Unhinged: 2 (44 page)

Jeb sees me run from the arcade entrance and tries to maneuver through the crowd. There’s no time to get Mom. I have to clear out the place before the toys escape and humans get eaten by tulgey wood.

I stare up at the purplish fluorescent black lights on the endless ceiling, envisioning the bulbs on the sprinklers, pretending that
they’re rosebuds in a garden, waiting to bloom. I imagine a nurturing rain, their petals opening wide in a push for life.

Popping spreads from one side of the cave to the other, followed by a fall of cold water sweeping in until my hair and clothing stick to my skin. The crowd’s reaction is instantaneous. Screaming girls and cursing guys push their way to the ramps, while others race around, trying to salvage costumes and food.

The chaperones attempt to control the chaos and herd everyone to the exit. I duck behind the arcade sign, and when the last chaperone rushes out of the gym-style doors, Morpheus swoops in to wrap a chain through the push bars, barricading the entrance.

The sprinklers stop at Mom’s command.

“The army’s in the arcade!” I shout as she comes into sight and the four of us are reunited—skin, hair, and clothes soaking wet. “And watch out for the trees … they’re tulgey wood.”

Jeb looks completely baffled, but Mom and Morpheus exchange anxious glances through their reflective masks.

A stampede of decomposing toys scrambles out of the game room and heads for the trees by the dance floor. I can’t see the extent of their hideousness in the shadows. Doesn’t matter. I can still picture the way they looked in those bags—miserable doll eyes blinking, clown faces snarling in pain and rage, teddies and lambs losing their stuffing through rips in their bodies—all of them carrying souls delirious for a chance at freedom.

Their small, shadowy forms slip and slide into each other on the wet cement. They grumble in mass confusion. It would be comical if it weren’t so ominous.

“Get the supplies!” Jeb shouts.

Morpheus takes to the air, his crown falling to the floor with
a metallic clatter. I swoop up behind him. He’s a floating mask, doublet, and ruffled shirt skimming toward the buffet; everything else, his hose and wings, are too dark to see. Jeb and Mom follow on the ground, a hovering dress and a glowing periwinkle mask. All those years of balancing on a skateboard are paying off. Jeb does an impressive job of sliding along the drenched floor while also keeping Mom from falling.

There’s nothing but static coming over the intercom and speakers now. Flapping my wings, I scan the darkness below. It’s broken up by fluorescent platforms in the middle, murals, and ghostly trees to the north that will soon come alive, and, just a few yards perpendicular, the arcade. I cringe. It’s like looking down on a nightmarish pinball machine. As I glance at the pool tables and the glowing balls that look like marbles, an idea starts to take shape.

Morpheus interrupts my thought process, shouting over his shoulder, “Red?”

My hair blows in the gusts coming off his wings. “She’s overturned on the floor, bound and coughing up dirt.”

“That won’t last.” For once he doesn’t have a joke.

And he’s right to be serious. I only managed to keep the humans out of her path and bought us a little extra time. She wants my body back and Morpheus on a platter. She’ll figure out a way to make those two things happen. At least for now she’s incapacitated, which makes finding Sister Two top priority. I shiver, remembering Morpheus’s reaction to her sting. A human, without magic to fight off the poison, doesn’t stand a chance at survival.

Morpheus and I reach the buffet first. He lands expertly on the floor and slides to a stop. I alight clumsily on the table, my left boot squished inside a soggy fluorescent cupcake.

“Practice, luv. It’s all in the ankles,” he says as he drags out the duffel bags.

I shake off the wet cake and hop down, using my wings for balance so I don’t wipe out on the slick floor.

Jeb and Mom arrive after taking a detour so Jeb could short-circuit the elevator. Now he’s in full battle mode. “Al, let me have your shawl,” he says upon seeing me, whipping off his jacket.

I take off the brooch. “Jeb,” I mumble as he spins me around to unwrap the netting from the base of my wings while Mom and Morpheus unload stuff a few feet away, their backs to us.

“Yeah,” Jeb says, concentrating.

