Fragile Darkness (8 page)

I turned back around, watching.

“It's the perfect place to hunt.”

The words froze through me, throwing me back to the afternoon Jim Fourcade had used almost those exact same words.
“Hunt?”

Grace's eyes, still unseeing, or maybe seeing something beyond this dimension, met mine. “Someone knows you're here.”

“What do you mean? Who? Why?”

“They're watching. I can feel the coldness.”

I spun around, searching, but the orgy of dancing squeezed in on me, carrying me like a wave toward girls twirling in endless circles in front of the concession stand. The second I saw the shattered glass of the old popcorn machine, everything else fell away.

Jessica stood without moving, much like she had at the funeral, when she'd held a long-stem red rose in her hands, her eyes fixed on the beautiful crypt.

I could still see the way she'd dropped to her knees.

Now she wore a killer black halter dress, a lot like those worn by other girls, but she didn't dance like they did, and she didn't laugh and she didn't sing. She just stood there, watching me through a fall of dark brown hair, so much wavier now than it used to be. The lost look in her eyes carved a sharp contrast to the in-your-face cheerleader I'd met last fall.

Through the scream of the music, I would have sworn I heard it again,
“Help me.”

Jessica's mouth never moved.

Sisters, I'd thought that first day of school. We looked like we could be sisters or cousins. We were both about 5'7", we both had wavy brown hair and olive skin, we both had dark eyes. And we'd both dreamed of Chase.

But Jessica had known him since she was a little girl.

The moment circled around us, holding me against the swell of dancing, locking us forever in the nightmare that had begun last fall and twisted down a dangerous path ever since.

In my hand, my phone vibrated. I pulled it up, letting out a slow breath when I saw Victoria's name.

Where R U?

I hadn't said anything to her about tonight. She would have insisted on coming, even though she'd had plans with Trey.

With a hot, guilty flush, I gulped a quick sip of water before fingering a response.

Just needed to get out.

I hated lying.

Her response came seconds later.

Your aunt thought you were with me.

A quick flood of unease surged through me.

Oh! I didn't tell her that.

Thankfully, Victoria didn't seem too worried.

Don't worry. I covered 4u.

A few seconds later, after shooting Kendall a quick text, too, asking if she'd found Will, I glanced back to the popcorn machine. Jessica was gone.

“Did you see that girl?” I asked, turning toward Grace.

She was gone, too.

My heart kicked hard. When had that happened? And how? Where was she?

I spun around fast, straight into a tall, hard wall, a
very alive,
tall, hard wall.

“Hello, prophet,” he said. “No bodyguard tonight?”

 

SEVEN

With dark, chin-length hair scraggling against his face, the guy from the Greenwood party stepped into me, bringing his legs against mine.

I jerked back, but the crush of bodies gave me nowhere to go. I told myself not to panic. There was no reason to. He was just a guy, and this was just a party.

“You never know when he'll turn up,” I said, lifting my chin and looking him in the eye. But with the words I fingered the black obsidian in my pocket. Heat radiated from the stone in soft waves, and for a dizzy heartbeat I found myself looking beyond the guy, toward the flickering sea of dancing.

But no one stood watching. I knew that despite the darkness. I would have known that with my eyes closed. The frenzied rhythm reverberated through me. There was no stillness.

I'd made Grace promise not to involve Dylan again.

“Looks like it's just you and me now,” the guy from Friday night said, putting his hand to my hips, as his swayed with the rhythm of the music.

My skin crawled.

“Maybe later,” I said, stepping back and lifting my water between us. “I'm looking for someone.” The words jammed in my throat. Will and Kendall, Grace.
That's
who I was looking for. Not anyone else.

The guy's mouth curved even more. “Aren't we all?”

Gone,
I realized. He was as gone as everyone else, which meant I wasn't going to casually slip away.

“Look,” I said, forcibly removing his hands from my body. The second I did, mine said thank you. “I've got to go.”

