Brandt answered him as he tightened the straps of a knapsack onto Brenna’s back. “Because we don’t know what the cost of bringing everything back will be. Brenna still owes the universe a debt for her immortality. Norna has warned us that if we keep upsetting the balance of things, we might end up owing our lives and futures.”
“Are you saying that we might not try to restore humanity?” Jerrik asked.
“I’m saying,” Brenna interrupted, “that I need to go see it for myself. I am the one who caused whatever destruction is on Earth when I stopped the plague. I sacrificed humanity in order to save the other realms and all of my friends. I need to see what I have done.”
“When we return,” Brandt added, “Norna said she would talk with us about how to bring back the mortals who were lost. Helia and Matt have already gone back to Hel to tend to all that have arrived in the underworld. If we end up recreating humanity, we need to see all that was lost.”
“All right,” Colby said agreeably. “You think there’s a chance the Bao place is still there?”
Erik laughed out loud.
“What?” Colby said. He sounded like a little boy who had just tread mud all over his mother’s white carpet and stood innocently questioning what he had done wrong.
“I find it truly amusing that you think your favorite restaurant has survived the apocalypse that we just sent raining down on Earth,” Erik answered.
“So, that’s a no then?”
Brenna laughed a little too, even though her heart was heavy. She was glad that all four guys were coming. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Their journey to Earth was a silent one. Brenna felt responsible for whatever it was they would find there. And although the men had lived in many realms over the course of their existences, they had all become rather fond of this one. New York City tends to have that effect on people. When they arrived, it was all they could do not to break down. Brenna gasped and turned away quickly to bury her face in Brandt’s shirt.
To say there was carnage would have been a vast understatement. There were some buildings still standing, and many more had been reduced to crumbled piles of brick and dust. The roads were cracked as though the ground had buckled beneath them. Everything was dark, covered in a thick layer of smog with barely any electricity powering a few scattered and flickering streetlights. Corpses laid everywhere as if the people had all decided to flee their homes and apartments at once and had been slaughtered in the streets as they ran. The faces of the dead people looked like they had been frozen in fear, and it was evident their deaths had not been easy ones. Some had a dried froth lingering on their lips from being choked and poisoned by the plague. Others had open, bloodshot eyes that looked like their blood vessels had imploded. Women laid in the streets with their dead children still held in their arms, and the crushed and mangled bodies of men who had jumped from the buildings above covered the streets in blood. It wasn’t just that the mortal realm had perished; it had been brutally destroyed.
Brandt held onto Brenna and rubbed the back of her head until she was ready to turn around again. She took a few deep breaths and then faced the scene before her. It was difficult for all of them to see. They did not know any of the people who lay dead at their feet, but they all felt like they did. The people had all been a part of the city that they lived and breathed, and they felt like each of them had been a piece of the home that was now gone.
“Let’s see if the apartment still stands,” Jerrik said. He was as deeply affected as the rest of them. But standing in the street, gawking at the massacre was not helping anything.
They walked toward where they knew their apartment to last be, as they tried carefully not to step on any of the bodies. Brenna held onto Brandt’s hand and felt him shiver as he walked past the body of a young woman with long, dark hair.
“What is it?” she whispered to him.
“That could have been you,” he said with fear in his eyes. “She looked like you. If we had not been able to make you immortal in time, you would have been lying in this street just like her.”
She squeezed his hand tighter. “But it’s not me. I’m not mortal anymore, so you don’t have to worry about losing me.”
“Do you remember when you had me promise to you that I would never leave your side, that you would never lose me?” he asked.
“Yes, why?”
“I want you to promise me the same.”
“But you already know I will never leave you. I love you more than life itself. You know you don’t ever need to worry about losing me.”
“Regardless, promise me,” he said. “Please.”
“Okay.” Brenna was a little concerned about why Brandt was so insistent that she made a promise to him, which they both knew she would keep anyway. It worried her that he seemed so nervous. “I promise you will never lose me.”
He looked at her with a temporary satisfaction on his face and smiled. “I couldn’t live without you, you know?”
“I know.” They stopped walking for a moment so Brenna could kiss him and feel both of his arms wrapped around her.
“Hey guys,” Colby said. “Check it out.”
When they turned around to look, they saw Colby was pointing to their apartment. It still stood, which was surprising considering it was one of the tallest high-rises in Manhattan. They went to the elevator and pushed the button, but the electricity was out.
“Who’s up for climbing twenty-seven flights of stairs?” Erik asked. They all followed him to the stairwell and began the ascent.
The stairwell entrance into the apartment actually opened into the back of a closet in Erik’s room. Brenna had never known that before since they had never had a need to take the stairs. When they finally got to the top and managed to catch their breath, Erik pushed hard against the door to open it.
“There’s something blocking the door,” he said after multiple attempts to shove it open.
“You should have cleaned out your closet,” Jerrik joked.
“Trust me; it’s empty. Something must have fallen in front of the door and blocked it.”
All of them put their shoulders together on the door and heaved against it. After some effort, the door buckled and broke off the hinges.
“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Colby said. He pulled the door from the opening and tossed it to the floor.
The path into the apartment was blocked with debris as if someone had turned the apartment on its head and shook up all of its contents. They lifted piece by piece of the things blocking their way until they were able to get inside. Once in, they made their way toward the living room. It was an odd array of items scattered on their sides throughout the apartment. Some things were still untouched as if nothing had happened, and other things were damaged beyond recognition, even others were missing entirely.
All of the glass from the windows had been blown out, and there was a cool breeze of fresh air wafting through the room. Brenna turned over one of the chairs and sat on it. She reached down to the floor in front of her and picked up one of her old sketchbooks that was torn and dirtied with the same dust, which now coated everything in the city. She flipped through the pages and saw half-torn images of practice sketches she had drawn of the men during her first few weeks at the apartment. So much had happened since then. The guys came and turned over chairs and kitchen stools and sat down around her.