by Kelly Creagh
He pulled her with him beyond its boundaries, and as they shot through to the other side, Isobel’s eyes flickered up. Countless figures now populated the endless crisscrossing network of stairs—most of them cloaked, all of them men.
Lost Souls, Isobel thought, meeting the stare of one who, unlike the others, had channeled his focus on her instead of Lilith’s writhing form.
Then the door swung shut, blocking the sight.
Music boomed, bass thumping the floor beneath the soles of their shoes like a thundering heartbeat.
Colored lights blazed. Streamers and balloons—red and pink. People everywhere.
As Isobel’s vision adjusted, she slowly began to register the faces surrounding them as . . . familiar.
Boots squealing on glossed hardwood, Varen skidded to a stop, halting Isobel with him.
Though the music pounded on, those dancing nearest to them lowered their raised arms.
“Oh my God,” said someone nearby, inciting the unanimous withdrawal that came next.
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Bumping and jostling into one another as they retreated, Isobel and Varen’s classmates formed a wide circle around the two of them.
Smiles fell. Faces paled.
And as the shock of their sudden presence rippled its way through the gymnasium, through the attendees of Trenton High’s annual Valentine’s Day dance, it dawned on Isobel what had just happened.
They were back.
37
Neither of Ingress or Egress
No one spoke. No one moved.
For five fleeting seconds, they all just stared.
Then from the midst of the crowd rose a sweater-sleeved arm. Its hand held aloft a cell phone. Flashing bright white, the device snapped Isobel and Varen’s photo.
When a second flash sparked, Isobel whipped her head in that direction, her damp, clotted hair swinging.
A third flared right in front of her face. Then a fourth from behind.
Even over the throbbing music, Isobel could hear the digitized clicks of the cameras, the pings and chirps of phones receiving alerts.
With the rise of the discordant chimes came murmuring and pointing fingers. Isobel heard their names repeated again and again, growing louder with each utterance as the shell shock in the room began to thaw.
“Move!” a voice roared above it all, and Isobel turned, her heart thrumming.
Scanning the sea of cell phone lights, she searched for the source of that brash voice, recalling in the same instant the text she’d sent earlier before crossing into the dreamworld.
At first Isobel saw only the wide eyes of the cameras.
Then, wrestling between a pair of clinging couples, someone broke through.
“Isobel!” Gwen shouted, throwing off the hood of the oversize black-and-white checkered sweater Isobel recognized as Mikey’s.
Slung across one shoulder, Gwen wore her patchwork purse, and in one hand, her own cell glowed.
Isobel had just enough time to register the ash-smeared forms on its screen before Gwen rushed her.
Isobel released Varen’s hand to catch her friend.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” Gwen said, her voice high, pinched with fear. “So I can kill you. ”
Though Isobel wanted to return Gwen’s fierce squeeze, to tell her how relieved she was to see her, her thoughts swarmed around the photo she’d glimpsed on Gwen’s cell.
Had someone texted the photo to her? Or had the snapshots already splashed their way across the Internet and all of social media?
How many more minutes—how many more seconds—before those images found their way to Varen’s parents? To her parents. To the police . . .
She and Varen couldn’t afford to get caught, to be hauled off in different directions. Not now. Not without first severing their ties—Varen’s ties—to the other side. To Lilith.
Taking Gwen by the shoulders, Isobel parted their embrace.
“Gwen, listen to me. We have to—” She stopped when she noticed a flitter of shadows skirting the room.
Gwen had clearly sensed it too, because her eyes went to Varen, who stared at the ceiling.
Looking up, Isobel saw what held his attention.
A dark haze had begun to wrap the mirrored surface of the lazily spinning disco ball. Sharp faces, distorted, broken, and jagged-toothed, appeared between the smoky tendrils, causing the globe’s grid of projected light to flicker again.
“Thaaat’s . . . not a special effect,” Gwen said, “is it?”
