I hoped this was only a meeting and nothing else. I had like zero spare time. School. Life. That stuff takes time, you know?

  I was cleaning the cages when the others started to arrive. It was a raccoon cage, to be specific. This raccoon had been hit a glancing blow by a car on the highway. A lot of the highway patrol guys know to call us if they see an injured animal by the road. The raccoon would be okay, thanks to my dad. But in the meantime, it had to be fed and watered and medicated and its cage had to be kept clean. And all of that was my job. I was wearing dirty overalls and big tall rubber boots. My arms were deep inside rubber gloves when Rachel showed up.

  "Hey, Cassie."

  "Hi, Rachel." I was bent over, concentrating on wiping out the raccoon's cage. I could tell the raccoon was seriously considering leaping on my face and chewing my nose.

  "Sup Cassie. You get that outfit at Banana Republic? Or is that the new Express line?" Rachel and I are best friends, but we are very different people. If you just saw Rachel walking by you'd probably think typical airhead mall-crawler. If you took a closer look you'd start to think, No, she's actually very beautiful, not typical at all. And if you took a third look, she'd probably come over, get in your face, and say, "What are you staring at? Hello? You have some kind of a problem?"

  Rachel is tall and blond and beautiful and fearless. She's Xena: Warrior Princess - only without the leather.

  We must be the most mismatched best friends in history. Rachel could walk through the mosh pit at Lollapalooza on a rainy day and come out the other side looking like one of those models in Glamour.

  I, on the other hand, will show up for my own wedding someday dressed in jeans and boots and socks that don't match.

  I stood back from the raccoon cage. I smiled and gave a little twirl so Rachel could admire the outfit. "You like it? It's part of the Ralph Lauren Animal Poop collection." 12

  "Someday I am going to knock you over the head, stuff you in a big bag, drag you to the mall, and force you to buy a dress. You can keep the big rubber boots, if you insist, but we're getting you a dress."

  "You're kidding, right?" I asked Rachel. You can never be totally sure with Rachel. She just smiled with her ten thousand bright white teeth.

  I heard the sound of bikes being leaned up against the outside of the barn. Then I heard male voices.

  "Batman could beat Spiderman? You expect me to take that seriously? Are you insane? I thought I knew you, Jake, but you're obviously an idiot. No offense. Spiderman would annihilate Batman."

  Marco. Marco, sounding as serious as Marco is capable of sounding.

  "Two words.-body armor. Spiderman's webs would not stick to Batman's body armor. Homer, stay out here, boy. You can't go in."

  That would be Jake. And Homer, his dog. Homer is not allowed in the barn. Being a dog, Homer believes small animals are meant to be chased.

  Jake and Marco came through the small side door of the barn. Jake was in the lead, as usual. If we Animorphs have a leader, it's Jake. He's strong, inside and out. And really goodlooking. Also inside and out. I mean, he's just an amazingly cool guy. Jake has had to grow up a lot in a very short time. It's weird to be a kid, and yet act like some kind of a general or something. We all decide the big stuff together. But when we're in a fight, it's Jake who has to make the little decisions a lot of times. The little decisions that could leave one of his friends dead.

  It made me smile to realize that Jake could still enjoy absurd arguments with Marco. I sort of worry about the pressure on Jake.

  Jake and I are kind of... you know. We like each other. As in

  like.

  Marco was just behind Jake. He's smaller than Jake, with longer, darker hair, laughing, dark eyes, and an attitude.

  Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow glittery and dangerous.

  "Cassie," Marco said, "you look beautiful, as always. Your use of manure as a fashion statement is so tasteful." Then he gazed at Rachel and winced. "Yikes! Every time I see you, you're taller. Stop it. Stop growing."

  13

  Rachel patted Marco on his head. "Don't worry. I don't look down on you for being short, Marco. I look down on you just for being you."

  Marco grabbed his chest in pain. "Aargh! And Xena puts another spear in me."

  "Hi, Jake," I said, ignoring the usual Marco-versus-Rachel stuff.

  "Hi, Cassie," he said. He gave me one of his rare, slow smiles. "Hey, I heard this weird story. These two guys at school claim they were attacked by a pair of lab rats."

  "Really? I didn't hear about that," I said, trying not to make the fakey, shrill sound I always make when I'm lying.

  Jake raised one eyebrow and I quickly went back to cleaning out the cage.

  "What are we here for?" Rachel asked bluntly.

  Jake shrugged. "Tobias told me to get everyone together. He and Ax have something." Right on cue, we heard a flutter of wings. A hawk shot in through the open hayloft above. It turned sharply, killed its speed, swept its talons forward, and landed neatly on a rafter. It was a red-tailed hawk. Mostly brown on its back, a lighter, mottled brown and tan beneath. The bird took its name from its tail feathers, which were the color of rust. The hawk glared down at us with unbelievably intense brown and gold eyes.

  the hawk said, a silent voice that we heard only in our heads.

  "Hi, Tobias," I answered.

