I tried to make it back to Lucy’s Promise but got only as far as Monument Park before I fell to my knees in the grass. I clawed off my mask and gulped at the air but couldn’t seem to clear the stink of blood. It had seeped into my clothes and my skin and my hair. It filled my mouth. When I closed my eyes and saw that blaze of crimson splashed across the man’s middle, I vomited into the grass until my throat burned. I wanted to pass out, but I forced myself up onto my feet and strapped on my mask. I had to get back to Lucy’s Promise. Back to my camp.
“Quite a little tour you’re taking.”
A flashlight beam pierced the dark. A man’s voice came from behind it.
“Six nights running now,” he said. “Everybody’s talking about some kid treating our town like his own private museum.”
The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I started backing away, but then another beam hit me and then another one after that, until I was frozen in a cage of light. Dark shapes loomed on the other side of the flashlights. And there were more behind them. I counted six men. Then seven. Then ten.
“Imagine my surprise when the descriptions of this kid started to sound a wee bit familiar.”
I turned back to the voice. Light from behind me glanced off his shoulders, illuminating the pale, bald head and gleaming off the gold frames of his glasses. When he lowered his flashlight, I saw bruises on his face and around his neck. I looked over his shoulder toward Lucy’s Promise, but it was lost in the darkness, too far to reach even if I ran.
I pulled my knife from its sheath. “I just want to leave.”
A wave of laughter circled me.
“Well, son, I’d like to take a trip to Rio de Janeiro, but I think we’re both gonna be disappointed.”
“Please,” I said. “All I want to do is—”
There was a rush of movement behind me, and then I was face-down in the dirt at Tommasulo’s feet. More laughter. I got up and lunged at my attacker, but a boot hooked under my foot and I went down again. Another boot found my ribs and dug in. After that, they were all on me at once. Callused knuckles and boot heels. Blows landed on my arms, my back, my chest. Eventually the pain crested and started to fade, seeming more and more distant, like someone knocking on a faraway door. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t thinking about Mom or Dad or Hannah or Greer. Or you.
The last thing I remember is Tommasulo leaning over me and reaching for my mask. Before he could get a hold of it, a harsh light splashed across his face, followed by the wail of sirens. Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled. After that, everything went black.
17
I WOKE UP in the Gardens of Null.
Cardinal was on his knees, with his back to me, watching a pack of dogs sniff through a mountain of garbage that had been left to rot. His armor was charred and dented, ripped in places and held together by wire and bandages that had gone a rusty brown from dried blood. On his back there were two ragged stumps where his wings had been.
The land around us was a sea of rubble—ruined streets, collapsed skyscrapers, piles of scorched concrete with rebar sticking out of them like cracked rib cages. The sky was a seething red, brushed with black smoke coming from the incinerators that ran night and day out near Abaddon.
When he spoke, the dying electronics in his mask made his voice sputter and wheeze.
“I tried to save them, but I failed. Black Eagle. Blue Jay. Kestrel Kain. Rex Raven. Goldfinch. Lord Starling. Sally. My Sally.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. A fever ran through the broken steel.
I said, “There’s only one thing to do.”
Cardinal turned toward me. One of his electronic eyes had been put out, so I could see all the way down to the real one. It was bloodshot and glassy. The chrome blade of a butcher knife shimmered in my hand. I held it out to him.
“Forget.”
I sat up with a gasp. I was on a couch in a small dark room. My mask was still on and so were my gloves. Even my knife was where it was supposed to be. Every inch of my body ached.
There was a window just above my head. I strained to look out, but it was too dark to see what lay beyond it. I could hear footsteps, though, and an odd whispering sound. Someone was out there.