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“Don’t the dead like dwelling in the dark?” I whispered as Erik led me through the subway’s almost impenetrable blackness. Though we treaded lightly, the walls played with sound, making everything echo, making me feel enclosed in a tomb, surrounded by death. “How can you move around down here without running into a nest of them?”
He stopped in front of a thick metal door that seemed to appear from nowhere. When he turned the handle, it opened on silent hinges. Pointing to his scarred eye, he said, “I’m immune. Remember?”
I pointed to my own relatively unscathed face. “But I’m not.”
He shined his lantern into the space beyond the door and illuminated a circular iron staircase. “I’ve never seen them around my place.” He started up the steps. “I think they sense something’s different about me.”
My footsteps reverberated as I followed him up the winding stairs. “You aren’t afraid I’ll draw them in?”
“I’ve seen you shoot.” He paused, and I caught a flash of his white grin in the darkness. “So, no, I’m not worried.”
“Glad one of us can afford to be so cavalier.”
At the top of the steps, Erik opened another door, and sunlight and heat spilled in. We stepped onto an unfamiliar street, but from the fishy stench in the air, I suspected we were near the river. Most of the buildings seemed industrial, warehouses and such. Many were fire scarred and soot blackened with broken windows and crushed roofs. “What are you going to do now?” I asked.
Shifting, he crouched down on one knee and adjusted the buckles of his black boots. He’d strapped a rifle across his back, and under his coat, he wore a heavy utility belt stocking a large supply of ammunition. Despite his nonchalance about his susceptibility to the Dead Disease, he looked prepared to fight off an attack. “I know some people who deal with Moll Grimes,” he said. “We’ll talk to them, see if they know about your sister. See if they can find out something for you.”
“Now, wait a minute.” I raised a hand, gesturing for him to stop. “I don’t want to do anything else to attract Moll’s attention.”
“You think talking to John Brown yesterday didn’t already do that?” Erik rose to his full height. He stood almost a head taller than me, and he stepped closer, forcing me to look up at him.
Is he doing it on purpose? Does he think I’m easily intimidated?
“Yeah, but I can avoid John Brown,” I said. “He’s just one man.”
“Just one man?” Erik’s lips twisted into a cynical smile. “Brown is head of Moll’s security. He has all of Moll’s Forces at his disposal. And if you can’t go back home, where are you going to go? How will you keep him from finding you?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.” My chin dropped as I kicked a loose bit of rubble down a street still littered with detritus from the Dead Wars: toppled wagons missing their wheels, smashed crates, piles of stone, and broken bricks. “But I’m working on it.”
“You’ll stay with me,” he said in a dismissive tone. Before I could argue, he turned and strode away without looking back to see if I would follow.
“Mmm.”
For the last five years of my life, I’d mostly made all my decisions on my own. Bloom and I had argued fiercely over my stubborn need to remain independent. Turning any ounce of control of my life over to Erik went against my strongest instincts. I considered letting him go on without me, but I was entirely too curious about him and the people he knew. Erik was my Professor Lidenbrock, and I was Alex, reluctantly following him through a volcanic crevasse into a prehistoric realm. Erik probably wasn’t leading me on a journey to the center of the earth, but how could I be sure?
“I don’t need any more enemies,” I said, running to catch up to him. “I don’t know how talking to people who ‘deal’ with Moll Grimes could be a good idea.”
“This is a different kind of deal than what you’re thinking about.” Erik kept his gaze trained on the street ahead, obviously wary of human or nonhuman confrontation. There were plenty of places for the undead to hide. Plenty of places for the desperate and depraved—those who’d kill us just for our shoelaces—to set up ambushes too. “There are some things Moll can’t get, make, or grow on her little farm. Things she has to go outside for. It puts these people I’m taking you to in a special position.”
“What could they possibly have that could be that valuable? And if they trade it to Moll Grimes, then they’re just as beholden to her as anyone else is.”
