Alight The Peril (26 page)

We were approaching the point where the back of the meadow met the tree line, and I paused. Sophie stopped beside me. We stood hidden within the trees, but with a wide view of the meadow. Both of us scanned the area.

You sure she’s here?
Sophie asked.

I’m sure,
I said. But what if Harriet wasn’t alone?

Just as I started to think we should move closer to the beach, I smelled it. It was faint, but unmistakable. The rotting, burned smell that was like the breath of death.

Shadows seemed to slide and churn around the plants in the meadow. My heart clenched at the thought of the delicate flowers and grasses withering under those murky shapes. I squinted, straining to make out forms in the darkness. A burst of maroon light, the color of dried blood, sped across the sky. Then another, and another. I remembered the pretty twilight rainbows Mason had created. These ones were an ugly, violent color. Something about them made my stomach roll with nausea. The growing smell of death didn’t help.

The net we made. It’s . . . oh no, that’s why my head’s been hurting so bad.
Sophie’s alarm bolted through my mind.
Corinne, what are those things?
I followed her gaze, and realized that in the second or so I’d been staring at the sky, the shadows in the meadow had taken shape.

Horror chilled me as the shadows grew taller, unfolding to waist height, then chest height, and then they were as tall as me. And they looked like. . . . No, this wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

I unleashed the wave of white influence I’d been holding, and followed it with another wave of influences. No time to perfect a blend.

I reached into the mass of figures in front of us, searching for the heart of whatever propelled them so I could destroy it. But every time I tried, my probe slid away like a fried egg off a nonstick pan.

Sophie, you have to help me—
I began, but a voice crept across the darkness.

“Pyxis,” it said, gravely and deep, barely a human woman’s voice. “Meet my army.”

|| 31 ||

ICE RAN THROUGH ME as the shapes in the meadow began to move. They weren’t just formless shadows now, they were people. I remembered what Mr. Sykes had told us about the fog taking shape. But he said that was supposed to take time, lots of time.

Try to trap them!
I said, and Sophie began weaving a net.

I tried to pinpoint the direction from which Harriet’s voice had come. It seemed like it was straight ahead. I craned, trying to see through the shadow people massing before us, and by the light of a blood-red flash overhead, thought I glimpsed Harriet’s pale face.

Sophie let out a low moan as she tried to fling a net at the horde forming in front of us. The net crumpled against an unseen wall and winked out.
It’s like touching death,
she said.

Stay here,
I told her.

I bathed her in a wash of white influence, but I didn’t think it was needed. Some kind of barrier prevented me from using the influences on Harriet and the shadow people, and I was willing to chance that she couldn’t use the influences on us through the barrier, either.

I shuffled forward, each step taking me closer to the horrors massing in front of me. A couple of feet away from the edge of the meadow, I paused. I saw that the forms weren’t quite solid, and they seemed contained within an invisible bubble that surrounded the meadow. Maybe to concentrate the energy or force that was bringing them to life, like how Ang and Sophie’s net multiplied my influence. I hoped it wasn’t a solid, physical barrier, because I was about to try to charge through it.

“This place is no longer yours, Corinne.” Harriet’s voice seemed to echo in my heart. “None of it is. You’ve lost your friends. You’re going to lose so much more.”

Anger bolted through me at her mention of Ang and Mason.

Whatever you’re going to do, hurry!
Sophie’s near-panic curled through our link.

I let out a yell and ran the last few steps, plunging into the meadow and the invisible circle. The barrier slid over my skin like a layer of cold slime. Once inside, the smell was nearly enough to knock me senseless. Everything before me blurred and refocused, blurred and refocused, as if under water.

The shadow army stood, thick as a putrid cloud, before me, shoulder to shoulder, but the forms didn’t move to attack. They seemed rooted to the ground, perhaps not yet animated enough to move under their own power. I stared in horror at their partially formed faces, punctuated by eyes that glinted silver.

I wouldn’t be able to weave between them to get to Harriet. I’d have to walk
through
them. And quickly, before they became too solid for me to pass through. I drew a deep breath and gagged on the sickening smell that was so strong I could taste it.