  Tobias is the fifth human member of our group. Although he's not entirely human anymore. See, if you stay more than two hours in a morph, you stay forever. In his mind and heart, Tobias is still a human being --mostly. But he has the body of a hawk. He lives as a hawk.

  "Hi, Tobias," Rachel said. "I thought maybe you'd stop by last night." Tobias sometimes hangs out with Rachel. He flies into her upstairs room and watches TV, or reads. Things he can't do in the wild. Human things.

  he said in thought-speak.
  >

  Ax is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He's the sixth person in our group. He's even less human than Tobias. Ax is an Andalite.

  "Speaking of which, is Ax coming?" Jake asked.

  14

  "What things?" Marco asked, beginning to sound impatient. Tobias swooped down to be closer. He landed on the top edge of a stall door. He checked out the many cages. At the moment we had, in addition to the raccoon, a fox, two wolves, a handful of various bats, a really cool porcupine, a pair of jackrabbits, a deer that had been mauled by a bear, several doves, a goose, a swan cygnet, a whole group of assorted gulls, a beautiful red-winged blackbird, and a barn owl.

  Tobias asked.

  "He's all better so we released him," I admitted. See, golden eagles occasionally kill and eat hawks. "We released him way back in the hills, though. Nowhere near your territory, Tobias.

  "

  Tobias didn't look too happy. But then, Tobias has a hawk's face, so he never looks anything but

  fierce. Once he was a very sweet, slightly dopey kid. Jake and he met when Jake stopped some bullies from sticking Tobias's head in the toilet.

 

  "No way!" I cried.

  The others were less upset.

  "So what?" Marco asked.

  "So habitat will be destroyed! So animals will be made homeless! So old-growth trees will be chopped down to make plywood!" I cried. "That's so what." Marco frowned. "And I care about this . . . why?"

  I started to answer, but Tobias cut me off.

 

  "I'm guessing a logging company," Marco suggested.

  Tobias said.

  "What one little thing?" Jake asked.

 

  "Oh," Jake said.

  15

 

  "Yeerks?" Rachel wondered. "But why would the Yeerks want to be logging in the forest?" I knew the answer to that question. The Yeerks" plan was all too obvious. "They want to destroy habitat," I said.

  "What? Now the Yeerks are out to destroy the deer and the owls?" Marco said with a dismissive laugh.

  "No," I said. "It's not owl habitat they want to destroy. They're after a different species."

  Tobias agreed.

  16

  Chapter Four

  "The Yeerks are right there in our forest. Fine," Rachel said with her usual enthusiasm for anything dangerous. "Let's go take a look."

  "If this is a Yeerk operation, we have to be careful," Marco said. "They're expecting us."

  Tobias said.

  Marco nodded. "Look, the Yeerks believe we're a band of Andalites, right? They think only Andalites can morph. They've figured out that the forest is the only place a group of Andalites could be hiding. Let's face it --if we were Andalites, we wouldn't exactly be able to rent an apartment."

  "So we'd be in the forest. Just like Ax is right now." Jake nodded. "They want to use the logging operation as a way to go Andalite-hunting."

  "Right. Which means they think we're out in the forest. So they have to be prepared for an attack. They are going to be totally ready for any strange group of animals that show up." I agreed with Marco. But there was another question that was bothering me. "How did they ever get permission to cut trees in a national forest?"

  Marco rolled his eyes, like I was being an idiot. "Who cares? The fact is, they did."

  "If we're going to take a look at this place, we can't show up there in a big group," Jake said.

  "We split up, go in two groups. In different morphs. We see what we see, but we do nothing. Agreed?"

  Everyone nodded.

  "So. If it's okay with everyone, I'll go in with Rachel. I'll morph the peregrine falcon. Rachel, you can morph your bald eagle. Tobias will show us the way. That's a lot of excellent eyes to look things over. Cassie, you go in with Marco. Get a different perspective."

  "Why can't I go with Rachel?" I asked. It's not that I don't like Marco. He just grinds my nerves sometimes.

  "Because you and Rachel just egg each other on," Jake said. He knew about the rat thing. He definitely knew. Still, it kind of bothered me. "Oh, you mean like you and Marco egg each other on?"

  Jake nodded and gave me a wink. "You could say that. Yep. Exactly." Ten minutes later, Marco and I were walking across the far fields of my farm, wading through tall grass toward the edge of the forest.

  The forest is huge. It reaches all the way back up into the mountains. Thousands, maybe millions of square miles of pines and oaks and a scattering of birch trees sweep down from the mountains all the way to the edges of town. Our farm is right on the edge. Lots of farms are. And some new housing developments and so on.

  17

  It was a clear evening, so the mountains showed up pink and lavender in the setting sun. There was a cool breeze, loaded with the smell of wildflowers. Two of our horses were grazing off across the field by the fence. It was a safe area, so we let the horses run free at night in nice weather.

  Of course, now that wolves were being reintroduced into the forest, we might have to change that. A wolf pack can bring down even a healthy, strong horse. I know. I've been a wolf. And I was getting ready to be one again.

