The wind ripped across my face. I used every last ounce of the eagle's flying instincts to gain speed. Was it enough?
I was practically face-to-face with the man as he cleared the building.
There was a frozen sort of Road Runner-Wile E. Coyote moment when he seemed to hang suspended in air. Then, he plummeted.
I opened my talons, stretched them forward, and caught a shred of collar as he dropped. Instantly his speed dragged me down and I sank a second talon in. Right around his collarbone. I think I managed to nick him pretty good, but that was the least of this guy's problems.
I opened my wings, but I might as well have been opening an umbrella.
Maybe I shaved one mile an hour off his speed. Not much.
Then Tobias swept in like a guided missile. He grabbed the man's left arm. Jake was next, in his insanely fast peregrine falcon morph. He snagged the back of the man's collar.
He was slowing. But not nearly enough.
"Glide toward the water!" Tobias yelled. "No, don't flap, you idiots, glide!"
I forgave Tobias for calling us idiots. When it comes to flying, he is the expert. And it was a slightly tense situation.
"Aaaaahhhhhhh!" the man screamed so suddenly I nearly lost my grip. He was staring right at me, his left eye maybe an inch from my right eye.
He seemed like a normal-looking, middle-aged guy. Aside from the fact that he was screaming in terror.
Cassie and Ax arrived. Both grabbed talon-holds. Marco was last and he went for all that was left, grabbing the back of the man's suit jacket.
"line up your wings on my angle," Tobias yelled. "Like you're aiming for a level glide, but stay focused on the river!" Six birds of prey clutched that man. He screamed. But he was falling slower.
He was definitely falling slower. Still too fast to survive a concrete landing. But slower.
And he was moving forward. Foot by foot, he was moving toward the water's edge.
Down we dropped.
Forward we edged.
I wanted to giggle. It was like some bizarre geometry problem. The sum of the squares of the angles . . . would we make it?
The ground rushed up at us. Cars zipped by at sixty miles an hour below.
Then a strip of grass. Way too close! We were no more than fifty feet up.
Water's edge!
"Release!" Tobias cried. "Release, but watch out for the snapback!" We released. The man dropped. Freed of the weight, I went tumbling, wildly out of control, through the air. I flapped, I spun, I flapped some more, and by a miracle, I righted myself.
Oh. That's what Tobias had meant by "snap-back."
ZOOOOOM! I blew across the surface of the water, so low my breastbone surfed the tops of the swells.
Wings full again, I caught enough headwind to soar up. "Ah-HAH! Yow! Oh, that was SO cool!" I exulted. Then I felt guilty. "Everyone okay?" I wheeled around and looked for the man. He was not on the surface of the water. I peered down through the murky, salty river water.
The man was ten feet down, waving his arms madly, thrashing and blowing bubbles and looking terrified.
"You have GOT to be kidding," I moaned. "He's stuck in the mud on the river bottom! Cassie and Marco! Come on, we're supposed to be waterbirds, right?"
I dove straight down into the water.
What a cool feeling. One minute warm air, the next second, cold water.
Then not so cool. The water didn't soak into my feathers, but it did make it impossible to flap my wings. I guess I'd assumed I would sort of fly underwater. Wrong. Eagles may dive and snag fish swimming near the surface, but that does not make them ducks.
"Cassie! Marco! Don't do it!" I yelled in thought-speak.
"No duh," Marco said. "Just because you're a lunatic, doesn't mean we are."
"Rachel! You have to morph!" Cassie said. "He's struggling!" I was already changing. Any time you morph, you have to pass through your true body on the way to another form. So there I was, a very wet bird, already feeling my lungs burn, underwater and being swept away by the current.
I morphed as fast as I could. Being terrified always helps.
As soon as I felt my human arms and legs beginning to appear, I fought my way toward the surface. I saw that shimmering, silvery barrier between air and water above me and I used my mutating limbs - feathery, half-bird, half-human stumps - to swim up and up toward air.
I stuck my face up out of the water.
"Aaarrrgghhh!!" someone screamed.
"Oh, my lord, what is it?"
Some people in a little motorboat. I guess they'd been listening to the music from the Planet Hollywood.
I sucked air and went down again.
"I think it was a dead body!"
Thanks, I thought. Hope that's not a prophecy.
I focused on morphing a dolphin. I had the DNA inside me, and I'd morphed dolphin before.
Now I was an eerie mix of human and dolphin. Gray rubber skin and legs melted together to make a tail and hands that were turning into flippers.
I powered back toward the poor suicide guy. Although by now I wasn't feeling sorry for him, so much as really annoyed. I mean, what is it with people killing themselves? How big a moron do you have to be not to figure out that at least if you stay alive you have some hope, as opposed to being dead and having zero?
Besides, I was missing the fashion show.
He was a weird apparition as he loomed up in front of my dolphin snout.
He had sunk up to his thighs in the mud. He'd fought his way partly out, but was still in the goo up to his knees.
And now he was limp, motionless. But I knew he sure wasn't going to die if I could help it, the stupid, inconsiderate jerk.
I buried my snout in the small of his back, bent him backward till he was practically lying on me, and kicked like mad with my dolphin tail.
He came up with a shloooomp sound and a cloud of disturbed mud. I pushed him up to the surface and nosed him to the riverbank.