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Erik pushed me behind him and reached for the dangling fire-escape ladder.
“Maybe it fell on its own,” I said, although I didn’t believe my own weak explanation. “I didn’t lock it.”
“I’m going first, just in case.”
I rolled my eyes at his back but let him go without argument. At the first landing, we found Bloom’s metal window shutters wrenched from their bolts. “Maybe you should wait here,” he said with a pleading look.
I threw back my shoulders and gritted my teeth. “Like hell.”
I shoved past him and ducked through the window into the dusty bank office.
“Sera, wait.”
“You wait.” I scurried up the interior stairs. After making my way up the access ladder, I strode onto the rooftop and found...
Devastation.
Using that word might’ve sounded like overkill, but I would have rated this assault on my home as one step past overkill. Over-massacre, maybe. Here was another word: vanquished. It described the state of my garden, my stove, my chance at winter survival.
Huffing and puffing, Erik appeared at my side. He tried to pull me into his arms, but I shoved him away.
“No!” Tears of scalding rage burned my eyes as I crossed the roof and fell to my knees. I buried my hands in the remnants of my garden, the scattered compost, the withered vines, the shards of broken planters. The tatters filtered through my fingers and splattered to the ground.
“No!” I shrieked, but before I lost myself to anguish, I pitched to my feet and dashed to the stairs descending to the bank vault and the little bits of home Bloom and I had stored there.
But our vault looked like a funeral pyre, a pile of black ashes and nothing more. Our cots, clothes, books, Bloom’s instruments, photographs—nothing had survived, and nothing from that life would ever resurrect again in any shape or form.
I didn’t realize I’d broken down until I registered Erik’s scent over the smell of smoke. As always, he was there, holding me up. And there I was again, letting him. I freed myself from his arms and climbed back to the roof. He arrived several moments later but lingered in the doorway. For the first time, he was hesitant to approach.
“It’s all gone.” I gestured to the destruction. “Everything. Bloom, the things she loved and made, our garden, our survival. Nothing’s left.”
Erik leaned against the roof access door and folded his arms over his chest. “Bloom’s not gone.”
“She might as well be,” I said, full of self-pity. I’d never felt more alone in my life, as if I stood not on the roof of the Savings and Loan but in the center of Antarctica with not even a penguin to keep me company.
“I’m not gone,” he whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear.
But I did hear him, heard his anguish and dismissed it before allowing myself to acknowledge his hurt. I had too much of my own pain to digest at that moment. If that made me selfish and callous, I couldn’t work up the will to care. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what good does that do me? I can’t expect you to make up for all of this.” I waved my hands at the remnants of my life, meager though they were. “This isn’t your problem. I am not your problem.”
“Oh, shut up.” He said it in such a casual way, as if commenting on the weather. Still, I recoiled as though he had struck me. He strode across the roof and gripped my shoulders. “Just stop it. I’m tired of this act.”
“What act? I’m not—”
He cut me off with one firm shake. Lowering his voice, he spoke each word with care. “It is an act, your I-don’t-need-anybody routine. It’s a thin suit of armor, a weak excuse for self-protection.” His hands moved from my shoulders, stroking up my neck. He cupped my jaws, thumbs brushing my cheekbones. “I can poke holes in your armor all day long. All I have to do is wash your hair, rub the knots out of your neck. Dance with you.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “Kiss you.”
My body reacted of its own accord, going hot and limp. My eyelashes fluttered closed as I leaned into him. Savored him. How does he do this to me so easily? It was his own personal kind of alchemy, impossible to resist.
“You’re not as invincible as you want everyone to believe—or as much as you tell yourself you are. You need other people. You need me, Sera.”
I opened my mouth to tell him what he could do with his need, but he cut me off with a kiss that dissolved my anger like a drop of salt in a glass of hot water.
Well, that’s just fighting dirty.
His lips brushed over mine as he spoke, his arms sliding around me. “Yes. You definitely need me.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said feebly, my thoughts scattered to the wind by his touch.
He chuckled and kissed me again, and the last of my fight drained away in favor of warmer, lustier feelings. I didn’t know about need, but I definitely knew about want. I wondered if it was possible to keep the two things separate when it came to him.
“Let’s go home.” Taking my hand, he pulled me toward the roof exit.
“How do you do that?” I asked as I followed him down the stairs.
“Do what?”
“You’re like the Pied Piper. One kiss and I’m trailing after you, under your spell.”
He chuckled suggestively. “I guess I’m a really good kisser.”
I slugged him on the shoulder. He snickered and followed me down to the street. After landing on the sidewalk behind me, he caught my hand, laced his fingers through mine, and waited to see if I’d pull away. I didn’t.
By the time we made it to his subway car, he was so tired he could barely put one foot in front of the other, and he required more than a little of my strength and support to barricade the garage doors behind us. “You’re not as invincible as you think you are either,” I said, leading him inside his snug little home.
Feebly, he shook his head. “Don’t pick any more fights today, okay?”
After everything he’d put himself through, he needed to eat something and drink some sugar with a little tea in it, but he fell asleep before his head hit the pillow. Wrestling his limp form, I managed to remove his long black coat and heavy boots. He snuffled softly in his sleep. With his eyes closed and his face relaxed, he looked almost... vulnerable. Beautiful but completely normal. Not a hero, not an angel. Just a young man as defenseless as the rest of us. Well, mostly.
What must it have been like for him, finding sleep so easily when he usually had such a hard time with it? Easily? Humph. Walking I-didn’t-know-how-many blocks after giving I-didn’t-know-how-many pints of blood... no one should call that easy.
And he’d done it all for me.
I wanted to be mad at him for it, for putting himself out with no care for his own welfare. A loose strand of dark hair lay across his brow. I brushed it aside, and he smiled in his sleep. I wanted to resent him for refusing to protect himself, but I couldn’t. I’d never admit it, but he was getting to me. I was starting to believe the things he said.
I stretched out beside his long, limp body, wanting to relax, maybe take a nap, but as soon as I went still, my outrage and anger returned. Memories of what I’d seen at the Savings and Loan shined vividly in my mind’s eye, as if I were still there, seeing it all again for the first time.
John Brown’s act hadn’t been mere petty vandalism. It had been the destruction of my survival. There’s a common saying you’ve probably heard before, the one that goes, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” I understood what it meant. I would’ve given anything to storm into Mini-City and pump John Brown full of lead. Wouldn’t have felt sorry for it either. Unlike the undead, who acted only on impulse and instinct, John Brown had premeditated his attack. He had done it with terrific detail and purpose. Very thorough.
The living perpetrated at least as much viciousness as the undead. Maybe more.
I wanted my vengeance, but storming into Moll Grimes’s compound hollering “John Brown!” at the top of my lungs would only get me dead. So I had to do something else with all my rage. Like the legend about people who died of spontaneous combustion, I needed to find release for my anger before I turned into a ball of fire and ended up a girl-shaped pile of ash.
Erik didn’t budge when I rifled through his supplies and filled my duffel with ammo. Did Dwivedi’s college provide Erik with his bullets too? Feeling a bit guilty about pinching his stuff, I left him a note. I planned to hit the street at the closest subway access and draw in the dead any way I could. The sun wouldn’t be up much longer. The dead would soon be coming out to prowl, and I would be there waiting for them.