“I don’t mind it,” Delaney said. “Plus, Nate’s usually hanging around. Maybe he’ll know something.”
When the day was done, Delaney bundled up in a coat and hat and headed for the Sanctum. A hunk of black tourmaline weighed heavily in her pocket—to clear any malevolent energy, Mackenzie insisted. The days were getting darker, and already twilight had begun to deepen. She pressed on, hurrying down the wooded path at a clip, ignoring the gathering dark.
She entered the Sanctum to find the interior in shambles. The book cart was overturned, its contents strewn throughout the room. A beanbag had been rent from seam to seam as if by claws, leaving white polystyrene filling to flood the entirety of the space in snowy clings.
Alarmed, she pushed through the mess to the main chamber, where the wall of names rose up from a cataclysm of loose change and scattered pens. At the crux of it all knelt Nate, shirtless and hunched, his shoulders bowed. With a start, she realized he was crying. The sound came out of him in short, watery pulls.
“Nate,” she said, as softly as she was able.
The crying stifled. The room went still.
“Get out,” he said.
She stood her ground. “What happened?”
He bent forward, his fists pressed into the floor, rocking himself like a child. The sound that came out of him was low and strange. A moan, inhuman. She took a step, and a marker went skittering away from her, spinning out like a pinwheel. It rolled to a stop at the sole of his shoe.
He froze up like an animal, the hard ridge of his spine visible beneath his skin. Across his left shoulder blade, there was a single phrase done in bold, looping ink.Non omnis moriar.The sight of it bit into her like ice. When he spoke again, his voice came out strangled, like he’d meant to scream and found himself instead underwater.
“Get. Out!”
She staggered back, slamming into the wall and groping for the exit. Back through the polystyrene mess, little white balls clinging to her stockings. Out into the trees, where the waning light grew far too faint to pierce the branches. Alone and in the dark, she raced headlong down the leaf-slick trail. Branches tore at her skin. Her boots caught on the broad rivers of roots. She didn’t stop. She kept on running, shadows tearing at her skin, until she broke at last through the thick juniper press and staggered onto pavement.
Up ahead, the moonlit quad was empty of students. She huddled beneath the feeble glow of a streetlamp and tried to catch her breath. Her beret was gone, lost to the wood. Her cheek stung where she’d run headlong into a patch of spruce. The hunk of tourmaline sat useless in her pocket.
Breathless, she was about to start off for her dorm when she heard it: a sound, severed and strange as a coyote’s cry. It was the sort of far-off wail of something in deep distress, bone-chilling and distant. It carried in as though borne upon the icy crest of a winter wind. Only, there was no wind. The night around her was still and quiet as glass.
Somewhere in the dark, a foot fell on the walk. Her heart climbed into her throat, sour and thumping. A second step followed, dragging across the ground in a scrape. Step. Drag. Step. Drag. That pervasive wail continued. She froze, paralyzed—convinced that to step outside the fluorescent sphere was to enter the den of some ancient, unseen beast.
The pavement was mottled in shadow, the spaces between the lamplit concrete dark as a void. And there, beyond the reaches of light, something was approaching, its movements arachnid.
All the hair rose along her arms. Softly, she called out, “Hello?”
The disembodied wailing fell silent. At the far end of the sidewalk, a single lamp clicked off.
“Malus navis,” whispered the wind.
She frowned, not trusting her hearing. “Nate?”
The sound that answered her was a snarl, primordial and strange. A second lamp clicked off. That terrible void widened, swallowing up the walk. Her heart clanged through her in a warning bell. With fumbling fingers, she drew her phone out of her pocket.
It rang only once before Colton answered.
“Wednesday. This better be good. I’m right in the middle of dissecting Dante, and he’s just about to journey into the first circle of Hell.”
“Where are you?”
He paused for the briefest of seconds. “The library. Are you okay?”
“I’m outside by the quad.” Another lamp clicked off. The dark rushed toward her. She shut her eyes. On the other end of the phone, she heard Colton zipping up his bag. “I’m going to ask you for a favor,” she said. “I need you to not make fun of me for it.”
“Okay.” His voice came out cavernous, like he’d stepped inside a stairwell.
“I’m serious, Price.”
“Do I sound like I’m laughing?”
Something skittered past just out of sight. “Can you come out here with me?” She didn’t know how to explain what she needed from him without sounding insane. Without looking breakable. Fingers shaking, she landed on, “I don’t really like the dark.”
