“I'm fine,” Lucy-Anne said, sitting up and looking around. Memory rushed in, drowning the dream and replacing it with a stranger reality. But just for a moment a dreg of the dream remained—the fire, the nuclear explosion, the strange woman's enigmatic smile—and she shivered. Not everything I dream comes true, she thought, but she could not be certain of that. Time had yet to tell.
Rook had brought her to St. Paul's Cathedral, and they had spent the night high in the dome, in a place called the Whispering Gallery. She wanted to ask why he had chosen somewhere so exposed and well-known, especially after the confrontation with the Choppers that had left so many dead. But then she had heard the effects the birds’ fluttering wings had in the Gallery, and she knew. There was no silence here. Even with the birds roosting, the whole dome whispered to the sound of their wings. When he slept, Rook needed that.
“I don't like the silence,” he told her, as if reading her thoughts.
“Why not?” Lucy-Anne asked. Rook's face dropped a little, and he turned away.
“It's dawn. Time to hunt.”
“Hunt?”
“You chose to come with me, so you should see what it is I do.”
“I came with you because you said you could help find my brother Andrew.”
“I can,” Rook said. “And I will. But come on.” He led the way down out of the Whispering Gallery, and Lucy-Anne followed.
She hoped the others were okay. She'd watched Jack, Sparky, and Jenna fleeing the street, leaving burning helicopters, blazing buildings, and bodies behind. Leaving also Jack's father, Reaper, the leader of the Superiors, and Miller, one of the senior Choppers. She'd felt sad watching them go because she and Jack had been close—still were, she hoped. And Sparky and Jenna were her friends. But something had changed in Lucy-Anne the moment they'd entered the Toxic City. Discovering that her parents were dead had cemented that change, and as she'd fled from the hotel where she had discovered that fact, the city had seemed to open up around her. Running, crying, she had felt part of the city, not apart from it.
“Your friends haven't been caught,” Rook said. They were walking through St. Paul's itself now, the huge cathedral eerily quiet but for their footsteps and the flutter of rooks’ wings.
“How do you know?”
Rook did not need to answer. Two birds left his shoulders, three more landed there, spreading their huge wings to balance and breaking the silence with their cries.
He communes with the birds, Lucy-Anne thought. The idea was crazy, yet she accepted it completely. There was so much crazy stuff going on, including within her.
Those dreams she'd had. Dogs attacking, and then the pack of dogs had assaulted them in the tunnels into London. Her family buried, and then she'd learned that her parents were dead, and likely buried in one of London's massive mass graves. And Rook and the birds. She had dreamt of them as well, and now here they were.
“We need to go north,” she said as they emerged onto the cathedral's wide steps. Your brother is alive north of here, the man who'd confirmed that her parents were dead had told her. The street before them was silent and still. Nothing moved.
“And we will,” Rook said. He was a small, slight boy, with a dark mop of hair and almost-feminine features. But Lucy-Anne had seen him use his birds to kill.
“Andrew is all I have left,” she whispered.
“No he isn't.” Rook shook his head, reaching out to touch her hand. Was that affection? Ownership? She didn't know, and she flinched away. He'd said he could help her, but that didn't mean she owed him anything. Not yet.
Rook laughed softly. “Come on. East of here, there are four of them. I'll show you what I can do.”
“Four of what?” He started down the steps at a jog, without answering. “Rook? Show me what?” Still he didn't answer.
At risk of losing him to the deserted, dead streets of London, Lucy-Anne followed.
There were four, as Rook had said. But one did not belong.
“What are they doing to him?”
Rook reached out quickly and pressed his hand across Lucy-Anne's mouth, then came in close so he could whisper in her ear.