Never to Sleep (7 page)

Eastlake High was a block away. At least, it was in my world. Here, there was no telling what lay in the block between me and Luca, and strolling down the sidewalk in plain sight of every Tom, Dick, and Hairy-monster seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea. But without any good ideas, bad ones were all I had.

The sky darkened with every step I took, like a bruise ripening, and eventually I stopped looking up, because scaring myself felt stupid when there were so many things out there willing to do the job for me. After a quarter of a block, I realized someone—or something—was following me. The steps were soft and punctuated with light scratching sounds, like a dog’s claws on a wooden floor. I didn’t turn, because I didn’t want to see what was there. If it was big or fast enough to eat me, turning to look wouldn’t do me any good, and running would only lead to panic. As long as the steps didn’t speed up or get closer, I would maintain the status quo.

There were other sounds I couldn’t identify, and other things on the edge of my vision, but I didn’t dare turn and look. I just held the course and tried to keep my thoughts occupied so they couldn’t focus on things I was scared to think about.

Addison had called me a fool and said I didn’t listen. Ha! I got myself out of the cage, didn’t I? What kind of fool could do that? And I’d listened when she called the creeper vines greedy and bloodthirsty. In fact, that’s what had given me the idea to…

Ohh
. She’d given me a hint. Were there any more of them buried in the nonsense she’d spouted?

Addison had said I could go home. Of course, she’d also said I was dead, but unless my collision with the classroom door had actually killed me, and this really was hell, I wasn’t ready to jump to that conclusion. But her hint had gotten me out of the cage, so clearly some of what she’d said was relevant.

I replayed everything I could remember from my strange conversation with the dead rock star. She’d said I could go home, but she couldn’t take me. She’d told me to go back the way I came. She’d said I didn’t need Luca, or anyone else, and that I didn’t know what I was or what I had.

She was right about that last part. I was starting to think I didn’t know anything.

About halfway to the school, I realized that the scent of my blood might be what was attracting the follower I had yet to actually look at. So I stopped just long enough to squat at the edge of the sidewalk and wipe my bloody palm on the creepy, off-color grass. That got rid of most of the fresh blood, but also reopened the wound—and restarted the pain. But a minute later, the footsteps at my back were replaced with a creepy slurping, crunching sound. My follower was eating the grass I’d bled on.

I shuddered but resisted the urge to look.

By the time I got to the front of the high school, I knew I was being watched by more than just the thing that had stopped to taste my blood. I could feel them all around me, some hidden behind or inside buildings, others in plain sight. I could have seen them, if I’d turned, but forcing a confrontation would be pointless, as long as they were letting me move around freely. So I decided to walk as long as they let me, and face any obstacles when they actually stepped into my path.

My stomach churned with nerves as I passed the front entrance, trying not to see the cracked glass doors and windows or wonder what had hit them. I didn’t want to see the vines trailing over and around the front steps and scrolled concrete rails, and I didn’t want to hear the dry scratching sound as they slithered over one another.

The sky was darker than ever, and that was a mercy, as well as a curse. With just the reddish light of the scarlet half-moon hanging on the horizon, I wouldn’t be able to clearly see whatever was coming for me until it actually popped out and said boo. If ignorance was bliss, I was prepared to be ecstatic here in the Netherworld until I could escape it entirely.

At the edge of the building, I turned left and stepped off the sidewalk, headed for the quad entrance to the cafeteria. That was exactly where Luca and I had been caught by the hellion earlier, but all the other routes to the cafeteria involved going through the school and picking my way through nests of vines, in near darkness this time.

I crossed the grass quickly, trying to ignore the sounds following me, as well as the fact that they weren’t well defined enough to truly be called footsteps. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

As I neared the corner of the building, a new sound set my nerve endings on fire and raised hairs all over my body. More footsteps crunched through the grass, but this set was coming from the quad, ahead and to my left.
The hellion?
Running from him would do no good, because he could evidently appear wherever he wanted, and if he found out I’d escaped the jungle gym cage, he’d find a better place to keep me this time.

