Boy of Blood Page 12

  Pure light ripped through the night with a bang. A weight struck Nola in the chest, sending her flying as someone pulled her beneath them, shielding her from the terrible light. The bridge under her gave an awful lurch and somewhere far away people screamed. The noise of the screams was muted in her ears, tiny bugs trying to cut through the terrible ringing.

  “Get up!” Jeremy’s voice shouted. The one who had protected her from the light.

  Of course it’s Jeremy.

  “Are you hurt?” he yelled, sounding like he was underwater, his words almost too muffled for her to understand. But he didn’t wait for her to answer. People ran toward them, away from a fire at the end of the bridge.

  But the bridge now ended far before the other side of the river. Half of the bridge had disappeared leaving only jagged bits of flaming metal reaching toward the city.

  A blaze illuminated the far bank of the river. Bodies lay near the shore, some of the corpses on fire.

  Jeremy pulled her farther away, into the crowd of guards charging forward to meet the wolves who had made it to their side of the bridge before the light.

  Explosion. That’s the word for it. I saw an explosion.

  They were behind the last truck now. The domes glittered up the hill, looking so perfect. There was no sign of the explosion that had broken the domes. That had been mended. But the burning bodies on the shore could never be mended.

  “Nola. Nola!” Jeremy shouted, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Nola!”

  “Yes,” she said, wanting so badly to take off Jeremy’s helmet so she could see his face.

  “Nola, I need you to run for the domes.”

  Guns sounded behind them.

  How many wolves had gotten over the bridge?

  “I need you to run home and don’t stop until you’re at the door. They’ll let you in.”

  “Come with me, please!” She grabbed Jeremy’s hands. “I can’t go without you!”

  “You have to, Nola. Keep your head down and run. I’ll be at your house by sunrise, I promise you.”

  “No, please!” She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t.

  An agonizing scream cut through the sounds of the fight.

  “I love you, Nola. Now run!”

  “I love you,” Nola whispered before turning toward the glass castle and running up the hill.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tears and sweat mixed on her face. The sounds of fighting didn’t fade as she ran up the hill. They followed her like a demon, keeping pace with her every step.

  She had left him. She had left Jeremy in the dark, fighting werewolves.

  Home by sunrise. He’ll be home by sunrise.

  Screams chased her. Terrible, terrified screams. Something like a snarl followed. And then—

  Pop, pop, pop.

  Such a tiny little noise that could mean the end of someone’s life.

  Home by sunrise. He’ll be home by sunrise.

  The air burned Nola’s lungs as she ran up the hill. Her legs protested every step. Something warm and sticky dripped down her shoulder. But she didn’t dare look to see if it was her own blood that smeared her flesh or someone else’s.

  The door to the atrium came into sight. Twelve guards stood out front, weapons trained on the darkness around them. The Dome Guard should be down fighting with the Outer Guard on the bridge. Why were they standing in the darkness while others fought?

  “Help!” Nola tried to scream, but the words barely made it past her lips. “Help!”

  Two of the guards ran toward her, their rifles pointed at her chest.

  “They need help down at the bridge!” she panted.

  “Freeze!” one of the guards shouted.

  Nola ran faster, trying to get away from whatever was chasing her.

  “I said freeze!”

  She stopped so suddenly she nearly tipped over.

  “Please…they need help…at the bridge!” Nola begged between gasps.

  “Magnolia Kent?” one of the guards asked.

  “There are wolves on the bridge,” Nola said as a guard shone his light on her vest.

  “Take off the vest,” the first guard said.

  Nola pulled off the vest and dropped it onto the ground. She didn’t need protection. She needed them to listen. “There was an explosion on the bridge. Guards are hurt.”

  “The Outer Guard can take care themselves.” He pointed his light at her shoulder. “You’re injured. We need to get you inside.”

  “I’m fine.” Nola stepped back as one of the guards reached for her.

  But another guard caught her tightly around the waist and carried her to the door.

