Fallen - Lauren Kate [116]
Luce resisted filling Miss Sophia in on her recent escapade outside the school gates. She groaned inwardly. Why not bring along the whole student body so everyone could enjoy the drama? Molly could take pictures, Cam could pick another fight. Why not start right here, and pick up Arriane and Roland—who, she realized with a start, had already disappeared.
Miss Sophia, book in hand, had already taken off for the front entrance. Luce had to jog to catch up to her, speeding past the card catalog, the singed Persian carpet at the front desk, and the glass cases full of Civil War relics in the east wing special collections, where she’d seen Daniel sketching the cemetery the very first night she was here.
They stepped outside into the humid night. A cloud passed over the moon and the campus fell into inky blackness. Then, as if a compass had been placed in her hand, Luce felt guided toward the shadows. She knew exactly where they were. Not at the library, but not far away, either.
She couldn’t see them yet, but she could feel them, which was so much worse. An awful, consuming itch coated her skin, seeping into her bones and blood like acid. Pooling, clotting, making the cemetery—and beyond—reek with their sulfur stink. They were so much bigger now. It seemed like all the air on campus was foul with their wretched stench of decay.
“Where is Daniel?” Miss Sophia asked. Luce realized that though the librarian might know quite a bit about the past, she seemed oblivious to the shadows. It made Luce feel terrified and alone, responsible for whatever was about to happen.
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling as if she couldn’t get enough oxygen in the thick, swampy night air. She didn’t want to say the words she knew would bring them closer—far too close—to everything that was making her so afraid. But she had to go to Daniel. “I left him in the cemetery.”
They hurried across campus, dodging patches of mud left over from the downpour the other day. Only a few lights were on in the dormitory to their right. Through one of the barred windows, Luce saw a girl she barely knew poring over a book. They were in the same morning block of classes. She was a tough-looking girl with a pierced septum and the tiniest sneeze—but Luce had never heard her speak. She had no idea if she was miserable or if she enjoyed her life. Luce wondered at that moment: If she could trade places with this girl—who never had to worry about past lives, or apocalyptic shadows, or the deaths of two innocent boys on her hands—would she do it?
Daniel’s face—the way it had been bathed in violet light when he’d carried her home this morning—appeared before her eyes. His gleaming golden hair. His tender, knowing eyes. The way one touch of his lips transported her far away from any darkness. For him, she’d suffer all of this, and more.
If only she knew how much more there was.
She and Miss Sophia jogged forward, past the creaking bleachers framing the commons, then past the soccer field. Miss Sophia really kept in shape. Luce would have worried about their pace if the woman hadn’t been a few steps ahead of her.
Luce was dragging. Her fear of facing the shadows was like a hurricane-force headwind slowing her down. And yet she pressed on. An overwhelming nausea told her that she’d barely glimpsed what the dark things could accomplish.
At the cemetery gates, they stopped. Luce was trembling, hugging herself in a failed attempt to hide it. A girl was standing with her back to them, gazing into the graveyard below.
“Penn!” Luce called, so glad to see her friend.
When Penn turned to them, her face was ashen. She wore a black Windbreaker, despite the heat, and her glasses were fogging up from the humidity. She was trembling just as much as Luce was.
Luce gasped. “What happened?”
“I was coming to look for you,” Penn said, “and then a bunch of the other kids ran this way. They went down there.” She pointed toward the gates. “But I c-c-couldn’t.”
“What is it?” Luce asked. “What’s down there?”
But even as she asked, she knew one thing that was down