That night, images of Fang lying bleeding and hurt on the ground, calling out for me flashed through my mind. Every time his voice screamed for me, my heart wrenched in my chest, but it seemed as though I always got farther away from him. Worse still (yeah, it gets worse!) were the images of him lying prone, pale, and silent. The silence was worse than the screaming. Because at least when he was screaming, he was alive.
I woke up crying once, sobbing my eyes out. Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to be the all-tough Max, but the nightmares were too much. The thought of Fang dead was…unbearable, to say the very least. Now, I didn't know if he was alive or where to find him. The thought was enough to make me scream, so I grabbed my pillow and screeched into it, letting everything go. With, of course, more embarrassing tears.
"Max?"
I swear, that Tonks has ears like a bat's. The pillow had nearly made my scream silent. Though, if Iggy had been there and not a floor below, he'd defiantly have heard. I didn't think a regular human would have heard it, though.
"Max, you gonna be okay?"
"Define 'okay'." I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
"Let's just settle for 'You're not going to break down and jump off a cliff without using your wings and leave us all to be all angst filled for eternity, are you?' in definition, shall we?"
"Let's not give me ideas, okay? That cliff idea was a good one."
"Max," she laid her hand on my shoulder. "I'm serious."
"Yeah, I'll be fine. I just need some time to think of how the heck we're going to find him."
"You think there might be something back at the farm?"
"Not a clue."
"Wanna go look?" Tonks had that scary glint in her eyes again.
"Aren't you still hurt?"
"Not that bad."
"What time is it?" If it was dark, we weren't going to find anything.
"Dawn."
I looked out the window and saw the sun creeping up amidst pink clouds.
"Let's go."
Tonks and I climbed into one of the cars and headed out, after leaving a note for the others. We reached Anne's once again, and were walking to the barn when I saw a small flicker of motion from the house.
My head snapped around just in time to see the porch light flicker into life and Anne Walker step into the doorway.
"Oh, crud. The Vixen is at home." I hissed to Tonks.
"You have a habit out of giving evil nick names to people you don't like, don't you?" She whispered back.
"Max? Oh, my God, Max!" Anne ran toward us, her slippers flopping. She reached out as though to hug me, but stopped when she saw my scowl.
"Hello, Anne." I snarled.
"Why are you back here?" Anne said, once she'd recovered from being shocked at my tone.
"Some off-program flyboys thought that this was the perfect place to try to catch us. The didn't catch us, just F-Nick."
"Max, I know his name is Fang."
"Fine. Now you know why I'm here. Go back inside and act like you never saw me."
"Max, I-"
"You betrayed the Flock, Anne, I know what you did. You were with Jeb the entire time. There is nothing you can do that will earn my forgiveness for that. You deceived us, lied to us, and used us. Now get out of my way, there isn't anything you can do here that will be any help. Just go."
"Max-"
"Go."
And, to my surprise, she went. She gave me a piteous look before she left, her eyes pleading, but I ignored it. She couldn't have done anything, and I couldn't trust her. I wouldn't ever trust anyone like that with Fang's life. Not even Jeb, and he'd turned out decent.
"Man, what'd she do?"
"Took us in, fed us, gave us the best Thanksgiving of our lives, then we found out that she was working for the people who made our lives a living hell."
Tonks gave a whistle.
"Da-a-ang."
"Yup."
"So, what exactly are we looking for?"
"I have no clue." I told her, and it was the truth. I had absolutely no freaking clue as to what to look for. "I guess just scan around and see if you find anything."
"Gotcha." She threw me a casual salute and loped off toward the barn. I walked around the house to the backyard, trying to swallow the lump in my throat that was being brought on by memories. Looking at the pond, I could almost hear Angel asking me what the best way to catch a fish was. I drew my wings tighter to my body and shook my head.
"Max! You have gotta see this!" I heard Tonks yelling at me from behind the barn.
I ran, pouring on the speed to get to her. I reached the purple-haired girl in seconds, hardly out of breath.
"What?"
She pointed wordlessly at the ground in front of her. In the morning light, I could see a dark arrow on the ground made out of dark feathers with red blotches on them-blood. Those were Fang's feathers….
That was Fang's blood.
"Where do they point to?" Tonks was looking curiously as though she could see. But you'd only know where they were pointing to if you'd been there.
"A cave…A bat cave."