Snapping from his trance, Varen moved. He snatched Isobel’s hand, and she, in turn, grabbed Gwen’s.
In one fell swoop, the legions of cell phones winked out, screens going black.
A screech of feedback sliced through the music, its piercing shriek killing the thudding bass and vocals.
Everyone ducked their heads and covered their ears.
Pulling Isobel and Gwen after him, Varen ran toward the glowing exit sign and the double doors beneath—the only barrier between them and the parking lot, which contained, Isobel hoped, Gwen’s car.
Girls in heels backpedaled from their path, shoes clattering while boys in dress shirts peeled away, everyone giving them a wide berth.
The colored lights dimmed, fluttered, and snapped out, plunging the room into darkness.
Screams rose, followed by an earsplitting crash.
Through the coarse material of Varen’s mechanic’s jacket, Isobel felt debris pelt her shoulders. She looked back to see Gwen’s stricken face, pale pink in the red glow of the nearing exit sign, and behind her, lying in shambles on the cleared floor, the obliterated disco ball.
Though Isobel no longer saw the Nocs, she knew they were there. All around them. All around everyone.
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Suddenly the blazing fluorescents burst on; someone must have tried the main lights. One after the other, each fixture burst with a loud pop. Showers of sparks and glass rained down into the renewed darkness.
“—got a gun!” Isobel heard someone shout as people hit the floor all around her, covering their heads. Covering one another.
No, she thought. No no no.
“Isobel?!”
Her head swung toward the panicked cry.
“Isobel!” boomed the voice a second time, and as the emergency lights kicked on, Isobel saw him. Her father.
His head bobbed above the others, his gaze darting through the confusion before homing in on her.
Then her dad started running, dodging through the groups and around the couples as they scrambled past him, all of them hurrying in the opposite direction. Trying to get away.
Close behind him, Isobel spotted Principal Finch’s bald head. Mr. Nott’s glinting glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, too.
Even from a distance and with so many people dashing back and forth between them, Isobel could still mark the change that overtook her father’s expression the moment he laid eyes on Varen.
Rage. Hate. Fury.
Terror.
“Isobel!” her dad shouted again, the sheer panic written across his face causing a landslide to take place inside of her. But even as she ached to stop, to run to her dad and throw herself into his protective arms, she kept her hold on Varen’s hand and allowed him to pull her to the doors.
As she moved, she kept eye contact with her dad, doing her best to project a silent apology. For this. For everything. And whatever happened next.
But then another man rushed between them into the center of the room, blocking Isobel’s view of her father. It was the police officer Isobel had seen that morning, the one who was assigned to Varen’s missing-person case. Detective Scott.
Gun drawn and held low to his side, he halted atop the emblem of Henry the Hawk.
“LMPD,” he shouted at them. “FREEZE!”
CLUNK came the sound of the door’s push bar, and, yanking hard, V
aren pulled Isobel and Gwen past him, through to the other side.
Isobel staggered out into the open, but the soles of her shoes did not meet with hard pavement.
Ash, soft and silent, absorbed her steps.
Trees and darkness greeted her instead of cars and streetlamps.
Swinging back toward the school, Isobel saw no door, no gym, no cop. Only the familiar black chasm she’d encountered before when she’d crossed through the veil.
“What just happened?” Gwen panted beside her. “What’s going on? Where are w—?”
Hundreds of coils of violet smoke poured through the black opening, whisking in every direction.
Taking on their bird forms, the Nocs screeched. Caws filling the air, they began to circle around the three of them. Then they morphed yet again, from crows to smoke, before solidifying into ghouls.
“Run,” Varen commanded, as pair after pair of buckle-lined boots landed in the dust, sending up plumes of white.
38
Shrapnel
Clutching Gwen’s hand again, Isobel turned to go, but she found their way barred on every front as more and more Nocs landed in the dust.
Wafting high, the unsettled ash became smog, its haze thick enough to obscure the emerging figures and turn them to silhouettes.
