neck so I could see how high up I was.
The sight of it could have been sickening to most people, but then again, I wasn't like most people. Even if I did fall the hundreds of feet below me, I had wings, I could fly. I glanced at Max, it seemed she was doing a mental head count and a calculation of where everybody was.
"Where's Fang?" She asked. I could tell she was attempting to keep the panic from her voice. "I'm right here." There Fang was.
His back was against the trunk of the tree and was straddling a branch. Confusion crossed Max's face. "I looked, you weren't there."
Nudge spoke up, "I looked for you too. Were you behind the tree?" "I was right here!" I could tell Fang was losing his patience. "I didn't see you either man," Iggy said, how he managed to keep a straight face I didn't know. I let out a soft laugh.
Max rolled her eyes, "I'm rolling my eyes Ig." Fang shrugged, "Well, I was here the whole time." He leaned back and relaxed into the tree once more.
I kept my eyes trained on Fang, and slowly over the course of five minutes his figure began to dissipate before my eyes once more. "Fang!" Max shrieked.
She whipped her head around looking for him. "I'm here," a voice sounded from the nothingness that was once Fang. Max asked, "Behind the tree?" "Are you blind?!" Fang inquired sarcastically. "I'm right here."
Max turned to me with a grin on her face. "What's going on?" In all honesty, I hadn't the slightest idea. "Fang has discovered a new ability.
Author's Note: AHHHH! I've gotten so many kind reviews I can't believe it. Sorry if this chapter was kinda… Not the best. I wrote it while I was on a plane and had to hurry and finish it before we landed. I also didn't edit this one cause I'm going on vacation and I knew I wouldn't be able to update it or write. Here's a hint for upcoming plot points in the story, see if you can remember what happened after Fang found his special ability. I already have a plot twist for it and I'm super excited!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Dialogue that is portrayed above when Fang found his ability. All rights go rightful owners and James Patterson.
