Starling (2 page)

“Whoa,” Mason heard Calum say.

She turned to see him gazing up at the gathering storm, his eyes wide and forest green in the uncertain light that filtered down through the tall windows.

“Hey, Toby?” he called. “Maybe we’d better head back to the dorms—that looks like some pretty serious weather rolling in.”

“Sure,” Toby agreed. “We’ve done enough work today. And it’ll save
you
from getting your ass handed to you again by your partner.” His mouth quirked upward, and he slapped the folder with the scoring sheets inside closed. Then he picked up his travel mug—his constant companion; the guy was a total caffeine junkie—and turned, bawling to the other student athletes to pack it in. He barked at the fencing club members to hand in their gear to Mason so that she and Cal could check the weapons for loose hilts and burrs and then return them to their proper places in the storage cabinets.

“Hey, Mouse, catch,” Rory said as he tossed an extra practice foil carelessly at her, and Mason had to dodge or risk getting the tip through one eye.

Damn, he’s annoying
, Mason thought. She hated it when he called her Mouse. He knew it, too.

Heather, of course, just strolled right past Mason and handed her foil directly to Calum. They were still cordial, but since their breakup Cal had been pretty clear in his intentions to keep it that way—cordial. Not that Mason had made a point of noticing that or anything....

“C’mon, Mase,” Cal said, smiling at her.

He handed Heather’s foil to Mason, shrugged out of his fencing jacket, and threw it over onto the pile of his own gear. Underneath, he wore only a thin T-shirt with the school logo stenciled on the back. “We should hurry to beat the storm or we’re gonna get drenched on the way back to the Res,” he said to Mason over his shoulder.

Calum in a wet T-shirt wasn’t such a bad idea as far as she was concerned, but he had a point. She hurried toward the storage cabinet at the far end of the gym, but it became suddenly apparent that they weren’t beating anything. Through the windows, she saw a blaze of lightning fork across the sky with a sizzling, ear-shattering crack that made her jump.

Is it a bad sign when you can actually
hear
lightning?
she wondered. But she didn’t really have time to ponder the physics of it because the sound was drowned out almost immediately by a cannon-roar boom of thunder so loud it felt as though it had come from inside her head. The air in the hall quivered with the shock wave, and the new gym floor felt as though it had actually heaved upward. Mason yelped and ran for the cabinet. Outside, the rain started to fall in fat, splattering drops and the wind moaned loudly.

Mason juggled her armload of whip-thin aluminum blades, trying to open the metal door without actually having to stop and put anything down. She was surprised when Heather appeared at her elbow and pulled the door open for her.

“Thanks,” Mason gasped, struggling to untangle herself from the forest of swords.

“Hold still,” Heather said. “You’re gonna stab one of us.” Together, the two girls struggled to disengage the weapons and stow them on the rack on the cabinet wall.

“Be careful with that épée!” Mason warned. “You’re gonna snap the tip!”

“Yeah, yeah. Let
go
, Starling. I’ve got it.”

By the time they got everything stowed, the sky had turned to shades of deepest midnight and lightning lashed the underbellies of black clouds. The lights flickered again, and Mason felt the breath stop in her throat for an instant.

“Jeezus.” Cal snorted. “Who ordered the apocalypse?”

As if on cue, another magnesium-bright flash of lightning blazed, and the lights in the hall flickered and died. The entire gymnasium went suddenly, completely, dark. Mason sucked in a sharp breath, and her heart started to rabbit in her chest. She quickly grabbed her gear bag and hurried toward the door.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

She thrust through the double glass doors into the foyer and leaned on the main door’s push bar—and nothing happened. She shoved it again, harder, but the heavy carved-wood door remained shut.

“What’s wrong?” Heather asked from behind her.

“It’s jammed or something,” Mason said, and tried again.

“Let me try.” Calum nudged her over to one side. He used both hands to push against the bar. He kicked the door’s brass footplate and tried shouldering it open, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Hang on, Cal,” Toby called. They could hear him walking across the gym floor toward them. His worn, heavy combat boots made a steady
thump-thump
in the darkness. His bulky form suddenly loomed up in front of them, and he jiggled the door bar and pushed sharply on it a couple of times. Then he stepped toward an alcove at the side of the door. “Hunh,” he grunted. “Weird.”

“What’s going on?” Rory asked, showing up with his gym bag slung over one shoulder.

“I think the power outage screwed up these new electronic locks,” Toby answered. “The control panel’s dead.”

“Shouldn’t there be a backup system or something?” Calum asked.

“Yeah.” Toby punched at the panel and jiggled the door bar again. “But there should also be emergency lighting, and I don’t see that it’s come on, either. Could be that they just haven’t got the bugs worked out yet....”

Outside, it sounded like the world was coming apart. Mason could hear the old Gosforth oak creaking in protest at the punishing winds.

“I’m gonna go check out the fire exit door,” Toby said. “Sit tight until I get back. Don’t wander—there’s still construction equipment lying stacked near the walls and I don’t want any of you accidentally kicking a circ saw and amputating a toe.”

Even in that pitch dark, it didn’t take the fencing master long to travel from one end of the gym to the other and back again. And Mason knew, just from the sounds of his measured tread, that they weren’t leaving anytime soon.

“We might as well make ourselves comfortable until the juice comes back on,” Toby said, confirming her suspicions, and Mason heard him swishing around the dregs of whatever was left in his travel mug. “Fire door’s sealed tight, too.”

“That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”

“No, Mason. It isn’t.” Toby sighed heavily. “And damned if I’m not out of coffee.
That’s
not supposed to happen, either.”

