Oblivion (33 page)

Varen tugged harder, sliding them both along the smooth marble.

Though Isobel heard him say her name, she couldn't shake herself from the trance induced by the depth of those two empty hollows. Her mind remained fixed on the demon, who, faltering with her next step, collapsed to the floor, soaked veils slapping the marble.

“I will fiiinnd you,”
rasped the demon, her haggard voice dropping low, going guttural.
“Rot your heart before your own eyes.”

Still Lilith continued to advance on them, using elbows to drag herself forward. The sound of the sword hilt scraping stone sent spikes of terror through Isobel's gut, but still she could not snap herself out of her spellbound stare. Not until a pair of white-spattered boots stepped in front of her, blocking her view.

“Go,” came Reynolds's voice. “Through the blue doors. For now, the worlds blend and part at your whim. Use it to your advantage. Go somewhere safe. Somewhere hidden.”

Isobel blinked up at the tall figure standing over them.

But Reynolds's piercing stare was not aimed at her. And neither was his command.

Rising, Varen brought Isobel to her feet.

“W-wait,” Isobel murmured through numb lips, but Reynolds had already turned toward Lilith.

Taking Isobel's hand, Varen tugged her in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” Isobel repeated, louder this time, and she wondered why neither of them seemed to have heard her. Or were they choosing not to listen?

Before Varen could drag her any farther away, Isobel snagged Reynolds's sleeve.

“Come with us,” she managed to blurt when his head snapped toward her.

Reynolds glared sternly at Varen, ignoring Isobel altogether. “Keep her safe,” he said. “I have bought us only time. And precious little at that.”

“I said,” Isobel snapped, pulling harder on his sleeve, her anger at being snubbed helping to jolt her back to her senses, “come with us.”

Reynolds scowled, but when he glanced to where Isobel gripped him, the knit in his brow softened.

“I'll not be far behind,” he assured her, this time meeting her gaze full on.

Isobel hesitated. Then, deciding to believe him, to trust him . . . she let go.

“GOOORRRRDOOOOOON,”
Isobel heard the demon howl.

Isobel looked to where Lilith lay like a spider in tar, all limbs and joints. Her body, reduced to bones, crackled as she moved, her sword-pierced rib cage dripping sludge.

“Gordon is dead,” Isobel heard Reynolds say in a monotone, his words echoing through the corridor as he placed the tip of his other sword beneath Lilith's putrefied chin, drawing her hollow eyes to his. “As I shall continue to wager you very soon shall be.”

Isobel kept her gaze on the two figures as Varen drew her toward the blue double doors Reynolds had told them to take.

CLUNK
came the sound of the push bar, loud in Isobel's ears as Varen collided with it.

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.

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.

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.

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, Varen 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.

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.

“What
are
they?” Gwen asked, her voice trembling as hard as her hand in Isobel's. “Please tell me this isn't real.”