Those lids narrowed further. “I’ll promise not to kill him, how’s that?”
Okay, that was taking things a little far. “Why would you want to kill him?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
How informative. My first thought: I should cancel with Justin, just in case this mood of Cole’s continued into tomorrow night. My second: I couldn’t let Cole’s moods dictate my life.
“Nothing else to say to me?” Cole asked.
I lifted my chin in defiance, a new habit I must have developed. “No.”
“We’ll see about that.” He darted back into motion, dragging me with him. We reached his Jeep, and he placed his hands on my waist to heft me inside. Before he’d lifted me an inch, his entire body tensed. He sniffed the air.
In reflex, I, too, sniffed the air.
Rot.
Panic threatened to consume me. That same stench had permeated my backyard two nights ago when I’d gone tearing out with a baseball bat, intending to confront Bridezilla.
Only two nights. Too soon.
“Cole. We need to leave.”
“You’re leaving. I’m staying.”
I blinked, and Cole had his crossbow palmed. A cold sweat sheened my skin. “Cole?”
“Go back inside, Ali.”
Sounded like an excellent plan, considering I was weaponless, but I stayed just where I was. “Come inside with me.” If he stayed out here, alone…no! I couldn’t let him, wouldn’t leave him to face whatever danger lurked out there. He might know what it was, he and his friends might even seek it out as I suspected, but I wasn’t going to watch another person fall to the monsters. “Please.”
“Tell the boys I need them,” he said, ignoring my plea.
Just then he reminded me of my dad, looking in every direction, stiff, alert, poised to erupt into battle.
“The f-fighting vision I had,” I stuttered, my mind locking on the thought. Our kiss had happened. Why not this, too?
I had to tell him all the details I hadn’t had the courage to tell him before. If I stayed quiet, he would stay out here. He was too stubborn for his own good.
“I don’t know what happened in yours, but in mine, there were monsters all around us, wanting to eat us.” The words gushed out of me. “And the other night, I saw two of them, outside my window, for real and not in a vision. At the time, I thought I was crazy.” Now, I wasn’t so sure. “They were watching me and when I checked on them, there were tracks. The ones you showed me.”
He sucked in a breath, an indication he’d heard me, but he never glanced in my direction. He kept his attention straight ahead, clearly waiting for the threat to materialize. If it did, would he see the monster or not? Would I?
“Do you have any idea what you just—”
A twig snapped in the distance, and he went silent.
Four men trudged into a ray of moonlight, their clothing dirty and ripped. Their eyes sagged, their skin was pitted and their finger bones were gnarled and curled in. Hair had fallen out of their scalps in chunks, leaving them mostly bald.
Nausea hit me with such force I nearly doubled over. “Come with me, Cole. Please!”
“Go back to the club!” he shouted at me—and sprinted toward the monsters.
*
There was no time to process the surreal fact that Cole did, indeed, see the monsters, that this wasn’t a hallucination, that my dad had always been right, that monsters had eaten him and my mom. That would come later, and I suspected I would scream and cry and rage.
Right now, I had to fight, had to put the skills my dad had given me to use. I couldn’t allow Cole to face the monsters alone, whether I had a weapon or not.
Breathe…in…out…as if I were part of a movie and someone controlled the stage, the world slowed around me. I watched as Cole ran and his—oh, sweet heaven. Cole multiplied. One Cole became two Coles.
The passage I’d read from that journal suddenly boomed inside my mind. We are spirit beings, those spirits our source of power, and we have a soul…our logic and emotions, and we live in a body.
No way. Surely not…but what other explanation was there? Cole’s spirit had just left his body.
There were now two versions of him, and both wore the same clothes. Cole One—his body, most likely—appeared solid while some sort of mist shimmered around Cole Two. His spirit, I would bet.
His spirit.
It was almost too much to take in. His body stood completely still while his spirit continued to surge ahead. I watched as he extended his crossbow and launched an arrow. Midair, the arrowhead grew sharp little arms and those arms sliced one of the creatures across the throat.
There was no ensuing spray of blood, but there was definitely an open wound. The creature’s entire body shook, then he just sort of stopped, his head detaching from his body and both toppling to the ground. And yet, still the monster’s body moved. Still his eyes blinked and his teeth snapped in Cole’s direction.
Even in two pieces, he lived.