They held each other wordlessly, neither of them speaking, the darkness around deepening with the closing in of night. Hawk listened to the blanketing silence, picking out the faint sounds of small creatures scurrying in the debris and of voices drifting out from behind the walls of the compound.
He could feel Tessa’s heart beating; he could hear her soft breathing. Now and then she would shift against him, seeking a different closeness. Now and again she would kiss him, and he would kiss her back. He thought of how much he wanted her with him, wanted her to come away and live in the underground. He didn’t care about her parents. She belonged with him. They were meant to be together. He tried to communicate this to her simply by thinking it. He tried to make her feel it through the sheer intensity of his determination.
And for the little while that Tessa had asked him for, everything else faded away. Time stretched and slowed and finally stopped entirely.
But then she whispered, “I have to go.”
She released him abruptly, as if deciding all at once that they had transgressed. The absence of her warmth left him instantly chilled.
He stood up with her, trying not to show the disappointment he was feeling.
“It hasn’t been that long,” he protested.
“Longer than you think.” She hugged herself, watching his face.
“But never long enough, is it?”
“Tomorrow night?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow night.”
“Do the best you can for Persia. I know it’s asking a lot.”
“To help a little girl?” She shook her head. “Not so much.”
He hesitated. “Listen, there’s one more thing. There might be something new on the streets. The Weatherman found a nest of dead Croaks down by the waterfront, by the cranes. He doesn’t know what did it. You haven’t heard anything about this, have you?”
She shook her head, her short black hair rippling. “No, nothing.
The compound sends foragers out almost every day. No one has reported anything unusual.”
“They might not tell you. They don’t always tell kids everything.”
“Daddy does.”
Hawk nodded, not all that convinced that her confidence in her father was well placed. Adults protected their children in strange ways. He took her hands in his own and held them. “Just be careful if you have to go out. Better yet, why don’t you stay inside for a while until I know something more.”
She smiled, quick and ironic. “Until you can go out and take a look around? Maybe you should worry a little more about yourself. I shouldn’t have to do all the worrying for you.”
They stood close together in the darkness, not speaking, looking at each other with an intensity that was electric. Hawk was the first to break the silence. “I don’t want to let you go.”
For a long moment, she didn’t reply. Then she tightened her fingers about his and said, “One day, you won’t have to.”
She said it quietly and without force, but with a calm insistence that suggested it was inevitable. “I know I belong with you. I know that. I will find a way. But you have to be patient. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you. I love you.” He bent forward to kiss her so that he wouldn’t say anything more, so that he would leave it at that.
She kissed him back. “You better go,” she whispered, pressing the words against his lips.
Then she slipped through the doorway leading back into the underground and was gone. He waited until he heard the snick of the heavy lock, and then waited some more because he ached so much he could not make himself move. He waited a long time.
*
HAWK WALKED BACK through the city with Cheney at his side, the sky roofed by heavy banks of clouds that left everything shrouded in gloom. The buildings clustered silent and empty about him, hollow monoliths, mute witnesses to the ruin they had survived. There were no lights anywhere. Once, this entire city would have been lit, with every window bright and welcoming.
Panther had told him so; he had seen it near the end in San Francisco. Owl had read the Ghosts stories in which kids walked streets made bright with lights from lamps. She had read them stories of how the moon shone in a silver orb out of a sky thick with stars glimmering in a thousand pinpricks against the black.
None of them had ever seen it, but they believed it had been like that.
Hawk believed it would be like that again.
He worked his way through the piles of debris, around derelict cars and cracked pieces of concrete and steel, and past doorways too dark to see into and too dangerous to pass close by. The city was one huge trap, its jaws waiting to close on the unwary. It was a place of predators and prey. Their shadows moved all around him, some in the alleyways, some in the interiors of the buildings.