Wings (A Black City Novel) by Elizabeth Richards Read Free Book Online Page B

the supplies we came for. “Use the cellar door. It’s safer.”
    My mind is still on these “Tin Men” as we climb out the cellar door, which leads into a dark alleyway beside the church. A bell lets out a melancholy
dong, dong, dong
from the church’s belfry, telling the Pilgrims the morning service is about to start. What does Purian Rose need with a new security squad? It can only mean trouble. Destiny, Garrick and Sasha enter the alley first; Elijah and I follow.
    The alleyway is filled with trash cans overflowing with several weeks’ worth of garbage, and I cautiously step over the piles of junk. It’s nearly all glass bottles. Some of them still have a milky-gray residue in them. They must be some of Scott’s potions. I accidentally kick one of the bottles and it rolls across the cobblestones, hitting a pile of rags. The material stirs and a man’s craggy face appears between the folds. A gasp escapes my lips. His sallow skin is drenched in sweat and covered in seeping ulcers, which have devoured his face so that part of his nose and eyelids are missing. Even through my respirator mask I can smell the sticky scent of decay reeking off him. He grabs my ankle and I cry out in fright.
    “Help me . . . ,” he rasps, blood spraying out of his chapped lips.
    “Let her go!” Elijah roughly kicks the man’s hand away.
    We hurry to meet the others, my heart racing.
What was wrong with him?
I haven’t seen wounds that bad since the Wrath, but he didn’t have any of the telltale signs like yellow eyes and hair loss. So what is it?
    “You okay, hon?” Destiny asks as we reach them.
    “No,” I admit. “That man needs our help.”
    “Scott can deal with him,” Destiny says, taking a firm hold of my arm.
    She drags me down the passageway, ignoring my protests to go back. Just before we slip into the crowds, I look over my shoulder. Through the shadows, the homeless man’s rotting face peers back at me.

5.
    ASH
    I STARE AT THE BURNT-OUT RUINS of Black City Zoo, expecting to feel sadness, grief,
something
at the sight. This is where the Darkling assembly used to be. It’s where Natalie and I, and so many others, took refuge when Purian Rose attacked the city a month ago. It was our home. But looking at it now, I feel surprisingly empty. Maybe it’s because I helped orchestrate the attack on Black City that caused this to happen. Or maybe it’s because my real home is where Natalie is and that’s not here. I don’t know where home is anymore.
    I turn my back on the zoo. I knew it would be destroyed, but I had to see it for myself. In the three days since we’ve been in Black City, I’ve visited almost every place that was significant to me and Natalie, as if it would somehow bring me closer to her: the bridge where we first met (destroyed); Black City School where my heart activated (rubble); the house where she lived with Day’s family (razed to the ground). I’ve yet to pluck up the nerve to visit my childhood home, the Ivy Church. Maybe some places are best avoided.
    The air is crisp as I stroll through the sprawling Darkling ghetto. Although it’s early spring, you wouldn’t think it, looking at the cinder skies. My feet stir the ash that has settled on everything, from the winding cobblestone path to the thousands of cheap metal shacks that once housed my people.
    Up ahead, the Boundary Wall splits the horizon. The concrete structure is easily thirty feet high and stretches around the entire ghetto, dividing Black City in two—the humans on one side, the Darklings on the other. I frown. Despite a decade of war, an air raid
and
an inferno, the Boundary Wall is still standing.
    There are hundreds of walls like this one in the United Sentry States, the biggest of them all surrounding the Tenth. I run my fingers over the rough concrete. Before I met Natalie, I used to spend hours walking the length of this wall, wondering what life was like on the Darkling side. Now I know. Famine, disease, death.