chapter FIFTEEN
• GRACE •
This was the nightmare.
Everything around me was solid black. Not the shape-filled black of my room at night, but the absolute depthless dark of a place with no light. Water splattered onto my bare skin, the driving sting of rain and then the heavier splash of water dripping from somewhere overhead.
All around me, I could hear the sound of the rain falling in a forest.
I was human.
I had no idea where I was.
Suddenly, light burst around me. Crouched and shaking, I had just enough time to see a forked snake of lightning strike beyond the black branches above me, my wet and dirty fingers outstretched before me, and the purple ghosts of tree trunks around me.
Then black.
I waited. I knew it was coming, but I still wasn’t prepared when —
The crack of thunder sounded like it came from somewhere inside me. It was so loud that I clapped my hands over my ears and ducked my head to my chest before the logical part of me took over. It was thunder. Thunder couldn’t hurt me.
But my heart was loud in my ears.
I stood there in the blackness — it was so dark that it hurt — and wrapped my arms around my body. Every instinct in me was telling me to find shelter, to make myself safe.
And then, again: lightning.
A flash of purple sky, a gnarled hand of branches, and
eyes.
I didn’t breathe.
It was dark again.
Black.
I closed my eyes, and I could still see the figure in negative: a large animal, a few yards away. Eyes on me, unblinking.
Now the hairs on my arms were slowly prickling, a slow, silent warning. Suddenly, all I could think about was that time when I was eleven. Sitting on the tire swing, reading. Glancing up and seeing eyes — and then being dragged from the swing.
Thunder, deafening.
I strained to hear the sound of an approach.
Lightning illuminated the world again. Two seconds of light, and there they were. Eyes, colorless as they reflected the lightning. A wolf. Three yards away.
It was Shelby.
The world went dark.
I started to run.