Or maybe he’d just eat me.

I stopped and pressed my back against the brick wall, wondering suddenly if my “ignorance is bliss” philosophy was a mistake from the beginning. Maybe if I knew what was coming for me, I’d be better prepared to fight. Or run, since I’d never actually been in a fight. Or hide, if running wasn’t an option. Or…

The footsteps approached the corner and a shadow stretched out across the grass, an inky shape in the greater darkness. I squeezed my eyes shut as logic and fear came to a stalemate inside me and I froze, hating myself a little for my own indecision. Was this the best I had? Close my eyes and hide in the shadows, wishing for the big bad to pick another target?

I wanted the courage to face whatever was coming to kill me, but who was I kidding? I didn’t even have the guts to defend Laura—my own best friend—when Peyton started ragging on her, so what good would I be against an actual monster?

The footsteps came closer. My jaw clenched. I would look. This time, I would be strong. I would open my eyes in three…two…

Something touched my arm and I sucked in a deep breath to scream. But then lips pressed against mine, soft and warm, and the breath I’d taken froze in my throat. I kissed back for a second without thinking, caught up in the eager touch, the pleasure where I’d expected pain.

Then my senses came roaring back and my eyes flew open, but the face was too close, the world too dark. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing or feeling, and I couldn’t pull away, because of the wall at my back. So I wedged my hands between me and a solid, cotton-covered chest and shoved.

Luca came into focus as he stumbled backward, recovering from surprise with a grin I ached to indulge even though I wanted to smack it off his face. “What was that for?” he asked, staring into my eyes in the dark.

“Why’d you kiss me?” I asked, instead of answering his question.

He shrugged. “You were about to scream, and that would have attracted attention.” He frowned and glanced around in the dark, obviously just now hearing the sounds that had been following me all along. “Though it sounds like you’ve already done that.”

“So, what? You couldn’t just say ‘Shh’?”

“I could have.” His grin widened, his eyes sparkling in the red-tinted moonlight. “But this was more fun.”

I knew better than to admit that I agreed. “I was coming to rescue you. How’d you get out?”

Another shrug. “Netherworld fun fact—monster flesh crisps up nicely with direct exposure to an open flame.”

“Open flame?”

“Turns out the gas stoves in the kitchen actually work. Also turns out that vegetable oil functions nicely as an accelerant.”

My eyes widened. “Impressive.”

“Thanks. You?” he asked, as I let him lead me away from the building.

“Good old-fashioned bloodletting.” I showed him the gash on my palm, crusted over with dried blood, and he raised one dark brow.

“Gruesome, but obviously effective. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“You have no idea what’s in me,” I said, and then I realized that that statement applied to us both. I wasn’t sure what I had in me either.

“I intend to find out, if we ever get out of here.”

I hoped he couldn’t see my stupid grin in the dark, because I couldn’t banish it—until I noticed how many dark shapes lingered on the edge of my vision, lumbering slowly toward us. We’d be surrounded soon. We needed to get out of the open.

Luca squinted at something to my left, then pointed. “There.”

I followed his aim to a shed used by some of the athletic teams for overflow equipment. In our world, it was kept padlocked, but here…there was no telling.

“Walk fast, but don’t run,” Luca said, taking my hand, and I nodded. The creatures were getting closer. I could hear a few of them breathing now, rasping, chuffing sounds.

“Is closing ourselves in a good idea?” I whispered, as we race-walked across the grass.

“Probably not. But neither is being eaten.”

When we got to the shed, I was relieved to see that there was no lock. Luca pulled open the door and I shone my cell phone screen inside to make sure the tiny building was empty. It was, except for what few pieces of equipment had bled through from our world with the building. He followed me inside, then slammed the door shut, and I set my phone on the ground so it would illuminate as much as possible while we wedged the door in place with several old baseball bats planted in the dirt.

Less than a minute after we’d closed the door, the first fist pounded on it. Not that I could tell it was a fist. For all I knew, it could be a hoof, or a tentacle, or a horn. I jumped at the sound, and Luca’s hand wrapped around mine in the dark—by then I’d pocketed my phone to save the battery.