Look
, Mason told herself sternly,
it’s not as if you’re in a small space or anything … you’re not trapped. There’s plenty of room.

She could feel the airiness of the vaulting hall all around her, even if she couldn’t actually make out the ceiling, but it wasn’t that. It was more just the thought of being locked in with absolutely no avenue of
escape
that bothered her. That, and the darkness. It was so complete. So absolute. Shouldn’t there have at least been some light spill from surrounding buildings or the street? The school was in the middle of freaking Manhattan, for crying out loud....

“Toby,” Mason said quietly.

He didn’t seem to hear her. Probably because her throat was so dry her voice had barely come out as a whisper.

“Toby.” She tried again.

“What’s wrong, Mason?”

What was
wrong
? She was going to lose it any second—
that’s
what was wrong. She was going to blow a mental gasket right in front of the hottest guy in school and his ice-queen ex and her stupid selfish brother and by the time first period rolled around tomorrow, everyone at the Gosforth Academy would know she was a claustrophobic freak. “Toby? I …”

“What is it?” he asked again. “Mason, we’re stuck here until the power comes back on, so we might as well all just relax.”

“I can’t.”

“Aw, hell,” Rory muttered. “Here we go.”

“Shut up, Ror,” Mason said tightly.

“Mason, what do you mean?” Toby asked.

“I mean … I … I’m not exactly good with confined spaces.” Mason could hear the panicky rasp in her voice. “I’m not good with being locked in.” She knew that Toby had shifted forward, and that he was probably peering at her, trying to make out if she was kidding or not. Or if she was, in fact, on the verge of losing it. But she couldn’t see his face. Zero ambient light filtered in through the windows. It was starting to feel like being trapped down a well or sealed in a coffin.

“
How
not good?” Toby asked quietly.

“Sweating-barfing-screaming-uncontrollably-psychotic-episode not good.”

Toby blinked at her. “When?”

“Soon …”

“Well, that’s just marvelous,” Heather said in tones laced with disgust. “You puke on me and I’m punching you in the face, Starling.”

“Not a problem,” Mason said through her teeth. Her fists were tight, sweat-slick knots of bone and muscle, and she couldn’t seem to make her fingers unclench. “I’m not really gonna care
what
you do to me if it gets to that point—”

Suddenly there was a loud thump against the heavy double doors—as though something heavy had run into them at high speed—and even Toby jumped at the sound. In the silence that followed, Mason could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Then the howling started. Eerie and keening and somehow … inhuman.

“What the hell
is
that?” Heather said sharply. Even in the darkness Mason knew the other girl was staring accusingly at her, as if it might somehow be her fault. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“C’mon, Heather,” Calum said. He also seemed to sense the accusation in her tone. “Mason has nothing to do with it. And it probably
is
a joke. Some jerk-ass freshmen are probably running around in this stupid storm, pretending they’re ninjas. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Cal’s right,” Toby said. “And anyway, nobody’s getting in here anytime soon—ninjas or not. Just like we’re not getting out. Sorry, Mase.”

There was another loud thump on the roof, followed by a frenzy of hammer blows at the front door and the sounds of shrieking.

In the darkness, Calum stalked over to the door and hammered back, shouting, “Knock it off, you losers! We’re stuck in here! Go make yourselves useful and get a freaking crowbar!”

The noise stopped. They all listened for what must have been several minutes, but all they could hear were the sounds of the storm. And Mason, panting for breath. In the darkness, even with her eyes squeezed shut, all she could see was red. The back of her fencing jacket was soaked with cold sweat and her stomach was churning. Mason was pretty sure that what they’d heard had
not
been pranking students. But she was also starting to think that she’d be perfectly willing to take her chances outside in the storm rather than spend another five minutes locked in with no escape.

Restlessly she retreated back into the gym and made her way carefully across the too-dark space toward the scaffolding under the tall windows set high in the wall. Originally they had been the second-story windows. The lower ones had been bricked over and, once the gym was finished, the long wall would hold athletic apparatus like a ballet barre and rigging for hanging indoor archery targets and practice fencing dummies. But for now, there was just the painter’s scaffolding, and Mason reached out a hand and grasped one of the metal bars. She had to do something to keep herself occupied or she was truly going to lose it.

“Mase?” Calum called. “What are you doing?”

“I just want to check on something.” She put a foot on a crossbar and pulled herself up to the first level.

“Mason,” Toby said in a warning voice. “I’d rather not have to tell your father you broke your neck playing monkey bars in a blackout. Please consider the fact that he would probably feel obliged to break mine just to make it even.”

“I’m being careful,” Mason said as she pulled herself up to the next platform, the one that would let her look out of the window. Mason edged over to the closest window and peered out into the storm. She could see the rain falling torrentially and could make out the dark shapes of some of the closest Columbia buildings, dark against a dark sky. But there were no lights. Anywhere. No emergency lights, no streetlights … nothing even powered by backup generators, it seemed. Mason swallowed against the constricting lump of fear in her throat. This just wasn’t
normal
. She glanced back down at where the others huddled in the darkness.

“Looks like there’s a power outage everywhere,” she said.

She thought she might have heard the distant wail of a police siren over the noise of the storm, and she turned to look back out the window. Suddenly Mason screamed in terror and threw herself instinctively backward. She shrieked as her foot slipped off the platform edge and she fell, only saving herself from plummeting fifteen feet to the floor of the gym by catching one of the scaffold struts with the crook of one elbow. She hung in midair, thrashing and kicking her feet while Toby and the boys shouted her name and reached for her. They managed to grab Mason’s legs and take her weight, and she let go of the scaffold bar. Once her feet touched the ground, Cal wrapped her in a fierce, totally unexpected embrace.