Wisteria (Wisteria Series) by Bisi Leyton

didn’t know what to think. These boys could be setting her up as bait or maybe they were part of a cult. She walked back to the window and peered down. It was kind of hard to make out was happening below, but she noticed some movements.
    “Here.”
    She jumped at the voice.
    Bach stood in the doorway. “Felip says that you need proof of what I said.” He held out a pair of binoculars.
    “It’s okay, I believe you.” She only agreed so she wouldn’t provoke her captors or rescuers. She didn’t know who these people were.
    “No, you do not.” He was still holding them out to her. “I want you to see for yourself.”
    She cautiously took the binoculars, noting that Bach was sweating a little. She swung them over to look out of the window. She felt devastated by the destruction she saw below. The streets were littered with burnt and crashed vehicles. Rotten bodies lay everywhere. The shops had been looted or vandalized by survivors. This wasn’t the city she remembered visiting years ago. Was this what it was like in her real home? Her mind went to her home and her extended family. She shuddered.
    “Are you all right?” Bach asked.
    “Of course.” She attempted to smile. Looking through the binoculars again, she saw three biters in tattered fancy dress, shuffling through streets. Seconds later, she spotted groups of twenty or so, all wearing red football jerseys staggering slowly behind them. As the moonlight shone through street, one of the biters gazed up as if looking at her. Wisteria quickly dropped behind the curtain. “Kill the lights,” she said to Bach, who was now standing by the door.
    “Why? I am sure Felip told you, we are safe up here?”
    “Please?”
    He switched off the lights.
    Peeking out again, there were forty biters now roaming through the street below. Wisteria was trapped here with no way out.

 

     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     

    Bach marched across the roof of the Hunter Tower, through the makeshift forest. It was once a flower garden, but he now used it to grow vegetables. Over a year ago, he and Felip built a greenhouse and planted the garden up there so they would be able to grow some of the vegetables from their home realm. Growing plants was something he’d learned from watching his mother, who collected the most unusual plants he’d ever seen.
    Felip was bad at working with plants, but he’d gotten a bit better over the last years with Bach’s help.
    Enric, on the other hand, was useless at it and he tried to get Piper to learn, but Bach refused to be near enough to teach her.
    Once at the edge of the roof, he leaned over, watching the night covered street. About three hundred or so infected Terrans staggered along in the street below.
    Bringing the Terran girl here was a mistake. She didn’t remember him and from her eagerness to leave, she despised him. This hurt him deeply. He did not expect her to fall at his feet, but he didn’t expect such rejection. “Ah.” He clenched the railing as sweat poured down his arms.
    “I thought you would be inside, figuring out why you think you remember her.” Felip tapped him on the shoulder. “Instead, you are up here alone while getting extremely angry.”
    “Why are you not resting? You look worse than before.”
    “I think Wisteria has been around strangle weed.” He waved his hands and sat down on a nearby bench. “But it’ll be better once she has washed.”
    “That explains why I have been sweating so much. How much does she have on her?”
    “She did not have with her. I think she bathes in it.”
    Unbeknownst to the Terrans, strangle weed, a violet vine that grew on Terra, was one of the few things from Terra that could kill the Family. It was toxic to the Family in almost any form and just being near it was uncomfortable for Bach, to say the least.
    “After the swarm passes, I will take her back. We will not have to worry about her poison,” Bach grumbled as he stepped onto the railing. “I want to check the perimeter