Free Never to Sleep by Rachel Vincent Page B

me, but they were backlit by red moonlight from the doorway, so I saw only a tangle of arms and legs—too many to make sense of—and eyes that glowed without any real light to reflect. There were teeth and claws and fur, and the shed was full of it all.
    There was nowhere to go. There was nothing left to do. And Luca was being pulled away from me, in spite of the foot he’d jammed onto the end of the door to hold himself in place.
    Then one of them reached for me—a humanoid hand with thick, curved black claws.
    I screamed again, and the sound that ripped free from my throat was both terror and rage, mindless in its intensity. Merciless in its volume. I clung to Luca’s hand and kicked at the claws that raked my leg, but I was helpless against the scream scraping my throat raw with the power of pure sound.
    Fog rolled around us, but the sound didn’t stop.
    Then, suddenly, everything changed. The fog was gone, and with it the monsters. The shed was still there, but I now sat on a mesh bag full of soccer balls. Luca clung to my hand, his legs stretched out behind him, where the monsters had tried to haul him away, but the door here was intact, hanging from all three hinges, and the only signs of what we’d done and where we’d been were the scratches on my shin and the blood dripping from his ankle.
    “Sophie?” Luca sat up and stared at me in the light leaking into the shed from around all four sides of the door. That light was too white to come from the Netherworld, and too bright to come from the moon. “Holy shit, you did it!”
    “Yeah.” Yeah. I’d done it. “But what about the monsters? They were touching you when we…left.” Hell, they’d been trying to rip his leg off.
    “Most things can’t cross out of the Netherworld. We’re safe.”
    But I couldn’t think past the part he wasn’t saying. If “most” couldn’t cross, that meant “some” could. Like that soulless reaper.
    Before I could question the miracle I’d accidentally delivered, Luca pushed himself to his feet, then pulled me up with him. He kissed me again, and tears rolled down my face, and I tasted them, but that kiss lasted forever and ever, and it was the best thing I’d ever felt in my life.
    When he finally pulled away, he was laughing, and I knew how he felt, even though nothing was funny. Survival was joy, and joy was laughter, and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate reaction to having escaped an evil alternate dimension a single second before we both would have been literally devoured alive.
    I was high on life. On still having mine. On still having his.
    “What are you?” he whispered, staring down at me in the shadows as if I was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen. That was the second time he’d asked the question, and I had no better answer now than I’d had the first time.
    I’m a sophomore. A dancer. An only child. A half orphan.
    All of that was true, but none of it felt like the answer he was looking for. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I hoped he’d found it, somewhere in me.
    “I don’t know,” I said at last.
    “I do. You’re amazing.”
    My chest ached, and my head swam. I’d never been called amazing before. I’d been called hot, and bitchy, and talented, and spoiled, and entitled, and stuck-up, and pretty, and a princess. But I’d never been called amazing.
    Luca squeezed my hand. Then he let go and turned to the door. “Let’s get out of here.” It took him three tries to kick the door open, and what eventually gave way wasn’t the padlock, but the bolts that had held the lock in place. He’d ripped them right out of the wood.
    “Uh-oh.” The first thing I noticed was the sun, warm, and half-blinding. I dug my cell phone from my pocket to look at the time—7:34 a.m. School started in less than an hour, and I had eight missed calls, probably all from my father. “How…? I don’t…” I frowned, and words deserted me. “It’s supposed to be the middle of the