Ash and Darkness (Translucent #3) (19 page)

Did I have a choice? Just check. Gripping the aluminum, I knelt under the pipe and stuck my head in . . . then my shoulders. My torso slid right in. Inches to spare.

I didn’t have a choice.

Gritting my teeth against the fright, I crawled the rest of the way into the pipe. It clamped around me, suffocated me, and the metallic echo of my heartbeat reverberating in the tiny space. Zero elbow room. I gasped, overtaken by nerve-tingling stabs of panic.

Don’t think don’t think don’t think . . .

I wiggled deeper into the pipe, scrunched my shoulders for purchase, kicked off the ground. My shins scraped the jagged rim, and then I was all the way in.

This fucker was going back to Earth, and I was going back with it if I had to follow it down to hell.

The corrugated ridges provided toeholds, and by squeezing my shoulders and pushing with my toes, I could slide a foot at a time, to a deafening chorus of echoes and bangs. Cold metal pinned my arms uselessly to my side.

A dim circle swam ahead, and I squirmed toward it, practically choking on claustrophobia. I passed another glowing strand, which looked happy to see me, and kept going.

A shadow flicked across the circle.

Gotcha.
I slowed to a crawl, heart racing. Couldn’t make a sound now. Inch by inch, the circle expanded into a dim concrete chamber lit by those same wriggling threads, splattered on the walls like glow-in-the dark paint.

The shadow creature paced in the center of the room, its lumpy silhouette blurring against a backdrop of tunnel openings guarded by rusted, eroded bars. Its hideous, toothed face came into view, jaws still dripping strands of Sarah’s soul.

I recoiled and shrank out of view, hiding in the pipe.

What was my plan?

I hadn’t thought this far.

As I watched, the creature’s limbs flickered and turned opaque, took on a pinkish color, and freckles—Sarah’s skin—like a grainy projector coming into focus. The head morphed into a face, growing red hair before it melted back into a blurry mess. The creature continued to pace like a caged animal . . .
waiting
.

Waiting for its body.

Waiting for the wormhole to Earth.

While its back was turned, I eased myself out of the pipe and plopped like a cat onto a pile of river rocks, which had spilled through a broken grate. I shrank into the shadows, a feral adrenaline buzzing in my veins.

What the hell was my plan?

The creature flickered again, and when it turned back around, I found myself staring at a perfect duplicate of Sarah’s face. The rest of her body followed, growing taller, materializing piecemeal out of the smoky limbs until the spitting image of Sarah Erskine stood before me, fully clothed.

I bit back a gasp.

Imposter.

Then, right in front of me, she began to vanish. Her fingertips receded first, fleshy stumps shrinking down to her knuckle, leaving nothing but air. She lifted her hand, turned it over, watched as her fingers telescoped to nothing and a hole began to eat into her palm, leaving her shrinking thumb stranded in midair until it, too, winked out.

My breath caught in my throat.

She was becoming invisible.

The nothingness advanced down to her wrist . . . inched up her forearm . . . rounded her elbow.

Dark matter was spreading across her skin, swallowing her.

She was leaving for Earth without me.

My heart ground to a sickening halt. What an idiot I’d been. Dark matter fused to the skin, it covered
one
person. A custom-made wormhole through space. No one else would fit.

I could no more hitch a ride in her wormhole than I could fuse to her body.

Chapter 23

Fuse to her
body.

The idea flashed in my mind.

Like Sarah had said.
If we’re touching, it will spread over both of us and form a single wormhole.

But I couldn’t touch her. She would eat me.

She
looked
like Sarah, but inside . . . inside she was still that thing.

Frantic thoughts raced through my head, winding my nerves into a tighter and tighter knot. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. My gaze darted around the cave, searching. For what?

What could I use?

Dark matter crept over Sarah’s shoulders, crawled onto her collar bone, dripped down her torso and inched up her neck. Leaving nothing. Just empty space. My one chance of escape was slipping away. Soon she would be gone. And I would be alone, abandoned, stuck here.

No, not alone.