  We reached the edge of the forest. It began very suddenly. One step was on grass, the next step was on pine needles and fallen leaves. It was darker under the trees. And as we walked into the forest it grew darker still. I craned my neck back. Looking up, I could still see blue sky overhead. But the sun was going down, and night was growing near. Creatures of the day were winding down their activities, and creatures of the night were opening their eyes.

  "Might as well morph now," Marco said.

  "Yes. We'll move faster in wolf morph," I agreed.

  He grinned at me. "Does it ever creep you out? All this morphing, I mean? I still remember the first time. It was so bizarre."

  "It's still bizarre," I said.

  "Even for you?"

  "Why not for me?" I asked.

  Marco shrugged. "You're the morphing queen."

  I laughed. "Oh please. We all morph."

  "Yeah, but even Ax says you have some kind of special talent. Like you have more control or whatever. He says you're even better than he is."

  "That doesn't make it any less creepy for me," I said. "I mean, we're in the forest, the sun is going down, and I'm getting ready to turn into a wolf. This could be a horror movie."

  "Wolfman."

  "Wolfwoman," I corrected.

  "The Wolf Couple."

  We shoved our outer clothing under some brush, and I began to morph. I focused my mind on the wolf whose DNA was a part of me. Marco and I were actually the identical wolf. We had both absorbed the DNA of the same female.

  18

  I felt my jaw stretching and stretching outward. The bones made a slight grinding sound as my small, weak human mouth became the powerful, crushing jaw of the wolf. My human mouth and teeth could barely cut through a tough steak. The wolf jaw and teeth could tear the throat out of a living, struggling deer.

  My gums itched as my teeth grew longer.

  "See? Thrat's whuk I mearrrn," Marco said, trying to make sounds even as his human tongue and lips disappeared. In a few more seconds he was able to switch to thought-speak.

 

  I had controlled the morphing so that the wolf's head appeared completely formed before anything else happened. I was a completely normal girl with just the downiest growth of fur and a massive, shaggy wolf's head atop my shoulders.

  I said.

  The rest of the morph continued. My knees reversed direction. My legs grew smaller. Rough pads replaced my feet. The fur on my body grew long and rough and grayish in color. I fell forward onto my front legs, no longer able to stand.

  The wolf's instincts began to surface, but I had done this morph before, so I could handle them easily.

  Then the wolf's senses came on, replacing my human perception. The forest was an entirely different experience to the wolf. It was as if I had been transported instantly to some totally different place.

  My human ears had noticed almost nothing --a bit of wind, a few chirps, the rustling of leaves. But the wolf's ears heard everything. They heard some large, four-footed animal about a hundred yards to the right. They heard squirrels gnawing acorns in their high nests. They heard insects crawling beneath the pine-needle floor. They heard cars on the far-distant road. And the ears were nothing, compared to the sense of smell.

  Let me just put it this way --in terms of smell, all humans are blind. We smell nothing. Maybe we smell a flower if it's right under our nose, or a chocolate cake baking in the oven. But we are the morons of smell. Wolves are the geniuses of smell. You have no idea. No idea at all what it is like to have that wolf nose.

  I cried in shock.

  Marco agreed. It is exactly like being blind and then, all of a sudden, being able to see. 19

  The wolf smelled the horses in our field. The wolf didn't just smell that they were horses, it smelled that they were fully grown and healthy. The wolf smelled every flower, every tree, every leaf, every mushroom. It smelled water in three different locations and knew which stream was sweetest.

  The wolf smelled a chipmunk, a dozen squirrels, voles, rats, mice, deer, a dead sparrow, a raccoon, no ... two raccoons.

  And it smelled me.

  I mean, it smelled my scent from the clothing I had just morphed out of. It smelled the scent of all the birds and animals in my barn that I had touched or even walked near. It smelled things that were three days old. The human who had walked through these woods days before. The other wolf, an old male, who had passed by. The smell of dogs and cats and trash.

  And one very strange smell that I realized had to be the scent of an Andalite --Ax. When you put it all together in your head --the sense of smell and the hearing --it was as if the entire world around you was crawling and seething and exploding with life.

  Marco said.

  I agreed.

 

  Wolves like to run.

  20

  Chapter Five

  Wolves can run. Wolves can run all through the night, without stopping or slowing or taking a break.

  We ran, Marco and I, jumping fallen logs, swerving through trees, and skirting patches of thorns. Across sunset-lit meadows, and through dark stands of tall pines. We splashed happily through streams and skittered across rocks.

  We were running on sensation, our heads swimming with smell and sound and sight. There was nothing within a thousand yards that we didn't know about. We were plugged into the data stream of nature itself.

  We smelled the logging camp long before we reached it. Then we heard the sounds of machines. And we heard the murmurs of conversation. Human voices. Then we got a reminder that we were not the only hyper-alert predators in the forest.

  a thought-speak voice asked. Jake's voice.

 

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