Darksoul (5 page)

I tried to stand
. “Jesus, Ash, there is no teaching you what personal space is. Lay off it and let me sit beside you.”

“But I like you in between my legs.” I thought I heard him smile. “For
several reasons.”

Having
a guy friend is wonderful. Really. I’d recommend it to everyone. Not. “Grossness level: one thousand.”

“I wonder what you’d think if you saw what was on my mind.”

Oh-kay. “I’m going to get someone else to teach me math, and you can sit here being horny by yourself.”

H
e laughed and pulled me back. “Relax. I’ll try to keep my boy calm. Now…” He leaned over, his cheek caressing my temple, and flipped to a random chapter in the book. “I’m assuming this is where the pre-calc kids are at.”

I blinked
. “Actually, yeah. How did you know?”

“I’m on good terms with the math teachers here.”

Of course.

But the truth of the matter was that he really could work magic when it came to math. He explained things clearly
and didn’t act as if I was stupid, which, according to my academic track record, he totally should have. He sketched out every problem step-by-step. His left-hander’s scrawl spilled clumsily across the page and half the time I had to ask him what he’d written, which made him laugh a little. Honestly. He wrote like a drunk squirrel.

At the halfway point, we dropped
the lessons. I nudged him away, only to flop back and prop my head on his lap. I was too damn used to his trademark Evans-style closeness to help myself. He shifted to take out his tiny notebook from his pocket and cracked it open.

Used to this, too. I grabbed my camera from my bag and turned it
on, taking photos of everything—the sky, the flaming leaves, and secretly the raven tips of Ash’s hair—from my lazy post. Lisle style. As always.

“What are you writ
ing?” I asked, angling the lens toward him. Holding back a smile, I snapped a photo of his lowered lashes, the top of his pencil, a leather corner of his book.

“The triple integral of a constant function
g
of
x, y,
and
z—”

“
Aaaand I’m sorry I ever asked.”

He didn’t stop writing
. “There’s a party tomorrow night.”

“What?”

“It’s a Halloween party. Barely the beginning of October, I know, but when is it too early for Halloween?”

“Your point?”

“There’s a party,” he said, and glanced at me before starting to write again. “And of course you’re coming.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“I’m guessing
I don’t have a choice.”

“You’re guessing correctly.”

“I hate you,” I grumbled. “I don’t have to go, you know.”

“Was that an invitation for me to come and kidnap you? Because that’s what that sounded like.”

“Was that a
blah blah blah blah?”
I said, mimicking his accent. “Because
blah blah blah blah
.”

He laughed. After a moment of trying to keep my face straight, I laughed, too.

Chapter 5

“Hey, Mom?”
I climbed on my bike, plugging in my earbuds so I could hear her over the chilly wind. It was after school and the lot was empty, given that it was Friday and everyone had ripped out of here the second the bell rang. “I’m going to Marco’s Art Store to get some supplies. Is that okay?”

“Sure thing, honey.” Over the
tak-tak of her keyboard, her words sounded gentle and clear. “Why don’t you tell Asher to give you a ride?”

“What? I thought you didn’t like him.”

Papers rustled in the background. “Oh, I don’t,” she said. “But it’s kind of cold, don’t you think?”

“Sorry,
ma. I actually like the cold.”

“Tell him to give
you a ride, anyway.” Her voice lowered to a dry mutter. “I know that he’d love to.”

I biked out of the lot. Major awkward sauce. “Don’t say that.”

“You clearly haven’t seen the way he looks at you.”

“He doesn’t—” My gri
p tightened on the handles. “Mom, he doesn’t look at me.”

“I’m thirty-four, honey, not an alien species.
I notice things.”

“Let’s not have this conversation right now. Please.” We’d gone over it a thousand times before. She wasn’t telling me that he liked me. She was telling me that he wanted
to lock me up in a dark room, tie me to the bed, and have his way with me. Which, yes, was awkward and made her want to keep him and his English cooties a continent away from me.

We exchanged
goodbyes soon thereafter. I stopped to hang up and pedaled forward. Mom hated Ash. More than hated him. Maybe it was because I was her only daughter and she played the role of both mother and father—being a single parent and all—but she was fiercely protective of me, and Ash was not a safe cookie on her radar. She had to know where I was every minute of the day. Which was why I had to call her and ask for permission. I didn’t mind. For the most part.

