Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(97)

And he wishes it would just stop.

He wishes he were dead.

“Oh, Jeffrey,” I gasp. “Don’t think that.” I throw my arms around him, my heart in my throat. “I love you, I love you,” I’m saying over and over. “And Mom loves you, and Dad loves you, he does; we all love you, silly. Don’t think that.”

“Mom’s dead. Dad’s gone. You’re busy,” he says without inflection.

“No.” I pull back and look into his eyes, tears streaming down my face. I put a hand on his cheek the way I did with Samjeeza earlier and flood him with the memory of Mom on Buzzards Roost this afternoon, hoping he can receive it, focusing on the moment when I first told her about Jeffrey, how happy she was at the very idea of him. Then I show him heaven. Mom walking into the distant light. The warmth of it. The peace. The lingering traces of love all over her.

“Don’t you see? It’s real,” I whisper.

He stares at me, a sheen of tears in his eyes.

“Let’s go home,” I say.

“Okay.” He nods. “Okay.”

All my breath leaves me in a relieved rush. We move to the door. Christian’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking all around like the very shadows are going to jump us. Over there, he says, looking to the west, to the waning light. Something’s coming.

I grab Christian’s hand, still gripping Jeffrey’s. “Come on.”

There’s the clear sound of a train whistle, high and sweet. I’ve never heard a more welcome sound in my life.

The people on the street turn toward the noise.

It’s coming. It’s almost here.

But now we’ve caught the attention of the damned. I was concentrating on Jeffrey before, not looking at the other lost souls in the pizza parlor, but they are all looking at me. Even the gray people out on the street are turning slowly toward us, their faces raised instead of bent to the ground. They look directly at us, and where their eyes should be are black, empty holes. They open their mouths, and the insides are black—their teeth are black, their tongues—and I become aware of another noise, like the buzzing of flies. Death.

Christian swears under his breath. Angela grabs Jeffrey’s hand.

One of the gray people lifts a bony finger to point at us. Then another, and another. Then they start to move in our direction.

“Run!” Angela yells, and we take off toward the train station down the middle of the street, our arms bumping and jarring as we struggle to keep holding on to one another. We can do it. We’ve only got like half a block to go, if that. We’re so close. Minutes away from safety. We can do this. We can get there.

But we don’t make it ten feet before the gray people start to pour onto the asphalt to block our way. They are lighter than real people, easier to shove back, to push past, but soon there are so many of them, too many of them now, an army of the damned between us and the station. Their fingers are cold and damp, zombielike, their hands tearing at my hoodie and then at my hair, Angela kicking and screaming and crying, Jeffrey being jerked out of my grasp. They’re all around us, on every side, moaning, yelling things in a language I don’t understand, a litany of low, guttural noises, shrieks. We’re going to be torn to pieces, I think. We’re going to die right here.

But then they stop, as suddenly as they turned on us. They back away, then cast their faces down again, leaving the four of us gasping and panting in a small empty circle in the middle of the road. We’re trapped.

I warned you not to speak to anyone, comes Samjeeza’s voice ringing in my head, and I feel a kind of eagerness from him. Fear. Excitement. He expected this. He knew that Jeffrey was in hell, and he knew that I’d talk to him. He knew that I’d give us all away.

I’m beginning to think he tricked us.

Please, I say desperately. Help us.

I can’t help you now. Asael has you, and then Samjeeza’s presence vanishes as quickly as it came. He’s deserted us.

The crowd of gray people is parting to let someone come through. I can’t see him yet, but I feel him. I know him. My blood turns to ice at the wave of malevolent delight that radiates out of this man, this angel, which overcomes his sense of sorrow to the point that it chills my bones to think all that he could be capable of. He is powerful. He is hate. And he carries the image of a drowned woman like a tattoo on his heart.

“Asael,” I whisper.

I turn to Christian. He smiles at me sadly, lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. Angela puts her tattooed hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

“Thanks for trying,” she says. “It means a lot that you tried.”

“What’s happening?” Jeffrey asks.

“We’re done,” I answer. “There’s no way out.”

“You could cross us.” Christian’s eyes meet mine, flaring with hope. “Call the glory, Clara. This is it. You were right. This is your purpose, this right now. Call the glory. Get us out of here.”

I reach for the glory, but the sorrow presses in.

“I can’t,” I say helplessly. “There’s too many of them, too much sorrow; I can feel them—”

“Forget them.” He takes my face in his hands. “Forget Asael. Just be with me.”

I stare up into his warm green eyes, so close that I can see the flecks of gold.