  “No, please. I’m fine. You have to help them!” Nola fought against the man’s grip.

  “Our orders are not to leave the perimeter of the domes.” The guard punched a code into the door, and it whooshed open. Fresh air spilled out of the atrium, and hands grabbed Nola, pulling her inside before the doors had fully opened.

  “We found her, sir.”

  Captain Stokes stood just inside the door, glaring at Nola.

  “Keep them from getting near the glass,” Captain Stokes shouted as the door lowered.

  “But they need to get to the guards on the bridge!” Nola wrenched her arms free from the hands that held her.

  “Captain Ridgeway chose to take his men to the bridge. Their blood is on his hands,” Captain Stokes said. “I will not have the blood of my men on mine.”

  “And if the wolves get past them? If they break through the glass again?”

  “My men will do their duty and protect the domes,” Stokes said. “Fighting the people across the river is not what we have been assigned to do. As Captain Ridgeway has made clear again and again. Get her medical help.”

  A guard standing next to Stokes raised his wrist to his mouth and began muttering.

  “You fought with them in the city,” Nola pleaded. “You did it then. Why not now?”

  “Because my men are not in the business of slaughter.” Hatred twisted Stokes’ face. “We protect the lives in these domes. What the Outer Guard do is on their own damned heads. Get her to the bunker.”

  “No!” she screamed as two guards reached toward her. “I just watched a woman’s neck get ripped open and a bridge explode. I tried to stop this from happening, and I failed. I’m not waiting underground to see if the monsters make it to our door.”

  Stokes eyed her for a moment. “Let her stay.”

  A woman in a white coat ran into the atrium, emergency medical bag in hand.

  Nola didn’t flinch as the doctor tore away her sleeve. Stokes was still studying her, and she wouldn’t look away.

  “You never could have stopped it, Miss Kent,” Stokes finally said, as though he had spent the last five minutes searching for words. “Nothing you could have done would have stopped the bridge from burning.” He pushed the words from his throat as if every syllable cost him an enormous effort. Without waiting for her reply, he turned and walked to the back of the atrium, toward the high concrete tower that loomed over the domes.

  Nola turned back to the glass. The bridge was barely visible in the darkness, only flames marked the bloody expanse.

  “We need to get you down to the medical unit,” the doctor said.

  Nola didn’t register the doctor pulling at her skin until she looked down. The blood on her arm had been hers. A piece of something was lodged in her bicep. The longer she stared at it, the more she realized she was looking at her own arm. Then the pain began.

  “We need to get your arm taken care of,” the doctor said. “Did you hit your head? Are you dizzy?”

  “I’m fine.” Nola shook her head as though the movement would emphasize how fine she was.

  “We need to run some tests.” The doctor shone a bright light into her eyes.

  “I’m not leaving.” Nola looked back to the bridge. “I’m not leaving while he’s fighting.”

  The doctor swore, unpacking her medic
al bag, muttering darkly about guards allowing things to interfere with her patient’s care.

  “Have you at least used an I-Vent?” the doctor snapped as she pulled bits of shining black metal from Nola’s arm.

  Pain surged through her with each little scrap that was removed. She savored every sting. She deserved to be in pain. People were dying down the hill because she had failed.

  “I-Vent,” the doctor shouted, as though Nola were deaf.

  Fishing in her back pocket with her good hand, Nola pulled out the tiny tube and took a deep breath, never taking her eyes from the bridge.

  The fighting had moved closer to the domes in the ten minutes she had been inside. Nola laughed. A panicked chuckle that caught in her throat.

  “And she’s lost her mind,” the doctor muttered.

  “I liked that last doctor I saw better,” Nola said.

  “I don’t think you’re appreciating—”

  “You’re fixing a few broken inches of skin on my arm, and wolves could kill us all by morning.”

  A blaze lit the far side of the bridge. Something large had been sacrificed to the inferno. Like the city had lit a fire to shed light on the sins of the battle.

