I nodded, and let him go.
“How many did you run into?” Vee asked as she walked to my side.
“Two trucks,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other. My body was still ready for action. “There was just one Bane in the first. The other was loaded.”
She nodded. “There were two in the truck I took out. I found another on foot. And then that one who got your soldier. The soldier was headed back for the hospital when it tackled him.”
I swore, my fingers tangling in my hair. “I don’t dare try to call them out,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll just draw more of them into the city.”
“Eve!” Avian suddenly called from behind me. I turned to see him running up to me, rifle in hand, West behind him.
“I told you to keep him inside tonight!” I shouted at West, pointing a finger at him and taking two aggressive steps forward.
“Sorry,” West said as the two of them stopped beside us. He was eying my injuries. Avian was asking what had happened but I was ignoring him for the moment. “Royce’s orders sometimes have to overrule yours. He asked Avian to keep you inside for the rest of the night.”
“What?!” I bellowed, looking up toward the blue floor. But I couldn’t see through the windows. They were covered once again by steel security doors. “But they’re likely to keep coming at us.”
“I’ve got it covered, Eve,” Graye suddenly growled as he came marching back out of the hospital. “We’ll watch the perimeter and we’ve got the tanks in place. You get inside and stay alive.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said, my jaw tightening. “I am needed out here.”
And as I turned my eyes back to the road leading up to the hospital, I saw a figure.
A Bane was standing in the middle of the road, just staring at us.
I brought my rifle up and fired a shot that missed by an inch or two. The Bane turned and ran in the opposite direction.
“Bane don’t run away,” I shouted as I darted after him. “This is a diversion! Be ready to fire!”
I was a block away before I realized that Avian was racing alongside me.
“I’m not letting you go out without me again!” he said before I could try and argue.
And I did want to argue, but all I could do at the moment was smile and shake my head.
The Bane took a quick right and as we rounded the corner after it, I saw it scaling a ladder up the side of a building. I launched myself at the ladder, catching hold of the rung ten feet off the ground.
The Bane scrambled over the ledge as we climbed, disappearing from my view.
Avian called out as he slipped. I looked back at him just as I crested the side of the building.
I shouldn’t have gotten distracted.
An iron fist gripped around my throat, lifting me from the ladder. It held me extended out at a perfect ninety degree angle, dangling me over the side of the building.
Instinct brought my hands to my neck and I could have killed myself for dropping my weapon.
“Eve!” Avian screamed from below me. His rifle clanged against the ladder as he swung it around and pointed it in our direction.
“Shoot it!” I tried to scream but it came out as a strangled gurgle.
“I can’t get a clear shot, not without hitting you!”
“Just shoot!”
There was a moment of hesitation. I clawed at the Bane’s hands, staring into its dead eyes. Avian wouldn’t be able to shoot me in order to kill it. The Bane would throw me off the edge of the roof and then it would infect Avian.
Blood sprayed in my face. I felt a hole tear through the fleshy under part of my right arm.
Metal exploded in my face as the bullet caught the Bane in the chest. Its hand released me as it fell back.
I was falling.
“Eve!”
And then my chest caught the concrete ledge of the building.
More of my skin was scraped away as I clawed to gain purchase. I slipped back and down, my shirt catching and being pulled up. A chunk of rebar that was exposed in the side of the building caught my stomach, shredding my skin and drawing blood.
I couldn’t catch myself in time.
The air whooshed around me.
And then my arm felt as if it was yanked out of socket.
“Hang on!” Avian shouted.
His long, strong fingers were wrapped around my wrist. Thankfully my good one. The one that was still covered in skin.
A smile crossed Avian’s lips as he looked down at me, and a second later, a laugh bubbled up out of him.
I couldn’t help but laugh too. I was dangling twenty feet in the air, my skin shredded and torn, bleeding like crazy, but I felt alive.
“Eve,” Avian said, his eyes dancing. “Will you wear that dress for me the day after you save the world?”
Metal scraped concrete as a hand smacked the ledge. A moment later the mangled figure of the Bane appeared over the ledge.
“Avian!” I screamed.
His eyes turned up to the roof just as the Bane started climbing over the ledge.
With a primal scream, Avian swung me up with enough force to throw me a few rungs over his head. I slammed into the ladder and scrambled the rest of the way up.
I exploded into the Bane, knocking the two of us back onto the roof.
This time my hands wrapped around its throat. Not wasting a second of momentum, I spun the both of us in a circle before flinging it off the side of the building.
It exploded into a hundred pieces when it landed on the sidewalk far below.
Avian let out another slightly hysterical sounding laugh as he looked up at me and met my eyes again.
“You still didn’t ask the question quite right,” I said with a lopsided grin.
The smile that crossed Avian’s lips was crooked and sly. He finished scaling the ladder and stood before me, no more than an inch of space between us.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something tiny.
It was a plain, simple band, shiny silver colored.
“Eve,” Avian breathed. I looked up into his eyes. They were blue, and burning so bright. “Will you fight by my side until the end of our days? By my side—not with me standing behind you or locked up in the hospital. Side by side.”
I licked my bottom lip just once as the smile spread on my face.
“Now that is the right way to ask the question,” I said as I leaned into him. His lips brushed mine, sending electricity that should have killed me through my entire body. “Yes.”
Avian’s free hand came to the small of my back, crushing my body into his. His lips engulfed mine and for a moment I could have sworn we were both flying.
He had promised me that when he did ask the question, it would be grand and that I would be speechless.
It was grand. But the words had come without a second’s thought as to what my answer would be.
It had always been Avian.
THIRTY
There had been many long nights over the course of my life. The night the Bane burned our gardens in the mountains. The night Sarah died. Being tortured in Seattle. I wasn’t sure if that night was the longest, but it certainly made the top five.
After Avian’s proposal, he and I returned to the hospital. Graye was angry that I’d run off, but it was nothing compared to Royce’s fury. He’d pointed a gun at Avian and told me to get inside and stay there.
I surrendered my radio because I knew if I kept hearing the updates I would break someone until they let me out again to help. I left the lobby because Royce commanded me to. I took a hot shower to try and ebb back the action that demanded to be let out from my body. I sat and watched my skin heal beneath my new ring, trying to zone myself out.