The Awakening (33 page)

He’s like my own furnace.

And then the entire stairwell lights up like the sun. An intense blast of heat slams into a dark being one flight above us. Its body cracks apart, fissuring with light until there’s a giant burst—like an exploding star—and the dark thing is no more. It wasn’t knocked unconscious. It was completely obliterated.

We all stare, momentarily stunned, at the place that thing once stood.

Cap looks at Luka. “I’m glad you changed your mind about joining us.”

By the time we reach the fifth floor landing, I sprint ahead, out from the reach of Anna’s cloak. Luka is right beside me, casting a cloak of his own. He’s with me as I run and he’s with me as I walk inside my grandmother’s room.

It’s as empty as the rooms two floors below.

“Where is she?” I spin in a circle, as if I somehow missed her the first time. “Why is her room empty?”

Luka takes my hand and pulls me away. “Tess, we have to go.”

“No! I can’t leave her. We can’t leave her.” Not again. Not when we’re this close. “She’s here somewhere. She has to be.”

“Get her out of here,” Cap says from behind us.

Luka’s grip tightens on my elbow. He’s dragging me from the room. I’m so confused by all this emptiness, so desperate to figure out a way to find my grandmother, that it takes me half the length of the hall before I feel what has Cap and Luka so on edge. It’s as though the entirety of Shady Wood has been plunged into ice. How many from the other side must there be to cause such a dramatic drop in the temperature? And where are they all?

We hurry down the stairs, the coldness growing colder with each flight we descend. Instead of going all the way to the first floor, we step onto the second and run down the hall, toward a back stairwell that leads directly to an exit. As we round a corner, we come face to face with an entire white-eyed army. I’ve never seen so many of them in my life. They hold out their arms while wisps of black seep from their fingertips. It stretches and curls and creeps closer—a sinister spider web that slinks straight through Anna’s cloak and wraps around her wrist.

She shrieks. Her cloak disappears.

And the second floor of Shady Wood breaks into pandemonium.

“Get to the exit!” Cap shouts.

Clive doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t question Cap’s orders. Like a good soldier, he obeys and runs straight into the heart of danger. Cap, Sticks, Claire, Jose, and I run ahead of him—trying to clear a path by fighting as many as we can, sometimes three at a time, while Non and Gabe and Luka throw out shield after shield. But we are terribly outnumbered and more and more keep arriving, as though stepping through doorways of their own. Two take out Non until she’s crumpled on the floor. One jumps on Jose’s back, but I spin around with a roundhouse kick that knocks him free. Luka lets fly another intense blast of heat and somewhere in the midst of all the commotion, Clive pushes through the exit door and Cap yells for all of us to startle.

“No!” I shout.

Anna disappears.

Jose disappears.

Sticks grabs his crumpled wife on the floor and they disappear, too.

“No!” I shout again. We can’t leave without finding her. We can’t leave my grandmother here alone. I’ve done it once before. I won’t do it again. I begin flinging the doors open. Room after room, all unlocked. All empty. “Elaine!”

Gabe throws a shield in front of Cap, who yells again for the rest of us to startle.

I throw another kick and run ahead, for the first time in my life thankful for Claire. Thankful that she’s not obeying Cap’s orders, but inching closer to me, her face screwed up in concentration as she grabs one of the demons by the wrist, twirls around, and slams it to the ground. I run for another door as Luka blasts five of them back at once, but there are three more at my heel. And just as I’m about to run past Claire, into the final room, she reaches out her foot and trips me.

I sprawl to the ground with a loud
oomph
and in the split second before she disappears, our eyes connect. There’s a look of pure vindictiveness in hers. I spin onto my back, but I’m too late. Three of the white-eyed soldiers lunge at me. Luka dives between us, throwing out a shield to protect me.

But they swarm upon him like flies. An entire army of them. Black mist wraps around his hands, binding them together.

“No!” I run to free him, to fight for him, but Gabe grabs one of my arms and Cap grabs the other as I watch Luka being dragged further and further away. I fight against their hold. “Startle, Luka!” I scream. “Startle!”

Only he can’t seem to. It’s as if the black mist wrapping around his body prevents him from doing anything. My captors, however, do exactly what I’m screaming for Luka to do. They startle. And they take me with them.

Gone

N
o! No, no, no, no! Please, no!

Panic surges through every inch of my body. It crawls across my skin. I kick off the covers with flailing legs and sprint across my room. Tears blind my eyes as I hurl open the door. Lights come on in the hallway. Jillian and Rosie and Ellen all stare out from their rooms—pale and wide-eyed. I sprint through the antechamber, toward Luka’s room. I fling open his door at the very end, crashing inside his room.

Please, please, please, no!

He’s lying in bed. I see his form through the darkness. But he’s not moving. I grab onto his shoulders and shake him. I shake him harder than Link ever shook my grandmother. “Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!” I scream the words over and over and over again, beating his chest with my fists.

Luka does not wake up.

His eyes remain closed.