He looked wounded. “I didn't mean to freak you out the other night.” With the “A” tattooed against his neck, for anarchy I knew, the sulkiness made a strange combination. “Let me make it up to you. Here,” he said, offering me the cup in his hand. “Let's start over.”

“Later,” I said even more firmly. Spinning away and not looking back, I cut through the press of hot, grinding bodies. Like quick, frantic breaths, they flashed in from the darkness with each strobe of the lights then vanished with the same speed, rhythmic, repetitive.

I was halfway across the room when the horror movie–like flickers revealed Amber with her skinny arms lifted high and her head thrown back. Lucas danced behind her, his hands on her hips, their bodies bumping as one.

Eyes meeting mine, she smiled the dreamiest of smiles, and the darkness swallowed her again.

With the next flash, she was turned in Lucas's arms, their mouths locked together.

I turned away, barely catching myself as the room tilted. I hung there trying to breathe, but the thick swirl of sweat and smoke rolled through me. Off balance I reached for my phone and shot a text to Grace and Kendall.

Where R U?

Neither responded.

Turning, I fought my way past the remains of a mini-arcade, to a long hall lined by individual theaters.

Wanting to sit for a second, I darted into one, where a huge, vacant screen played nothingness to rows of plush, rotting chairs, not all of them empty.

Here light didn't flicker, only the sounds of heavy breathing and fevered moaning, of bodies coming together.

I made my way to the next theater, smaller than the first. With no ventilation to the night, it was like walking into a life-size oven. Muggy heat swamped me, the smoke of cigarettes and weed mixing with stale alcohol and the earthiness of decay.

Everything blurred. Stumbling, I reached out, my hand slipping against something matted and sticky that felt more like a floor than a wall. Carpet, I realized. Filthy and rotting. I tried to breathe, but the putrid, saunalike warmth rushed against the back of my throat and made me gag. Dizzily I fumbled for my water and gulped greedily, but the room kept shifting, and the low vibration wouldn't stop.

A few disoriented seconds passed before I recognized the pulsing as my phone. I wedged it from my front pocket, blinking several times before the distorted letters became words.

I'm by the concession stand. Where are you?

The room kept tilting, making my fingers clumsy as I responded.

In a theater.

A few rows in front of me panting escalated, loud, urgent breaths ripping into the stillness. I stumbled toward the door, hesitating when another text buzzed against my hand.

Against the fuzz of white, I made out Kendall's name.

I found him. We're out back.

Can u come?

Another quick stab of pain against my skull made me wince as I fumbled to tap the right letters.

On my way.

I hit send and made it to the door, but then my phone pulsed again. This time it was a picture that popped up on my screen. Not thinking much about it, I enlarged the image and stared down at the girl, at the long hair falling around her pale face, her eyes unfocused, the smeared makeup and clothes clinging to a thin body.

Me,
I realized with a sick feeling. Taken tonight. Here. My guess was Amber, but the sender's area code was not one I recognized.

The question came a few seconds later.

What would Chase think?

“You ready?”

Startled, I spun around, but even after I stilled, the shadows kept swirling.

Muted waves of light slipped through the open door, revealing a guy with long dark hair raining down around a tragic face, deep-set eyes and a long straight nose, lips parted, waiting. I'd never seen him before.

I tried to push past him. “Excuse me.”

He smiled. “Do you know how amazing you are?”

I'm not sure how I heard him, when the music strummed so loudly, and his voice drifted so soft.

“How much more amazing you
can
be, life can be?”

Another sharp throb pulsed against the back of my head, spreading toward the front like fingers squeezing, tightening.

His smile went sad. “But you don't feel that way, do you?”

Everything blurred. Wincing, I tried to blink him back into focus.

“I have to go.” I pulled away, needing to get …

Somewhere. I needed to get somewhere, I knew.

I couldn't remember where.

“Don't be afraid,” the tragic-faced guy said, reaching for me. “It's why you're here.” He had a cup in his hand, and he was lifting it between us as another vibration swept in, not from my phone, but inside me.

