The Gathering Dark (29 page)

The sensation of being squeezed and something cold and viscous sliding over her skin were immediately followed by Walker’s strangled cry of surprise.

Keira sagged against the table, gripping its smooth edge.

“Oh, shit.” Walker stared through the wall behind Keira and she knew that he could see Jeremy, baseball bat and all, back in her world. Walker looked at her. “I didn’t think about you getting caught. I didn’t even notice that you’d gone inside a
house.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Keira. I was so wrapped up in the crap with Smith that I didn’t realize—”

“It’s okay,” she said. Her voice shook and she cleared her throat. The noise shivered against the locked cases and she winced. It sounded so loud in the tiny room.

He picked up the record and slid it into its protective sleeve, putting it back on the shelf. Keira didn’t like the rising note of alarm in his voice. “We have to get out of here. Legal studies is only two rooms over. If we can make it that far, then we can get out of Darkside without running into Jeremy’s bat.” He crammed the needle back into its box and left it on the table.

His hands were shaking.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. Keira had never seen
anything
make Walker’s hand shake.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what else to—”

“You have
nothing
to be sorry for.” He stepped in close, catching her face between his hands. “It’s not your fault. Coming here was better than getting whacked with a blunt object.”

He didn’t add
I think
, but Keira could see it in his eyes.

Walker leaned down and brushed his lips across hers. The heat of his skin melted her knees and she swayed into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her mouth against his.

Walker slid his hands up her arms, gently breaking her hold on him.

“We can’t,” he whispered. “There’s no time. Oh, God.” He
dropped another quick kiss onto her mouth, catching her lower lip gently between his teeth. “We have to go.
Now.
” He spun her so that she was facing the door and then he carefully swept it aside. His shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch as the sight of the empty vestibule came into view.

He motioned for Keira to follow him. “This way,” he whispered, heading right.

Keira stepped around the corner in time to see Smith pull Walker out of view of the main hall.

“They’re coming. Dozens of them. You have to go
now
,” Smith panted. Walker looked over at Keira and Smith followed his gaze. They both looked scared, but Smith’s eyes glittered with shock. She froze.

“Oh, shit! Keira.” Smith looked from her back to Walker. “So she really is the Experimental?”

Walker nodded.

“And you brought her
here
?” Smith gaped. “Have you lost your mind? You have to get her out of here, Walker.” Sweat glistened on his pale forehead, making him look ill. “The guards, they—”

From across the Hall, a shout rent the air like a bullet.

“It’s the Experimental! Hey! You—Sorter! Stop them!”

Keira looked at Walker, whose face filled with terror.

“Cross!” He whispered.

She tried, but she was so flustered that she could barely remember what her piano looked like, much less Jeremy’s spare room.

She shook her head mutely.

Then you need to run. Now!
he mouthed.

She nodded, sprinting off toward the main part of the Hall.

“Sorter!” the guards called. Smith’s head snapped up. “Get them!”

Smith grabbed Walker halfheartedly, and a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed for Keira that it was a ploy. With a roar, Walker tackled him, sending Smith sprawling against the floor.

Keira ducked behind one of the enormous curtains that had been pinned back against the wall, and peered around it, looking for a way out of the Hall. She nearly screamed when one of the guards tore past her, headed for Walker and Smith, who were rolling around on the floor in a very effective fake fight. She was stuck—there was no way she could make a run for it without someone seeing her.

The guard pulled Smith off Walker. Walker’s arm gave a gut-wrenching snap and he screamed. With one enormous, booted foot, the guard kicked the back of Walker’s head, sending his face smashing into the stone floor. Walker stopped moving. The sight made Keira sway on her feet. She wanted to run, but how could she leave him like that? And then she saw his ribs move, just a little.

He was breathing at least.

“Leave the traitor for now,” the guard shouted. “We’ve lost the Experimental! You, Sorter,” he barked at Smith. “Check the
other rooms in this annex.” Smith scrambled away while the guard dashed into the listening room where Keira and Walker had been moments earlier.

