3:59 - 3:59 Part 25
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3:59 Part 25

"That's the understatement of the century."

Nick sat at the stop sign. "Yeah, but it doesn't mean she's wrong."

Josie pursed her lips. For some irrational reason, she was ticked off by the way Nick defended Madison. "Your girlfriend's been nothing but a bitch since I got here, so excuse me if I don't jump on the 'rah-rah, Madison' bandwagon, okay?"

Nick gritted his teeth. "She's not my girlfriend."

"I don't know," Josie said, attempting to sound as flippant and disaffected as possible. "You two seem pretty simpatico."

Nick turned his eyes back to the road and continued the drive. "We dated. Briefly."

"I knew it," Josie said under her breath.

"Look," Nick said sharply. "We went on a few dates last year, but Madison's . . . intense. About everything. It didn't work out." He paused, then shook his head. "And she was never my girlfriend, okay?"

"Whatever."

"What do you care anyway? It's not like you're sticking around. As soon as we find a way to get you home, you're out of here. Right?"

That was the reality. Ever since she'd tried to get back through the mirror and found a concrete wall in her path, Josie had been singularly focused: find a way home. This wasn't her world. This wasn't her life. And yet for some reason the idea of leaving here-of leaving him-made Josie instantly sick to her stomach.

Nick stopped at a light and turned to her. "Right?" he repeated.

His face was drawn, taut like a boxer anticipating a blow to the face. Josie wanted to grab him, to hold on for dear life and never, ever let go.

She'd come here hoping for one day in a perfect life, one day to make amends. A happy family and loving boyfriend, a school full of friends. She'd known it would all be an illusion and a lie, but she hadn't cared. For one day, everything would be perfect.

Then everything had gone wrong.

But as she sat in the car gazing into Nick's eyes, she realized that something had happened to her. Nick Fiorino, the great love of her life. Except this wasn't Nick. Not really. He was a completely different person. Smart, brave, considerate. He took care of his friends, was trying to help save the people they loved. Unselfishly, since he knew his brother was already dead. Even Josie, someone he'd just met. He'd gone out of his way to help her. He'd been the one person she could trust, and the idea of leaving this Nick made her physically ill.

She wanted to tell him. All about her Nick and Madison and how they'd betrayed her, about how she'd come to his world for a fantasy, and about how somewhere along the way he'd become more important to her than she could have predicted.

She wanted to tell him everything.

But she couldn't.

"Right," she said, dropping her eyes.

Nick slowly turned back to the road. "That's what I thought."

7:41 P.M.

The sun had completely dipped below the horizon by the time Nick pulled his SUV into the warehouse. It was dark and empty.

The only light was from the floods on the top of Nick's car. He cut the engine, and Josie strained her ears, listening for the telltale flapping and shrieking of the Nox.

It felt strange to be in the near-darkness as Josie slipped out of the car. Nick had pulled a giant flashlight from the backseat of his car and walked off, presumably to fire up the generator, but as Josie stood there beside the car, she had the distinct feeling that she wasn't alone. She could have sworn she heard a shuffling noise like someone darting around in the dark recesses of the abandoned space, and her eyes must have been playing tricks on her. She thought she saw something move. A shadow in the blackness, darker than the dark, if that was even possible.

"Hello?" she called into the shadows.

No answer. Josie shook her head. It had been so many days since she'd experienced actual darkness, her ocular membranes were no longer capable of adapting to the lack of light.

The generator whirred to life, flooding the warehouse in artificial glow, and Josie jumped.

"There's no one here," Nick said. He pulled the chain, rolling the gate back into place.

"Oh." Josie peered into the back of the warehouse, now bathed in the orangey overhead lights. Nick was right. No one there.

After he secured the door, Nick wandered over to the fridge, mumbled something to himself, then closed the door without taking anything. Josie watched him, unsure what she should do next. He was clearly annoyed with her, angry almost. She felt like she was to blame, and yet how could she be? What did he want from her?

Nick plopped himself down on a sofa and picked up one of the books on interdimensional travel Penelope had left there. He flipped through the pages quickly, and kept his eyes focused on the book. The signal was loud and clear: I don't want to talk.

Josie shrugged and sat down on the sofa opposite him. Suddenly, she was exhausted. The excitement at Penelope's discovery had long since evaporated, and Josie was left feeling fatigued and sore. Every muscle in her body ached as if she'd run back-to-back marathons in stilettos. She leaned her head against the armrest and closed her eyes, wishing she had a sleep mask with her. The orange glow beyond her closed eyelids only enhanced the dull ache emanating from the back of her head. Never in her life had she craved the darkness so desperately. Josie's breath began to slow. Sweet, calm black . . .