“Those trees, they swallow things. Then they either spit them out as mutants, or the things are lost in—”

“
AnyElsewhere
. Your mom told me on the way over.” His fingers keep working at the netting.

“And Sister Two is here.”

He pauses.

I look over my shoulder at him, a knot forming in my throat. “Your plan is brilliant, but this isn’t your war. You aren’t equipped to fight these things.”

His wounded gaze penetrates, even through his mask. “But
he
is, right?”

I look over his shoulder at Morpheus. His wings block him and Mom as they untangle the nets.

I turn, concentrating on Jeb. “No matter what you think happened between the two of us, I love you. We share battle scars and hearts. I don’t want to lose that.”

He studies my necklaces and the soldered clump of metal at my neck. “Yeah, I see how well you took care of my heart.”

I wince at the honesty behind the dig.

“But you should know by now that I never give up without a fight.” He catches the necklace, jerks me close, and presses his lips to mine—a counterclaim to Morpheus’s kiss, marked with Jeb’s flavor and passion. When he releases me, his jaw is set stubbornly. “You and me? We’re far from over.”

I’m too shell-shocked to respond.

Our moment is cut short as the undead toys awaken the trees. Wide mouths yawn open on the trunks, and their serpentine limbs palpitate. Like Red, they’re limited to the pots and soil they’re in. But I remember the snapping retractable teeth and gums I saw on the tulgey shelves in my memory. If the toys can round us up into the forest, we’re all as good as eaten.

After waking the trees, the toys disappear into the shadows once more. The intermittent sounds of sloshing water and gruesome whimpers and moans are the only indications of their whereabouts. Other than a silhouette here and there, they’re impossible to see, being so small and close to the floor.

Without another word, Jeb rolls the netting into a strip to make it stronger and fashions a makeshift harness around his chest and shoulders. He digs out the night-vision goggles and tears off his mask to slide them into place. Then he snags a paintball gun and shoves all the boxes of paintballs into one duffel that he hangs on his shoulder.

He steps up to Morpheus, catches his arm, and turns him around. “Think you’re man-bug enough to give me a lift?”

Morpheus snorts. “Child’s play. Although I can’t promise a safe landing.”

The threat doesn’t faze Jeb. He turns so Morpheus can ease his arms through the back of the harness.

“Morpheus.” I shoot him a meaningful glance, trying to get his assurance he’ll play nice. But neither guy looks my way. I hope they can manage to work together without killing each other.

“We’ll tag them.” Jeb looks down at us as Morpheus hoists him up, his powerful wings flapping hard enough to stir up gusts. “And you two bag them.”

Mom hands me a net as the guys rise toward the ceiling. Jeb’s shirt is a streak of glaring purple in the shadows. The thought of Sister Two lurking gnaws at the edges of my heart, but I have to keep it together. I can’t let my fear for Jeb get the best of me, or it will prove Morpheus right: that Jeb’s my downfall.

I won’t let that be true. He’s my partner, just like he was in Wonderland. Even if I have lost his trust.

A splatting sound erupts as Jeb blasts paintballs into the darkness. Creepy toys clamber out of hiding places, growling and groaning. Spatters of paint mark them—smears of neon light scuttling to and fro.

Mom and I bob and duck, sway and slide, as gnashing teeth and angry snarls attack from all directions. With the wet floor beneath us, we can barely stay upright to fight them off, much less capture them in nets.

“If we’re going to get the upper hand,” I shout over the commotion, knocking a few undead toys away with a pool cue, “we’ll have to go aerial.” My wings itch to take flight and I climb onto the table.

Mom looks up at me, a hint of reservation behind her mask. “I’m not that great at the flying thing.” She looks scared, just like I was when Jeb and I skated across the chasm in Wonderland on a sea of clams. But Jeb persisted, and we made it out. I’ll be just as strong for Mom.

A half dozen neon-smeared toys tumble our way, panting and rabid.

I drag her up onto the table next to me. “Now, Mom.”

Biting her lip, she nods. There’s a
whoosh
as she releases her wings—almost exact replicas of mine. After tonight—seeing her Wonderland wildness set free—I don’t think she’ll ever have any problems with my miniskirts again.

