Free Torment by Lauren Kate

of student desks so they could each get a better look. “And some of you,” she said, eyeing Luce, “even have some experience working with them. But do you really know what they are? Do you know what they can do?”
    Gossips , Luce thought, remembering what Daniel had told her the night of the battle. She was still too new to Shoreline to feel comfortable calling out the answer, but none of the other students seemed to know. Slowly she raised her hand.
    Francesca cocked her head. “Luce.”
    “They carry messages,” she said, growing surer as she spoke, thinking back to Daniel’s assurance. “But they’re harmless.”
    “Messengers, yes. But harmless?” Francesca glanced at Steven. Her tone betrayed nothing about whether Luce was right or wrong, which made Luce feel embarrassed.
    The entire class was surprised when Francesca stepped back alongside Steven, took hold of one side of the shadow’s border while he gripped the other, and gave it a firm tug. “We call this glimpsing,” she said.
    The shadow bulged and stretched out like a balloon being blown up. It made a thick glugging sound as its blackness distorted, showing colors more vivid than anything Luce had seen before. Deep chartreuse, glittering gold, marbleized swaths of pink and purple. A whole swirling world of color glowing brighter and more distinct behind a disappearing mesh of shadow. Steven and Francesca were still tugging, stepping backward slowly until the shadow was about the size and shape of a large projector screen. Then they stopped.
    They gave no warning, no “What you are about to see,” and after a horrified moment, Luce knew why. There could be no preparation for this.
    The tangle of colors separated, settled finally into a canvas of distinct shapes. They were looking at a city. An ancient stone-walled city … on fire. Overcrowded and polluted, consumed by angry flames. People cornered by the flames, their mouths dark emptinesses, raising their arms to the skies. And everywhere a shower of bright sparks and burning bits of fire, a rain of deadly light landing everywhere and igniting everything it touched.
    Luce could practically smell the rot and doom coming through the shadow screen. It was horrific to look at, but the strangest part, by far, was that there wasn’t any sound. Other students around her were ducking their heads, as if they were trying to block out some wail, some screaming that to Luce was indistinguishable. There was nothing but clean silence as they watched more and more people die.
    When she wasn’t sure her stomach could take much more, the focus of the image shifted, sort of zoomed out, and Luce could see it from a distance. Not one but two cities were burning. A strange idea came to her, softly, like a memory she’d always had but hadn’t thought of in a while. She knew what they were looking at: Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities in the Bible, two cities destroyed by God.
    Then, like turning off a light switch, Steven and Francesca snapped their fingers and the image disappeared. The remnants of the shadow shattered into a small black cloud of ash that settled eventually on the floor of the classroom. Around Luce, the other students all seemed to be catching their breath.
    Luce couldn’t take her eyes off the place where the shadow had been. How had it done that? It was starting to congeal again, the pieces of dark pooling together, slowly returning to a more familiar shadow shape. Its services complete, the Announcer inched sluggishly along the floorboards, then slid right out of the classroom, like the shadow cast by a closing door.
    “You may be wondering why we just put you through that,” Steven said, addressing the class. He and Francesca shared a worried look as they glanced around the room. Dawn was whimpering at her desk.
    “As you know,” Francesca said, “most of the time in this class, we like to focus on what you as Nephilim have the power to do. How you can change things for the better,