Fragile Darkness (33 page)

“You're okay,” he said in that low, hoarse voice of his, the one from an instant before, when everything had been so incredibly okay. “You're safe.”

He
was okay.
He
was safe, right there beside me, with his hair falling into his face and something I didn't understand burning in his eyes.

My hands shook as I lifted them. “You weren't moving.” I touched him, needing that, the feel of the stubble at his jaw and the softness of his hair.

Blinking, I brought my surroundings into focus, the white sheets and pillow, the big Siamese and small boxy room and Dylan on the edge of the mattress beside me, leaning over me with his hands so steady and sure on my shoulders, holding me.

Not letting me go.

“You fell asleep,” he answered before I could ask.

He must have carried me into his room. “How long?”

“About an hour.”

Everything inside me raced, as if I was running still, running always. “I saw them.” My breath stabbed. “The twisted shadows. It was like a party. They were all there, on the ground in the moonlight by a bridge, except…” The memory made me sick. “They were bodies.”

I struggled for detail, but already the images were retreating. “You were there, too,” I said. “But I couldn't get to you and the bridge was lifting.”

His eyes darkened. “A drawbridge?”

The room kept spinning, tilting, but I made myself scramble from the bed and find the wall, using it to guide me to the milk crates with his laptop.

My fingers shook as I fumbled with the keys, entering words into the search engine:

New Orleans Drawbridge

“There weren't any cars.” That confused me, the absolute darkness, as if we'd been alone in a postapocalyptic world. But I could see it now, finally, the image that had been trying to form since the Greenwood party.

“What else?” Dylan leaned over me. “What else did you see?”

“Will,” I whispered. “He wasn't moving.”

But then the bridge was there, not in my mind or memory, but in a small box on the computer screen.

“That's it.”
I clicked the YouTube link, and the image came to life, a huge, hulking steel structure lifting toward the sky.

“A railroad bridge,” Dylan said.

It made sense, why there weren't any cars crossing it.

“
Whatever you did worked
,” I whispered. My eyes flooded. “You helped me see again.”

His eyes met mine. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn't.”

“You unlocked that place inside—”

His smile was slow, soul melting, and it changed everything. “What I do doesn't happen that fast.”

“But I dreamed. I saw the bodies and the bridge and Will. It was all so clear and real.”

“You,” he said in that steady, unnerving way of his. “You saw, because you were ready to. Because it was time.”

So much hit me at once, shock and confusion and happiness, relief, but there was no time for any of that, not after what I'd seen.

I looked at Dylan. “Something bad's going to happen there.”

A quiet knowing came into his eyes. “You want to go.”

“I
need
to,” I said, remembering the man in the shadows. “I need to see what else I can pick up.”

*   *   *

We called Detective Jackson. To be safe, he was sending a patrol to the bridge. Then I called Jessica and asked her to check on Amber, to try to keep her from going out for a few days, until we figured out what was going on.

When I called Will, he didn't answer. I kept trying, but the phone kept ringing. Kendall hadn't heard from him in hours.

“I don't like it,” I said, staring straight ahead. “He's supposed to be working on a new list.”

“We'll be at the bridge soon.”

Jackson called a few minutes later, telling us the patrols had swung by and found nothing going on. That made me feel a little better.

“It hasn't happened yet,” I said, putting down my phone.

Dylan slid me a quick look. “Only a few more minutes.” We sped past a collection of new houses sitting next to the remains of long-abandoned neighboring homes, the well-traveled road deteriorating into a collection of potholes. At first there were streetlamps, then there were none, leaving the headlights to cut a path through the darkness.

And all I could think was here we were again, me and Dylan, racing toward the unknown. Except this time was
different.
This time we were ahead of the game. We were trying to
stop
something from happening, instead of figuring out what had already happened.

I wanted to be there. I wanted to walk around and breathe the air, to be where I'd seen the bodies strewn, to see if I could bring the vision back, to see more, even faces this time. The man. I wanted to make the nightmare end before it fully began.

Headlights cut through the darkness, the shadows giving way to steel beams and concrete against the desolate stretch of the Industrial Canal.

I grabbed the door handle before Dylan had the car stopped. “This is it.”

 

THIRTY-THREE

“It's so quiet,” I whispered as Dylan rounded the car, “like everything's holding its breath.”

He stopped beside me. “You sure you want to do this?”

I looked at the play of moonlight against the silver of his eyes, and smiled, despite everything.

“I have to,” I said.

He seemed to know that. Because we'd been in this moment before, so many times.

Maybe that's why I didn't feel the tight, cold fist of fear, because Dylan and I had faced uncertainty before. We'd faced danger. And we'd survived.

Or maybe it was the calm that always settled around me when he was near, the way scattered pieces drifted quietly into place.

The healer in him,
that logical place of my brain tried to explain. But all those other places, the ones I'd locked away, been scared of, that had made me feel things I'd never felt before, knew it was far more than the Navajo in Dylan that settled me. It was him.

Us.

Slowly, hypnotically, he lifted a hand to slide a long tangle from my eyes.

“I know,” was all he said.

Never looking away from him, I took his hand and curled my fingers around the width of a palm I knew to be square, and squeezed.

“This is right.” It was what Madam Isobel had said a few days before, about the tapestry. “This is how it's supposed to be.”

“I know,” he said again.

I tugged him toward the bridge. “Come on.”

He handed me a flashlight. He had one, too, and together our beams slashed against the old, wooden ties of the railroad tracks.

The hum was quiet at first, barely more than an undercurrent to my breath. But with each step I took, the vibration intensified, and I moved faster.

“What?” Dylan asked.

I lifted my face toward the night, inhaling deeply, as if I could pull the cool, hushed whispers inside me, as if I would know then, understand the darkness yet to unfold.