Passing through the mouth of the wormhole took time. She would remain here for a while, invisible, like Ashley’s evil double. One move, one sound, and she would be on me, ripping into my throat. At once, the trauma of that fight rushed back, leaving me squirming in fear, hopeless.

But wait, hadn’t I
killed
Ashley’s double?

She’d vanished in my arms, presumably to return here. But how could I kill something that couldn’t even be touched? Because just like this Sarah, she’d taken on a physical, mortal body, which meant . . .

Just bash her in the head, you moron!

The largest river rock. I seized it, hoisted it over my head, and staggered out of the shadows, knees about to buckle under its weight. Sarah’s head floated over a pair of legs. Hadn’t seen me. Her chin eroded back, exposing her jaw and bare teeth, then two sinus holes where her nose should have been. Just the top half of her head now.

My heel scuffed the ground, causing a sharp echo, and the rock’s inertia pitched me forward, out of control.
Shit!

Sarah’s shoulders flexed and she spun around, her red mane veering right into my line of sight.

I screamed and heaved the rock at her temple, just as her eyes widened—
Crack!
Her head whipped back, and for a split-second, I glimpsed a bloody slit on her forehead before dark matter swallowed the wound and she dropped into a heap, unconscious.

Just like Ashley.

I had to touch her bare skin before dark matter sealed around her completely. But her head was already gone, already invisible. Too late. I’d missed the window, no skin left to touch. The last piece of Sarah—her left boot—evaporated before my eyes.

Her bare foot.

I pounced on her and dug my finger under the boot tongue, pried up her sock, touched bare ankle. Nothing. The dark matter didn’t latch onto my finger. It had already fused to her skin, already swallowed half the shoe.

I dug deeper, frantic, clawed at her ankle, my fingernails scratching skin. But they were hiking boots, rigid leather and tight laces. Couldn’t get down far enough. I’d have to untie them.

The left shoe shrank before my eyes, seconds left, and suddenly it was all too much. I froze, couldn’t budge, could only watch as the last few inches shrank away, dread pooling deep in my gut. The severed tip of a shoelace bounced in midair, mocking me like a bobblehead doll.

There was a trick.

The loose end of the shoelace . . . you pulled the end. 

I grabbed it and yanked, and the shoelace whizzed out of the knot, which fell apart in my hand, loose . . .
loose!
Pulse thundering, I pried up the tongue, wrenched out Sarah’s foot, and ripped off her sock. The tip of her big toe came into view, a pink dot, shrinking to nothing.

I jabbed my index finger against her exposed skin just as dark matter closed off the dot.

A moment passed.

My trembling breath tumbled out into the silence.

And then dark matter crept up over my fingernail and began climbing my finger, as if there was no seam at all between her skin and mine.

I kept my
finger jammed against her big toe, determined not to break the connection. As dark matter engulfed me, a numb, tingly feeling filled my lungs—adrenaline drawing from an empty tank.

Dark matter crawled down my torso, my legs, taking my clothes with it this time, and seconds later, we were both invisible.

Invisible, but
touching.

Cautiously, I ran my palm up to Sarah’s torso. To my relief, her chest rose and fell, she had a pulse. Still alive. Because I kind of didn’t think dark matter would teleport a dead Sarah Erskine back to Earth.

Without warning, my palm fell through her chest and slammed into cold concrete. I swept my hand along the floor. Nothing. For a moment I panicked, thinking her body had been taken back to Earth but mine hadn’t.

I reached for my own chest, alarmed. No, nothing there either.

Plus, I could still feel her big toe with my index finger. Somehow, I was connected to her
inside
the cloak of dark matter. I held the finger rigid, hardly breathing, afraid I would flinch and lose the connection. My joints were cramping up. I didn’t care.

The hideous chamber began to fade into a gray blur.

It was happening faster this time.

Good. I didn’t know how long she would stay unconscious.

One by one, details sank into the fog. The rusted grates, the pile of river rocks, the wriggling strands of Sarah’s soul, they all blurred together and washed out, leaving white space too bright to look at. I winced against the glare, tried to shield my eyes, which adjusted slowly after thirty hours of night.

Suddenly, the ground dropped out from underneath me, and my stomach rushed up my throat. I floated up, fingertip just brushing Sarah’s toe.

