Page 162 of Red Marked

This is it.

I fly in the middle with Rift on my left wing and Saber on my right. Flint’s tail is ahead of me, and ahead of him, Atlas is a black shape cut out of the stars. The moon is three-quarters full. It turns the canopy gray and the rivers white.

The forty minutes go by in no time.

The sandbar is empty when we get there.

Crap!

I knew it wouldn’t be cut and dried, but I could do with a break.

We circle it once. There’s a deep wallow scraped into the sand, and a tree at the water’s edge with the bark hanging off it in strips. Something big has been sharpening its claws there. The scent coming up off the sand is male and musky, but it’s days old.

Atlas banks north and starts the grid.

He takes us so low that the leaves thrash under my belly. We fly a mile out. Then we all swing around and fly the mile back, a few wingspans farther into the trees. Then we do it again. I search the ground in sections, as per the manual. I hunt for a glint of scale or an eye catching the moon.

Anything.

A herd of deer scatters under us on the fourth leg. On the ninth, a gray male breaks from a thicket and goes crashing away downstream. We ignore him.

By the time we’ve crossed to the other bank, the moon has moved a good hand across the sky. My shoulders burn. We’ve lost count of the legs we’ve flown, and the river has climbed into rockier country. There are more boulders than sand now, and the banks have turned into low cliffs.

Shit!

Flint is going to call it soon. I can feel it. We’ve been out here too long.

Please be here. Please, please be here.

A low, rolling growl comes from my right.

Saber has his snout pointed upstream.

The river runs out of a split in a cliff. There’s a gravel bank at the mouth of it, and on the gravel is a male with his head down over a carcass. The moonlight is on his back. He’s the color of an old coin, and there’s a stripe as dark as rust down his spine with some red markings.

It’s him.

It’s the male from the file.

It could be Holt.

Please be him.

He lifts his head. There’s a pale mark on his left shoulder.

It’s him, all right.

Atlas gives a short, cracking bark, and we drop.

I hold the middle like I’ve been told to. Atlas and Flint come down on the river side. Rift and Dane turn off to take the banks. Rex flares right over the top of me with Brian leaning out of the harness, the rifle at his shoulder.

The male rears up and spreads his wings, and for one second, he looks straight up at me.

His eyes are that same familiar green.

Holt.

It’s him.