“He’s talking about some kind of strange bird. Fat and fast.”

  I see Maddy’s mind turning. “A drone.”

  I decide to step forward and try my hand at a language I haven’t spoken in ten thousand years. Under its black hood, the falcon turns toward me. The falconer stiffens and sizes me up.

  “Öglöönii mend,” is my simple opening. Good morning. I’m holding my hands up to show I’m not armed. I see the rider ease back into his saddle. Then I ask about the building in the valley. It’s like turning on a tap.

  The falconer talks fast. I keep up the best I can. I know I’m missing a word or two here and there, but the basics are clear. The factory’s only been there for a few months. It seemed to pop up out of nowhere. One day, the valley was empty. The next day, swarms of trucks and workers showed up. “Shorgoolj shig.” Like ants. A few weeks later, the building was finished.

  In my best Khalkha dialect, I ask what the hell they’re making down there.

  The falconer shrugs. “Bi medekhgüi.” He has no clue. But he saw the fast, fat birds many times. His falcon wouldn’t go anywhere near them.

  Batuhan looks at me, hollow-eyed and drained. He tells me he needs to use our horses to carry his brothers back to the village. How can I say no? But that means I need a new plan, fast. I ask the falconer if he can take my wife back down the mountain with him. He looks Margo up and down, like he’s calculating the weight of a feed sack. He gives a terse nod.

  When I translate the arrangement for Margo, she looks incredulous. She comes at me with a hoarse whisper, close enough so Batuhan won’t hear. “You want me to ride piggyback down a mountain with a man and a bird and three dead bodies? There’s no way!”

  “Margo, it’s the only way. Maddy and I will meet you back in the village.”

  “Why? Where the hell are you two going?”

  I nod toward the valley. “We’re heading down to check out the factory.”

  “Why can’t I come?” Margo asks. “I can hike as well as you two can.”

  I glance over at the hooded falcon. “We’re not hiking. We’re flying.”

  CHAPTER 89

  MADDY AND I stand on the edge of the cliff watching the others start winding their way back toward the village. Then we turn toward the valley. The sun is high in the sky, causing reflections in the river.

  I realize that Maddy and I have never shape-shifted together. It’s risky, having two of us in nonhuman form at the same time. I hope Dache taught her well.

  “Have you done birds?” I ask.

  “Once,” she says. “Red-tailed hawk.”

  “Okay. Then you know the drill. Ride the thermals for lift. Tuck in to dive. Watch out for wind shear.”

  “I know, I know,” she says impatiently. “You go. I’ll follow.”

  I close my eyes and focus my mind. I feel my body shudder and shrink. In an instant, the shift is complete. I sense the wind direction, raise my wings, and launch.

  As a saker falcon.

  My eyesight is incredible. I spot a rabbit in the grass a mile away. My bird brain pulls me toward the prey, but what’s left of my human cortex overrules it. I feel Maddy behind me now, drafting on my current. Then she shoots past me like a bullet, wings tight to her sides, heading for the factory about a mile away.

  She plummets toward the ground and pulls up about a hundred feet above the building. She starts flying in graceful circles. I swoop down and match her pattern. We’re effortlessly in sync, communicating with twitches of our wingtips. Easier than talking.

  I circle lower and lower, looking for an opening. But there are no windows, and all the vents are all gridded. As buildings go, this one is virtually bird-proof.

  I touch down on the flat cement roof next to a maze of air-conditioning units.

  Maddy flares her wings and lands beside me. I rematerialize and take a moment to adjust to my man-sized weight and piss-poor vision. In a second, Maddy is human, too.

  She’s breathless and excited.

  “I could stay up there all day,” she whispers. “The wind feels amazing.”

  I nod. “I’d rather be a bird than a rat, that’s for sure.”

  We move toward a boxy structure with a metal door. The door looks thick and heavy. A fireball could probably get us through, but it would take me some time to work up the energy. Plus, I don’t want the noise of the blast.

  Maddy walks right up to the door and pulls it open. Unlocked. I guess they’re not worried about intrusions from above. Or maybe somebody got sloppy.