“I feel something.” I hurried onto the bridge, searching, waiting. “An energy.” A presence.

Dylan stayed close, the glow of his flashlight scanning the bank along the other side, where reeds and rocks tumbled down to the steady dark current of the water.

Shadows fell, slipped …
danced.
And on the breeze, music throbbed. I kept moving toward the other side, faster with each beat of my heart, until I was running, and the vision became people. They twirled in small groups along the edge of the canal, laughing and drinking, every movement in perfect time with the electronic pulse of drums.

The screaming ripped through me, had me running faster, running as the dancing changed into writhing, the laughing into shouting. I tore toward them as everything flashed, dropping them to the ground, exactly as they'd stood.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, running among the sea of bodies. It was dark now, clouds blotting out the moon, leaving shadows drifting across faces.

But I would have recognized the rail-thin body and stringy brown hair anywhere.

“Amber,” I whispered with a hot surge from somewhere inside me. I had to warn her, to make sure she never came to the bridge, and that she understood how dangerous bliss was.

But there were others, so many others who needed to be warned. It wouldn't matter, though, not unless I could stop the man. I twisted back toward the expanse of the canal, searching the overgrown tangle of grass and shrub, except then they weren't grass or shrub anymore. They weren't anything. They were dissolving, slipping back into the darkness, and taking the bodies with them.

“No!” I screamed. “Not yet!” Not until I saw the man. He was the key. Angling my flashlight in front of me, I started running, running again, running as fast as I could, until the sickening grind of metal against metal ripped into the night.

I twisted around, and somewhere deep inside I started to scream. Because I knew. This, too, I'd seen.

The bridge, big and massive and steel, folded in on itself, lifting toward the night.

“Dylan!” I started to run. He should have been behind me. He
had
been behind me.

But he wasn't now.

“Where are you?” I called, praying, praying so, so hard.
Not again,
was all I could think.
Not again!

Gears grinded. Each crunch tore into the night as the steel steadily angled higher.

I fought my way up the incline, steep now, fought for every step, every breath, as if the air had thickened into something hot and vile and viscous, something shoving me back, trying to stop me.

I was so beyond being stopped.

The bridge angled higher, forcing me to grab onto the rail so I didn't fall backward. I pulled forward, toward the edge, and felt everything inside me go horribly still. Across the widening void of darkness, in the exact spot where Dylan and I had stood a few minutes before, he lay without moving.

My knees buckled, but I clung to the cool steel of the rail, knowing I couldn't let go. That I had to get to him. Get help.
And that someone else was there
.

Trying to breathe, I fumbled for my phone and stabbed a finger to Jackson's number.

“You're early.”

I stiffened. The voice came from behind me, deceptively benign, friendly almost. But I knew whoever stood behind me wasn't a friend.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I wedged the phone back into my pocket and slowly turned around.

He stood at the base of the bridge, a tall man with thick dark hair and sharp, distinguished features, the kind of presence that made you take notice. He stood there so casually, in a crisp crimson button-down and khaki slacks, watching me as if watching a child's soccer game.

And with a punishing slam of my heart, all the remaining pieces sliced into place.

He'd been there from the start, from the very first swirl of unease at the beautiful mansion in the Garden District. I'd seen him inside the house, and out on the patio. I'd seen him with the police, and in the family portrait hanging in the darkly paneled room where I'd looked into Dylan's eyes and first realized how much remained between us. And how badly it hurt.

“Mr. Greenwood,” I said, hoping and praying that Jackson had answered my call and was listening. That he'd alerted the patrol that had been here before. That
someone
was coming.

Mr. Greenwood smiled all casually, like he had the week before, the perfect host greeting a guest. “Next party's not until Friday night, sweetheart.”

My stomach twisted.
Here.
There was going to be a party here, exactly like I saw in my vision. People were going to dance. They were going to die. Here.

Will.

Amber.

But I needed time, and calling him out wasn't going to buy me any.

“What party?” I asked, pretending I had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't seem to be in a rush, and I didn't want to create one.

He took a step up the incline, his movements as deceptively mild as everything else about him. It's what made him such a successful businessman—
salesman.

“No games, sweetheart,” he said. “I'm done playing, and so are you. We both know why you're here.”

My throat convulsed. Bile surged.

“We also know there's nowhere to go,” he said, tracking me one slow, methodical step at a time.

I inched back anyway. The bridge had stopped at a 45-degree angle. With one hand in a death grip around the Maglite, my only possible weapon, I kept the other on the rail.

“We tried to keep you away,” he kept on in that sickeningly parental voice. “We tried to make you understand we were serious. But here you are anyway.”

The wind pushed from all directions, harder, stronger.

I made myself breathe. I made myself think. “You don't understand,” I tried, stalling. “Something bad's going to happen here, to my friends! That's why I'm here!”

Another step. “Something bad happens every day, everywhere.” Another. “But you're right about here. This is where it all ends for you.”

Another.

Time was draining, second by second. Breath by breath. And with it everything inside of me was twisting, screaming. I inched backward, acutely aware of how close I was to the edge, that Dylan lay on the other side, unmoving, and that only a few feet remained between me and Mr. Greenwood.

That if I screamed, no one would hear.

If I ran, there was nowhere to go.

“It might be awhile before they find you and your boyfriend,” he said as if discussing antiques and not life and death. “The canal can be cruel like that, and no one will know where to look. But in two short nights, they
will
find Will right here.”

With an exaggerated sigh, Mr. Greenwood shook his head. “The perfect place for the introduction of a new way to have fun, don't you think? Isolated, moonlit. And poor Will Ingram will be nothing more than another kid to make a bad choice. No one will think twice when they find him in the reeds.”