Chapter Four

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Chapter Four

The plane seesawed violently, nearly throwing Zave out of his seat. Glenn pitched forward, and only reflexes honed by years of living in the wild let him raise his arms before his face slammed into the seat in front of him. People were screaming, the lights were flickering. With a ding, the Fasten Seatbelts sign above Zave's head lit up.

It took a few terrifying seconds, but the plane eventually righted itself. The lightning was so bright that every flash blinded him. Wind and rain continued to batter the plane, and Zave could feel the pilot's struggle to keep it level as it tilted left and right like a boat in choppy waters—only, if this boat sank, there would be no swimming to safety.

"What the hell was that?" Zave demanded, rising halfway out of his seat before remembering that he had nowhere to run. With his heart pounding in his chest, he forced himself to sit down and buckle his seatbelt.

"I think I saw something," Fey said from behind him. "Just before it hit the plane."

"What?" Zave asked.

She shook her head. "It was too fast. I couldn't make anything out about it."

"Just stay calm," Glenn advised them. His voice was as peaceful as an autumn breeze, but the look of terror in his eyes was almost enough to make Zave panic.

The plane began to shake, and Zave gripped his armrests with white knuckles. Had the wendigos somehow grown wings after all? Had Jacob's promise to leave them alone been a—

The plane was plunged into darkness.

"No!" Zave yelled, his old phobia taking over. He tried to stand up again, nearly throttling himself with his seatbelt in the process.

The plane shook violently as whatever was outside struck it again, and half a second later the meager light came back. With cold sweat running down his face, Zave pressed his face against the window just in time to see something vanish into the turbulent, roiling clouds.

Something big.

"Was that," Ember asked, her voice disbelieving, "a bird?"

"I saw it too," Fey said in a rare moment of agreement with the fox-walker.

"Who cares about that?" Zave yelled, fighting down his growing panic. "Look at the engine!"

Lightning flashed, revealing the column of smoke that billowed from the turbine outside his window. The engine continued to spin, but flames danced and sparks jumped in between the shards of metal.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please stay in your seats," the captain said over the intercom, his voice strained with forced calmness. "I'm going to try to make an emergency landing."

The plane angled downwards, shaking as the crosswinds tried to force it off course. The clouds were so thick that Zave couldn't even see the ground. It was as if they were careening through a world where there was no up or down, no ground or sky, only the endless storm that had swallowed them whole.

"You can do something about this, right?" Zave asked, turning to look desperately at Glenn. "Y- You can do magic, so you can just—"

"Here it comes again!" Fey shouted.

Zave looked out the window just in time to see the massive shadow take form again in the violent gray clouds. Fey had been right; it was a bird of some kind. But there had never been a bird on earth that could grow to such an enormous size. Its wingspan rivaled that of the plane, and it easily kept pace with them. It flapped its wings, and Zave could feel the power behind them as the entire plane rocked to the side.

And then, to Zave’s utter disbelief, the gigantic bird locked eyes with him. The moment their gazes met, he felt a ripple of something go through his entire body. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but in that moment a horrible certainty came over him.

That bird knew him.

Zave broke eye contact, feeling like a vice had been clamped down on his soul, and collapsed backward in his seat, trembling. He didn't think he was hurt. In fact, the brief and inexplicable moment of connection he'd had with the bird didn't seem to have had any physical effect on him. Only his sanity—which he worried was being stretched dangerously thin—was the worse for wear.

But before he could dwell on it, the shrill sound of tearing metal filled the air. What looked like eight jet black swords burst through the plane's hull. People screamed, some in horror, others in pain as the ebony blades pierced their flesh just as easily as they had the plane's aluminum shell.

The plane came to an abrupt, painful stop.

Zave shot forward and slammed into the seat in front of him. His vision went dark. Blood began to seep from his waist where the seatbelt had done its best to cut him in half. But the pain helped him to focus through the fog inside his skull, and with a groan he forced himself back into consciousness.

The plane wasn't falling. That was the first thing that crossed his mind when he opened his eyes. Through the window he could faintly see a forest far, far below, the treetops being blown this way and that by the storm. But the ground wasn't getting any closer. It was as if the plane were hanging in midair.

Wings as black as midnight pumped up and down on both sides of the plane, keeping the metal craft aloft in the gargantuan bird's clutches—because the long, wickedly sharp barbs piercing the plane were, Zave realized, the bird's own talons.

"C- C- Clueless?" he gasped, craning his neck around. The young woman was still in her seat, but her head hung listlessly, her face covered by her long blonde hair. "Clueless, are you okay?"

He caught a brief glimpse of Norrin sitting behind her, his face almost comically impassive despite the dire situation. He raised one burly arm, maybe to check on her—and then the bird's massive beak came crashing through the ceiling.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit!' Zave babbled. The beak was almost as long as he was tall, and had the deadly curve of a bird of prey.

The beak opened, and a cry so loud that it blurred Zave's vision burst from it. It withdrew, only to plunge back into the plane's cold, lifeless body a second time before withdrawing again.

The third time it came down, the passenger three seats ahead of Zave screamed as it plucked her out her seat and up into the driving rain. Whether or not she was still alive when the bird swallowed her whole, Zave didn't know. All he knew was that as soon as she was sucked inside the great bird's maw, her screams abruptly stopped.

The plane groaned, and a pit formed in Zave's stomach when cracks began to form, spreading outward from the holes the bird had made in the metal.

"Glenn?" he asked. "Whatever you plan on doing to get us out of here…"

He turned to look at the deer-walker, and his heart sank when he saw that Glenn was hunched forward the same way Clueless was, knocked out cold by the plane's sudden midair stop.

The bird cried out again, its shrill voice making a perfect harmony with the thunder. It drove its beak into the plane again, over and over in a primal, animalistic need to kill the cold skinned pretender that had dared to trespass in its domain. Every time it stabbed the plane, its beak came a few feet closer to Zave. All he could do was watch. Where could he have possibly run? Had he survived the wendigo attacks, only to die helpless up here in the—

With a groan that reverberated down into his soul, the plane split in two. Zave's eyes opened wide as a weightless feeling came over him. While the back half of the plane was still clutched in the massive bird's talons, the front half had broken free.

And now it was falling, falling, falling…

NEXT CHAPTER: 12/4/24