“Why? What happened?”
“We found them. Travers and Lia.”
“Alive?”
Emory shook her head. Devastation darkened Romie’s brown eyes, and Emory couldn’t bring herself to tell her the gruesome truth of their deaths. Didn’t want to give her a false sense of hope by telling her they’d been alive when they’d first washed up, even if it was just for a moment. They had to make sense of this before Romie or Jordyn tried to follow those voices and suffered the same fate.
But they also couldn’t stay here—that was clear enough. They needed a way out that wouldn’t get them killed.
Romie’s eyes narrowed onto a point over Emory’s shoulder. She stiffened. “Jordyn, what are you doing?”
“Jordyn?” Emory echoed, whipping around.
He was a dark shape down the path, his movements slow and uncoordinated, almost as if he were drunk. There was a gaunt, haunted look about him, and down the side of his face were three long, black gashes. He didn’t seem to hear Romie or see Emory as he leaned dangerously close to the edge of the path. Stars shied away from him and the gathering shadows beneath him.
A clawed hand materialized from the dark then, made of shadows itself. Slowly, it reached for Jordyn, whose own hand lifted in a mirroring gesture.
Romie tore toward him. “Jordyn, no!”
Those monstrous claws sank into Jordyn’s flesh. Cords of black sinews raced up his arm and neck and into his open mouth, and just as Romie reached him, darkness burst all around them. Emory thought she might have screamed, thought she heard Romie crying out to her, saying something that didn’t register, but all she knew then was chaos and cold and fear—
Emory stumbled back into waking.
She opened her eyes to another tenebrous space, to another Brysden shouting her name.
She was awake—but so was the stuff of nightmares.
The darkness had followed her. It expanded and twisted and stretched, looking to fill the cavern. A chilling breath blew through the Belly of the Beast, knocking over the lantern she’d left on the cave floor, leaving only the one in Baz’s hand, a weak beacon in the void.
There was silence. Neither of them dared to breathe or move, all too aware of the presence that loomed.
Baz saw it first, the shape that lengthened behind Emory out of the darkness. A slender thing of bone and shadow, humanoid in theory but stretched too long and too thin, with fathomless eyes and clawed hands tipped in black.
An umbra. Nightmare personified.
I thought I might have pulled one into the waking world with me once, Kai had said.
But it was impossible. He’d claimed they were contained to the sleepscape, and yet—
A low rumble rattled her bones, the only warning sign before the umbra swiped for her.
Baz wrenched Emory out of the way just in time. “Run!”
They bolted for the exit, feet slipping on the wet cave floor as the creature behind them shrieked and screeched, darkness and fear given form. Emory felt its cold breath on the back of her neck as she stumbled forward. She fell to her hands and knees, the breath knocked out of her.
“Baz!”
Pain lanced through her ankle as claws pierced her skin. She kicked at the creature, desperate to extricate herself from its grasp. Baz’s feet sloshed into a shallow pool as he came to an abrupt stop, turning toward her. The umbra let out a piercing wail and recoiled, as if blinded by the light Baz was holding up to it.
Emory scrambled to her feet. As Baz reached for her, the lantern slipped from his grasp, shattering on the ground.
“No!”
Emory shot her hand out—not to grab the lantern, but to pluck the last flickering ember of light from it before it died. The Lightkeeper magic came instinctively, and she was glad she’d had practice wielding it on the harvest moon. The feeble light twisted around her outstretched hand, kept safe in her grasp.
“Look out!” Baz yelled.
Emory glanced over her shoulder and stared into the face of nightmares—into eyes so black they seemed to drown out every bit of light in her soul.
They devour dreams like black holes gobbling up any star that moves too close.
She thought she might have glimpsed something human in those depthless orbs, but then the umbra’s power seeped into her, and Emory screamed.
Fear was a blade and it ripped through her, bright and burning.
30 BAZ
COLD SPEARED THROUGH BAZ’S SOUL. Fear was a seed in his chest that bloomed into a thing he might choke on as the umbra turned its empty eyes on him, making images come to life in his mind:
A blast of power. Blood and rubble and veins shot through with silver. His father telling him everything would be all right. His mother’s singing that he hadn’t heard for years and Romie’s baking that he would likely never taste again. His sister’s name on a silver plaque and caves that beckoned and the stormy-eyed girl who pulled away from him over and over. The ache in his heart every time he watched her drift into a world where he could not follow. The empty commons and the dismal absence of Kai.
Everything he’d ever hoped and dreamed and feared, pulled to the surface by the umbra’s magic as it sought to make him hollow.
This was so much worse than the kind of magic that Kai would use on him, because he could trust Kai to make it all stop, to end the nightmares with a look, a touch, a single note of his midnight voice. But this… If nightmares were but a single droplet of fear, this was an entire ocean of it. Baz felt himself slipping, tumbling through fear after fear—until the umbra scrambled back with a shriek of pain.
Beams of light shot from Emory’s hands as she stood defiantly in front of the umbra, the gash on her ankle already healing. She cast the creature back into the depths of the cavern, creating a barrier of light between them. A light to keep the nightmares at bay. A reprieve—if only temporary.
“What happened back there?” Baz gasped. “How did an umbra follow you out of the sleepscape?”
Emory ignored him, taking a careful step toward the creature that writhed in the darkness beyond the light. Baz tried to stop her from getting any closer. She shrugged him off.
“Jordyn…” The umbra stilled at the name. “Jordyn, if you’re still in there…”
Bleak, horrible understanding dawned on Baz. If this was Jordyn, then Emory must have found Romie in the sleepscape too. But there was nothing of the student behind the umbra’s eyes. It was a predator assessing its next move, and as Emory took a step closer, it pounced.
The umbra clawed at the barrier of light, and Emory buckled beneath the impact, biting back a sob. Baz’s hand shot out to steady her.
“He’s gone, Emory. That’s not Jordyn anymore.”
The umbra’s wails turned piercing as it sought to disperse the slowly waning light. Emory couldn’t keep it back forever. They had to stop it, but could a nightmare be killed? Could fear be conquered?
The walls rumbled around them, giving even the umbra pause. There was a sound like a great thunderclap, so loud it rattled his bones.
The tide rushing in.
Baz glanced at his watch. The hands had slipped, and now they were out of time, with nightmares closing in on both sides. The umbra pushed back against Emory’s light, using their distraction to its advantage. She faltered, leaning heavily against Baz’s side as she held trembling hands out to keep the light from dying.