Fallen - Lauren Kate [66]
How could she breathe in this air when she didn’t even know what had happened to Penn? If Penn hadn’t made it out—if she was collapsed somewhere inside—then Luce had failed someone she cared about again. Only this time it would be so much worse.
She wiped her eyes and watched a puff of smoke curl out from underneath the crack at the base of the door. They weren’t safe yet. There was another door at the end of the hallway. Through the glass panel in the door, Luce could see the wobble of a tree branch in the night. She exhaled. In a few moments, they’d be outside, away from these choking fumes.
If they were fast enough, they could go around to the front entrance and make sure Penn and Miss Sophia had made it out okay.
“Come on,” Luce told Todd, who was folded over himself, wheezing. “We have to keep going.”
He straightened up, but Luce could see he was really overcome. His face was red, his eyes were wild and wet. She practically had to drag him toward the door.
She was so focused on getting out that it took her too long to process the heavy, swishing noise that had fallen over them, drowning out the alarms.
She looked up into a maelstrom of shadows. A spectrum of shades of gray and deepest black. She should only be able to see as far as the ceiling overhead, but the shadows seemed somehow to extend beyond its limits. Into a strange and hidden sky. They were all tangled up in each other, and yet they were distinct.
Amid them was the lighter, grayish one she’d seen earlier. It was no longer shaped like a needle, but now looked almost like the flame of a match. It bobbed over them in the hallway. Had she really fended off that amorphous darkness when it threatened to graze Penn’s head? The memory made her palms itch and her toes curl.
Todd started banging on the walls, as if the hallway were closing in on them. Luce knew they were nowhere near the door. She grabbed for his hand, but their sweaty palms slid off each other. She wrapped her fingers tight around his wrist. He was white as a ghost, crouched down near the floor, almost cowering. A terrified moan escaped his lips.
Because the smoke was now filling up the hallway?
Or because he could sense the shadows, too?
Impossible.
And yet his face was pinched and horrified. Much more so now that the shadows were overhead.
“Luce?” His voice shook.
Another horde of shadows rose up directly in their path. A deep black blanket of dark spread out across the walls and made it impossible for Luce to see the door. She looked at Todd—could he see it?
“Run!” she yelled.
Could he even run? His face was ashy and his eyelids drooped shut. He was on the verge of passing out. But then it suddenly seemed like he was carrying her.
Or something was carrying both of them.
“What the hell?” Todd cried out.
Their feet skimmed the floor for just a moment. It felt like riding a wave in the ocean, a light crest that lifted her higher, filling her body with air. Luce didn’t know where she was headed—she couldn’t even see the door, just a snarl of inky shadows all around. Hovering but not touching her. She should have been terrified, but she wasn’t. Somehow she felt protected from the shadows, like something was shielding her—something fluid but impenetrable. Something uncannily familiar. Something strong, but also gentle. Something—
Almost too quickly, she and Todd were at the door. Her feet hit the floor again, and she shoved herself against the door’s emergency exit bar.
Then she heaved. Choked. Gasped. Gagged.
Another alarm was clanging. But it sounded far away.
The wind whipped at her neck. They were outside! Standing on a small ledge. A flight of stairs led down to the commons, and even though everything in her head felt cloudy and filled with smoke, Luce thought she could hear voices somewhere nearby.
She turned back to try to figure out what had just happened. How had she and Todd made it through that thickest, blackest, impenetrable shadow? And what was the thing that had saved them? Luce felt its absence.
She almost wanted to