Page 10

I see McScott in my mind's eye, staring at me as enemy suppressing fire peppers the cinderblock wall we're sheltering behind.

"Bird!" he shouts. "Do me a favor and sort this mess out, yeah?"

I turn away from the memory—and then I feel it, a little pull inside of my chest and my fingertips, just like the tug of a fridge magnet getting close to a piece of metal. My powers. There's material I can control in that room.

The terra cotta jars.

I reach out with my powers, recalling the tedious hours I spent practicing in my hideout, manipulating rock, clay and soil into different shapes and forms. I don't know why, but the jars are not as easy to control, maybe because they're not raw material. They're heavy and dense, but I can still feel them. All I need to do is get one to move...

And then I do it. Something shatters from inside the room.

"Fuck! The wine!"

"What the hell did you do?"

"Nothing!"

I grab the collar of Dustin's shirt and haul him after me as I dip past the door, snagging a glance at the chaos inside. The guards are all desperately trying to plug up the bottom of one of the jars as red wine flows over their hands, drenching their clothes and the floor. Then the hole completely crumbles apart, and the entire contents gush out everywhere.

Fuck yeah.

We hurry to the end of the hallway, which becomes an elevated walkway crossing through a large room. The noise is intense. It's like a huge subwoofer thumping its lowest tone. My eyeballs are vibrating.

I pause for a moment to check the corners. There are two ladders on either side of the walkway going down about fifteen feet to an area below. Above, the intricate framework of the ship is exposed, spearing outwards from the ceiling into the walls. There's a mural painted all along the length of the wall, but I don't take time to look at it. My attention is on the thing at the center of the room that looks like a big stone pizza oven. No guards, probably on account of the noise.

What is that thing?

I glance back at Dustin to make sure he hasn't melted into a puddle. He's also focused on the pizza oven. He looks at me questioningly. I shake my head. My guess is as good as his.

We walk to the center of the platform. There's an opening on one side of it, shimmering with a strange light. It's definitely some kind of furnace, just like the big boilers they used to use to power trains and steamships. Except here there's no coal, no steam, noheat,just that chest thumping, brain melting sound.

But no, there's something else. There's something weirdly familiar about the light coming from that thing. Looking at it makes my skin crawl, and yet I'm drawn to it. The closer I get, the more the sound intensifies around me, and the light is pulsing along with it. The rhythm feels wrong, like a heartbeat going backwards.

That feeling. It's like the same as when I use my powers. Same spot, same sensation, except...twisted, somehow.

Moving closer to the opening, I can see what's making the light, and my stomach turns.

Feathers. Dozens of feathers suspended in some kind of crystalline structure, and they pulse with each thrum of the ship's furnace, their light draining away only to slowly fill in again, like they're being wrung out and squeezed of all their essence. Mygod, they're beautiful, and somehow, I knowexactlywhat they are.

"Phoenix feathers. These are fucking phoenix feathers." My voice is immediately eaten by the surrounding noise. I know Dustin can't hear me, but it doesn't matter. I'm pretty damn sure he can feel exactly what I feel. It's a part of him, just like it's a part of me.

A cold weight settles in my stomach.

I know this technology—or magic—is common in this world. I've seen them all around, from flying ships to work carts hovering across the ground. Every one of them must use phoenix power. This is industrial-scale extraction.Thisis what happens to phoenixes.

We enter a narrow corridor that angles upward, and the throbbing beat of the engine room fades enough for me to hear the sound of my own breath again.

"We're almost there, I think," Dustin whispers.

"You think?" I repeat back.

"I'm pretty sure," he says. "Yeah. I think there's a door coming up on the left. I remember, because it was just before the noise room."

Sunlight shines through a wooden grate in the ceiling ahead, and I stop us before we walk beneath it. There are two wolfmen standing there, and their voices drift down.

"...once we get to Al'Phaer."

"You son of a bitch. You're not really thinking of leaving Praxis Skotos?"