  We brace the door open in case we need a way out. A few seconds later, we’re standing on a metal landing. I lean over and look down the staircase to the factory floor two stories below. I can hear isolated thuds echoing. It doesn’t sound like machinery. More like somebody being punched.

  I point down the stairs, then I disappear. A second later, Maddy vanishes, too.

  I remind myself that when we’re both invisible, Maddy can see me, but I can’t see her. In that way, she’s more evolved than I am. But it means I always have to take the lead. Otherwise, I’ll keep bumping into her.

  The air smells like paint and fresh cement. Standard new-building scents. At each turn of the staircase, I expect to find workers or guards, but so far, it’s a clear path. Or maybe they’re just waiting for us below.

  My heart is pounding hard in my chest. I stop to look through a small port on the second-floor landing. All I see are catwalks and ductwork. Whatever they’re making here, it must all be happening on the ground floor.

  There are surveillance cameras at every corner, but that’s one thing we don’t need to worry about. All the cameras are seeing are empty stairs. If they were heat-sensing, we would have heard an alarm by now.

  The punching sounds are getting louder, echoing in a large space.

  I’m standing with my shoulder against the first-floor door. I feel Maddy pressing in behind me. I pull the door partway open, just enough for us to slip through. I swing to my left, and get hit hard in the gut.

  By a soccer ball.

  CHAPTER 90

  GODDAMNIT!

  The factory floor is as wide and long as an airline hangar. And it’s totally empty, except for four kids in the middle—two boys and two girls in cheap athletic gear, kicking soccer balls back and forth. The kicks echo against the bare walls. Like punches. But the kids are oddly quiet.

  They look about seven or eight. Maybe they’re workers, or slave labor. But they’re well fed, and they don’t seem to have a care in the world. If they worked here, their bosses are long gone. Along with all the equipment.

  I need to find out what the kids know. What they saw. Which means I have a choice to make.

  Should I duck around a corner and rematerialize there? Or should I do it right in front of them? Sometimes the shock effect works wonders.

  I whisper to Maddy. “Follow me.”

  I walk to the middle of the floor, right in the center of the quadrangle of kids. One of them kicks a ball waist-high across the space. I catch it in midair and hold it. Then I make myself visible. Maddy rematerializes right beside me.

  I watch for the reaction—the kind I’ve seen a thousand times. Fear. Amazement. Disbelief.

  But the kids don’t look shocked at all. They just stand there, like nothing happened. Like seeing two people appear out of nowhere is no big deal. The tallest boy steps forward with a sneer on his face. He turns to the other kids. “Suuder irlee,” he calls out. I feel a chill in my belly.

  “What did he say?” asks Maddy.

  I give her the translation: “The Shadow has arrived.”

  One of the girls points toward the wall behind us. We turn around. My gut does a flip-flop. The wall is filled with a message in giant script. In the Destroyer’s handwriting. No translation needed.

  TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, it says.

  “Oh, shit!” Maddy grabs me. She’s looking back over her shoulder. I spin around to see what she’s seeing.

  The kids are gone, soccer balls and all.

  All that’s left are four filthy, skittering rats.

  CHAPTER 91

  SOMETIMES FLIGHT IS smarter than fight. I’ve got no appetite for another rodent battle. Neither does Maddy.

  In only took two seconds for us to shape-shift back into falcons, leaving the critters behind on the factory floor. Now we’re soaring back over the mountain. From a few hundred feet up, I scan the ground for other factories or storage facilities—anywhere somebody could be building or storing weapons. With Maddy close on my tail, I do a slow loop across the valley. But all I can see are miles of Mongolian steppe, dotted with small huts and goat herds. It’s no use. Time to get back to Margo.

  As we swoop down back toward the village, I can see the falconer leading the way out of the foothills, with the bird on his arm and Margo in the saddle behind him.

  Batuhan is leading the string of three horses—our horses—each one with a limp body draped over it. As they get closer, I can see villagers lay down their tools and baskets and move toward the procession. The village is tiny. No more than thirty or forty people. As they reach the horses carrying the bodies, I can hear wails rise up into the sky—like a collective banshee howl.

