the ground, submerging the room in total darkness.
Without warning, life kicked into regular speed. She grabbed Nick by the arms and pulled him to the ground just as the muzzle of the gun flashed. But Mr. Byrne and his handgun were the least of her problems.
The sound of a crash pierced the room and suddenly the shrieks of the Nox were twice as loud. Josie felt the rush of air as they swooped into the lab.
Nick wrapped his arms around her to try and shield her from the Nox, but this wasn’t the time for chivalry. “Curl up into a ball,” she whispered.
“What? Why?”
“Stay quiet.” She didn’t have time to explain. “Trust me.”
Without waiting for him to comply, Josie forced him onto his side, then climbed on top. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, resting her head directly on top of his. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be able to sense Nick with her covering him.
A scream tore through the chaos. Not an animal this time—human. It was close to them, just on the other side of the table, and Josie could feel the terror of it seeping into her bones.
“No!” Mr. Byrne cried. “Not me. Not me!”
His screams shifted, less pleading and more pain. Excruciating pain, the kind of cries Josie imagined from a fourteenth-century witch burning at the stake. The air beat around her, faster and faster, a torrent of ecstasy in the kill.
Josie hugged Nick tighter. So far she hadn’t felt as much as a wing graze her body as they lay on the floor in some kind of bizarre spooning pose.
Suddenly, Mr. Byrne’s screams choked off. There was an abatement in the shrieks of the Nox, and Josie could hear sputtering, like a man drowning. She heard a crash, and felt the reverberations through the floor. A table falling over as Mr. Byrne made one last, desperate attempt for the door.
Without warning, the Nox exploded into a frenzy. The noise of their screaming was so loud Josie was sure her ears were bleeding. But she didn’t move her hands to her ears to try to mute the noise; she kept them wrapped around Nick. She had to protect him. The screeching intensified, at once joyful and horrific, and Josie realized it was the bloodlust as they ripped Mr. Byrne’s body to pieces. The table bounced, pushing up against them from one side, and Josie could feel the vibrations of the Nox as they attacked Mr. Byrne’s body again and again and again. . . .
Then as suddenly as it began, the room went silent.
Josie didn’t move. Her head throbbed, her ears rang from the sheer decibels of the noise that had inexplicably ceased, and her breaths came fast and deep, like after line sprints in PE. Beneath her, Nick didn’t stir. She could feel him breathing just as heavily as she was, but neither of them felt brave enough to move.
Nick was the first to break the spell. “I think they’re gone.”
“Where?” Josie whispered.
“Wherever they go during the daylight?”
Josie nodded, even though Nick couldn’t see her in the darkness. “They must have phase shifted. Like Tony said.”
“What happened?” Nick asked breathlessly. “I mean, why aren’t we dead?”
Josie continued to straddle him. “I think . . .” Her voice was trembling. “I think it’s like with Tony, where he’s not quite in our world but not quite out of it? I think that’s what’s happened with me. When I came through the portal.”
Nick shifted, and she sat back on her heels, freeing him from the weight of her body. In the pitch darkness, she didn’t realize he was sitting up until his nose grazed her cheek.
Nick froze, and Josie heard him suck in a quick breath, then slowly he drew his cheek against her own. His skin was rough with stubble. It scratched her face, but Josie didn’t care. She inhaled deeply and caught the spicy traces of aftershave long since applied. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and take gulping breaths of him.
Fingers against her face. Just the tips, deliberately outlining her jaw, the contours of her face. Nick’s touch was soft, yet assertive. She could sense his want, his need to touch and feel her, but with a gentleness that Josie had never encountered in his predecessor. His fingertips traced down her cheeks to her chin, and his thumb swept lightly across her lips, causing a fluttering thrill deep within her.
Josie’s heart thundered in her chest. She reached a tentative hand forward and pressed it against Nick’s body. Through the thin cotton of his shirt, she could feel the strong, rapid beat of his heart. He was just as excited as she was.
Her touch gave Nick the green light. His hand snaked behind her neck and pulled her to him. The feel of his lips against hers was electric.
Josie pressed her mouth to Nick’s and kissed him greedily. She’d fantasized about this moment so many times, but it had never been like this. In her dreams, she was using him as a substitute for the boy who had broken her heart. But that pain and loss had passed, and now Josie found herself yearning for this Nick of his own merit. He was not her ex-boyfriend. He was different. He was better.
And she was in love with him.
Nick moaned softly into her mouth as he wrapped both of his arms around her. He rolled over, cradling her head in his hand so she wouldn’t clonk it on the tile floor, and slid his body on top of hers. She arched her back as she deepened their kiss. The darkness that had been a thing to be feared, a place where nightmares lived, had lost its menace. Josie couldn’t see the outline of Nick’s face and body, though they were just inches from her own. She couldn’t tell where his hands were, where he would touch her next.
Nick gently glided his hand up beneath her shirt, then kissed the soft part of her neck just below her ear. Josie trembled as he inched his hands upward toward her chest. So slowly it was almost torture. Her body ached for him in a way she’d never felt before. She wanted to feel his hands on every inch of her skin, to revel in the warmth of his body sliding against her own. Just as his hand swept over her breast, she reached her arms up over her head.
Her hand touched something in the darkness.
A shoe.
Josie pulled her lips away from his; the spell of Nick was broken in an instant.
“What’s wrong?” Nick panted.
Josie didn’t answer. She felt up the smooth, leather of the shoe to a sock. A sock clothing the hard bone of an ankle. A sock that was sticky and damp.
She yanked her hand away, realizing what it was, but the foot came with her, sliding several inches closer to where she lay on the floor. It was easy and light, as if it was no longer attached to a body.
“Oh my God!” Josie pushed herself up, cracking her forehead against Nick’s in the process. Nick grunted, fell back, and Josie scrambled after him, desperate to get away from the body on the floor.
“Are you okay?” Nick said, reaching for her in the darkness.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . ,” she started. Her brain felt paralyzed and all she wanted to do was wash the hand that had accidentally touched Mr. Byrne’s severed leg.
“Oh my God.”
Nick rocketed to his feet and fumbled around in the darkness, swearing under his breath as he bumped into tables and crunched on broken glass in his sneakers. After a few seconds, she saw the weak but steady beam of the flashlight a moment before Nick shined it in her face. “Are you okay?” he asked again.
Her face must have answered when her voice couldn’t. Nick sprinted to her side and lifted her to her feet. She felt his strong arm around her waist, and she let her body sag into it. But she couldn’t enjoy the sensation, not even for a moment. The beam of Nick’s flashlight traced a slow trail across the lab floor, sweeping back and forth, looking for the remains of Mr. Byrne. He spotted the shoe first, black and unmarred, as if its owner had just come from a shoeshine.
Knowing Mr. Byrne, he probably had.
As Nick traced the shoe up to the ankle and beyond, Josie saw what she’d feared: the leg was severed at the knee. Shreds of the dark dress slacks Mr. Byrne had been wearing still clung to the leg, gathered down by the blood-soaked ankle. But the rest of what had been his lower leg was little more than a skeleton. Thick puddles of blood spilled out in every direction, splattered across the floor by the frenzy of the attack. Bits of ripped and