I
rode into Main Street and rolled onto the sidewalk, climbing down to guide my bike by the handles. I peeked into the storefront windows as I passed them. Marco’s should be somewhere around here.

I was about
to turn a corner when, ever-so-softly, wings rustled overhead.

Clenching my jaw, I kept walking. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard them, and hell if I wasn’t bothered. Honestly. No matter where I was. No matter where I went. They were
always there, rustling over me, but I’d gotten so used to them that I couldn’t bring myself to care. I ignored them. That was all. Making my best attempt to not look up, I took another glance around and stopped when I realized I’d taken the wrong turn. Damn. I’d miscalculated. Marco’s was on the other side of the block.

I’d have to go around. Or I could cut through.

Farther down, an alley opened up. Wary, I inched closer and peered in, squinting against the shadows. At the end of it, there was the street where I guessed Marco’s was located. Not that bad of a shortcut. But not somewhere I wanted to be caught dead in, either. Pursing my lips, I turned away and moved to climb on my bike.

But not before my limbs froze against my will, keeping me locked in place.

My eyes widened. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Confusion crashed into me, and I attempted to open my mouth, only to find that it’d been sewn shut with an invisible thread. As if of their own accord, my legs backtracked and took me into the alley, moving as naturally as if I were controlling them myself. What in hell—what the—what was going on? What was this? A show? In which I was the puppet? But who—how—
No time to wonder. I t
ried to gain control of my muscles. To command my feet. But my body—traitorous, weak—kept moving on its own.

No.

Someone—or something—was moving it.

Gritting my teeth,
I struggled to lift my hand where it rested on the bike handle. It barely budged an inch. Still. Progress. Maybe I could make my fingers move—
And then I saw it.

A darker, infinitely more revolting shadow disentangled itself from the wall and squelched toward me. Frost crackled down my spine. Numbing fear exploded inside my chest. Its monstrous frame had no form. No shape. Black molten ropes swished against the ground, having crept out from under the beast. An array of claws protruded from each gaping eye socket, and yellowish pincers glared at me when it opened its mouth. A garbled, unintelligible screech erupted out of it. Raked my ears bloody.

I f
ought against the hold that had me locked in place, growing more desperate the closer it came to me. Another shriek balled up inside my throat but fell limp as a rock. I tried to scream again. To lift my hand, make myself move, or do the sensible thing—run away. But the thing kept approaching, its eye-claws reaching for me, a screech bursting out of its lips. It was close enough to touch. To breathe, to see, to smell. Pores widened across its face. More claws slid out, the tips of them glinting a wet, metallic charcoal.

I had to do something.

But before I could try to move—

A blob of
sharp silver tufts flashed between me and the creature, pushing me back. Even through my confusion, I recognized the shining, slender shape of a boy, swaths of light enveloping his lithe form. Feathers. Everywhere. Angular and glimmering, like a waterfall of metallic blades. Razor-edged and hard. They were not pretty things. Not soft and delicate.

They were the feathers of a monster.

Suppressing a shriek, I strained against the stronghold that rendered me unnaturally still. Because that wasn’t just a boy. Those weren’t just feathers.

Those were wings.

And I was staring straight at an angel.

Swiftly, he reached up
, plucked a feather off his back, ran his palm down the length of it. As I watched, frozen, it elongated under his touch, turning into what might’ve looked like a clunky sword if it weren’t for the feline arch of the blade. He spun. Gave a fluid, graceful thrust. And the feather-turned-weapon pierced straight through the beast.

Petroleum gunk exploded out of the wound. The stench of rotten meat burst forth
. Attacked my senses. The monster screeched and tried to lift its eye-claws, but was obviously weakened. Its hold on me evaporated—and suddenly, I was free to move. Heart going a thousand miles an hour, I spun on my heel and was about to shoot into a breathless sprint when three more of—of the monsters slunk out of the shadows, screeching. Creeping toward me.

