Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [45]
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.
They were always there, the remnants of the old world, the refuse left over from the destruction and the madness. He felt a certain sympathy for the creatures that prowled the night, hunting and being hunted. They hadn’t wanted this any more than he had. They, too, were victims of humankind’s reckless behavior and poor judgment.
He thought of Tessa and tried to figure out what else he could do to persuade her to come to live with him. But her attachment to her parents was so strong that he couldn’t see any way around it. He resented it, but he understood it, too. He knew that her feelings for them must be as strong as his own were for her. But things could not continue like this. Sooner or later, something would happen to change them. He knew it instinctively. What worried him was that when it did, Tessa would be standing in the way.
He would talk to her about it again tomorrow night. He would talk to her about it every night until she changed her mind.
When he reached the underground, he paused to take a careful look around, making sure that nothing was tracking him. Satisfied, he went into the building that led down to their home. He went quickly now, Cheney at his side, feeling suddenly tired and ready to sleep. The heavy door was barred and locked, and he gave the requisite series of taps to alert Owl of his presence.
But it was not Owl who opened the door. It was Candle. She stood just inside as he entered, small and waif-like in her nightdress, red hair tousled.
Hawk waited for Cheney as he padded over to his accustomed sleeping spot, and then closed and locked the door behind them. When he glanced back at Candle, he saw for the first time how big and scared her eyes were.
He knelt in front of her right away. “What is it?”
“A dream,” she whispered. “Owl went to bed, and I stayed up to wait for you and I had a dream. I saw something. It was big and scary.”
“What was it, Candle?” he asked. He put his hands on her thin shoulders and found that she was shaking. He drew her close to him at once, hugging her.
“Tell me.”
He could no longer see her face, pressed close to him as she was, but he could feel the shake of her head against his shoulder. “I couldn’t be sure. But it’s coming here, and if it finds us, it will hurt us.” She paused, her breath catching in her throat. “It will kill us.”
A vision, Hawk thought without saying so to the little girl. And Candle’s visions were never wrong. He ran his hand along her silky hair, then down her thin back. She was still