The Winged [HIATUS]

Chapter Nineteen

I suppose it’s as good a place as any, Logan concurs. Is there a reason you want to go there?

Not really…

Hey, isn’t that where your dad died? Tempest pipes up. Not to be insensitive or anything-

No, it’s fine, I assure her. But maybe… maybe if I go to the place where he was killed…

You could find peace? Tempest fills in. Sounds fine to me. Logan?

I’m all for it.

Great. I pull out my iPod and flick the screen, pulling up a map of the United States. Okay, according to this scale there are approximately one thousand two hundred seventy miles between us and Colorado. If we fly at a steady ninety miles per hour, we should get there in about… fourteen hours, not counting breaks.

How long can you two fly before you get tired? Logan quizzes. I mean, I can pull three or four hours at a time-

What the hell?! The most I’ve ever done is two and a half! Tempest whines, folding her arms tightly over her chest.

Tempest is right, I accede. I can’t get past three before my stomach goes cannibal.

Logan huffs flippantly, glancing back at us like we’re dead weight. Right. I keep forgetting that you haven’t been training for sixteen years. Anyway, we’ll stay on course for two more hours before we take a break. Can you handle that, Ash?

I’ll manage.

Tell me if your injuries get to be too much and we’ll rest early. Just remember that it’s best to fly at night, since it’s highly unlikely that anyone will see us. We can’t waste a minute of cover.

We zoom the rest of the way in silence. Tempest has her copy of The Great Gatsby in her hands, somehow reading it thousands of feet up in the screaming wind and, to top it all off, in the dark. Her fingers clench it in a death grip to keep the pages still. Logan, on the other hand, is concentrating on the vast expanse of empty space before her, keeping her eyes trained carefully ahead. Her focus betrays no emotion. I pop in my headphones and crank up the dubstep to pass time.

Not a minute goes by without some part of my body declaring its disapproval. My spine tingles. My chest is exploding. My stomach hurts. My headache is creeping back into my skull. I distract myself by staring at the cities below through breaks in the cloud cover. The streets are crawling with cars, like clogged arteries. Umbrellas are multicolored octagons crowding the sidewalks like an overgrown patch of flowers… if flowers had legs, anyway.

I suddenly feel detached from the human world I was once a part of. Besides the matter of my peregrine falcon genes, my life could have been considered utterly ordinary. My grades were prodigious, but aside from that I was just your standard-issue high schooler. I had a little group of friends and kept my distance from the popular kids. I enjoyed sports. I humored the teachers. I dated… I mean, before I decided that relationships were messy and unnecessary and that boys were more fun to hang out with as friends. Hell, I was even planning on getting a summer job at the video store down the street. I guess that’s out of the equation now.

I peek at the time about thirty songs later. An hour and forty-five minutes have gone by, and my head is spinning so hard I fear it might detach itself from my shoulders. I regretfully turn down the volume, conceding that it was probably a bad idea to listen to music with overwhelming bass lines while recovering from a concussion. My soaked clothing works with the furious wind and nips my skin. Shivering, I rub the fabric of my jacket back and forth over my arms in an attempt to generate heat. My back hurts. My ribs hurt. My head…