to fall. Panic revved inside her, but she forced herself to push it down, to set one shaking foot in front of the other and keep going.
“Alnitak,” she whispered, stuttering, into the dark, imagining points of light appearing on her bedroom ceiling. “Alnilam. Mintaka.”
Glenn began to take another step, but stopped when the gravel down the path ahead of her shifted. She froze and listened. Nothing.
Just the wind. Glenn raised her foot, but there it was again, followed this time by a shower of dirt and rocks that tumbled down the hillside only feet from where she stood.
There was something waiting in the gloom ahead of her.
Glenn raised one foot and set it down behind her, but then the same sound came again. This time, behind her. She was trapped. Her hand slid up the wall to her right. At first there was only cold stone, but then her fingers discovered a crack. The ground shifted again in front of and behind her, closer this time, faster.
Glenn leapt, found another crevice for her left hand, and pulled herself up, her feet kicking at the smooth rock until they hit shallow depressions and took hold. Looking up, she could barely make out a series of short plateaus and crevices. A few deep seams, deeper areas of darkness, ran the wall’s length. The gravel below shifted again. Glenn pushed off and her fingers grazed a chink in the rock. A fingernail snapped as she dug in but she didn’t let go, she groped for another handhold, finally pulling herself up and away from the path. Glenn clambered up until she hit a narrow shelf, just wide enough for her to rise up onto her knees. She dared a look back to see what was coming for her.
It was as if the darkness below had congealed into two deep shadows. Both of them were tall and thin, like shifting smoke, and moving fast toward the same wall she had scrambled up.
Glenn’s heart flipped. The two figures were already on the wall, but they didn’t pause to find holds. They slid up, their hands flat on the rock, as if they were sticking to it. Glenn threw herself against the stone, finding two more handholds and yanking herself up. When she made it to the hill’s moonlit crest she rolled up onto it, then ran across the uneven rock. The two creatures came over the lip of the hill. They were faceless, freakishly elongated and thin, with tendril-like arms and legs.
Wisps of their dark bodies trailed behind them as they glided across the stone. Glenn fled up a short rise, leaping onto another hilltop that curved away to the right. She took off again, moving down a narrow corridor of rock.
She made it only a few feet before what she saw ahead pulled the last breath out of her lungs and crashed her down onto her knees. There, dark silhouettes against the deep blue night sky, were four more of the smokelike creatures. They stood in a semicircle at the edge of the cliff, their bodies wavering in the wind. Beyond them was sky and, to either side, high rock walls.
Glenn knew if she turned around she’d see the other two right behind her, cutting off her escape. There was nowhere to run. Even if she could fight, there were too many of them.
She had only one choice.
Glenn pulled back the sleeve of her coat and her fingers found the edge of the bracelet. Her breath caught in her throat as she tore it off and the dull metal hit the ground.
Glenn was aware only of the cold rock below the soles of her boots as she advanced toward the faceless creatures at the other side of the hill. She halved the distance between them and stopped. A gust of wind blew across the mountaintop. Removing the bracelet was like waking up a little at a time. The world began to pulse around her, becoming more vivid, fuller. High up on the mountain, there weren’t as many voices coming at her, just the smoothness of stone, the deep night, and the creatures that stood before her.
Without the bracelet to block them out, they were like places where the night, weighed down by some infinitely dense hunger, collapsed in on itself. They reached out for her, tugging at her, eager to press in through her flesh and fill her body. They wanted to devour her.
Become her.
Glenn’s knees started to buckle, but she threw her head back.
Above her the moon was huge and brilliantly white. It was transfixing, so cool and clean. Its light filled up her arms and legs and chest and drew her upward. Soon Glenn was aware of being high above the mountains, barely able to feel the shadowy things below.
The thin air seemed to fill with music the farther she drew away from the earth. She heard bells and horns and the tinkling of crystals.
The moon grew enormous. Glenn began to pick out the forms of the planets and the curve of solar systems. She could feel the universe like a bolt of silk gliding through her fingers, smooth and cool. Glenn urged herself higher, starving for more. Could she walk across the moon’s dusty surface? Could she go farther? Out to Orion? Out to 813? Opal had said that people once walked from world to world. Maybe she could too.
But then a sound rose up from below, followed by a jolt of animal terror that hit Glenn like molten iron. Below her was a small figure being surrounded by those cold, starving things. They were pressing in toward it. Glenn floated there, watching, but soon she turned away, rising back into that sea of music and light. Soon she would be a part of it.
“Glenn!”
The voice ripped through the air and was like a hand seizing Glenn’s ankle. There was something about the shape of it that fit like a key in her mind.
“Morgan!”
Something snapped. Glenn plummeted down out of the sky and
crashed onto the ground between a young man and the approaching shadows. They had formed a tight circle and were closing in. Glenn felt their tearing hunger as if it was her own.
She gritted her teeth as the darkness flooded her. The creatures pressed in closer, their wormlike arms reaching out. Their featureless faces yawned wide, opening up huge, dark mouths. She tried to push them away, but what were they and what was she? What was the difference? She knew there was something she was supposed to do, but it was fuzzy and indistinct in her head. She was so hungry. A deep moan, a sigh of misery, resounded through her.
A hand took hers, the fingers pressing into her palm. Glenn turned. A spike of heat came from the boy on the ground. She was sure she knew him, but no name came to mind. He was small and thin, but there was something in him, something that burned and pushed the darkness back. Glenn snatched at it and pulled it within herself until it grew into a raging fire.
Glenn leapt again into the sky as the light and heat welled up in her pores and exploded outward, scouring the cold stone. She was a sun, and the creatures screamed as they fled from her, the light tearing at their smoky bodies, rending them apart.
Their cries doubled, keening pathetically. Words bubbled up through their screams. They came from everywhere, from each of them at once, clawing at her.
Glenn loosed another wave of light. It burst from her and pushed the creatures away, but still their cries surrounded her. Glenn dropped to the ground. A cluster of them was at the edge of the cliff, cringing with their dark arms wrapped tight around one another. Their moans still echoed in Glenn’s head. She strode forward, her body burning.
“Stop!” someone shouted distantly, but it meant nothing. Glenn burned hotter and brighter, ready to blast them away into nothingness.
The power was glorious.
A hand suddenly clasped her wrist. Glenn turned just as the young man yanked her toward him. There was a gray circle in his hand and he slapped it onto her wrist. Soon there was a great contraction and Glenn crashed to the ground.
“Glenn? Glenn!”
She was pulled into someone’s lap and cradled into their chest.
Her head lolled back.
His face was covered in ash and there were streaks of burn marks on his cheeks and on his shaven head. His eyes were luminous and strong. Glenn raised her hand up toward his face and he took it in his.
