The Forest of Sleepers (Nowhere Book 2)

t h i r t y : n i n e : t r a p p e d

 Before anyone could make a move out of the cathedral, the ground trembled. A piece of stone from the ceiling came crashing down to the floor and Ophelia had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit.

The silence of the forest changed, then. It was less of a muffled, muted silence and grew into an echoing, foreboding silence. Like the silence one would hear upon waking up to an empty world.

The ground rumbled again, shaking harder this time.

They all dropped to their knees to avoid falling over and Wyatt crept over to one of the gaping holes in the walls to see outside.

Stale wind tousled his hair.

His eyes widened as he stared out at the desolate forest, unsure of what he was seeing.

"Wyatt?" came Ophelia's timid voice.

A wall of darkness was heading toward them like a tidal wave, leveling trees and twisting up patches of dirt in its path.

The darkness was living, almost, and the closer it got the more the air filled with static electricity.

Birdie came beside him, but Wyatt hardly noticed. He was frozen in place and when Birdie yanked on his arm, shouting for everyone to find cover, he found it hard to tear his gaze away from the scene.

He couldn't breathe.

The noiselessness, the destruction, the terror was all so, so familiar.

"Wyatt!" Birdie screamed, jerking him around to face her.

Her expression was stricken with fear. "We have to hide before it tears this place apart!"

"I found a stairwell!" Ophelia called.

Birdie yanked Wyatt along behind her, dodging between rubble and leaping over fallen stone. Wyatt followed her, trying to blink away memories that kept scraping at his mind as they tried to break free from their cages.

Ophelia waved them over. Marshall was leaning against her, though with the return of energy to Gwydyr, he was able to keep himself upright.

They came to what Ophelia had said was a stairwell, but was actually more like a hatch with a steep set of steps going down into darkness.

Ophelia helped Marshall down first and the wind picked up, swirling debris around in the air.

"What is going on?" Wyatt heard Birdie murmur before a noise like a train filled the cathedral.

Wyatt had never been in a tornado before, but he knew that this must have been what all of those wild west television shows talked about.

The sound built up until it was all they could hear besides the utter havoc that the darkness wrought.

Then, just out of the corner of his eye, Wyatt saw the cat.

At first, he thought it was just his imagination, but then a voice spoke in his mind.

You've made the wrong choice, Murderer-King.

The cathedral disappeared from under him. The air tasted like smoke.

He was frozen in place, looking down at his feet. He wore moth-eaten shoes and a trickle of blood ran down his spindly leg.

No, his mind choked, not here.

He looked up.

The city around him was in utter ruin. Smoke and fog hung low in the air and clogged his lungs.