The antechamber was empty.

This was her chance.

Keira sprinted out of the vestibule. She skidded into the main hall and stopped short at the sight of another black-robed figure running toward her across the main hall.

Another guard. It had to be. A couple of Darklings had emerged from other little rooms in the Hall, and they shrank back against the pillars and walls, as though they could become invisible. As though getting chased by the guards was the worst thing they could imagine.

The guard’s leathery robe flapped around him like bat wings, more intimidating than Smith’s shaggy robe was. He shouted at her and Keira took off, her shoes sliding against the floor as she fought for traction. There were two other small rooms set into the walls of the main hall, but they offered nowhere to hide. Up ahead, Keira could see a long, dark hall, lined irregularly with openings. She ran for it. Behind her, she heard someone yelp with pain, but she didn’t look back. The sudden silence in the antechamber was just as terrifying as the slapping of the guard’s feet against the floor.

Her chest ached as she ducked under the archway that led to the darkened hall. She needed Walker to be okay, and not only
because she was entirely too panicked to get out of Darkside without him.

In the hall, the doors were mostly shut. She peered down the black corridor, looking for an exit, but the passage twisted abruptly, hiding everything beyond the bend.

At least it would hide her, too.

The guard’s footsteps drew closer.

She had to move.

The first door she tried opened into an empty room with a domed ceiling. Something about the musty scent of the air and the dark glitter of the smooth walls made the back of her neck prickle in warning. She dropped the door back into place and sprinted down the hall.

Her lungs and thighs burned with the effort of running. Her feet slipped against the floor again. She rounded the bend in the corridor and kicked off her ballet flats in frustration. In the newly visible part of the hall, she could see two new doorways. She sprinted toward them, wincing at the iciness of the floor beneath her bare feet.

She stopped in the middle of the hall, between her potential hiding places. Her palms were sweating and she wiped them against her jeans automatically.

What she could see of the room on her left was nearly filled by an enormous machine that was covered with levers and dials. She glanced to the right-hand room and saw stacks
of boxes. It would have been perfect to hide behind them, except they were pressed up against the walls. Behind her, the timbre of the guard’s footsteps changed as he crossed from the main hall into the hallway.

The hallway she was standing in.

Her time was up. She’d have to take her chances hiding with the machine. She darted into the room, ducking behind a panel of switches that was waist-high. If she knelt down, she’d be invisible from the door.

Above her hung a row of the same sort of needles that Walker had used in the little record room. They dangled from a mechanized-looking track like a row of dark icicles. Keira shuddered.

The guard’s footsteps slowed, and she could hear the creaking, leathery noise of the doors down the hall being opened and closed. Keira wrapped her arms around her knees and closed her eyes. She tried to wish herself back to the normal world, but it didn’t work—she didn’t even know where she was in that world, whether she should be feeling for grass or Berber carpet or asphalt beneath the soles of her freezing-cold feet.

Keira opened her eyes and stared around her as she huddled behind the machine that filled most of the room. She longed for the headache that came with seeing both worlds at once. She caught a glimpse of blue sky, but the sound of the footsteps inching closer swept it away.

Focus. Focus or get caught. Those are your two choices. And if you get caught, they get Walker, too.

Crossing over was her only chance. Keira blocked out everything but a tiny ripple in the black stone of the room’s walls. She looked for the familiar sights of her neighborhood with her peripheral vision, trying to see even the edges of something normal.

The tall, litter-strewn grass of an empty lot drifted into view. Keira knew that lot—it was two doors down from the Reynoldses’. It would be muddy beneath her. And she could see the grass moving. It must be breezy. She struggled to feel those things. Keira welcomed the almost familiar press of sliding between the two worlds. Her skin had begun to go clammy with the feeling of going home when a light flared to life above her.

A guard stepped around the side of the machine, his robe swirling out in front of him. The fabric was the same as what Smith had worn, only this looked finer. It moved like magnetic dust, shifting and re-forming as if it were alive.

The guard yelled when he caught sight of her.

