Master and Apprentice Read Online Free PDF Page B

for such a contraption.”
    A lone bird zipped past my head. I lurched aside and watched my life flash before my eyes, which I’d squeezed shut to keep from glimpsing the ground half a mile below us. “Why not? It’d be just as fast, and you wouldn’t get drained—”
    “No. They are too loud. We would lose the advantage of secrecy.”
    “I hate you.”
    “Excuse me?”
    I raised my voice. “I ate food. Ten hours ago, but I’m still gonna lose it if you don’t land soon. Aren’t we there yet?”
    Ian didn’t answer me. That could’ve meant we weren’t even close, or we were but he was too stubborn to tell me. He knew damned well I hated flying. But short of a helicopter or a two-day hike through impenetrable mountains, there’d been no other way to get to or return from the cave where Akila had located the Morai’s tether.
    She could’ve flown this distance smoother than a Vegashustler and twice as fast, being part hawk and all. Unfortunately, Ian—and myself by extension—hailed from the wolf clan. The Dehbei weren’t exactly suited to air travel. My personal flight ability rivaled that of a two-ton boulder, and Ian’s wasn’t much better. At least he could get off the ground. Still, he’d be exhausted again by the time we reached our hotel room, and we’d have to rest before we could open a mirror bridge to take us home.
    Home was where the women were. His wife, my Jazz. We’d been gone two days and I already missed her, and our son. I’d lost out on the first two years of Cyrus’s life and had spent the last year playing catch-up between Morai hunts. Now I couldn’t imagine not being his father.
    I risked opening an eye, and watched my sentimental thoughts vanish in favor of a deadly view. We’d passed the bulk of the mountain range and started over a stretch of jagged, rocky terrain. From our height the occasional flourish of vegetation looked like green bird shit dribbled across broken asphalt. Far ahead, beyond the wasteland and the rolling acres of forest that followed, a long whitish-gray smear represented Ridge Neck. We’d rented our usual Days Inn room. They had the biggest bathroom mirrors. If Ian gained a little altitude, we could be back on solid ground in fifteen or twenty minutes.
    Just when I moved to suggest higher ground, I realized the bird shit below had sprouted leaves. An instant later I recognized the sinking feeling in my stomach as a literal sensation. We were falling.
    “Ian! Quit fucking around.” I gave him an awkward shake. It felt like tackling a mannequin. He rotated under me, and I caught a glimpse of wide, unblinking eyes and a rigid jawline. The same expression the Morai had worn when Ian cast a lockdown spell on him.
    Then his head slipped through my arms, and he dropped like a bowling ball straight toward a fast and messy demise.
    I must have screamed. Rushing air snatched the sound away, and all I heard was a thin whistling above the Niagara Falls roar of the wind. For a minute I considered flapping my arms like Wile E. Coyote, but a regrettably strong awareness of the laws of gravity stopped me. I had to try something, though. Ian might survive the fall, but my human ass would be on the next slingshot to hell in about two minutes—maybe sooner, if the shock stopped my heart before the ground splattered my flesh.
    Ian’s stiff form flipped wildly through the air, a good four feet from me and getting farther away. I had to reach him. Didn’t want to find out what happened when a basically immortal being got torn to bits and lived through it, assuming I somehow survived to witness it. I decided to try air swimming. Dog-paddling wouldn’t work, so I straightened my limbs as far as they’d go and headed in Ian’s direction with a series of awkward flaps and spirited grunts, like a constipated angel.
    I’d never been in a hurricane before, but the air slapping my face felt like at least category 4. The blinding wind made it almost impossible to get my