“I talked to you,” she told him. “I heard you answer. You were never dead.” She swallowed hard. “You were always with me.”
“And I always will be.” His voice was fierce. “I always will fucking be. I swear that to you. Part of me is inside you. I may forget something, but I will never forget this.” He put his palm over her heart. “I will never forget this.”
He wiped wetness off her face. “Say you believe me. Say it, Rune.”
She grasped his fingers and kissed them feverishly. “I do believe you. I know it’s true. I felt you there. You’re in here.” She thumped her chest, still holding his hand. “You’re here.”
“Forever.”
“Forever.”
It had to be true.
She couldn’t live with anything less.
Neither one of them could.
Maybe he wasn’t completely Z.
But there, in that cold, strange world, she wasn’t completely Rune Alexander.
Finally, they rose and continued on.
There was nothing else they could do.
And she was getting sicker.
The bird’s birth had shredded her flesh and the rot was now stronger than her body’s ability to heal the vicious wounds.
She walked with her hands over her chest. The wound throbbed painfully, and she had to stop walking to force down nausea.
The crawlers and the crow had taken nearly all the fight she had left.
“Can you smell it?” she asked Z, her voice dull.
“Smell what?” His voice was full of worry. “Death?”
“Me.” She pushed her palm a little harder against her wound. “The rot.”
He averted his eyes, and that was all the answer she needed.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“It’s not you, Rune. It’s the disease.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close to his side. “We have to get your cure.”
“Yeah,” she said, grimly. “As soon as we find our three missing friends, I’m going to have a talk with the Flesh hand.”
And there was no time to waste.
Carnage was destroyed.
“Dammit,” Z muttered. “She’s destroying the world.”
“And not slowly.” Rune blew her hair out of her face and looked around, desolate. “By the time we finally kill her, there will be little left to save.”
They stayed on high alert as they walked through the rubble, saying nothing as they stepped over and around dozens and dozens of bodies. Some were recent kills, some were long dead.
And there was no sign of Roma, Blue, or Nadaline.
There was no sign of anyone.
Not anyone alive, anyway.
Then she was proven wrong when two figures darted across the destroyed street in front of them.
“Hey,” Rune called. She started to run after them but her body refused to let her. She leaned over, her hands on her thighs. “Shit.”
Z helped her straighten. “We don’t need to chase anyone, sweet thing.”
“They may know what became of our crew.”
“They wouldn’t tell us if they did. After Damascus is finished with a city, the few remaining people aren’t able to help anybody. The ones who were healthy would have been taken for her army.”
“To fight for her?”
“Maybe,” he said, once again looking away from her. “And other things.”
She closed her eyes. “Fucking…” But there were no words bad enough for the witch.
The city smelled of blood and smoke. Blood ran in rivulets over the crumbled pavement and smoke from burning homes rose into the sky.
She stepped gingerly over those who’d been murdered by the legislators, and forced herself to glance at those who still had faces.
Hoping Roma, Blue, and Nadaline weren’t among the dead littering the streets.
And almost certain they were.
“We shouldn’t have sent them,” she murmured.
But Z shook his head. “The fighting would have been over by the time Blue and Naddy got here. They’d never have entered a war zone unless they had no choice.”
“Something delayed them,” she said. “If not the legislators, then something just as bad. They wouldn’t be wandering the city knowing the hurry we’re in.”
“No. They wouldn’t have. They’d have grabbed some supplies and got the hell out of here.”
“Listen. Do you hear that?”
He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes as he listened. Finally, he heard it. He grabbed her upper arm and dragged her into the shadows of a building, only half of which still stood.
She heard his throat click as he swallowed, and knew without being told that something horrific was coming.
Barely breathing, she waited.
Finally three vehicles appeared. They rolled slowly down the street, the one in the lead scooping bodies out of the way of the two that came after.