We were now inside the wormhole.

Then Sarah’s toe wiggled, and she pulled away from me.

Chapter 24

No! I thrust
my arm after her, trying to catch her before she floated away, but my fingers clasped empty air.
Gone.

Terror closed around me.
Wait, come back . . .

I swung my arms, frantic.

She was my ticket back to Earth, and I’d lost her.

Sarah—the
real
Sarah—had said a wormhole would be impossible to navigate. Without a guide, I’d get spit right back out on the dead world, or—only slightly better—I’d be jettisoned into outer space a billion light years from Earth.

I had no idea how to get back on my own.

I reached out again, praying for a brush of skin, some kind of reassurance that she was still there. Nothing. She could be miles away by now—

The sound of hoarse breathing brushed the back of my neck, making my flesh creep. I twisted in midair, straining to see behind me. How had she gotten behind me?

Then another terrifying thought.

This . . . this
thing
was floating right next to me, wide awake, invisible and untouchable and probably pissed off as hell. If it attacked me now . . .

The blood froze in my veins.

My eyes darted across the white nothingness.

No, she couldn’t see me either. She probably had no idea I was here.

But then I
did
see something. The blurry humanoid figure stood up in front of me, and a jolt stabbed down my spine. I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp, but my hand flew right through my face.

The creature’s essence, stripped of its body.

But it didn’t attack. Instead, it began walking purposefully away from me, smoky limbs shrinking into the white haze. I looked down at myself, wondering if my essence had been revealed to be a creepy blurry figure as well.

Nope, still nothing.

It couldn’t see me, like I’d thought. But I could see it. Chewing my lip, I watched the shadow figure—which I knew still inhabited Sarah’s invisible body—shrink into the distance. Going
where?

To Earth?

Well, this was as close as I was ever going to get to a giant arrow pointing the way.

Somehow, I had to follow it.

Follow the breadcrumbs . . .

Except how, exactly,
did one move through a featureless white space devoid of gravity?

I tried swimming.

I reached out, cupped my hands, and dragged my arms back and kicked my legs in a sort of awkward, flailing breast stroke, making zero progress.

It hadn’t worked last time either.

The figure receded to a wriggling smudge.

A twinge of panic tightened my chest. I was losing ground fast.

I paused to catch my breath, utterly exhausted.
What the hell?

Clearly
it
could walk. What was I missing? What was it walking on?

Some kind of propulsion, maybe. I craned my neck forward and inhaled a deep breath, tucked my chin down, and blew the air down my torso, then did it again. After a few breaths, a dizzying wave of spins rolled through my brain, leaving me disoriented and lightheaded. Also called hyperventilating.

By now, the creature had shrunk to a dot.

Why could it walk and I couldn’t?

Maybe I
could
walk.

I straightened out my leg and probed the space below me with my toe. Or the space
above
me, depending on my orientation. My foot brushed something.

Whoa.

My brows drew together, and I stretched out farther. Again, my heel caressed some kind of surface—before it evaporated and my foot dipped through. Something
sort of
there.

Like when dark matter took you, you could sort of nudge things. Too much pressure and you broke through. I found the surface again and rested my toe there, then my other foot, careful not to push too hard. Like spreading my weight on a thin sheet of ice. I closed my eyes, took a slow breath, and imagined solid ground underneath me, anchoring me down.

As I did, a gentle force caught me as I floated upward and reeled me back down like a magnet, landing me lightly on the surface. It held my weight. I gasped and opened my eyes, and instantly, my perspective shifted and the white space took on an up and a down.

I was standing!

In the middle of an ocean of white mist, I was standing on an invisible surface. Why not?

I took a careful step, but my foot melted the sheet underneath me, and my toe dipped through. I froze, staring down at the gaping white abyss with a sudden rush of vertigo. A long,
long
way to fall.

Don’t move a muscle.

But now I couldn’t stop it. Little by little, the surface eroded away under my heel. And suddenly, I lost it all. My leg plunged through, and I sprawled forward into empty space.

