Rachel Vincent - Before I Wake

The lake was…not made of water. I don’t know what the Netherworld version of our lake was filled with, but it was thick, and dark, and it stank to high hell. Things slithered just beneath the surface, leaving ripples in the thin, foul membrane that had formed on top. I gagged just from looking at it, and without the ability to teleport, I couldn’t get far enough from the stagnant body of…fluid to avoid the smell.

I’d done my part. I’d crossed over. I closed my eyes, preparing to cross back into the human world to make sure Em had been released, when someone shouted my name.

I spun around to find Emma limping toward me from only feet away, leaving small drops of bright red blood on the sand. Behind her, long, black, multilegged creatures—carnivorous caterpillars?—crawled out of the sand and gathered around each new drop, fighting over her blood, scratching, clawing, and devouring until each stained grain was gone.

Invidia stood at Emma’s back, stuck in her own form now that the Jayson-costume had expired with her trip back into the Netherworld. The hellion of envy looked just like I remembered. Thin hands sticking out of the long sleeves of her black dress. Gaunt cheeks. Dark circles beneath featureless black-orb eyes staring out at everything. Or at nothing.

With a hellion you never could tell.

Invidia’s long, ever-flowing rivulets of black hair dripped down her back and over one shoulder, shining with a green tint in the anemic light of the Netherworld sun. Each drop sizzled on the sand at her feet, but instead of gathering for a bite, the caterpillars scurried away from the noxious fluid. Except for one unlucky creature, who suffered a direct hit and was consumed alive by the acidic drop of liquid hair.

“Em…” I threw my arm around her waist while hers went around my neck, and in the process, I stepped on several of the creepy little bugs still following the source of Em’s human blood. “You were supposed to let her go in the human plane!” I snapped at Invidia, then flinched over my own volume. Shouting in the Netherworld was like ringing a dinner bell in the Old West.

“I don’t recall saying where I would release her,” Invidia said, and her cackle of laughter grated against my bones like nails on a chalkboard. “You should take her home while you still have a chance. They’ve had a taste of her, and they’ll want more.” Her grand, skinny-handed gesture took in the army of tiny cater-creatures marching around the threat of Invidia’s toxic hair drops on a steady path toward me and Em. “I’ve seen them strip slabs of meat twice your size to the bone in under a single of your human minutes.”

I frowned in confusion, carefully backing Emma and myself away from the growing mass of bugs crawling over one another to get to us. “You’re letting us go?” It was a trick. It had to be.

“If she is still here in ten seconds, I won’t leave enough scraps of that pretty little body to feed a single one of the bugs… .”

She didn’t have to tell me twice—er, three times. I grabbed Em’s hand and closed my eyes. A second later, we stood on the lakeshore in the human world, where the sand was brown and nothing crawled out of it ready to devour us.

Emma sagged against me, her breathing ragged, her grip on my shoulder weakening with every second. “Is that it? She just let us go?”

“That’s what it looks like…” But my nerve endings were on fire, and every hair on my arms was standing straight up. Why would she let us cross over? It was almost like Invidia wanted us in the human world. “Something’s wrong. That was too easy.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh, Em…” I lowered her to the ground carefully and she removed her hand from the wound long enough for me to take a look. But I couldn’t even tell what I was looking at, much less how bad it was. I only saw blood. “We’re going to get you to a hospital. They’ll fix you up.”

“It’s going to be okay, though, right?” she asked, staring up into my eyes, her entire face lined in pain and fear. “I can’t die if I’m not on the list, right? And Tod would have told us if I were on the list?”

“Yeah, if he saw your name, he’d definitely tell us. But…” Damn, I didn’t want to have to tell her this. “That knife—it’s actually a dagger made of hellion-forged steel.”

“What does that mean?”

“Supernatural events trump the list. Which means…”

“I could die,” she finished for me, and her gaze dropped in shock. “Again.”

“Yeah.” Of a wound I’d inflicted. “But we’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to get you to the hospital.” I couldn’t take her that far in one jump, but maybe Tod could.

Where was Tod? Why hadn’t he crossed into the Netherworld with us? He was gone, and so was the broken dagger.

“Shit. Give me your hand.” I reached down, and Em placed her bloody left hand in mine, still clutching her wound with the other. I closed my eyes and blinked us to the pavilion my father had rented, then helped Em onto one of the picnic table benches.

“Where is everyone?” she asked, and I glanced around, wondering the same thing.

“Harmony took my dad and Sabine to the hospital. Nash and Luca went to find Sophie, but I don’t see any of them.”

“What about Tod?”

“I don’t know.” The chill bumps on my arms grew even fatter.

The fire was still going in the grill, burning the burgers and charring the already-burned hot dogs. My dad’s spatula lay on the grass a few feet away. The soda cans he and Harmony had been drinking from still sat on the table nearest the grill. Nash hadn’t packed anything up yet, which meant they’d been gone since I went to confront Jayson/Invidia.

“Kaylee!” Nash shouted, and I looked up to see him and Luca running around the curve of the lake toward us, from the shore opposite where Em had been taken hostage. I exhaled in relief—until I realized they were alone.

“Hey, Emma’s hurt!” I said as they stopped beneath the pavilion, winded from their run. “Where are Tod and Sophie?”

“We couldn’t find Sophie,” Nash said. “There were several sets of footprints in the sand—some of them ours—and hers seemed to head into the woods. But we couldn’t tell for sure.”

“Didn’t know we were supposed to be looking for Tod,” Luca added, still trying to catch his breath from the sprint.

“What happened?” Nash dropped to his knees in front of Em before I could pull another word out of him. She moved her hand so he could look at her wound, and her nose and forehead wrinkled in pain.

“I accidentally cut her. I was aiming for Jayson, who turned out to be Invidia.”

“Invidia?” Luca said.

“The hellion of envy who turned Sabine and Kaylee against each other,” Em explained.

“It wasn’t just us!” I insisted. “The whole school went crazy because of her!”

“Emma needs a hospital,” Nash said.

“I know, but I can’t blink her that far, and we can’t leave Sophie and Tod.” I dug my keys from my pocket. “Why don’t you take Em to the hospital, and Luca and I will stay here and find them.”

Nash shook his head and refused the keys when I tried to hand them to him. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“But, Em…”

“I’m fine for a little while,” she insisted, but I found that hard to believe. “Besides, if you find Tod, he can get me there faster than driving, right?”

I nodded. “In theory.”

Em’s gaze focused on something behind me, and her frown deepened. “Shit. We have company.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it before I could turn and look. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you guys have to make it stop,” she said, glancing from Nash to Luca, then back to me. “Before someone else gets caught in this like Jayson did.”