Page 6

"Very quiet, apart from this wind," Kalistratos observes as he brushes hair from his eyes. "Even the gulls have abandoned these rocks."

"Uh, guys?" Tyler says. He's standing at the entrance of one of the buildings, and he points at what I'd initially taken for a pile of driftwood at the corner of the room. No—these bleached white shapes are unmistakably human bones.

Kalistratos folds his arms over his chest. "Poor bastards. Looks like they were hiding from the storm."

He and I go inside the building to look around. We find more skeletons, most gathered toward the rear near the walls, behind overturned tables and furniture. Kalistratos walks to a skeleton slumped against the rock wall and knocks some debris away from its hand with his foot. I see the tarnished bronze handguard and part of the blade, partially hidden beneath the soil. Kalistratos and I share a curious look.

"Who needs a sword to hide from a storm?" he asks.

I shake my head. "Looters, perhaps?"

Kalistratos shrugs. He buys the theory as much as I do. I conjure my staff to my hand.

"Better safe than not," I say to him, and he rests his hand across the sword sheathed at his hip.

"There a problem?" Tyler asks.

"Not unless skeletons can come back to life," Kalistratos says, and after a pause he adds, "They can't do that, right? Airos. Hey.Right?"

"I don't feel any dark power lingering here," I say. "Do you, Tyler?"

Tyler looks surprised to be asked, but he shakes his head no. "I mean, it's a little spooky. And what Kalistratos said. It's weirdly quiet. That might just be the ghost town vibes, though."

"Gods. Don't say 'ghost,’” Kalistratos mutters.

"Don't tell me my big strong alpha is afraid of ghosts?" Tyler teases. "Here's the thing about ghosts I learned when I was a kid. If you don't believe in them, then they don't exist."

"They exist," I say.

"Dammit."

We continue our descent, only pausing to pick through and examine the ruins of what must have been the flyerwrights' workshops. Then we reach the bottom, and the town curvesaround the edge of the gorge into where the cliff has split in two. Almost nothing remains here, just scattered and half-buried debris. The bow of a flyer juts up from the sand. It doesn't matter if it's in working order or not; there's no way we will be able to dig it out.

The caves lie just ahead, gaping mouths nestled below natural overhangs in the cliff face. The shape of the wall blocks our view of the ocean and has dampened the sound of its roar to a purr. The wind is what speaks in this place, and its voice rises from a whistle to a howl as it flows through the chasm. I hold my hand up to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun and the stinging sand.

Inside one of the larger openings, I can make out the shadowy shapes of what look like intact flyer frames.

"There," I say, trying to contain my excitement.

"I see it," Kalistratos replies.

"Let's go, let's go," Tyler says, and we break into a jog.

The wind calms as we approach the cave's entrance, deflected by the shape of the overhang. We're greeted with an eerie silence, and an odd odor.

Tyler's forehead crinkles. "Why does it smell like someone fried their laptop?"

"Their what?" Kalistratos asks.

"It could be the smell of the flyer cores," I say.

"The heart of a flyer," Kalistratos tells Tyler. "They give them life through a very unfortunate source of power."

"Something tells me it's not gasoline powered," Tyler replies.

"Phoenix feathers," I say darkly. "Harvested from enslaved Phoenikos."

Tyler's shoulders slump. "Jesus Christ..."