I stole a glance forward, and it took me several frantic seconds to locate the tiny speck in the distance—the creature, almost out of sight. Inhaling slowly, I found the invisible plane again and let myself be pulled to it, and then—focusing hard on its solid feel—took a step.

This time it held.

My breath came out in a whoosh. I extended my leg again, taking another leap of faith. The brittle surface thawed under the ball of my foot. I moved on quickly, staying focused.

It’s solid . . . solid . . . solid . . .

Soon, I was speed walking, then jogging, then bounding in huge, effortless leaps in the miniscule gravity. I caught up with the shadow creature.

I slowed and hung back, conserving my energy, watching it.

The figure drifted forward in slow, impossible strides. With each step, its noodle-like limbs suctioned to the surface and bent unnaturally backward at the knee.

Then it started changing.

Its arms lengthened and grew into legs, wriggling forward like insect feelers until they latched onto the space in front of it. Then its lumpy body morphed before my eyes, somehow turning inside out as its original legs shrank to arms and its head emerged on the opposite end.

It continued walking, only now upside down and at a whacky angle to me. I blinked, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. It was still moving. Away from me. Pretty sure it was still moving away from me, but . . . but not up or down, not forward or backward, not even left or right. It was moving in another direction altogether, moving
deeper
into the white space. Both right in front of me and nowhere at once.

I couldn’t even point to it. It was like another plane had been superimposed on space, and my brain kept trying to fit it into the three dimensions I was familiar with, but it kept popping out, it kept not fitting. I only knew it was there because this thing was clearly walking along it.

Another dimension?

I reached the spot where it had veered off and bit the inside of my cheek.

Now how did I follow that?

I peered intently at the creature’s receding form, trying to figure out the angle, but my brain went crazy, couldn’t fit it in. It hurt to even try. I reached out and probed for the surface it had stepped onto. A plane materialized under my palm, a wall. But not the right one. No, a right angle to the right one. Frustrated, I reached
deeper
, squeezing my hand into the space I knew had to be there—because I was staring right at it—only the space kept closing me out.

Come on, I’d
seen
it work.

And then I did reach through. My palm—and the rest of my body—slapped a surface that couldn’t possibly be there, yet was. In a nauseating head rush, gravity shifted and tugged me against it, niggling my inner ear, and then I wasn’t standing anymore, but laying on my side on this new surface.

In an instant, everything shifted. The direction I’d just come from—no, the entire space I’d come from—seemed to fold in on itself and disappear, while three more dimensions unfurled like a fan around me.

I stood up on shaky legs, disoriented, feeling somehow upside down and right side up and inside out all at the same time . . . and
very
nauseous. I had the feeling I’d just crossed a major navigational hurdle.

The creature was squarely in front of me again, moving away from me just like before.

“Thought you could shake me,” I muttered, jogging after it again.

But my mind was reeling.

The creature executed two more bewildering maneuvers, crossing to different planes, before continuing on a straightaway. I followed it all the way.

Around us, vague shapes began to surface out of the fog.

Though we continued
to move through the white space, the chamber taking shape around us didn’t move—as if the stained concrete, the rusted steel bars, and the scattered river rocks were features of an impossibly distant landscape.

Earth or not?

I couldn’t tell.

The white mist drained into the shadows, leaving sharp, crisp lines. At some point, the blurry shadow man—my guide—faded away too. I kept walking, feeling like I wasn’t
quite
there yet. A hazy shape to my right crystalized into the aluminum pipe. Above it, river rocks clung magically to the ceiling.

All at once, a crushing weight pressed down on my chest, pinning my back against hard concrete.
Gravity
. The last of the silvery haze melted away, leaving me shivering on my back in the exact same storm drain I’d left. I blinked under blinding pinpricks of yellow light, which sifted through the holes in a manhole cover above me.

Sunlight!

I rolled onto my side, my lungs wheezing from the effort. A murky puddle rippled next to me, recently disturbed. It bore the muddy prints of Sarah’s boots, which trekked across the chamber to the aluminum pipe.

The last folds of dark matter peeled off me and slopped into the muddy runoff. I blinked, realizing I was staring at the answer to another mystery.

Why in a storm drain?

