Read Shadowlark for Free Online

tight.
    Tansy.
    “Tansy—we’ve got to—”
    She hauled me backward toward the door. “My bow’s outside,” she gasped. One of her eyes was half-shut and streaming tears, and her other arm hung oddly. Before us was the family, silhouetted by the fire behind them, pacing and watching us, looking for their moment. The pale bandage around Sean’s knee looked strange and out of place, surrounded by the sickly grey flesh of a shadow person. None of them—not even Molly, who had regained her balance—looked like they’d be slowed down by the meager injuries we’d managed to inflict.
    They were waiting. Waiting to see what we’d do, waiting for one of us to make even the tiniest movement.
    I stepped backward and hit wood. The door. I groped with my free hand for the handle, only to find rough wood, exposed nails.
    The barricades. We’d locked ourselves in with monsters.
    “Your arm,” I said in a low voice, trying to keep it from shaking. Trying my hardest to keep the creatures from sensing my terror and striking. “Can you help me move this?”
    Tansy shook her head, not taking her eyes off of the shadow people. “No,” she gasped. “And we’d never get them all moved in time—they’ll attack if we try.”
    My eyes went to the screens, and beyond them, the lobby that stretched back toward a wide staircase. Past that I could see only darkness, my night vision ruined by the fireplace in between.
    Tansy swallowed audibly. The sound prompted a gurgle of anticipation from Brandon, his grey face and white eyes sunken behind the black beard. “We’ll never get past them.”
    I knew she was right. Molly, the tiniest of them, had leaped on me before I’d even realized she meant to move. There was no way.
    A mad whine cut through the low growls and snapping jaws, and we looked in time to see a copper blur zip across the room, directly at Trina. She howled and reeled back, clawing at her face. The blur slowed enough for me to recognize Nix, shifted into a tiny ball of spikes, zipping from shadow to shadow and screaming all the while. They pawed and clawed at the air, but Nix was too fast for them.
    I was frozen, staring—but Tansy didn’t hesitate. She surged forward, dragging me with her by our joined hands, making for the back of the lobby. Once I was moving she let go of my hand, stretching her longer legs and putting on a burst of speed. She reached the doors at the back—a pair of them. She ran to one first, jerking at the handle, then skidded to the other. She pulled, pushed, clawed at the wood—but it didn’t budge.
    “No good!” she shouted. “The stairs!”
    I spun, my shoes squealing against the marble floor, and made for the broad stone staircase. I heard the boy give an outraged scream, and then the solid clink of metal striking stone.
    Nix. My heart seized, and I almost stopped.
    “Don’t let it be in vain,” gasped Tansy, surging past me for the stairs.
    I gasped for breath, the air sobbing in and out of me. Blood was seeping down my neck from my ear and into my shirt, sticky and wet. I fought another surge of dizziness and turned back for the main room. I couldn’t leave Nix now. But just then I heard the familiar whine of madly whirring wings and a voice that only became distinct as it went zipping past me in a flash of copper and sapphire: “Gogogogogogogogooo . . .”
    I saw a shadow, indistinct, clawing its way around one of the screens. I bolted up the two flights of stairs, my pack bouncing heavily against my spine.
    I found Tansy sprinting down a carpeted corridor on the third floor and I followed, gasping for air. There were doors on either side of the hallway, but though we tugged and pounded on each one, they were all sealed up tightly. The hallway ended in a broad window overlooking an alley below. Only part of the glass remained around the edges, jagged and splintered.
    Nix’s momentum carried it out the window several feet before it turned and zoomed back in, hovering,