Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [78]
“You know I can’t do that.”
“I know you think you can’t.”
She drew back from him. “Why must we always have this argument, Hawk?
Every time I see you! Why can’t we be together without talking about the future?” She squeezed his hands sharply. “Why can’t we just be in the present?”
He had thought he would be able to lead into this more gradually, but that wasn’t the way things were working out. He bent close, so that their faces were almost touching.
“Because,” he whispered. “Because of everything.” He took a deep breath.
“Listen to me, Tessa. I told you last night that you had to be careful about going out of the compound, that the Weatherman had found an entire nest of dead Croaks down on the waterfront. But there’s more. We came across a Lizard two days ago that was just all ripped apart. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know anything that could have done it. Then, earlier today, we were down in a warehouse basement and Candle’s voices warned her to get out of there. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel it. There was something there, something big and dangerous, hiding on the other side of a collapsed wall.”
She started to speak, but he put his fingers to her lips. “Wait, there’s more. Last night, after I came back from seeing you, Candle was waiting up for me. She was shaking, she was so afraid. She’d had one of her visions, a bad one.
It was of something huge coming to the city, something that was going to kill us all.”
He touched her cheek, then stroked her hair. “Candle doesn’t make these things up. The voices are real, and they have never been wrong. I don’t think they’re wrong this time. But I don’t know what to do about it. I haven’t told anyone but you. Do you know why that is? Because I can’t do anything without you. I have to get the Ghosts out of the city to someplace safe. But I won’t go without you. I can’t leave you. I won’t ever leave you.”
She nodded, biting her lip and reaching up with her hands to hold his head steady as she kissed his eyes and nose and mouth. There were tears in her eyes.
“What am I supposed to do about my mother? You can’t ask me to leave her!”
His gaze was fierce. “You’re all grown up, Tessa; you’re not a child. We belong together—you and me. We’re ready to start our own life. To do that, you have to leave her. That’s just the way of things. She has your father; he can look after her. You would be leaving her, in any case, if we were to marry.
Isn’t that what you want for us?”
She shook her head. “I’ve told you before! You could come live in the compound! You could be with me there!”
He lost control and shook her hard. “What are you talking about? That’s nonsense! When they caught us together outside the compound—what was it, six months ago—your father forbid you from ever seeing me again. He told us both that it wasn’t something that he would allow, his daughter with a street kid, the member of a tribe. He said that! Others in the compound were even worse.
Some wanted you cast out on the spot. They worried you might have picked up diseases that could be transmitted to them. Some would have thrown you from the walls. Do you think that if we tell them we want to get married, it will change any of that?”
He put his hand on her mouth as she tried to speak. “Wait, don’t say anything. Let me finish. Let me get it all out. I didn’t argue about it at the time. I didn’t know what to say. I just knew I didn’t want to lose you. So we’ve been meeting like this ever since, you sneaking out at night, me sneaking down here through the ruins. But we both know how it’s going to end. Sooner or later we’re going to get caught—unless we find another way to live our lives.”
He exhaled sharply, his energy exhausted. “We’re right on the edge of something. I can feel it. Step the wrong way, and we are lost. Step the right way, and we will never lose each other. But you have to leave the compound. You have to leave and come with me to wherever it is that we have to go to