Excerpt: Angel: A Maximum Ride Novel

Prologue.
Ever since I can remember, Max had been like a mom to me. My first memory is of crouching in a dog crate. I had been there for hours and cramp sliced through my leg muscles like razor blades, making me grip the sides of my cage until my knuckles turned white in order to shut out the pain. My brother Gazzy slept fitfully in the crate next to me, his wings crumpled cruelly in a space far too small for an energetic five-year-old. A aching lump came into my throat, and I tried my hardest not to cry as images flashed through my brain – the hurt and pain-ridden nightmares of six bird-kids, freaks of nature, abandoned by all and loved by no-one.
They choked me, and I tasted salt as warm tears spilled down my cheeks.
Then, unexpectedly, I felt a warm pressure on my hand. Strong fingers nudged me through the bars of the cage next to me. I straightened out as best as I could and saw her: a pair of warm, chocolate-brown eyes looking back at me. Max. Just a skinny neglected kid herself with a mess of dirty brown hair, but a familiar face. And to me, everything.
Her warm fingers fumbled to get a good grip on my hand. We couldn’t speak – the whitecoats would see even this small movement – but she squeezed my hand gently. In that comforting pressure was everything Max symbolised to me: protection, sympathy, someone to depend on. I squeezed back, and my eyelids fluttered closed. As I focused in on Max’s thoughts, I felt a fog of sleep ease closer. I saw myself reflected back in Max’s eyes – a tiny child with a halo of golden curls, pale under the layer of grime and skinny despite the chubby roundness of childhood. And, folded tightly into my back, the reason we were all here: a fledgling set of baby wings, feathered in fluffy, pure white down. In her eyes I glowed, surrounded by a rosy aura of the love and protection she tried her best to give me. I felt this light settle around me like a tangible thing, and shielded, I finally drifted into the best escape available to us: long, dreamless sleep.
Yep, Max was my mom; my comfort and protector all through my time at the School. She was the one who got us all through the indescribable horrors we witnessed there. Even once Jeb had smuggled us away, into relative safety, Max brought me up. No-one else had the least idea what should be done for a two-year-old baby telepath, who was steadier in the air than she was walking and still spoke in baby-talk. Max raised me. She was the one I ran to when I fell down, the one who made sure I was in bed by eight, the one who wouldn’t let me watch MTV, the one who insisted we took a detour for me to pick wild strawberries, the one who taught me to blow bubbles with washing-up liquid. Even though Jeb was our leader, she was our guide – not just to me and Gazzy, but to the whole Flock.
The thing is, Jeb’s gone now. Max might be my friend, but she’s not my leader.
Problem is, she disagrees.