Josie didn't realize she'd fallen asleep until she felt a hand over her mouth.

"Shh!" Nick hissed in her ear.

Josie's eyes flew open and panic immediately welled up inside her. It was completely silent in the warehouse; the gentle, ever-present whir of the generator was gone. And though Josie could feel Nick's breath against her cheek as he held his face close to hers, she couldn't see him.

The warehouse was completely dark.

Josie lay there frozen, Nick's hand still covering her mouth, his body pressed tightly next to hers on the sofa. She couldn't see any movement in the warehouse, but as before she had the sensation of motion. A shuffling sound. A breath. Was she hearing things?

Nick made no move for the car. He was listening intently. He held his breath and didn't move a muscle.

That's when Josie heard it. In the distance.

The shrieks.

"Come on!" Nick yelled, all pretense at subterfuge evaporated. He grabbed her hand and hauled her off the sofa. She stumbled over the coffee table as Nick dragged her forward. The shrieks of the Nox intensified quickly, like they moved at light speed. Josie and Nick didn't make it halfway to the car before the windows at the top of the warehouse exploded.

A coordinated attack, bursting in through several windows at the same moment, as if directed to do so. Screams filled the warehouse and in an instant Josie was surrounded by the sensation of flapping. The air beat around her as countless leathery wings swooped at them. Glass rained down from the roof, and though Josie could feel the broken shards crunching beneath her feet as Nick feebly dragged her toward the car, she could hear nothing but the deafening roar, the piercing screams of the Nox.

Josie felt Nick trip in the darkness, his hand ripped from hers.

She dropped to her knees, desperately searching for Nick as the wings continued to swarm around her. Her hand caught hold of his leg, motionless on the ground. As she blindly felt upward toward his face, she touched thick, leathery skin.

The Nox flinched when she touched it, but the monster didn't move. It felt smaller than she'd imagined: about the size of a pit bull. It sat there, perched on Nick's chest.

A predator claiming its prey.

She lashed out at the beast, punching at it fiercely with her fists.

The Nox shrieked, not the ferocious war cry that filled the rest of the warehouse, but a cry of fear and surprise. As if it didn't know she was there.

Josie paused in confusion. Instead of attacking her, the Nox beat its wings desperately and flew away.

Josie had no time to contemplate her strange encounter with the Nox. She crawled on top of Nick, feeling for his face. Her fingers touched something wet and slick. Blood. She tried to feel for a heartbeat, for movement from his lungs, but the swarm whipped up to a frenzied pitch. The air whistled around her as if the Nox were circling above, preparing for a final attack. Just like in the woods that night. In the chaos, she'd completely lost track of where she was. Could she carry Nick to the car? Could she find it in the blackness? She heaved his shoulder, desperate to move him away from the attacking swarm of invisible beasts that seemed to fill every inch of space in the warehouse. She got to her feet, looping her arms under his, and lifted with every ounce of strength she had left. She staggered backward, dizzy and disoriented. She had to make it to the car. She had to. They were going to die if she didn't. . . .

Suddenly, the weight of Nick's body was gone. She felt him lifted upward by an unseen force. She grasped at his arm. The Nox had him. They were carrying him away.

"No!" she screamed. She clung to Nick's arm, desperate to keep him away from the Nox.

A hand grabbed her wrist, prying it off Nick's arm.

A human hand.

"Nick?" Josie yelled. He was alive. They were going to get out of there together.

"Quiet," a voice said close to her ear. "Follow me."

Josie stopped. It wasn't Nick's voice, but it was familiar. Harsh and raspy. She'd heard it before, whispering in her ear amid the chaos of a Nox attack.

The man in the woods.

FORTY-THREE.

9:05 P.M.

"WHO ARE YOU?" JOSIE REMEMBERED THE SHADOWS she'd seen in the darkened corners of the warehouse ever since Nick had first brought her there. A trick of the eye, an overactive imagination. Not so much. But where had the man come from? Materialized out of thin air? Magically risen out of the ground?

"Quiet!" he barked.

Josie shook herself from her daze. She reached out and felt his shoulder, tall and strong in front of her. He held Nick cradled in his arms.

"This way."

Not that she had a choice. Stay in the warehouse and be eaten alive by monsters that live in the darkness or follow the mysterious stranger down the rabbit hole.

Mysterious stranger it was.

He led her across the warehouse to what must have been the far corner beyond the parking area. He moved slowly, unhurried, which seemed odd considering the swarm of creatures that continued to circle just above their heads. It took Josie a few moments before she realized they weren't being attacked. It took her even longer to realize that while Nick had been viciously overcome within seconds of the Nox bursting into the warehouse, she didn't have so much as a scratch on her.