Lowering my chin, I held my hands out in front of me and stepped forward, trying to pass between two of the shadow people. But there wasn’t enough space, and as my hands, then one of my legs, then my body, entered the space the dark forms occupied, my resolve began to drain away.

I stopped, my body merged with the shapes of the two shadow people on either side of me.

Why was I here?

Remembering. . . . It was too much effort. Unimportant now.

I’d wait. Wait with the rest until it was time to act.

Everything in me slowed. Like a dying engine, my awareness hitched . . . sputtered. . . .

Then, pain. Middle of my back.

A voice from far away, screaming a word. A word . . . a word I should know?

A much bigger smack, knocking me forward to my knees.

Free of the shadow forms, my mind revved up again.

CORINNE! WAKE UP! MOVE!
A voice boomed through my head.

Something solid bounced off my shoulder and plopped softly onto the ground next to me. I turned to see what it was. A ball. A sparkling wad of Guardian net?

CORINNE! PLEASE SAY SOMETHING!

Sophie.

I reached for the ball, which rested between the feet of a shadow man. Careful not to touch the dark form, I curled my fingers around the ball and picked it up. The net itself had no heft or mass. But Sophie had wrapped it around an egg-sized stone.

I’m here
, I said to her.

I could feel her terror, now tinged with some relief.

I closed my eyes, and then opened them, and I was in the hypercosmic realm.

As I looked around me, a horrified scream welled up in my throat.

Here, the shadow army was more than fog coalesced into shapes. Here, the shadow people were . . . people. Twisted, horrible bodies and faces with soulless silver-white eyes.

The one nearest me, with long sinewy limbs and an awful bulge in the middle of its chest, reached toward me with skeletal fingers.

I screamed and flashed back to the waking world. And into another nightmare. My mind started slipping away again as my left arm invaded the space occupied by one of the shadow people, and with great effort, I took one step forward. In a wink I was back in the dream world. My senses returned, and again I dodged the twisted claws reaching for me.

I began cycling between the two worlds faster now, moving forward one tortured step at a time. I winked between the worlds so quickly, they began to blur together, shadow forms merging with their physical counterparts.

As I moved forward, the influences I harnessed swelled within me until they seemed to seep out between the cells of my skin. I was like a ripe peach, ready to burst.

I could feel Harriet’s influences growing within her, too. She launched them at me in tidal waves, but I evaded them, flashing between the two worlds.

I forced myself forward, through the dual nightmare that surrounded me, toward the green eyes whose owner was responsible for my friends’ sickness. Finally, I broke through the last of the figures that circled Harriet. I planted my feet, facing her, still flashing between the two worlds. The influences pulsating from her ricocheted off me.

Harriet’s mouth twisted as she realized her efforts had no effect. Her eyes narrowed, and she bombarded me with influences so intense, my skin burned when one hit glanced off my forearm. I flashed between the two worlds, dodging each wave of influence she hurled at me. She growled, a nightmarish, inhuman sound. But I could feel her tiring. She’d grown powerful so close to the solstice, and she had harnessed the power in horrible ways. But she was still the false Pyxis.

My body pulsed with energy.
Sophie, a funnel!
I commanded.
Use a rock to make it pierce the barrier. Aim it at the center of her chest!

As Harriet flung attack after attack, I kept flashing to the hypercosmic realm, cycling so rapidly my own body became a weightless blur. Time stretched as Sophie’s net took shape, painfully slowly, it seemed to me.

As the net curled over itself, beginning to form a tube, I raised my left hand. I still held the glittering ball with the stone in the center.

I closed my eyes, gathering every swirl, every drop of influence I held. Then I focused on the ball and everything within me surged into it. The stone in the center glowed white-hot, and the net around it swelled, straining to contain the power. The song from the dream—
my
song—coursed through my body. Its rhythm pounded in time with my racing pulse, its melody vibrated in tune with my soul. It sang through my blood, using my bones and muscles as amplifiers.

Then another song, the one I’d heard that had no owner, joined it, weaving into my melody. The power within me grew impossibly, and violent shudders wracked me as I drove the influences into the ball.