  With a hiss from a canister, the doctor sprayed something that burned Nola’s arm.

  “I am going to have a lot more patients before the end of the night,” the doctor said, dry fear crackling in her voice. “I’d really like to be done with you before they get here.”

  She smeared blue goo onto Nola’s arm. As if on cue, a truck rumbled up the hill.

  Her heart leapt.

  It’s over!

  But no, it couldn’t be. There were still people moving at the bottom of the hill. Still tiny sparks of firing weapons lighting the night.

  “And that will be my wounded.” The doctor wrapped a bandage around Nola’s arm. “I don’t care where the hell you go, but if you actually care about the wounded guards who are about to be coming through this door, get the hell out of the atrium. Go to the bunkers, go to your own bed, I couldn’t care less. But I will not allow you to stay here and be in my way.”

  The vents rumbled as the door opened.

  “Take care of them.” Nola ran to the far side of the atrium and down into the tunnels.

  He’ll be home by sunrise.

  Nola tore through the tunnel to Bright Dome. From her roof she would be able to see if the fighting came closer, even if she couldn’t see the bridge.

  Bright Dome was empty, abandoned by all the residents who had fled to the bunker. For a moment, she wondered if her mother had looked for her. Had asked the guard who kept them all trapped where Magnolia Kent had gone. But her mother probably hadn’t gone to the bunker. She would have snuck away to be down with her seeds, making sure no panicked person or malicious intruder dared damage them.

  Nola leapt up the two steps to her door and burst through the kitchen without bothering to turn on the lights. She sprinted up the stairs and into her room. Something soft tangled around her feet, and she fell forward, screaming as her hurt arm took the impact.

  “Leave me alone!” Nola shouted, kicking away whoever was trying to trap her. But there was no one hiding in the shadows or pinning her down. The soft, white towel she had dropped what seemed like a lifetime ago lay on the floor, now stained by her boots.

  Panting, she pushed herself up. The pain in her arm had become impossible to ignore, but she had to see what was happening. Stepping up on the windowsill, she couldn’t stop the scream of pain that wrenched from her throat as she pulled herself onto the roof.

  The cool, soft moss, terribly unlike everything happening in the world, cradled her cheek. She shouldn’t be sitting on something so gentle and familiar while Jeremy was outside fighting for his life.

  The fire on the city side of the bridge had grown, reaching the buildings that sat along the water. The smoke from the flames clouded the sky, obscuring the river’s edge.

  Nola swore, screaming at the flames, and the smoke, and the wolves and explosions.

  There was still movement on the remaining half of the shattered bridge.

  How many wolves had made it to their side of the explosion? Surely the fighting would be over soon. And the rest would be stuck in the fires they had created on the far side of the river. There would be no guards going into the city to try and save people from the flames. There was no way across.

  The river ran with a swift current, and the water had been contaminated from years of industrial pollution. Even if someone were strong enough to make it from the city to the domes, submerging in the water would be a death sentence.

  But would it be a death sentence to the wolves?

  Nola shut her eyes against the night, and dark, imagined shapes swam through the water that shone in her mind.

  She wouldn’t be able to see them swimming. The distance, smoke, and darkness all prevented that.

  But if they could. If they swam over. If there are boats hidden in the city…

  Then Jeremy will fight them, too.

  Nola opened her eyes and looked back toward the river. Trucks drove back up the hill. And bright, fake lights bathed the remnants of the bridge. She wanted to leap off the roof and run to the atrium, to search every truck for Jeremy as they came in. If he was injured, she should sit by his bed just as she had before. But the doctor had told her to stay out of the way. That it would be safer for the wounded.

  Digging her fingers into the moss, Nola anchored herself to the roof as though expecting a wind to blow her away.

  Her arm throbbed with every beat of her heart.