Though Varen had told them to run, short of creating another door, there was nowhere to go. And what door could deliver them from these creatures, whose attachment to Varen enabled them to follow him anywhere?
At least here in the dreamworld, Isobel reasoned, she could see her assailants.
Hissing and whispering, the Nocs inched closer, their bodies clinking and clattering as they jostled one another. But as they bared their claws, drawing tighter, Isobel began to note a difference in their demeanor.
In her past encounters with the Nocs, they had always laughed and jeered among themselves, sharing in some mutual and heinous mirth.
Pinfeathers, in particular, had displayed a penchant for an especially dark brand of humor. His malevolent glee, Isobel recalled, had been interrupted only by intense emotions like fear or rage.
Or love . . .
Of course, Isobel didn’t have to guess which emotions had triggered the shift in these Nocs, not one of which smiled or snickered.
Instead they sneered and glowered, their sharp, broken faces fixed in glares of hatred.
We are hurt, Pinfeathers had said to her in the park. And only now, as the creatures stared past her, through her, to their source—Varen—was she able to fully comprehend what the leader of Varen’s Nocs had meant.
Isobel would not be able to fight these Nocs, let alone defeat them, like she had with Scrimshaw. There were too many to fend off with blows or dreamworld tricks, and despite her track record of landing lucky punches, Isobel knew she was unequipped for this battle.
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“What are they?” Gwen asked, her voice trembling as hard as her hand in Isobel’s. “Please tell me this isn’t real. ”
“They can’t hurt you or me,” Isobel said. Huddling nearer to Gwen, she hoped her words—the only remotely comforting ones she could think to offer—were indeed still true.
Varen opened his arms wide and splayed both hands, as if that might somehow force the creatures to retreat.
The action only drew them nearer.
Gwen clung to her harder as Isobel fought a rising tide of helplessness. Then her racing thoughts latched on to what she’d just told Gwen. About their being protected.
“Varen,” Isobel said, pressing her back flush to his. “The Nocs. They couldn’t harm me before. Even when they tried. None of them could. Because of you. Because they come from you, and in your mind, you wouldn’t let them. Because you cared for me. About me. ”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but if you have a point—”
“They can’t get to you unless you let them. Like you wouldn’t let them get to me. ”
“Weak,” whispered one of the snarling Nocs.
“Worthless,” snapped another.
“Surprising as you may find it,” Varen replied, his voice as doleful as it was dry, “I somehow doubt they share the same affinity for me. ”
Isobel’s heart stammered a beat at this response and she scowled, arrested by how much Varen had just sounded like . . .
Breaking free from Gwen, Isobel rushed to stand in front of him. Though she saw no sign of Pinfeathers’s presence, no evidence that the Noc could have somehow rejoined with Varen, she now found herself wondering if the two had ever truly been separate to begin with.
“Don’t you see?” she said, gripping him by the arms. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. ”
“Screwup,” came another hiss.
“Waste. ”
“Ignore them,” Isobel urged. “Tune them out. Focus on me. On what I know you know in here. ” She pressed a hand against his chest—his heart.
“I can’t fight them. ” He shook his head without looking at her. “And I can’t send them away with a thought. Believe me, I’ve tried. ”
“You don’t have to fight,” Isobel said. “Not when they only have as much power as you give them. These things answer to you. To your deepest thoughts. Your unconscious desires. Please, say you understand. ”
“I’m afraid I do,” she heard him mutter, his eyes at last shifting to hers.
“I need you,” Isobel said through gritted teeth. “She is losing and she knows it. Why else would she send them?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Trouble letting go?”
“Hey. ” She gave him a stiff shake. “You are mine. So don’t you dare let her win. Do you hear me?”
“If anything will help,” he said with a sad smile, touching her cheek, her scar, “that might. ”
Panic clenched a cold fist around Isobel’s heart. She started to speak again, to remind him once more how much she loved him. But she didn’t get the chance.
The Nocs converged on him.
