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It’s dark in the room. Nearly pitch black. Pure shadow and nothing, but it’s all around me, surrounding me on all sides while I lay there with Ryan—with Helios. Burned by the sun, igniting the dark like a star on the velvet black. Unreachable. Untouchable. He’s done this to me. For me. The dark, the empty, the lonely has been pushed from me until it’s enveloped this room and left me nothing but a bright ball of energy, life, and light.
Shaking.
Afraid.
Awake.
Chapter Twenty Three
The Garden Gate.
That’s what Westbrook calls his mansion. His fortress. His castle on the water.
It’s a reference to the Pearly Gates and the Garden of Heaven, but it’s also a nod to the guy who designed and built the place. Apparently he’s taken over the home of a man who was once an electronics and computer expert—Bill Gates. The name means nothing to me, but the older crowd recognizes it: Ali, Alvarez, Todd. It makes me a little happy that Trent didn’t know who he was either. We learned something together, and isn’t that a fresh and new experience?
We got information on the building and the security around it from a few people that survived the destruction of the southern Colony. The Vashons watched last night as people spilled over the walls, desperate to get out and away from the zombies. I listened with Ryan as a lot of them landed on their own mines spread out along the shore, and we didn’t sleep a wink. The few Colonists that survived were very eager to talk. Whatever it took to be kept safe from the absolute hell we unleashed on them.
“I feel like this has gotten away from us,” I confessed as we laid together staring up at the ceiling of the dark, decaying house. “I thought we were freeing people, but what happened with this Colony… It’s not how I saw it going down.”
“It’s more brutal than I expected,” he admitted.
“Why did they do it like that? Why leave everyone alive in the stadiums but murder the entire southern Colony?”
“They weren’t slaves here. Plus, we’re getting closer to this Westbrook guy. You know how the Vashons feel about him. The closer we get, the angrier they get.”
“Remind me not to piss off the Vashons,” I muttered.
“Hmmm,” he grumbled in agreement. I could feel his voice vibrating deep against my cheek where it lay on his chest, making me grin. “Once this is over we’ll get some distance from them.”
My grin vanished as I felt a strange panic set in. “Where will we go?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Your loft?”
“The city. Seattle. It’s home. I don’t want to leave it.”
I felt his fingers thread slowly through my hair, stroking it gently. My eyes rolled closed with the relaxing feeling. If I were a cat, I’d have been purring.
“What about the woods?”
“Crenshaw’s woods?”
“Yeah. We can add on to his house. Make it big enough for the two of us. I can keep up his gardens.”
“Do you know how?”
“He was teaching me for years. I can run that place exactly the way he did.”
“Will you wear a bathrobe and cook me smoked rabbit?”
He chuckled. “I’ll even talk down to you and call you Athena if you want me to.”
“No,” I said, wrapping my arm around him and hugging him tightly. “You’ll call me Joss. Always Joss.”
“Tinkerbell?”
“No.”
“Peter Pan?”
“No!”
“You sure you don’t want me to call you Kitten?”
I pinched his side, making him yelp. “No.”
“All right,” he conceded. His breath brushed hot across my head. His lips landed lightly in my hair. “I love you, Joss,” he whispered.
“I love you, Ryan.”
I will never in my life get tired of saying that.
Now we stand on the deck of the Vashon boat guiding us across Lake Washington toward Mercer Island. Garden Gate is there in the gray morning mist that hovers over the water. It looks like a freak show against its perfect black backdrop. There are no lights anywhere on that island except for this one house—this one weird glass-walled house that’s blazing with u
“It’s totally self-sufficient,” Sam tells us as we stare at it in amazement. “It’s built into the side of a hill and uses the earth for a lot of its walls to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It’s covered in solar panels, it’s using the water in the lake to generate power, there’s a row of wind turbines up on the hill it’s built into. Totally gated in on the back to keep the zombies out, but it sounds like they cleared them off the island same as we did.”
“How do you know all of this?” Ryan asks him.
“Alvarez.”
“How does he know?”
Sam grimaces slightly. “Interrogations.”
“I don’t want to hear about that,” I warn him.
He shrugs. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“An interrogation is a formal line of questioning,” Trent informs us. “It doesn’t necessarily mean violence.”
“Based on what happened to the southern Colony, I’m assuming this interrogation was violent.”
“Safe assumption.”
I shiver against the thought and the cold.
“Is Ali on the boat?” I ask Sam, surprised he’s not with her.
Sam suddenly won’t meet my eyes.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, “she’s here.”
“Are you not guarding her anymore?” Ryan asks.
“No, I am. I’m on a break. She’s with Alvarez.” He shifts on his feet before muttering, “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s sick?” I ask, wondering if that’s rude. Ryan doesn’t nudge me so I figure I’m okay.
“Yeah. She’s kind of on the edge right now,” Sam says with irritating vagueness. “She…” He sighs heavily. He looks over his shoulder and stares at the back of the ship where I can see Alvarez and a long mass of dark hair whipping in the wind.
“Sam?”
His eyes snap to mine. He looks worried.
“Docking in five!” someone shouts.
We’re coming up on the shore outside Garden Gate. My heart begins to pound in my chest.
“Just watch out for her, okay?” Sam says urgently.
“Everyone to their stations!”
Ryan nods as he turns to leave, going to our assigned post. “Yeah, we’ll help you keep an eye on her.”
“No, I mean watch out for her,” he says emphatically.
The deck is swarming with people. A line runs between Sam and I, blocking him from sight.
“You mean like ‘watch your back’?” I shout to him.
He doesn’t answer and when the line of people is gone, so is he. Trent and Ryan have already moved on so I get my butt in gear and head to my post, but Sam’s words are still swimming in my head, confusing me. Worrying me.
We break the mist and there it is, clear and glowing against the hillside. Somewhere inside, Westbrook is milling around in his pajamas. He’s probably munching a donut and sipping tea. Maybe listening to music. He might be watching a movie. Or cartoons like a Saturday morning when we were kids and had homes and parents. And Saturdays.
“Hold!” Alvarez cries.
We all wait, dying to jump off this boat and head inside. It’s going to be brutal, and I remind myself to be ready for that. I don’t plan on killing anyone and I haven’t asked, but I doubt Ryan does either. I’m not afraid to break an arm or deal out concussions with my ASP, but I’d rather not have any more living, human blood on my hands than I already do. I wonder for a second if anyone should clarify that to Trent, but before I can there’s an explosion on the shore.
Several go off, dirt flying into the air and then raining down, pelting the side of the house and the water around us. Some lands on the boat but we all hold steady, waiting.
Alvarez’s team launches two more volleys of stones against the shore until he’s convinced every last one of the land mines waiting for us is dead. We learned our lesson back at the southern Colony; no one is falling for that trick again.