Page 75 of The Shade of Things
“She’s one of them!” I body-slammed myself against the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
Laurent growled at me.
“You have to believe me. She doesn’t have the tracker.”
“We’re being tracked?” Okeyo slapped his body like he could dislodge it.
Eli and Emmett attempted to pry open the doors here inside the gym while Laurent raced to the ones on the opposite side of the room. Luckily, they just had those horizontal bars to push on to open them, but those were locked as well.
The temperature plummeted, my breath coming out in white puffs.
Daw let out a stream of agitated Thai.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the floor, the black painted lines bleeding into the wood. The windows morphed to an impenetrable obsidian.
I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face. It was as if all light had been vacuumed right out of the room. “Eli? Laurent?”
My voice echoed off the walls.
Laurent howled.
Teresa cried out.
Eli called my name.
I fumbled through the darkness, my hands outstretched, finding no one.
Fangs ghosted along my neck and I flinched, slamming my cloaking over myself. I kept going, for an hour, a lifetime, feeling smaller and smaller the longer it took to cross this room.
The darkness had legs. It loomed, it menaced, it peered into my soul and claimed it for its own, a dank toxicity making itself at home.
I hit a corner on rubbery legs and slid down the wall, scratching at my skin, desperate to pry out the evil sludge within.
Blurry figures whipped past me, too fast to be human, while the Sapiens called out: for each other, for help, for mercy.
Nothing else touched me, but I couldn’t escape the dark. It swelled up inside me, crawling higher until it touched my mind. A perfect moment of madness that held and stretched like an opera singer’s note. Crystal clear yet twisted, it strung me tight in its grip, until it snapped.
I spun suspended, blind and deaf, in a vortex. Up, down, time—nothing had meaning anymore. There was just darkness, that place where monsters dwelled.
The evil crooned at me to stop fighting. I was already made of shadows. Embrace it. I floated, weightless, almost reborn. Yes. Give in.
All I had to do was jump and I’d touch the sky. I’d be like that vast galaxy, terrifying, beautiful, ever-changing. Stars appeared, confirming the rightness of my decision, and I reached for them, but as I did, my arm brushed against something hard in my ear.
The stars glittered, smattering the universe with golden dust.
Damn. This thing in my ear was itchy. I grabbed it to tear it out, and the pointy back part jabbed my finger.
Sadie.
I snapped my eyes open to find myself on the playground and gasped, my hand flying to my mouth.
All of us, intruders and players alike, stood before the finish line comprised of bright yellow letters reading “Did you survive the Human Race?”
Everyone except Emmett and Eli wore crazed smiles. Even the wolf lay on his belly with a glazed look, his tongue lolling out.
“Mir! Thank God!” Eli grabbed me in a hug. “I almost lost myself,” he said, “if it wasn’t for Sadie’s earring…”
Emmett hugged me from behind. “I couldn’t get anyone to snap out of it. You guys were lost for hours.”