Cut off and thrown back, Isobel plowed into Gwen, who caught her and held her tightly.
“Varen!” Isobel screeched, struggling to free herself as the Nocs tore into their prey.
39
Redoubled
Though Isobel continued to fight against Gwen, her actions grew weaker with every passing second, enabling Gwen to pull her away from the carnage that, by this time, had already accomplished the worst.
Dying as quickly as it had begun, the chaos of noise and movement, of shrieking and slashing, subsided to nothing.
Stillness took the place of the mayhem and, not daring to breathe or blink, Isobel ceased her struggles.
Gwen’s grip on her eased. They both remained in place, staring into the clouds of white that had risen thick enough to hide the onslaught—and now, its outcome.
The curtain of soot thinned. Hours seemed to pass while Isobel scanned the haze, searching for something—anything—to make sense of.
She stiffened when, from nowhere, more dark forms emerged in her periphery.
Reluctantly Isobel broke her gaze from the dissipating fog, her eyes catching those of the towering figure who now stood beside her.
Confused by his sudden presence, Isobel frowned, trying to place the stranger’s sallow face, his rigid features. She’d seen him before, she thought dimly. He’d seen her, too.
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In the Gothic cathedral of Varen’s palace.
This man had been one of the two shrouded figures standing in the shadows, whispering about her. The man who had removed his hood. One of the Lost Souls?
“Isobel, who are these people?” Gwen asked.
Tearing her gaze from the man’s black stare, Isobel glanced all around to see that the forest now held as many shrouded forms as it did trees.
Robed and hooded, grim-faced and onyx-eyed, each held a weapon at the ready, their assortment of arms ranging
from swords to axes to spiked clubs, maces, and even scythes.
How long had they been there? Where had they come from, and why were they—
Crash!
Isobel and Gwen started in unison. The noise, like the shattering of porcelain plates, was one Isobel knew well.
The same sound—that of a shattering Noc—came yet again, louder than before, closer.
Then, as though he’d been thrown, a Noc flew out of the mist. Striking a tree, his hollow body exploded on impact.
A second Noc stumbled from the smog, and, choosing that moment to move, the Lost Soul beside Isobel rushed forward. Seizing the creature by the throat with an enormous hand, he knelt and quickly slammed the Noc down, smashing him to pieces against the ashen ground.
From the clearing vapors, violet smoke spirals shot into the air, zooming in every direction.
Dust mixed with smoke. Snarling faces appeared in the gloom.
Re-forming, the Nocs diverted their attacks to the Lost Souls as they dashed into battle.
A myriad of clashes and clangs, shouts and screeches, crashes and splintering noises rose, building into a crescendo.
Charging straight ahead, Isobel ran headlong into the heart of the riot.
“Isobel!” Gwen cried. “Wait!”
Though Gwen caught her by the arm, Isobel didn’t slow down. Not until she spotted two silhouettes standing opposite each other in the densest portion of the mist.
One of the figures, gangly and long-limbed, belonged to that of a Noc. The other, Isobel saw with a surge of relief, belonged to Varen.
He stood tall, alert, whole, and, aside from a few scrapes and a deep gash that marred the center of his right cheek, unscathed.
The Noc opposite him sought to change that, though, and he lashed out as Varen raised his arms to shield himself. But he couldn’t block the claws from raking clean across his body.
Reeling from the blow, Varen staggered backward.
Isobel halted with a gasp, and when Gwen crashed into her from behind, she fell to her knees in the dust. She looked on helplessly as Varen curled into himself.
As the battle between the countless dreamworld ghouls and Lost Souls continued to rage all around them, both Isobel and the Noc watched Varen, waiting and hoping, she knew, for opposite outcomes.
Slowly Varen lowered his arms.
Then he raised his head and straightened.
Isobel saw no blood—no more, at least—and she tasted relief a second time. Varen had listened. He’d heard her, and had been able to protect himself from the Noc this time.