The Nox left her alone.

What was going on?

The stranger paused, and Josie felt him bend down. Or so she thought. He continued to move forward and as Josie followed, she realized he was going down a set of stairs.

The steps were rickety wood, judging by the way in which each step sagged ever so slightly under her weight. Only a dozen or so, and Josie landed on a firm dirt floor.

"Wait here," the stranger said. He squeezed past her in the passageway. He was tall-Nick's height, at least-but broader and heavier. Josie's eyes strained against the blackness of the space, trying to get a glimpse of the stranger, but other than an outline of a body disappearing up the stairs-even blacker than the blackness around her-she couldn't make out anything.

She heard a distant thump, and the shrieks of the Nox were instantly muffled. A trapdoor. He really had come through the floor.

"Who are you?" Josie asked again, now that she could actually hear her own voice. Above in the warehouse, the shrieking intensified, punctuated by thumps on the floor.

"They can hear you," the stranger said, ignoring her question. She could hear him breathing in the darkness. "They get angry when deprived of prey. We should keep moving."

Josie took a step back. Her foot nudged something on the ground. Nick's leg where his body lay motionless. "We're not going anywhere with you," she said. Her voice sounded small in the darkness.

"You," he said firmly, "don't have to go anywhere. But he's coming with me. He needs medical attention."

"Is . . . is he . . ." Josie felt the weight of Nick's motionless body behind her on the ground. She pressed against his lifeless form, afraid to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.

"He'll be fine. I think."

She felt a figure move past her in the darkness. She stepped aside as the stranger grunted against the weight of Nick's body. "This way."

Josie placed a hand on either side of the narrow passageway and slowly followed the sound of the stranger's shuffling footsteps. She stooped, worried she'd clock her head against a low beam, and picked her way cautiously across the uneven ground. The floor was soft dirt, dry and powdery; their footsteps kicked up small clouds of the stuff that tickled Josie's nose and made her eyes water. It was significantly warmer in the passage than the late spring evening above, and the heat accentuated the stench of mold and damp cardboard that permeated the space.

They hadn't gone far before a creak from in front of her stopped Josie in her tracks.

"Watch your step," the stranger said. "They're rotting away on this end."

Great. Josie felt with her foot for the first step, then tentatively tested her weight. It was bouncy, but sound, and clearly the stranger had gone ahead of her carrying Nick. Without a second thought, Josie climbed the stairs.

Like the passageway through which they'd just come, the room Josie stepped into was almost completely dark. Almost. Unlike the metal walls of the warehouse, this room had been constructed with wooden beams, and slivers of grayish-blue moonlight filtered in through the weathered slats. A hint of light in the utter blackness, but it was enough to show the dimensions of the space-no more than ten feet in any direction, windowless with a low roof and a thin outline of a door on the opposite wall. She wrinkled her nose as an acrid, chemical smell wafted toward her, mixed with the stale stench of unwashed bodies.

There was only one place they could be.

"We're in the storage shed," Josie said out loud. "Next to the warehouse."

"Yes."

Dust billowed up in amorphous clouds as the stranger shuffled across the dirt-layered floor. He grunted, then the metallic creak of ancient mattress coils signaled that he had deposited Nick on a bed of some kind. More shuffling, then a single flame burst to life, strong and unwavering, from a table in the middle of the room. Not the feeble flickering of a candle-this was the powerful, gas-fueled light of a Bunsen burner, which illuminated a bedlam of beakers and cylinders, test tubes and flasks cluttered around a low-grade laser rig on a large metal table. The orange light of the burner barely permeated the darkness, but Josie could see a shadow moving around on the far side of the table. The shadow of a man.

He walked quickly, purposefully back and forth from the table to a cot. Josie tentatively stepped around the table toward the body that lay unconscious on the bare mattress. Nick was motionless, and his thick, wavy hair looked matted and sticky with blood. She stared at him, desperate to catch a glimpse of movement from his body. A shudder, a slight expansion of the chest to prove he was still breathing. Anything.

The stranger remained cloaked in shadow even as Josie drew closer to him. She could see his outline, a dark silhouette that seemed to absorb the feeble moonlight streaming in through the tiny fissures in the wall. He sat on the edge of the cot and rolled Nick onto his side, then dabbed at the back of his head and neck. The stranger was utterly consumed with his task, seemingly unaware that Josie stood within arm's length.

"This wound is deeper than I thought," he mumbled to himself. "Going to have to stitch it."

"Shouldn't we take him to a hospital?" Josie said.

The stranger jumped as if he'd completely forgotten her presence. He turned to her, stared her straight in the face as the light from the burner illuminated his features, and suddenly all the life seemed to drain out of Josie.

There was no face.