“Well?” Hailey asked, swaying in time to the music like she was trying to suck me in. “All work and no play… ever heard that before?”
It was tempting. I yearned to toss everything aside and go out there with her, to feel unrestrained even if only for a few moments. But then I started thinking about Naira. I’d run from home for something specific and this wasn’t it. Wherever they were with that lady from the photo, they weren’t partying.
“It’s not my thing,” I said over the noise.
Hailey pouted. It was cute. A little too cute.Focus, Ada. You came here on a mission. Stick to it.
“You sure?” Hailey asked, still swaying. This time her fingers motioned me to join her.
I smiled. “We need to figure out our next step.”
Hailey groaned before following me to the parking lot where her red death trap awaited us.
Hailey and I moved away from the dense heat of the college crowd, the cooler air reenergizing me.
I sensed movement around us, not a bunch of college kids heading to the quad, but something familiar and not in a good way. It was the same feeling I’d had when I was sitting in front of the alley outside her home. Only moments ago, I swear there were people in the lot with us, which was suddenly deserted except us and a growing buzz like a swarm of locusts in a wheat field, signaling that something, or somethings, much worse than that were coming.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sound, like a million nails scraping across concrete and cement, came first and from all around. Then a hollow moaning sound of torturous agony. My body came alive, sensing that danger was close. Hailey was too busy assessing her drink situation to notice right away. It wasn’t until I grabbed her wrist, not realizing my strength until she flinched, snatched her hand away, and stopped what she was doing. Confusion wrinkled her brows as our eyes met and she opened her mouth to protest. Until she heard them too.
The blue lights from the emergency call boxes were a call for help that would not come, and from us. The streetlights cast an eerie, yellowish glow. Awhooshsounded above us, dimming one of the lights, as if something had swallowed its light. Then another. I tried locating the source but was too slow to catch whatever had made that enormous shade. Shadows swirled and reshaped themselves around us, becoming a tight net of black, closing in on us.
“What is happening?” Hailey breathed, her once-confident tone replaced by fear. She pressed her back against mine, her handfinding mine. No electricity this time. Just pure, unadulterated fear shared between us.
There was a heavy thump as whatever had been flying dropped to the ground. And then more thumps as shadows with tiny, gleaming specks dropped in ones and twos from the trees, scampered out from beneath parked cars, and emerged from the darkness between the buildings.
The shadows merged and then sheared from one another, becoming distinct shapes. The bodies with the shining, speckly eyes stood there, facing us, surrounding us, tilting forward with their arms extending at their sides, elbows bent outward like prehistoric humans. But these things around us weren’t human. Their fingers spread apart, and when they began advancing, emitting moans and high-pitched wails, I could see the thick, dark curving lines running the entire length of their bodies, all the way to their faces. Their veins showed through the color of their ashen skin—it didn’t matter if they were white or Black, or different races. Tonight, they were one singular being, moving in sync, getting closer and closer to us, their veins and whatever was coursing through them shining like thick black permanent marker.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Hailey repeated. I had never seen anything like this. Had never known anything like these things with their eyes that were tiny, red-rimmed pinpricks of light. Their mouths dropped open, gaping, and drooling down their chins, down to the ground.
My mind raced. What should I do? I would go down fighting. But with what? And fighting against what? Nothing Nana Ama had taught me prepared me for these—these creatures with theirtorn dirty clothes, as if they’d been rolling round in the dirt and mud. The smell of them hit me hard. Of sickeningly sweet disease. Of putrid flesh. Of old blood and filth. What had happened to them? They were close enough now that I could see one was dressed in a suit. Another was in a ripped maxi dress cinched by a Louis Vuitton belt.
They were right over us. One of them struck out, grabbing ahold of Hailey’s arm. She screamed, short and high. It was enough to give the thing pause for only a second before the creature yanked Hailey toward it. Hailey’s screams echoed in the wind.
Let her go!
I called on whatever parts of my spotty gifts that would work for me now and save us. My strength, despite my fear, bubbled up in me, and I did a half turn. I brought my hand down hard on the creature’s lower arm, breaking it and Hailey’s physical connection. Hailey screamed again from the force of it, but the thing said nothing. Its limp arm swung uselessly back and forth.
I needed space. I needed air. I needed the deafening drone of their noise to cease. I didn’t know enough, wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t in control of myself enough to fight one of these things off, let alone the horde a hair’s breadth away from us. I only had my will and my anger to drive me.
Another one of them reached its pockmarked arm out at us. The arm was covered in bite marks and gashes. We dropped to a crouch. Hailey shrank back, trying to get away from it, but the thing suddenly stopped, frozen. The creatures loomed over us, a stinking humanoid tent, as if they were of one mind. Then the one directly in front of me focused in on me, its large, onyx eyescatching me in their sight line. It watched me with vacant eyes that were a one-way mirror where someone or something could see me, but I couldn’t see them. I tried to get a sense of its thoughts, but its mind, an impenetrable vault, was occupied by something else.
The thing’s mouth unhinged to a length I hadn’t thought possible for a human. The jaw popped and cracked from the effort. A low hum emitted from deep within it.
“Ahhh-bennn-niiiiiii.” The word came out in a low, wet whisper from deep within the thing, from the other side of that one-way mirror. Its lips did not move.
I froze.
Abeni. My mother’s name.
There was no way this woman-thing could have known who my mother was. Only people of the Golden Isle knew her name. Only Nana Ama. Only me.
I didn’t answer.
The creature spoke again. “Who… are… you?” The words came out garbled, gravelly, like it was trying to talk through a mouthful of sharp stones. Like it was trying the words out for size. Its eyes, bright like fireflies, were rimmed in red. The deep grooves of poisoned veins carved in its face were too close, way too close.
“Who… are… you?”