Sophie’s funnel elongated, the wide end yawning a few feet in front of me, the far end narrowing to a point trained on Harriet’s heart.

I switched the ball to my right hand, drew it back. The ball grew painfully hot, and I let it fly.

The funnel seemed to suck it in, accelerating it until it was moving too fast for my eyes to follow.

It exploded out the other end in a burst of white light so bright, I squeezed my eyes shut and doubled over, trying to protect myself from it. The ground rumbled beneath my feet, and a shock wave blew me backward.

I stumbled and fell, smacking the back of my head on the hard ground with a thud and knocking the breath from my lungs.

Then, blackness.

|| 32 ||

VOICES SOUNDED SOMEWHERE BEYOND the pounding in my head, but they came to me muffled, as if through a stack of pillows. I didn’t want voices. I wanted to live in the song that wove through me. I let the melody lull me back to where the voices couldn’t reach.

* * *

Energy surged in my veins, and I sat up. Ugh, too quickly, judging by the pulsating ache across my forehead. Sunlight streamed through half-closed blinds, pooling on the floor in a bright, gyrating shape as the conifer outside the window rustled a little in the breeze.

I touched the bump on my skull and winced when my fingers brushed a patch that was sore, but not too swollen. I looked around, for a second failing to place my surroundings, before I recognized the guest room in Aunt Dorothy’s house.

Another surge of energy, bigger than the last. A little more, and I might levitate right off the bed. Ah. Today was summer solstice.

I threw back the covers and righted my top, which had twisted around me. The legs of my pants were bunched up to my knees. I swung my legs to the floor and froze.

Harriet.

I reached out with my mind.
Sophie? Are you okay?

Corinne, you’re awake! We’re downstairs.

I heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, and Sophie nearly crashed into me at the end of the hall. She threw her arms around my neck, and I embraced her back. When she let me go, she stepped back to take me in from head to toe.

“How are you feeling?” she said. Her happiness turned to frowning concern.

“Aside from the bump on my head, I feel like I could fly.” I laughed and the sound seemed out of place. We both shifted self-consciously.

Sophie turned. “Come down. You should eat something.”

My mouth watered at the thought of food, and I followed her down to the kitchen.

My great-aunt turned from the sink. “So glad to see you conscious and moving, my dear!” Relief spread over her face. She hastily dried her hands on the front of her sweater and held out her arms, pulling me into a hug.

“Did Sophie tell you everything?” I said once Aunt Dorothy let me go.

My great-aunt nodded. “Quite the battle you had last night.” She watched me, her face lined with concern.

“I don’t remember much toward the end,” I said. I turned to Sophie. “What happened to Harriet?”

Sophie stood at the stove, pouring a cup of tea. She turned and shrugged. “After you hit her with—whatever that was—she just
vanished
.” Sophie frowned.

I took the mug Sophie offered and looked at my great-aunt. “Did I kill her?”

“Doubtful. It is very odd, though, that her body disappeared in such a manner.” She frowned, and a prickle of anxiety passed through me. I brushed the feeling aside. Harriet was out of commission for the moment, at the very least.

I sat down with my tea and Aunt Dorothy slid a plate of fruit salad and toast in front of me. My stomach grumbled, but I ignored the food. “Any news about Angeline and Mason? Or Bradley?” I still couldn’t feel either of my friends in my mind, so I already knew the answer to the first question. Fear echoed through my mind as I remembered my friends’ still bodies, and Bradley’s pale face.

Sophie sat down across from me, her phone in one hand. “Brad is doing a lot better. He texted me this morning.” Her eyes brightened. “First time I’ve heard from him since the fever.”

I closed my eyes in a brief prayer of thanks. “Did he say anything about coming home?”

“Tomorrow or the next day, they think.” Sophie pulled another phone from her pocket. “I’ve been covering for you, by the way. Called your parents and told them you couldn’t find your phone. You stayed with me last night, as far as they know.” I gave her a grateful smile. Would I ever get used to this new love-fest between me and Sophie?