Chapter Fifty-Four All Through the Night-Mares
Not Luis, too. Please, please, please, not Luis.
I sprint toward him, slipping and sliding on the slick, broken sidewalk. Jude passes me, catching my best friend just as he stumbles and starts to fall.
“What’s wrong with him?” I demand as Jude lowers him to the ground.
“I’m okay,” Luis says, but his eyes are glazed with pain, and he’s trembling despite the heat. “I just need a minute to…” He trails off in a coughing fit.
“We need to get his shirt off.” Jude’s face is bleak as he crouches down next to me. “See what we’re dealing with here.”
I nod, but the moment I try to ease Luis’s shirt over his head, he gasps in pain.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I try to pull his good arm through its armhole.
“It’s okay,” he bites out. But he’s gray and sweating, and he’s clearly anything but okay.
Before I can figure out what to do, Jude steps forward and grabs the neckline of Luis’s shirt.
“What are you—” Luis gasps out, right before Jude rips the shirt in half with one quick yank of his hands.
I blink at him, shocked, for a second, but he just gives an impatient nod toward my best friend.
And he’s right. Now is far from the time to marvel at just how easy that was for Jude. So I turn back to Luis. And try not to gasp at the gaping wound that covers his side, stretching from right under his armpit to his waist.
“Who did this to you?” I ask as I use his torn, sodden shirt to wipe away as much of the blood as I can. Thankfully, his shifter metabolism has already started to clot the wound, so it’s a lot easier than it normally would be.
As long as it’s not a life-threatening wound like the dragon we were just trying to help, most shifters can heal themselves pretty quickly. That ability is slowed down a little bit by the power dampening on the island but not completely decimated as it’s part of their normal body chemistry as opposed to their magic. The same goes for the coagulating properties in Izzy’s saliva and Simon’s ability to seduce anyone with a pulse.
“A wolf.” Luis’s voice is grumpy as he answers my question.
“Who?” I demand. No one should be able to shift right now, not while the power lock is still in place.
“Not a student,” he answers, trying—and failing—to sit up. “An actual wolf.”
What the hell? I shoot a baffled glance toward Jude, but he doesn’t look anywhere near as confused as I feel. Instead, he looks…devastated.
“We don’t have wolves on the island, Luis.”
“Tell that to the giant gray one that sliced me open,” he answers. Then he yelps, “Fuck, Clementine! Could you be a little more sadistic?”
I ignore him as I continue to wipe his wound clean as gently as I can. “We need to get him to Aunt Claudia, too,” I say to Jude. “He’s going to need stitches.”
“I’m okay,” Luis gasps. “I just need to shift and I’ll be much better.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not exactly an option at the moment, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Just get me out of this rain and I’ll be fine.” This time he actually makes it to a sitting position—though he curses quite a bit as he does it. On the plus side, the wound already looks much better than it did when he collapsed.
“You should probably lay back down for a few more minutes,” I suggest.
“In this mess?” He shoots a disparaging look at the rain- and blood-soaked ground. “No, thank you.”
And just like that, I breathe a sigh of relief. If Luis is back to his normal, snarky self, then I’m pretty sure he’s going to be just fine—unlike a lot of the people we’ve seen in the last hour.
At least the screaming has stopped.
I look around, trying to figure out what’s happening. I’ve been so worried about Luis that I stopped paying attention to everything else.
Right now, the students are all milling around in the rain, looking traumatized but not hysterical anymore. Some of them are obviously injured while others look fine, but no one appears to be actively bleeding or fighting.
“It’s over,” I say to Jude as I stand up.
He doesn’t answer, and when I turn to him, it’s to find him staring into the distance again.
Jaw clenched, face blank, eyes far away. But this time his hands are out in front of him, like he’s reaching for something.
For one horrible second, I’m terrified that he’s suffering the same thing so many of the other students suffered. That he’s about to burst into flames or have his jugular ripped out or any of the other awful things that have happened tonight.