I stilled, trying to grab onto that, thinking I
should
grab onto that. The low hum meant …

Worlds fracturing,
I remembered with another wobble. That's what the vibration meant.
The unseen spilling in.

“It's why we're all here,” the stranger murmured, lifting the drink to his mouth. “Because we don't want to be anywhere else. We don't
belong
anywhere else. We want to forget,” he said mindlessly. “To be beautiful …
for bliss.
”

I reached for the wall, but found only air.

He caught me, steadied me. “For forever.”

A quick breath of cold moved through me.

“I can give you that,” he said, more quietly this time. “If you let me.”

My heart started to race. The rapid pace tripped through me, as if I was running for my life, even as I stood absolutely still.

Something was wrong, I knew. Really wrong. Pulling away, I staggered toward the door, knowing I had to get out of there, fast, back to fresh air and light, to reality and sanity, to Grace and Kendall …

I fumbled with my phone, trying to text.

Something wrong … need you.

Stumbling, I made it into the hall, where the guy from the Greenwood party, the one with the “A” on his neck, leaned against the wall, watching.

Lightning flashed, not from the dance floor, but the invisible kind. The kind that streaked like slivers of brilliant ice inside me, that only I saw.

Only I felt.

And at the end of the hall, something glowed, a single door, shimmering like a pearl lit from the inside out.

The corridor wobbled, stretched, but drawn by the radiance, I made myself move toward it. Some people staggered away. Others stopped and stared. With the light from her phone angled up from beneath her chin, Amber danced by herself.

Reaching the door, I grabbed the cool knob of sparkly cobalt and yanked as hard as I could.

 

EIGHT

I staggered through the darkness.
Get away.
That was all I could think. I had to get away from the theater.

Someone was following me. They crashed through the brush behind me, footsteps fast, pounding, twigs and leaves crunching. The labored rasp of breathing closed in with each rip of the wind. But I knew better than to look.

Trees surrounded me, their trunks running together in an endless, gnarled band, crowding closer. I tried to find an opening, a path, the faintest sliver of light.

Dreaming,
I realized. I was dreaming. This was all some bizarre nightmare or vision. That was why I couldn't stop running.

“Trinity.”

Everywhere I turned, knobby roots jutted up from the carpet of shifting … spiders?

I darted around them, but the vines slithered closer, reaching for me and coiling around my ankles.

“No!” I slapped at them, fighting forward to tear through the—

I stopped and stared, blinked, but the snakes writhed closer, hundreds of them, long and sinuous with eyes of unblinking red and darting tongues.

I backed away. Not snakes, I told myself. They're just sticks, dead branches. None of this was real, I reminded myself. I tried to remember how I got here, or where here was. But answers refused to come, only the strange, disjointed scene that I couldn't pull myself out of.

Stumbling, I started to run again, but above me the stars exploded, raining down and splashing up, freezing into icicles in midair. Beneath them puddles of radiant silver formed, and for a heartbeat the swirl of eternity beckoned.

“I don't understand,” I whispered, going to my knees. I wanted to dip my hand into the glimmer and bring it back to me, baptizing myself in the promise of forever.

“Trinity, no! Come back!”

The voice was closer.
Too close.
But forever shimmered right in front of me, and it was beautiful.

“Where are you?”

The urgent voice echoed around me.

“Dylan,”
I murmured, recognizing this part of the dream. This was when he came. This was when he always came, at the exact right moment.

The wind pushed and pulled. The moon started to bounce.

Pulling back, I stood. Everything hurt. “Why can't I see you?”

“Tell me where you are!”

“Right here,” I said as footsteps pounded closer, and arms caught me. And then everything settled, the stars returning to the sky as the confusion of the nightmare gave way to the familiarity of a dream.

*   *   *

When I was a little girl, I used to wander off to a clearing in the mountains, where pine beetles had decimated the forest, allowing wildfire to turn the brittle remnants into kindling. My grandmother called it an ugly place, barren. But that's not what I saw.