A trance-techno dance song bursts out of the speakers, and wicked laughter echoes through the intercom. Some toys have found their way to the sound booth.

Mom and I launch into the air—nets in hand—as several restless souls scramble onto the table. A mildewed teddy bear and a pink kitten with only one eye tug at my arms and hair, trying to pull me toward the waving, yawning trees. I slap away the toys with my pool cue as I rise.

Mom’s not gaining altitude fast enough. A worm-eaten vinyl doll clamps onto her ankle, biting her. She screeches and sinks a few feet. Blood trickles down her shoe to the table below.

Diving toward her, I slam the doll with the pool cue, sending it into the darkness. The toy yelps, and I follow its soaring white reflection as it hits the top of the skate bowl and slides down the orange incline, coming to a stop at the bottom. It tries to climb out but keeps slipping down again. The enclosed concave, combined with the moisture from the sprinklers, makes it impossible to escape.

The partially formed idea from earlier hits me fully now.

“Zombie pinball,” I yell to Mom, both of us high enough that our wing tips nearly brush the overhead black lights.

She looks down at the layout, not quite getting it.

To demonstrate, I focus on a pool table, imagining the balls are tumbleweeds caught by the Texas wind. They begin to spin, then
roll, dropping off the table’s edge like rainbow-fluorescent waterfalls.

They capture some toys in their spin, and I guide the mobile mass with my mind and imagination, herding it toward the skate park, hitting the tulgey trees and other fluorescent obstacles along the way but coaxing it along. From our altitude, the glowing scene looks like a hundred pinball games playing at once.

Mom catches on and uses her magic on another pool table, until the floor is covered with glowing balls and off-balance toys. We combine our powers and send all of the balls and toys siphoning into the skate bowl. Mom’s white teeth beam at me across the shadows, and I smile back. We’re winning.

In the distance, Jeb and Morpheus catch the corner of my eye. They’re close to the arcade. A steady buzz of paintballs rains down. They’re going after Red. I push my concern out of my mind, trying to stay emotionless, and keep working with Mom until we’ve piled most of the toys inside the tall bowl. The few remaining ones scamper into the tulgey forest.

I fashion a giant scoop, using my net and cue. Descending close to the skate bowl, I lower it. The toys clamber dumbly inside. I’m able to snag at least fifteen on my first try. Their wiggly weight works as a counterbalance to help me cinch the top closed. I drop the net off on my way to the buffet table for another one. I grab two pool sticks, handing one off to Mom as she hovers close. She swoops away, and I reach under the tablecloth for the last duffel bag.

Something slices my wrist through my glove. I yelp and jerk my arm back, blood drizzling across the floor. Garden shears rip through the tablecloth from the other side, and Sister Two scutters out, rising to her full height and lashing at me, stingers bared.

Gasping, I block Sister Two’s venomous hand with a pool cue.

She screeches as one of her poison-tipped fingernails gets stuck in the wood. I ditch the stick and run, heart slamming with every slippery footstep.

No one can see me through the waving white tulgey trees—Red, the guys, or Mom—but I see them. Jeb and Morpheus have landed and are rounding up the toys they marked—the ones that got by me and Mom. Morpheus uses blue magic to walk the zombies like puppets toward Jeb, who then swings a golf club, driving them into a net they’ve propped open. Leave it to guys to make a game out of a life-and-death situation. They’re almost to the arcade’s door—and Red.

Mom’s in the distance, scooping up toys from the skate bowl, as oblivious as the guys. I start to lift off so I can get to her, but Sister Two’s scissors hack into my right wing.

A fiery agony shoots from my shoulder blade to my spine. My knees fold under, slamming me to the wet cement. I attempt a scream … to warn the others … but the pain gores deep and sucks the air from my lungs, locking my voice box.

Sister Two scutters over, eight feet tapping in morbid synchrony across me. My wing is in tatters. Jeweled pieces fall around me like snow at midnight, reflecting brilliant white under the black lights.