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The smoke was what caught my eye first. It hovered over the city in black and gray tendrils, like a ghost reluctantly leaving a corpse.
And the closer I got to the city center, the more corpselike it became.
Buildings that had once been the backdrop of my childhood were now frail, twisted skeletons, leaking sparks from their severed veins. Their brick exteriors had been reduced to heaping piles of rubble and ash that completely buried the sidewalks and streets. Every car was a gray metal can, dented and hollowed out and smoking from its melted tires. In fact, everything in the entire fucking city was gray, other than the bright orange fires burning among the wreckage.
I couldn’t see the fighting from my window, but I could hear it, even over the rumble of the train and the rushing of blood in my ears. Gunshots, machine-gun blasts, and small explosions rattled the windows and vibrated through my chest, each one causing my back to go more rigid and my fingers to squeeze the armrests even tighter. The plastic groaned and cracked in my hands before I finally stood and paced the aisle, looking out every window for an auburn-haired girl or a sign pointing me to St. Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital.
As much as I wanted to mourn for my city, for the home that I’d dreamed of returning to for the last five years, the only thing I gave a shit about as I pulled into Heuston Station was finding Clo and getting the fuck out of there.
I bolted off the train the second the doors began to open and sprinted for the nearest exit, slowing to a walk as soon as I noticed a cluster of Russian soldiers gathered around a laptop. A drone flew in through the open exit doors, docking on one of several charging pads strewn all over the floor.
Fuck.
I hadn’t even considered the drones.
They were allowing people to evacuate now, so I assumed these drones were being used for combat, but I knew if one of those soldiers saw a gorgeous redhead walking alone on their laptop screen, they’d switch their device back to Prisoner of War mode real fucking quick.
The only thing that kept me from losing my shit was the fact that she wasn’t naked in the middle of that group of men right now. If the drones had found her, these guys would have made damn sure they got a taste before sending her to the nearest encampment.
Or maybe they already had. She did have a two-hour head start.
Fuck.
The smoke that filled my lungs and burned my eyes as I slipped outside was a welcome distraction from the spiraling thoughts in my mind. Keeping to the shadows, I quickly assessed the situation on Steeven’s Lane.
After seeing the destruction from the train, I expected to walk straight into a wall of rubble as soon as I left the station, but that part of Dublin was surprisingly untouched. The Russians probably didn’t want to risk destroying anything that might be of importance to them later, like transportation hubs or water and sanitation stations or …
Hospitals.
Turning to the right, I ran as quickly and as quietly as my starving, injured body possibly could, listening for drones, suppressing the agonizing urge to cough. My eyes swept across the terrain, scanning for anyone with dark red hair, but there was no one on the street. The fighting sounded close, maybe a kilometer or two away, but it was far enough that it gave me hope.
St. Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital was just up ahead, bordered on all sides by a four-meter-tall stone wall. I remembered it from when I was a kid. It was the kind of place they didn’t want people escaping from, and if Clo made it inside, it was probably the safest place in the entire city.
My wounds screamed, and adrenaline surged as I pushed myself to run faster, less concerned with being heard or seen now that I knew where the enemy was and my destination was in sight.
As soon as I saw that the metal gate in the wall was wide open, I felt myself exhale in relief.
Just before an errant rocket brought my entire world crashing down.
CHAPTER 38
CLOVER
“Mrs., em … Donovan? You’re in luck. Your uncle is awake and somewhat lucid today. Please, follow me.”
St. Patrick’s Psychiatric Hospital was being run by a skeleton crew, thanks to the mass exodus from the city, and the few people who’d stayed to care for the patients seemed shell-shocked and vacant. I wasn’t sure if it was their desire to care for others or their basic need for normalcy that kept them coming back, but whatever the reason, it was obvious that by this point in the invasion, checking visitor IDs was pretty low on their list of priorities.
I’d given them Darby’s name just in case I needed to be a blood relative to visit. Eamonn O’Toole was the only person alive who might be able to tell me what I needed to know, and I wasn’t going to risk my chance to see him by letting them know that I was a perfect stranger.
I followed the hollow-eyed nurse down a clinical gray hallway to a door that had to be opened with a key card.
The first thing I noticed was a large window that looked out over Steeven’s Lane. Of course, I couldn’t see the road through the massive stone wall encircling the hospital, but I could see the taller buildings behind it. At least, the ones that were still standing.
I didn’t think anything could affect me as much as the destruction of Howth, but riding through the wasteland that Dublin had become ripped the newly formed scabs off of all of my still-fresh traumas.
I was so close to home, and yet I was homeless.
Images of blood-splattered plaster and a severed hand flashed behind my eyes before I shut them down, taking a deep breath and shaking my head as I stepped farther into the room.
