There’s a pot of gold under every rainbow, Max.
Angel laughed, and it sounded creepy, almost disembodied. “I definitely had more fun with it, in the beginning, being inside your head.” Her eyes darkened, and I looked at Fang uneasily. “Then it got more serious. When you first killed Ari, the Voice told you that you had to do it, didn’t it?”
I winced, thinking of the day I’d murdered my half brother. The first time, when he had really felt like family. I was speechless. We didn’t talk about that day.
Why was she doing this?
“That was me, too. I could feel your anguish, Max. And I knew he’d come back anyway, again and again, worse every time.”
“Angel.” Fang’s voice was hard, protective. “That’s enough.”
But she went on.
“I was the one who told you that you had a greater mission in the first place. This is that mission: leading the new society after the apocalypse.”
The Voice had said all of those things, true. And, true, no one knew about them but me. But Angel could read minds. Of course she could know everything the Voice had ever said to me. She was manipulating me.
Again.
“No, Angel. The only thing you told me was that Fang was going to die.” I looked at her accusingly.
“I told you that Fang would be the first to die because I saw it, in a vision. I saw him falling.”
“And you were wrong about that, weren’t you?” I asked. “He’s still here.”
“It’s still true, though.” Angel frowned. “It’s not over yet. Soon, but not yet.”
No. NO. I shook my head against her idiotic claims, her attempts at mind control. We had been through all of this too many times before.
“I know it hurts,” Angel said sadly. “Didn’t I tell you to harden your heart?”
“You’re wrong,” I said through tears, clutching Fang’s hand. “You’re lying.”
“I told you knowledge was a terrible burden, Max,” Angel whispered, and I could hear the Voice saying those exact words in my head, years before. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you. Do you know how hard it is, seeing everything that’s going to happen all the time?” There were tears shimmering in her eyes, a bitterness in her voice. She sounded jaded, old. So much older than a seven-year-old should ever sound.
“Imagine feeling what people feel, thinking what they think. It’s so hard to stop listening, even when it hurts. Your Voice said she considered you a friend and loved you more than anyone. I meant it, Max. I always will. Don’t you trust me?”
I thought about that question long and hard.
How I’d missed her, how I’d felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest when we thought she was dead. But it was Angel who tried to hijack my leadership, who put the flock in danger over and over again. Angel who could kill us all.
She was my baby, and I loved her so, so much. But did I trust her?
Angel’s face crumpled; she looked hurt and betrayed. She turned from us then and soared off toward the cliffs.
Don’t deny the truth, the Voice said inside my head, and this time it was Angel’s voice, sweet and coaxing. Now is your time! Save yourself and the others! Do it now!
I spun around, flabbergasted. I was choking on tears.
“What are we supposed to do?” I asked Fang. I’d been doing this for so long, taking on the responsibility, making all the decisions, that I’d forgotten what it felt like to have absolutely no clue where to turn. “After all that, what the heck are we supposed to do now?”
Fang shook his head and stroked the sides of my face with his slender fingers.
“I’ve spent my life trying to deny what I felt, when all I ever really wanted was to be with you, Max,” he said. “I don’t care what Angel says. I’m with you. Always. Whatever you decide.”
But as I looked into Fang’s angular face, his pupils suddenly dilated to pinheads as the world lit up around us.
I wasn’t going to get to decide, after all.
84
THE SKY WAS on fire.
I mean really, actually, burning through the clouds on fire. A moment before it had been blue and calm, but suddenly the entire sky was exploding, as far as I could see, reaching from the jungle all the way across the ocean.
The light was nearly blinding as the yellow and orange flames licked overhead, burning through the atmosphere. I heard Fang inhale sharply next to me, and we both stared in awe and wonder. Seconds felt like hours as we watched the whole horizon transform into a raging inferno.
I could not move.
It was… dazzling. More than that. It was awesomely, terrifyingly beautiful. Like, it hurt to look at. The most spectacular sunset the world would ever see—this was the world’s final good night.
Moments later, a gash ripped across the sky, splitting it into two flaming halves, with an aching hole of nothingness between them. Then the split opened wider, like a horrible, garish sneer, and I felt all the dread I’d been bottling up sigh right out of it. I held my breath as I waited for the hand of God, or aliens, or even vindictive Ari, back from the dead one last time, to reach out and pluck me from where I stood.
Instead, from that gaping mouth came a wave of excruciating heat that swept through the jungle and right over us.
I snapped out of my trance and collapsed to the floor in agony, tearing at my feathers, my clothes; I was sure my skin was boiling off. I couldn’t even scream—my lungs were like shriveled little steaks baking inside my chest.
I was hyperventilating, trying desperately to breathe. Everything was getting fuzzy, except the pain. I was passing out.
But after what felt like a century of torture, the gap zipped closed as quickly as it had opened.
I gagged, sucking in the cooling air. I was alive. With intact skin and feathers. How was that even possible? I squinted upward, disbelieving. Except for some dying red streaks, the fire was no longer scorching the sky.
My adrenaline finally caught up to the insanity and the world rushed back into place. I scrambled to my feet, looking around wildly. I didn’t know what I was looking for—just an answer, a direction I could follow.
“Everybody’s at the caves!” Fang wheezed over the now furious wind. Smoke and ash billowed around us.
I shook my head stubbornly. “Not Angel,” I croaked, my throat raw. Fang looked me in the eye and saw what else I couldn’t say: Or Dylan.
They’d be at the cliffs, rounding up the rest of the community.
Like I should’ve been from the start.
Together, in silent agreement, Fang and I shot into the sky. A few hundred meters away, all the trees were scorched—a few more seconds of that heat and we would’ve been human fireworks. As we raced over the smoking jungle toward the coastline, we saw trees crashed down on one another like dominoes. Their trunks were stripped of bark and branches from where the fire had come.
Suddenly then there was a bang like nothing I’d ever heard—like a bomb connected to an amp had been detonated right inside my skull. It sounded like what the fiery explosion should’ve sounded like, but it came more than a full minute later.
It was like I’d been shot.
I felt it in my teeth, and vibrating through my brain.
I felt it in my wings as I flapped and spun uncontrollably.
It sang through my eardrums and made my eyes blur.
And then we were falling.
Down.
Down.
Like Angel knew we would.
I watched, helpless, as the ash whirled around and the jutting precipice of rock raced up to meet me.