Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch(42)

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.

I slowly got to my feet. The pain made my head swim, but I managed to hobble out of the room and into a narrow hallway. At the end, there was a soft, amber-colored light. I made my way to it, one hand against the wall to hold myself up. When I came to the end of the hall, I turned a corner and found a large open space. Candles sat on every available surface, their warm glow illuminating a maze of floor-to-ceiling shelves. I was in the library.

I wound through the stacks, surprised to find entire rows of shelves sitting empty. It looked like nearly half of the library’s books were gone. Most of what remained lay in messy heaps in the aisles. I stepped over a mountain of Stephen King paperbacks and a crumbling pyramid of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. Some had pages torn out of them; some had been ripped in two.

I found Freeman not far from the circulation desk, taking books from the floor and methodically re-shelving them. His coat was draped over a chair, leaving him in his dingy black pants and a sweat-stained shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He glanced up when I came in, but he didn’t say anything, just nodded toward one of the empty shelves. Sitting on it was a bottle of water and a bottle of aspirin. I shook four into my palm and chased them with a gulp of water.

“Thanks.”

Freeman slid another book onto the shelf. I figured I should start heading back to Lucy’s Promise, but I was too tired, too sore. The bruises along my chest and sides screamed as I lowered myself onto the floor beside the collected works of Charles Dickens. The spine of Great Expectations was broken. The cover of A Tale of Two Cities had been torn off and tossed aside.

“What happened?”

Freeman knelt by another pile of books and started turning each one over in his hands, lovingly checking it for damage.

“The latest skirmish in an old war,” he said.

“What war?”

“The library versus the powers that be.”