  We land at the side of a small yurt and go inside to rematerialize. The second we step out, Margo spots us and runs over. She wraps us both up in a big hug, then pulls back. “Did you find it? What was in the factory?”

  “Zip,” says Maddy. That pretty much captures it.

  “But the building,” says Margo, “was enormous.”

  I nod. “Right. Enormous—and empty. There was nothing there. The Destroyer is one step ahead of us, just taunting us. Whatever weapon she was building is gone. Either she’s hiding it somewhere else, or it’s already out there in the world, ready to be used.”

  “Or it doesn’t exist at all,” says Margo. “Maybe this whole trip was a decoy.”

  “Like the World’s Fair,” says Maddy.

  The cries of the crowd are getting louder. We all watch as the villagers untie the bodies of the three brothers from the saddles and carry them toward a small tin-roofed hut.

  Batuhan walks slowly toward us, his back straight, his fists clenched at his sides.

  His face is twisted with anguish and rage. He doesn’t even attempt English. He speaks to me in Mongolian, practically spitting out the words. He wants to know if I found the people who did this—the ones who murdered his brothers. He wants to know if I killed them.

  I hold him by the shoulders and look him straight in the eye. “Ügüi. Gekhdee bi khiikh bolno,” I tell him. Meaning, No. But I will. At the moment, it sounds like an empty promise, even to me.

  Suddenly the sky begins to rumble and the ground starts to shake. The horses startle and the falcon cowers. I look up as the belly of a huge cargo plane passes overhead, not more than a few hundred feet up. The sound is deafening.

  Our ride is here.

  CHAPTER 92

  New York City

  IT’S 6:00 P.M. when the government SUV pulls through the gate and into our driveway. All these different time zones are starting to mess with my circadian rhythm, and putting me in a dark mood. Flying west from Mongolia, we technically gained an entire day, but in every other way, I feel like we’re losing.

  Diaz called the plane as soon as we took off. I was embarrassed to tell him that the trip was a bust. We were no closer to finding the super-weapon than we were before we left. At that point, the comms connection dropped. Either that, or Diaz hung up on me. Couldn’t blame him. He hired somebody with mystical super powers and got nothing for it. He probably sees me as nothing but a waste of precious jet fuel.

  Jessica and Bando rush out to greet us. Bando yips and wags his tail, begging for a head scratch. Maddy wraps her grandmother up in a tight hug. Jessica turns her head and pushes Maddy away.

  “Good Lord!” she says. “You smell like a horse!”

  “Very perceptive, Grandma,” says Maddy. She steps in again, opening her jacket to let the odor waft. “Which breed?”

  Jessica holds her nose as Margo comes in behind us. “Take a shower, please! All of you!”

  I ask Jessica where Burbank and Jericho are. She holds her breath and points upstairs. I head through the kitchen and up the back staircase. Hopefully, they’ve been checking in on Hawkeye and Tapper’s attempt to track Toor Bayani. Maybe they’re having better luck than I did on my mission. Something has to go right today.

  When I walk into the comms room, Burbank and Jericho are huddled over the console. Jericho turns and gives me a quick wave. “Welcome home, boss,” he says.

  A pause. Then, “What’s that stench?”

  “One hundred percent pure Chinasian equine sweat,” I tell him.

  “What did you find over there?” asks Burbank.

  “Nothing. Either the weapon has been moved, or it was a sham all along. Any trouble here while we were gone?”

  “Quiet as a church,” says Jericho. “I finally had time to plant some mines in the front yard.”

  “Speaking of Chinasia,” says Burbank. He flips a switch. A speaker starts blasting static. He adjusts a dial and the sound clears, enough to hear a man’s voice, talking in an Asian dialect. I can’t understand a word.

  “Tapper and Hawkeye managed to find Bayani’s vehicle,” says Burbank. “They bugged it.” He points to the speaker. “That’s him. That’s Bayani talking right now.” The voice sounds thin and reedy, not like a guy with his foot on the necks of billions of people.

  I lean in. “Dammit! What’s he saying?”

  “Sorry,” says Burbank. “I should’ve built in a translator.”