Erik coughed a petulant laugh. “What they have, Moll can’t get anywhere else. She trades with them because she’s got no other choice. She’s got nowhere else to go, and she’d give almost anything to have it.”
The need to know had become a living thing inside me, pushing against my skin. I launched myself in front of Erik, blocking his path, and set my hands on my hips in my best no-funny-business pose. “Tell me what it is, or I won’t go one step further with you.”
He took a deep breath and blew it between his teeth, making a little whistling noise. “You ever heard of something called alchemy?”
“Sure. I read a novel about it. Doctor Goldenov. It was about a scientist who makes gold out of lead and stuff like that.”
Erik rolled his eyes. “‘Stuff like that.’”
“Well, that’s what the story said.” I shrugged.
“You can’t believe everything you read, Sera.”
I decided to take the mature path and did not stick my tongue out at him. “So, you know some evil scientists or something, and they make stuff for Moll Grimes that no one else can make, and they use some kind of magic science to do it.”
“Basically.” He shrugged. “In a nutshell. They’re not evil, though.”
“They don’t make gold?”
“God no. Who needs it? The banks are full of it. The rich homes have gold piled up in jewelry boxes. It’s useless. Would you rather have a beefsteak right now or a bar of gold?”
“I get your point.” I folded my arms across my chest and huffed. “So, are you going to tell me what it is, or are you going to keep making me ask questions until I guess?”
“You’d never guess.”
I stomped my foot and issued a silent scream, something Bloom and I had learned to do in a world where keeping quiet meant the difference between attracting Rotters and going about our business unmolested and uneaten. “Were you born this way?”
His black eyebrows drew together, and he frowned. “What way?”
“Why can’t you just answer a simple question? And why do you have to act like such a know-it-all?”
He glanced at his feet and had the decency to look chagrined. “You’d be surprised by how much I don’t know.” Stepping around me, he picked up his pace, and I hustled to keep up with him. In a jarring non sequitur, he said, “Your father was Cardinal Blite.”
“How is it practically everyone knows that?”
Erik slowed long enough to gape at me, wide-eyed and blinking. “He was as good as a celebrity, Sera, especially during the Dead Wars. The guns he designed were about the only ones that stood up to the fight. Most rifles, when you use them a lot, they get overheated. The barrels warp. They jam, backfire, or worse. Blite’s guns kept going long after the others wore out. Most people who have survived say that a Blite rifle saved their life.”
Still marching forward, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his long black coat and furrowed his brow. “I know one of them saved mine.”
I thought back to the day of my father’s death, and a rough, brown anger swirled into my thoughts. “Well, they sure didn’t save him.”
He slowed his pace again, nearly stopping. “How’d he die?”
I stormed past him. He didn’t like answering personal questions? Well, neither did I. Two could play the Avoid the Painful Topic game. “How about you tell me about your parents. How’d they die?”
This time, his expressive brows shot toward his hairline, both eyes widening big and round. “Now who’s the one who can’t answer a simple question?”
“Tell me something about yourself, first.” Maybe I sounded like a brat, but talking about my father did funny things to my emotional restraint. “Tell me something private.”
“I already told you about my scars and that I came from Saint Theresa’s.”
Putting a hand on his arm, I pulled him to a stop. “Nope. I want to know something about who you are. What makes you tick?”
He blinked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Tell me why you’re helping me. Why you watch out for me and come to my rescue all the time.”
A shadow crossed his face, masking his expression. Apparently, my question had touched a sore spot, but my father was my sore spot, so fair was fair.
“Forget it. Never mind.” Shaking his head, he stepped away. I reached out to stop him again, but he jerked free. “We’re almost there,” he said gruffly. “You better let me do the talking.”
“Oh, sure... because you’re so good at conversation.”
Why was I following him? Was I trusting him? He had evaded nearly every one of my questions, and yet I trailed after him like he was some kind of pied piper. But no one else was offering to help me find my sister, and I was out of ideas on my own. Surviving in this world meant taking risks. Following Erik was one of those risks. Please, God, let it be a good one.