“Can they get in?” I asked, as something scratched the door from the outside, and something else started banging on the wall at our backs.

Luca sighed. “Probably. Eventually.”

“So we’re trapped.” My throat felt tight and my hands were starting to tingle. This couldn’t be it. This wasn’t how I was supposed to die. This wasn’t
when
I was supposed to die. I was barely sixteen years old!

But at least I wasn’t alone. Though I couldn’t understand that either…

“That hellion was going to send you home, right?”

Luca nodded, and I let him pull me closer, until my back was pressed against his chest, my legs crossed in front of me. He wrapped his arms and legs around me like a cloak, though he felt more like a shield. Like he was putting himself between me and whatever was trying to break into the shed, and I couldn’t believe the kind of courage that must have taken. To put yourself between someone you just met and the monsters willing to rip you both limb from limb.

How could I be so scared, yet so relieved, both at once?

“So why didn’t you go home?” I whispered, as another long, grating scratch trailed down the door.

“Like I was gonna leave you here.” Luca’s breath brushed my ear and stirred my hair. He laid his hands over mine, and they fit like they were meant to go there.

“Maybe you should have.” I flinched when the next loud bang shook the whole shed. “I met this girl. She was crazy, but she kind of made sense. She told me how to get out of my cage, only I didn’t understand what she was telling me at the time. She also said I could go home, all on my own.”

“I’m not sure I followed that,” Luca said.

“I’m not sure I did either. And I don’t know if she was telling the truth. Even if she was, I don’t know what she meant.”

“What did she say?” He let go of me long enough to reseat a bat knocked loose by the latest blow to the door.

“She said to go back the way I came. Which might be helpful if I knew how I got here.” Or maybe not. I couldn’t think with all the banging, knowing we were minutes from being eaten alive.

“Well, clearly she wants you to wait until another soulless reaper appears in front of you.” He sat next to me this time and I twisted to face him. “I don’t suppose you know when that’s scheduled to happen again, do you?”

“He was soulless?” Were reapers supposed to have souls? I should have been impossible to surprise, after everything I’d seen since getting sucked into an alternate dimension, but the weirdness just kept piling up, and I was so buried in it now I wasn’t sure I could ever dig my way out. “How do you know?”

“His eyes. You know how they say the eyes are the windows to the soul?” Luca said, and I nodded, though I’d never really given the phrase much thought before. “Well, his eyes were empty. Because he has no soul.”

Everything else I wanted to ask was stuck in my throat, stalled by skepticism that would have been outright disbelief a few hours earlier. But I no longer felt qualified to say what was possible and what wasn’t. So…did that mean that Addison Page really was dead? And what about me?

“Am I dead?” I asked softly, trying to block out the scratches and thumps, and the slivers of moonlight that were starting to shine in around the widening gaps in the door frame. “You said you thought you felt something earlier.” When he’d pulled me off the ground, in the hall. “Was that because you’re a necromancer, and I’m dead?”

Luca laughed, and I felt like an idiot for asking such a stupid question. But I had to know. “You’re very much alive, and obviously determined to stay that way. But I do think you’re connected to death, somehow. Touched by it.”

“Because my mom died?” Even after spending who knew how many hours in this bizarre hell world, my mother’s death still ranked as my single worst memory ever. Or, my worst not-a-memory. I’d been unconscious in the moment of her death, and I’d missed her every moment since. My mom had known me like my father never could, and everything I truly understood about myself had come from her.

But Luca shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that’s it. Unless…were you hurt when she died, like, in the same accident or something? Is it possible you died too, even for just a minute?”

“No.” I frowned. “I don’t think so.” But the truth was that I had no idea. No one who was there that night would tell me what happened. Nash and his mom were off the hook, but my dad and Kaylee—they were family. They owed me the truth.

But Luca misunderstood my confusion. “That happens more than you’d think. People die, and doctors resuscitate, but once death’s touched you, you’ll always bear its mark, even if I’m the only one who can feel it.”