  “He’s talking about the super-weapon.” It’s Maddy, from the doorway.

  “You understand him?” I ask. She looks surprised, too.

  “He’s speaking Mandarin,” she says. “I guess I absorbed it from Dache the night the commandos attacked us.” Maddy steps up and leans over the console. “He’s saying, no visible physical effects… no residue… clean kill.”

  “It’s a biological agent,” Jericho mutters.

  Maddy nods. “Bó wù.” She searches for the right word in English. “Mist.”

  I think back to Batuhan’s brothers on the mountain. Not a single bruise on any of them. Clean kill.

  “Where’s he going?” I ask. “Where’s the car headed?”

  Burbank checks one of his screens. “Moving north along the Hudson River, out of the city.”

  “Wait! Shhhh!” Maddy holds her hands up and puts her ear closer to the speaker.

  The transmission is breaking up. I can see her concentrating, trying to pick up whatever scraps she can get.

  “It’s for sale,” she says.

  This is driving me crazy. “What is?”

  “The weapon. The formula. It’s being sold to the highest bidder.” She turns and looks straight at me. “Bayani’s headed for an auction.”

  “When?” I ask.

  “Jin wan,” she says. “Tonight.”

  CHAPTER 93

  IT’S ALREADY GETTING dark outside. I meet Burbank and Jericho in the basement supply room. I’m tense, but energized. Determined. Tapper and Hawkeye’s sensors show them just outside Beacon, ninety minutes north of the city. Bayani’s vehicle passed their location just before the bug stopped transmitting. With any luck, they’ve pinpointed his destination by now. The auction site. We need to get there fast. Before the deal goes down. Before the weapon gets sold. There are a lot of bad actors in the world who would be willing to pay top price for that kind of leverage.

  Burbank is stuffing a case with electronic gear. Taps. Scramblers. Receivers. Jammers.

  “Building yourself a robot?” asks Jericho.

  “You never know what’ll come in handy,” says Burbank. Always diligent. Always overprepared. Just like his ancestor.

  “As for me,” says Jericho. “I like to travel light.” He stuffs a sawed-off shotgun into a shoulder sling and jams a few extra cartridges into his pocket. Then he grabs a couple of small aerosol cannisters and hooks them on his belt. “Knockout gas,” he says.

  “Your house blend?” I ask.

  He nods. “A little goes a long way.”

  Burbank is more hyper than I’ve ever seen him. I can tell that he’s fed up with being stuck in the attic, just watching things happen. Sometimes even an introvert wants in on the action. I’m all for it. Compared to the rest of the team, he’s not exactly in fighting shape, but we might be able to use skills on-site for surveillance and eavesdropping. Besides, he’ll have plenty of protection. Tapper, Hawkeye, Jericho—and, of course, the Shadow. Although at the moment, I’m feeling like I might be the weakest link.

  I grab a satchel of my own and throw in some smoke grenades, a pistol, and a few flares. Old-school stuff. But like Burbank says, you never know…

  We haul our bags out through the lower exit to the Humvee. As soon as I step out, I see Maddy leaning on the vehicle, arms crossed, jaw set. I was expecting this. I walk over and set my bag down on the driveway.

  “I’m coming with you,” Maddy says.

  “No, you’re not,” I tell her. For about the tenth time.

  I’ve made up my mind. I have no doubts about her skills or her guts, but if there’s even a slim chance that we’ll be running into the Destroyer or more of her shape-shifters, I want Maddy and Margo back here, safe and sound—as far from danger as possible.

  “Maddy. I’m not taking another chance on you getting killed. We’re all wearing biosensors. You can track us the whole way from the comms room. If anything happens here, you can handle it. I know you can.”

  I’m not just blowing smoke. This is the girl who helped me defeat Khan in Times Square, not to mention tromping a shape-shifting rat to death. I trust her with my life.

  “Don’t forget,” I tell her, “the Destroyer has it in for Margo. I need you to keep her here with Jessica, and keep them both safe.”

  That argument seems to have some effect. Maddy steps away from the vehicle door. I pull it open. We start loading our gear. “Do you want me to get Dache here to back you up?” I ask.