“No, no, no, no!” I grab him into a hug, unable to comprehend what’s happening. Unable to process the fact that he’s warm in my arms, yet he’s not really there.

Strong hands grab hold of my elbows and pry me away. I can’t see who it is, not through my tears. I fight against whoever it is with everything in me. I cling to Luka like he is the last life vest in a tsunami. But this is the physical realm, where I am not strong. Where I am easily dragged away. “We can’t leave him! He needs to wake up. Please! I have to go back to sleep! I have to go find him! Please!”

“There’s no finding him, Tess. He’s gone.” The voice belongs to Gabe. He’s the one who has a hold of me. He’s the one who is dragging me away from Luka’s room. It’s his flesh my nails are digging into. His legs I am kicking. His arms that are wrapping me into a bear hug.

He forces me out into the bright hallway, where a crowd has gathered. It’s the middle of the night, but the hub is wide awake. All but one.

Claire stands among them. I saw it with my own eyes—her foot snaking out to trip me, her vindictive look when I fell. The white-eyed soldiers pouncing and Luka jumping in to save me. Whatever reason I still possess snaps in half. I twist from Gabe’s grip and I attack her. I hit and I kick and I claw and I scrape and I scream. “You did this! This is your fault!”

Gabe pries me off Claire, who glares at me from the floor with a bloody lip and a gouge in her neck and a chest that heaves. I kick the air. And I scream bloody murder. But Gabe drags me away, down the hallway. Away from Claire. Away from the watching crowd. Away from Luka, asleep in his bed.

*

They think I’m asleep. They think I can’t hear them murmuring through the walls. But sleep is impossible to find. I am wide awake, scratching the inside of my wrist raw. And I can hear everything.

“Are you sure he’s gone?” Link asks.

“Yes.”

“But he’s still—”

“Breathing?”

There is no reply.

“Give it a few days.” Gabe’s voice is cold and detached. “The other side will have destroyed his soul by now. It’s only a matter of time before his body follows.”

Footsteps recede down the hall.

My sanity follows.

*

I sit in the back corner of my room, knees drawn up to my chest, arms wrapped around my shins, rocking back and forth like the crazy people in Shady Wood. I’m supposed to be numb. This is what shock is supposed to do. This is what I crave. Instead, I am wild. Anguish is the flame and every single cell in my body burns with it. I have to remind myself to breathe.

He’s gone.

Gabe’s words have opened a fault in my chest. An eruption of emotional lava spews forth, scorching and scarring and burning and melting everything in its path. It can’t be true. Luka can’t be gone. Not like this. Not ever.

I scratch my wrist, hating the sting, then press my forehead between my knee caps and rock faster.
I
was supposed to be the one in danger. If anyone was going to be taken, it was supposed to be me. That, I was okay with. That, I could handle. But this? Never once, in the midst of all Luka’s concerns, in the midst of all his pleas for me not to go, did I consider that I might lose him. Never once did I picture what might happen if I was the one left behind to pick up the pieces.

The lava burns hotter.

He’s over there. Across the antechamber and down the hall. His heart is beating. His skin is warm. But Gabe says he’s gone. Gabe says there’s no getting to him.

My thoughts race, chasing each other in disjointed circles. I can’t pin a single one of them down. The empty rooms in Shady Wood. My missing grandmother. Claire reaching out her foot to trip me. Luka diving in to save me. White-eyed evil binding him up in a black web and dragging him away. Cap and Gabe grabbing my arms and startling me awake when all I wanted was to go with him. To die with him.

I want to blame Claire. I want to blame them. I want to lash out and blame someone. But I keep landing back on myself. Luka didn’t want to go. Luka had a bad feeling. He begged me to reconsider. But I insisted on going anyway. I was stubborn. I was unreasonable. And because I went, he had no choice. I shake my head as tears leak onto my kneecaps and spill down my leg. If not for me, Luka never would have been there.

*

The next morning, I hear them talking through my walls. They murmur in dulcet tones, but I hear them all the same. They don’t know what to do about me. They don’t know what to do with Luka. They speak of him in the past tense. I plug my ears and resume my rocking.

At some point, Jillian comes into my room. She brings me a tray of food and a glass of water. She tries to get me to eat, to drink. She might as well be asking me to swallow the sun. She sits beside me in bed and tells me things I no longer care about—Dr. Carlyle called. Leela got Clive safely to the Greyhound bus station. The hub’s newest Cloak is on his way. Tomorrow, Dr. Carlyle is coming to move Fray to a privately-owned hospital in Northern Michigan. Cap interrogated Claire in her bedroom and she’s yet to come out. Apparently, I’m not the only one who witnessed what she did.

The tray of food goes untouched.

Another day comes and goes.

The hub falls asleep.

I wander out of my room, because there’s no sleep to be had. I go into the bathroom and stare at my reflection in the mirror. The person who stares back is not me. The person in the mirror looks like a strung out druggie, with deep purple bags beneath blood shot eyes and hair that hangs limply around hollowed-out cheekbones.