It works.
Hail peers out the window morosely as if the rest of us aren’t here at all. At least the impressions I’m picking up from him don’t feel outright upset, only tense and uneasy.
Another van rumbles behind us. We careen toward the city together and grind to a halt just outside the factory’s fence.
No vehicles remain in the adjoining parking lot. A tiny waft of relief runs through my body.
The workers must have gone home for the night. There isn’t anyone in the building who could be hurt by the rift.
Inthisbuilding, at least. Last time, the shadowy deluge spilled all the way past the brick walls.
The current flood is lurching out of the rift’s mouth as if it’s vomiting pure darkness. The filmy sludge courses across the yard and into the factory building. The bricks that had already deteriorated with the first onslaught are crumbling further, little chunks disintegrating into the flow of shadows.
If that messdoesswallow any mortal beings for long… I hate to think what will happen to them.
Riva looks at the shadowy muck with a shudder. “Last time it just… stopped and pulled back into the rift. What are the chances that’ll happen again?”
Jonah has hopped out of the other van too. “I don’t think we should count on our problems being solved for us.”
Movement in the deluge catches my eye. My skin crawls as if I’ve been splattered with the ephemeral goop. “It’s not acting exactly the same way. It’s… bulging and dipping.”
As I make the observation, the whole flood heaves more. Its upper surface undulates like a lake in an increasingly forceful storm. The sort-of waves smack into the factory wall, passing through the solid surface but dragging more crumbs out of the brick and mortar at the same time.
Hail grimaces. “That doesn’t look good. I don’t think we can hold back an entire ocean of shadow.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Jonah mutters, and gestures to Riva and Zian. “Come on, quickly. We’ll get out the silver-and-iron chains and see if they have any effect.”
We didn’t have those metals on hand when the rift took us by surprise last time. As Jonah and the shadowbloods haul the sacks of noxious metals out of the back of their van, I head around the building to check how far the flood extends.
Along the side wall, some of the dark substance sloshes out to puddle in on the concrete walkway, which dents beneath the unnerving substance. Little cracks open up in the cement.
As I dodge the puddles in a manic game of hopscotch, Mirage bounds after me. “Back and forth, back and forth. Rock-a-bye shadows. No one’s going to sleep here.”
It takes a second for me to realize he’s talking about more than our jumping when he says, “Back and forth.” The puddles contract into the walls, giving me a jolt of hope that the rift is already sucking the deluge back in, but then they dribble out again.
They’re acting like waves—up and down, in and out.
Why is the shadowy substance so volatile today? Last time, as far as I remember, it just flowed straight out.
Has the rift caught a more exotic disease than indigestion, with some crazy new version of vomit?
I don’t suppose chucking a few buckets of antacid down its gullet would cure the problem.
Raze frowns and hurries onward. “This doesn’t seem like agooddevelopment.”
At the front of the building, the dark flood has spread as far as the road beyond—shallower but still knee-deep, like a drift of snow in the opposite color.
A couple of cars have jarred to a halt on either side. One driver has gotten out to stare; another peers from the side window with an incredulous expression.
I wave my arms at them, reaching for an appropriate human-ish explanation. “Get away! The terrorist gangsters made a toxic spill!”
They remain frozen like deer in headlights.
Do I need to make the situation sound even more ominous? My mind scrambles. “It was terrorist gangstersfrom space!”
If anything, the humans only look more stunned. Not the effect I was going for.
With a roll of his eyes, Hail steps in.
