Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What He Paid

Tuck wanted to carry him upstairs, and Ezra wouldn't let him.

"I can walk," Ezra said from the floor. "Mostly."

"Tuck," I said, "go count the barrels."

"They're counted."

"Count them again."

Tuck looked at the bloody towel, and at me, and he went without another word.

I got Ezra up the back stairs to the flat over the shop, one step at a time, with his arm across my shoulders.

He sat down on his grandmother's green sofa and held the torn sleeve away from his body.

The four pink lines on his forearm were already fading.

"Say it," I said.

"It's a long story."

"Then start at the front."

He yawned.

It was the first time I had ever wanted to hit him for it.

"The night before the gate," he said. "Your gate. You came down with the tray, the way you did three nights a week."

"I remember the tray."

"Do you remember the weld?"

I did, suddenly.

A broken seam on the third bar with a cutting edge, and my left hand sliding down it when I reached through to give him the bread.

"I cut my palm," I said.

"You bled on the floor. I wrapped it in the gauze off your tray, and you told me not to fuss."

My left hand was shaking, so I held it with my right.

"There was a bandage when I woke up," I said. "On this hand. Over nothing."

"Yes."

"Why don't I remember the rest?"

"Because you didn't see me do it." He looked at his own thumb, the right one. "I bit it open. I put it against your mouth through the bars."

"I'd have fought you."

"You did. You bit me back."

Iron, I thought.

Warm iron on my tongue, and his voice very close, saying something low and fast.

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