Only this time it wasn’t just this creature talking to me. All of the creatures’ mouths had disengaged, with thick ropes of saliva dripping down, nearly touching me. I looked at each of them. All of their eyes were fixed on me. All of them mirrors. I was in a house of mirrors and couldn’t find my way out.
All of the things spoke in unison. Speaking to… me.
Again, they asked, “Who are you?” Intoning the question over and over until whatever held them in its thrall began to consume me too.
They were drawing me in and I couldn’t think of anything else. I had to push through, fight back, protect myself, protect Hailey.
The woman-thing stirred. Her arm extended toward me, fingers curled, clawlike, reaching for my face, closer and closer still. She meant to touch me.
My mind thundered.Stay back!
My body finally cooperated, and a swell of burning energy I could only guess to be from the Light unfurled within me and burst out, propelling the thing backward and into the rest of them. Just beyond them, back toward the streetlamp, stood a tall figure. She looked impossibly tall, and I realized it was because her feet were not on the ground but hovering above it. She was wrapped from head to toe in a dark cloak fastened at the neckline. Through the slivered opening at the nape of her neck, an object gleamed against her chest, illuminating her face in an eerie glow. For just a flash, I caught sight of her. My mind must have been playing tricks because she looked no older than me. But before I could get a better look, she turned her head away, hiding herself and the object back in shadows. The ethereal being canted her head slightly as she studied me intently, her telepathic fingers probing my mind for information about who I was, how she could control me, and how I was able to break the connection to these monsters.
I was trying to figure that one out myself.
Beside her, a smallish man, whose feet were firmly on the ground, turned the adoring gaze with which he looked at her tome. I sensed nothing but rage and resentment emanating from him. He was different from her, from the others, but also unlike me or Hailey.
The break, the discombobulation of the monsters, was enough to jump-start action. I flipped around on my hands and knees, scuttling past Hailey, who was staring at them, as petrified as the fossils her family dug up. I got to my feet, reaching down.
“Now. Now. NOW!” I yelled. We had to move while they were confused. While the floating lady was contemplating, or whatever. “Let’s go. Now!”
I grabbed the top of Hailey’s shirt, bunching it in my hand, and yanked her to her feet like she weighed nothing.
She stammered, “That’s not how… Wait. Luke—”
There was no time for waiting.
“Now!”
Hailey got her life together, stumbling along, trying to match my speed. Together we pushed through the remains of the horde, expecting them to follow and attack again. This time I wouldn’t be able to fend them off. Whatever element of surprise I delivered earlier had evaporated.
But there weren’t dozens of feet pounding behind us. There weren’t disjointed limbs reaching to grab us. The horde groaning and snapping their teeth didn’t close in. The floating woman wasn’t suddenly hovering above. I did the one thing I knew you should never do. I chanced a look behind me.
The man at the woman’s side remained there. Hailey and I fought our way out. The gangly things tumbled into each other as they, as one, fell back and let us through.
We ran to Hailey’s car saying nothing, our breaths coming out ragged, our fear driving us forward. She unlocked her car as we approached it and we jumped in, locking it as soon as the doors slammed shut. As she gunned the engine and careened out of the student parking lot, I dared to look back. The spot where at least twenty of those things had attacked us was now empty. It was as if nothing had happened.
But my racing heart and shaking hands told a different story. Something was coming for us, and it wouldn’t stop until it’d ripped us apart.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hailey and I didn’t speak the entire ride back to her house. What had happened was too unbelievable to grasp and too terrifying to say out loud. Hailey didn’t have a chance to cancel with Karlie and Flex, and we were compelled to hang out with no reasonable excuse not to. If she was feeling anything like I was feeling after what we’d just been through, she probably didn’t want to be alone. Not with whatever was lurking out there.
Karlie and Flex brought a buffet of food, a welcome distraction and hidden gift. The adrenaline from earlier, the energy I’d spent calling forth that elusive burst of Light had exhausted me. Their spread of junk and desserts were the things available to help me get by, even if only for a little, until I made it back to the Isle. Hailey hadn’t flaked out this time, but we weren’t good company. And we weren’t able to tell them what happened, so Karlie and Flex left early and we were alone.
On the other side of the room, Hailey remained quiet. She sat unmoving, staring into the flames of the gas fireplace. Her expression was unreadable.
“Should we talk about earlier?” I felt I needed to ask.
Hailey pulled her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “What is there to say? We were attacked by… things that came real close to being zombies.”
Things that saidmymother’s name.
Hailey went to run a hand through her hair, but her hands shook so much that she clasped them back together again. “I just need a moment, okay? Like, what if they come here? I don’t think I can deal with this.”
“They’re not, or else they wouldn’t have let us go to begin with,” I said. “Something stopped them.”
What I didn’t want to say or consider was that it seemed like the woman knew me, knew my mother. She had stopped those things. But why, when they clearly came to attack?