“Jude!” I call his name, but he doesn’t answer.
I put a hand on his shoulder and shake him like I did earlier, but there’s still no response.
“Jude!” Panic sets in, and I start shouting. “Damn it, Jude! Answer me!”
Still nothing.
“Hey, help me up,” Luis tells me uneasily. When I turn back to him, I realize he’s watching Jude, too. And he looks just as concerned as I feel.
Reaching down, I grab Luis’s hand and pull him up before turning back to Jude and shaking him much harder than I did the first time.
But this time he doesn’t just look out of it. He looks like he’s in some kind of a trance, completely out of reach. I can’t begin to imagine what’s happening to him right now, but judging from what everyone else has gone through, I know it must be horrible.
Fear claws at my throat, has my heart beating wildly and my hands shaking as I grab onto Jude’s arms in a desperate attempt to anchor him.
“Help me!” I tell Luis as I frantically try to pull Jude back from wherever he’s gone, tugging him onto the porch of a nearby cottage.
Luis nods, but he doesn’t look like he has any better ideas. Though he does say, “You know what was weird about that wolf that attacked me?”
I shoot him an incredulous look—I can’t believe he thinks now is the time I want to talk about that. “The fact that there was a wolf on the island at all?”
“Well, yeah. And also, the fact that I used to have nightmares about him when I was a kid.”
I’m barely listening, too busy trying to get through to Jude, so it takes a few seconds for Luis’s words to hit me. When they do, I remember waking up with the snake on my bed—my worst nightmare. I also remember Eva telling me that burning alive, like Ember did in the hallway, was her worst fear.
I turn to Luis, eyes wide. “Nightmares?” I whisper. “You think these are all people’s nightmares coming to life?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he answers me with a solemn shake of his head. “But I don’t have a better explanation, right now. Do you?”
No.
I want to. I really, really want to. But I don’t.
Luis’s idea seems far-fetched, but Jude is an oneiroi, a dream daimon. And all I can think about right now is him standing, just like this, a few minutes ago and telling me that he was trying to help people.
I didn’t understand it then—hell, I don’t understand it now—but somehow, I’m not surprised at all when I turn back to Jude and see that the black tattoos are back to slithering around on his body. And like yesterday, they’re not content to stay on his back and arms anymore. They’re climbing up his neck to his jaw, his cheeks, even his forehead.
I glance down at his hands, which I’m currently holding in mine, and realize the black things are there, too. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of the serpentine, feathery black ropes are crawling all over him.
The realization has fear turning to absolute terror inside of me. I must not be the only one, because Luis says, “I’m going to go try to find help.”
I’m too busy freaking out over Jude to answer. Instead, I grab his shoulders again, and this time I shake him over and over and over again. When that doesn’t work, when he continues to stare sightlessly past me, I do the only thing I can think of.
I slap him across the face. Not hard, but—hopefully—enough to get his attention.
Jude’s body recoils from the slap, his eyes jerking to mine. I barely stifle a scream as I see the black things there, too. Crawling through the whites of his eyes, but also spinning themselves around and around in the depths of his multicolored irises.
They look beautiful and macabre and absolutely terrifying, all at the same time.
“Jude!” I gasp out. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer, and that’s when I realize he isn’t looking at me. Not really. He’s still lost somewhere deep inside himself. Whether by choice or because of the tattoos currently covering his body, I don’t know.
What I do know is that I can’t leave him like this. Not when I can’t tell if he’s okay. Not when I can’t tell if he’s in control of the black feathery things or if they are in control of him.
I’ve been so angry at him for so long, but the idea of losing him turns me inside out. I’ve lost so many people. I can’t lose Jude, too. I just can’t.
So I do the only thing I can do. I let the anger go as I step closer, going up on tiptoes so I can reach him better. Then I cup his cheeks in my hands and whisper, “I’m here, Jude. I’m right here. Please don’t do this. Please, please come back to me.”