Because when it rained, this was where all those stray bits of dark matter ended up . . . as runoff. And it was that runoff that had just coalesced into a wormhole to spit out Sarah and me.
The opening on the other end
 . . .

Just then, a faint grunt and a clang echoed from the pipe’s opening, coming from the other end.

The creature that had eaten Sarah’s soul was now loose.

I could deal with that later.

My gaze slid to another puddle, this one hopefully not dark matter runoff. I dragged myself over to it and touched the surface with my tongue. Sweetness exploded through my mouth.
Real
water.

I let out a moan.

I heaved my trembling body into the pipe and slid to the bottom, then stumbled along the tunnel, following Sarah’s footprints. An uncovered manhole came into view, spilling light into the storm drain.

I crawled free of the sewer and stood up on the street, squinting and shielding my eyes against dazzling sunlight. Cars whooshed by, the purr of their engines joining the murmur of distant traffic. A breeze swished through palm fronds, kissed my neck, lifted my hair and swirled it around me, and I caught the scent of honey and damp soil woven in with fresh, sooty exhaust. Buzzing around my face, a bee sniffed for pollen in my eyelashes before moving on to a bush of rustling lavender.

And voices . . . I heard voices! A mother pushing a stroller across the intersection, chatting on a cell phone, like this was all no big deal.

When it was. It was.

A tear slid down my cheek.

This was Earth.

A spray whisked my ankles—someone’s sprinklers. I pounced on it and cupped my mouth over the sprinkler head, and I gorged myself on real, precious, life-giving water.

Ding-dong.

I released Emory’s doorbell, and a flutter of nervous anticipation breezed through my stomach.

While I waited, I fished the cell phone out of my pocket and turned it over in my hand—a disturbingly convincing fake, I now knew.

When I’d gone back home to eat, take a boiling hot bath, and change—an hour of pure bliss—I’d found it sitting on the dashboard of my Corolla, where Megan must have left it. My parents weren’t home. Probably still at work.

The cell phone displayed 3:59 p.m.

Emory would be home from school by now. 

Muted voices came from inside his house, and my pulse hiked, suddenly drumming in my temples.

I went to click it off, when I noticed the new message icon at the top. Huh? Curious, I tapped open the message.

It was from Megan, sent an hour ago.

Don’t go inside your house, don’t go to school, don’t talk to ANYONE. Call me the moment you get this.

My eyebrows pinched together.

No time to process it.

Inside, heavy footsteps clomped down the stairs. I hastily shoved the phone back in my pocket, just as the latch clicked and the door swung open.

Cheeks flushed, Emory stepped into the doorway, smoothing down messy blond hair with a hint of a smirk hovering on his lips.

Until he saw me.

He jerked back, startled. “Whoa, what the—?”

“Don’t talk,” I said, cutting him off before he could derail my confession. “Don’t talk until I finish. There’s something I need to tell you, something I’ve needed to tell you for a long time.” I took a deep breath.

“But how’d you . . . ?” He glanced behind him at the stairs, eyes narrowing.

“I killed Ashley,” I blurted out. “It was me. I’m the one, Emory. I’m the one you’ve been looking for all this time. I hit her that night on accident, and I hid her body so no one would find out, that’s why I’ve been so obsessed with you, because . . . because I wanted you to forgive me, but I was too scared to tell you.”

The words tumbled out faster and faster, and the release was pure catharsis, pure bliss. “I’ve been running for so long, I can’t stand living in my own skin anymore. I should have told you a long time ago, but I lied to you . . . I lied to you when you needed the truth the most, and I’m never going to forgive myself for that. I’m never going to forgive myself for what I did to her. Never, never, never. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry, and I . . .” I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. “I want you to turn me into the police.”

He blinked, no expression.

Another set of footsteps came down into the foyer.

“Babe?” said an annoying girl’s voice. “Babe, who is it?”

Emory spun toward the voice, startled.

Then he glanced back and forth between me and the voice, and his ruddy face went ash white.

A pretty girl with long dark hair stepped into view, kissed his unresponsive cheek—ew, his
girlfriend
—and peeked out the door. Our eyes met.

And then I understood.

Not his girlfriend.

Me.