  Home by sunrise. He promised. He’ll be home by sunrise.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hours passed. Or maybe just a few minutes. She didn’t know what time she had been taken to the bridge, so there was no way to know how long the wait for the sky to turn gray would be.

  Her fingers went numb from gripping the moss on the roof long before the faint part of the sky visible through the smoke lightened.

  Tears ran down Nola’s cheeks, but she couldn’t brush them away. Her arms were too heavy to lift to her face.

  There were still people moving on the bridge. In the dim light she could see them like ants, carrying and pushing things from the broken bridge to the water.

  Bodies. They were throwing bodies into the water. If they were disposing of the dead, the danger must be over.

  Jeremy was hurt. He must be, or he would have come for her. Unless he was out with the people left on the bridge. Or maybe he thought she was down in one of the bunkers and had gone there. Or maybe…

  Nola couldn’t let herself finish that maybe.

  I’ll be home by sunrise.

  He promised.

  Orange tinted the sky. A sad, dusty orange tainted by the fire, unable to match the crackling brightness of the flames through the haze that coated the world.

  A blanket that suffocates us all.

  Her breath came in quick gasps. She would suffocate on the roof. The world itself would smother her, and she deserved it.

  A heaving sob broke free, and then another. She wept on the roof, staring at the sun, willing it to stop its relentless rise, knowing she would never have that power.

  Home by sunrise.

  The edge of the sun burst free from the horizon.

  “No, no, no!” Nola railed against the sun, but it wouldn’t listen. “Stop! Please stop!”

  “Nola!” a voice shouted from the far side of Bright Dome. “Nola!”

  She had nearly missed the sound in her screaming.

  “Nola!”

  Painfully, she pried her fingers from the moss and crawled to the other side of the roof where she could see the rest of the dome.

  “Jeremy.” His name came out as a whisper through her tears. “Jeremy!”

  He ran toward her house. His stride long and even. Blood and dirt marked his uniform, but relief brightened his face as soon as he saw her.

  Scrambling back across the roof, Nola dropp
ed over the edge and through her window, all pain forgotten as Jeremy’s heavy boots pounded up the stairs.

  “Nola, are you hurt?” the words were out of his mouth before he was in her room, but she didn’t answer. She had already thrown herself into his arms and was kissing him with everything she possessed.

  Explosions and blood melted away. Death and fear didn’t matter. Jeremy was alive and holding her.

  The room didn’t sway, and she didn’t want it to. She wanted to hold on tighter, to pull herself closer so no one would ever be able to separate them again. There was no more her or him. No difference between them at all.

  His fingers found skin at her waist and drifted up her back. She gasped at the warmth of his touch, craving more. Her heart raced as he hungrily grasped her side with his hand. Suddenly, her shirt became a hateful thing, another horrible barrier between them. Nola eased her hold on him only enough to reach for the edge of her shirt but as soon as she moved, Jeremy was there pulling it off for her.

  Blood rose to her cheeks not with embarrassment, but anticipation. He let go of her for a moment to take off his heavy guard’s vest. But that brief moment felt like an eternity. Like he would fall away from her completely.

  She pulled herself closer to him. Kissing him again as though trying to prove he was still alive. With only his thin guard’s shirt between them, his heart racing pressed against hers. The taste of him, the feel of his heat radiating through her, washed away all the cold fear that filled her.

  “Nola,” Jeremy whispered, and her heart soared. He wasn’t saying a name, but a prayer that they would always be together. That he would always hold her tight, and the demons of the outside world would never again come between them.

  Fingers trembling, Nola undid the buttons of his shirt, letting her chest press to his. She slid his shirt away without looking.

  In one movement that sent her heart bounding from her chest, Jeremy scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Laying her down gently, he gazed at her. His brown eyes smiling down at her. She reached for him, pulling him closer. The light from the sunrise shone through the window, casting an orange light on Jeremy’s bare chest. A red mark glistened on his arm. Surrounded by dried blood, the cut looked like a weeks-old gash, already through the first horrible stages of healing.