I
stumbled away from them and flinched when the back of my shoulders ran into a hard chest. I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t. Dreading what I would see, I turned my head and froze when I was met with the sight of a startlingly familiar hoodie, its drawstrings uneven, like they’d always been. But before I could look up at his face, he eased past me, as did the angel, who’d been following behind him.

I
stayed rooted to the spot.

The arms of the boy—the one
who reminded me of Ash, with his dark boots and pulled-up hood—rippled with ice and elongated into a pair of jagged, glimmering things, the sharp edges of them coming to twin lethal points. They looked like they were made of splintered glass. Hard, transparent shards. Tapered tips. Bright and deadly and terrifying.

He plunged
his arm into an oncoming beast, retracted it, pierced it into the next one. The angel did the same with his feather-turned-weapon, more mercilessly than As—the hooded boy. Soon, the two of them were done, leaving a chaos of rancid bodies lying on the ground.

I had to get the hell out of here. But my legs felt like rocks, and the only thing I could do was stare at the mess, stricken. In a flash, the angel was suddenly in front of me, grabbing my forearm and hiking up the sleeve of my sweater. I wanted to open my mouth. Demand what the hell he was doing. But my tongue lay heavy as a boulder inside my mouth, and no words would come.

“It’s all right
,” said the angel, and I jolted at his voice.

Hushed. Nondescript. Neither male nor female.

Just like the one in my head.

Before I could stop him, he pressed a
knife to my skin. Blood welled around the painless cut and slinked down the blade. I wanted to ask what he was doing, but stopped when he turned and flung the moistened weapon at one of the beasts. It sunk into its stomach, and I watched—wide-eyed, horrorstruck—as the body disintegrated into a cloud of dark specks. They disappeared within seconds, rising into the air and dissolving against the sky.

Then
there was nothing. As if it had never been there. As if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t encountered the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life.

I stood there,
unable to breathe. Hooded Sweater’s black-clad figure was nowhere to be seen. He’d left, I realized, somewhere in the last minute. The angel grabbed my arm again. He now brandished three blades between his fingers, and he slid them down my bloodied skin. Red drops gathered on their metal edges. Terrified, I pulled back.

He
watched me for a moment and then stretched out a blade toward me. “Want to try it?” he asked in his eerie non-voice.

Jerkily, I shook my head
. My eyes flicked to the spot where the monster had been.

Did my—did my blood do that?

No. Impossible. It couldn’t be. How—

In one
lazy, smooth motion, the angel turned, his ruffled wings unintentionally brushing against my shoulder. I shied away. There was a flash and the three blades went flying, piercing the beasts right in the center of their claw-eyes. Like a magic trick—
poof
, and they were gone.

I wanted to scream.
I should’ve run, gotten away. Instead, I stood there, frozen. Wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing. The monsters. The Ash lookalike. The jagged arms of ice. Everything.

But the angel was still standing there, and I could
n’t deny his existence. He’d turned back around and was now watching me, twirling an unturned feather in his hand. I stared at him, wide-eyed. Whatever the hell this was, it was real.

Unless I was hallucinating.

At last, I managed to get myself under control, to rationalize. I was all right. I was alive. And that was the only thing that mattered. Right?

“Could you—could you turn down—” Unable to finish, I made a vague gesture at him, at the unearthly, overwhelming light
that coated his body. I felt uncertain, as if this reality were nothing but a thin sheet of ice, bound to crack with the blow of a breath.

He said nothing
. A swallow crackled down my parched throat. Right now, he didn’t look so real. He looked like something out of a comic book. No. Out of a horror movie. Those wings were the things nightmares were made of.

“If you’re not
going to—” My voice broke. “Okay, then. At least explain to me what the hell just happened.”

Nothing.

“Tell me,” I said.
Please
.

After what seemed like for
ever, he nodded his head at my side. “Look at your arm.”

I couldn’t help it.
My gaze flitted down.

And
I stopped right on my tracks.

There
was nothing there. No cut, no blood, no slash. I touched my skin, ran my fingertips down the area that had been bleeding moments before. No pain, either. Unbelievable. Unreal. I closed my eyes, pressed my lips tightly. It couldn’t be. It just—it couldn’t be. This had to be a nightmare. A joke.

When I l
ooked up, the angel was gone.