His shout broke Keira’s concentration and for a horrible moment, she felt herself catch in the thin place between Darkside and home.

Unable to move.

Unable to breathe.

Her gaze was locked on the guard. Beneath his hood, she saw two eyes, pure black as a spider’s. They glittered in the strange antireflection of the ceiling light. Keira tried to scream, but she had no air to scream with. The guard reached for her with his unnaturally long fingers. He brushed her shoulder and she jerked, every molecule in her body pulling away from him.

She landed on her side.

In the mud.

In the empty lot.

Home.

Keira let out a choked sob as she rolled away from the spot where she’d come across from Darkside, afraid that the guard would be able to reach into her world somehow. She knew they couldn’t cross through the fabric of their reality, but she also knew that she’d made a new rip in Darkside. She wasn’t taking any chances. Keira stood up and picked her way across the debris-strewn grass. Her bare feet slowed her down as she tried to look for Walker in the Hall while still avoiding the broken bottles in her world.

She stopped near the edge of the lot. Cautiously, she looked for the other world she knew was there. The world that was more than the leafless trees and suburban grass and cracked sidewalks in front of her.

Keira dug her toes into the mud, keeping her physical awareness in Sherwin while she looked for Darkside. A swirling dark mark twirled on the top of her naked foot,
reminding her of the place she’d just escaped; luring her back.

The machine-filled room was gone. From her spot at the edge of the lot, she found herself looking at a Darkside wall.

She wasn’t inside the Hall of Records anymore. She couldn’t see anything except the building’s smooth facade.

She had no idea where Walker might be now, but he was in the Hall of Records somewhere, and she’d be damned if she was going to leave him to fend for himself.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

K
EIRA THOUGHT FRANTICALLY, TRYING
to come up with some sort of plan. She couldn’t wander around the neighborhood, peeking into the Hall of Records while she searched for Walker. For one thing, Jeremy was home and already hot to use his baseball bat. For another, she didn’t have any shoes. Someone might notice a muddy, barefoot girl roaming the sidewalks.

She wanted to plunge back into Darkside but she’d barely gotten out the last time. What if she got stuck? They’d catch her, and then who would save Walker? The memory of the guard’s eyes ghosted through her like a recurring nightmare.

She needed to find Walker while keeping herself from
getting caught. Her thoughts were impossibly tangled and her vision swam—she was having trouble shaking the effects of passing between the two worlds. Her fingers ached for her piano. She needed to play—to use the rhythm of the notes to quiet her mind. It was the way she’d always worked through her problems and without it, she felt lost.

But then again, she’d never had this sort of problem. There was no time to pick through a sonata when a life hung in the balance.

Suddenly, Smith appeared in front of her. Keira would have staggered back if he hadn’t grabbed her shoulders.

“He’s still there, Keira, on the floor. You have to go get him before the guards decide they can spare someone to drag him away.”

Now she knew what people meant when they said their hearts had leapt into their throats. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow through the thudding fear that filled her neck.

“What about you? Why didn’t you bring him across?” she croaked, both worried for him and also desperately wanting his help.

“I couldn’t! They would have seen me. I’ll go to another part of the Hall and create a distraction.” Smith’s face was grim, but determined. “If we both get caught trying to get Walker out, they’ll take the three of us in front of the Tribunal for sure. If they’re busy watching me throw a fit, though, we might all make it out alive.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Go, then.”

Smith disappeared as quickly as he’d come, and Keira strode toward the last place she’d seen Walker—facedown in the vestibule in front of the records . . . which was probably somewhere in the Reynoldses’ living room. Somehow, she was going to have to get back into Jeremy’s house.

She hurried across the cracked sidewalk. She was muddy, barefoot, and disheveled—maybe she could use that to her advantage. Not even Jeremy could find her sexy when she looked like she’d just rolled through a ditch. In front of the Reynoldses’ house, Keira squinted, looking for the Hall. Her skin crawled in warning, but she couldn’t tell if it was because she was close to the guards or because Jeremy was watching her from his living room window.