“Aislin,” Alex said, worry ringing in his tone.

I heard a loud shriek, and through the ice blanketed windows, I thought I saw a flicker of yellow. I could hear Alex and Aislin talking…something about getting out of here and transporting—whatever the heck that was—but I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of the frozen window to see what they were doing. I think I was in shock or something; frozen in terror—literally.

I needed to get off of the bus.

I tore my gaze away from the icy windows. Aislin was kneeling down on the ground doing something weird with a black candle and what looked like a chunk of amethyst. What was this? Black magic time?

I definitely needed to leave.

“I have to get out of here,” I said, trying to push past Alex so I could get the heck off of this freezer-of-a-bus.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Alex growled, refusing to let me by.

“Yes, I am,” I shoved at him with all the force I could conjure up, but he stood as still as a statue. I was on the verge of tears again. “You don’t understand I have to get off. NOW!”

“No, you don’t understand,” Alex snapped. “If you walk off this bus, you’ll die.”

“If I stay of this bus, they’ll kill me!”

That caught his attention. “Who will kill you?”

Oh crap. I hadn’t meant to say that aloud. But with what was happening around us, did it really even matter.

“Those things.” I pointed towards the windows where blinking eyes now flashed from the other side.

“You know what they are?” he asked, stunned.

“Of course I do.” I tried to shove past him again, but it was useless. “This is not the first time I’ve seen them.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Aislin, they know.”

Aislin, who was dangling the amethyst thingy into the flame of the candle, froze. Great. Here we were, about to be froze to death by monsters, and Aislin was…well, I have no idea what she was doing, but it seemed really out of place, all things considering.

Alex had his back turned to me. Hoping to catch him off-guard, I tried to slip by him, but he caught me by the hood of my jacket, and yanked me back, pinning me against his chest.

“I already told you if you go out there, the Death Walkers will kill you,” he said. “So do yourself a favor and stay put.”

I’d have kicked him in the shin, but something he said stopped me. “Death Walkers? What’s a Death Walker?”

“Those things out there with the glowing eyes,” he raised his chin at one of the nearby windows, “are called Death Walkers. And they’re called that for a good reason. They can freeze someone to death just by touching them.”

I already knew that way too well. Way, way too well.

“I know they can,” I whispered, horror pulsating through me as I thought about the nightmares that had haunted me over and over again—nightmares I should have taken more seriously. But it was too late now. The forest was right outside and I was about to die.

My ice-cold hands were trembling. I assumed it was from my nerves until I saw that they had turned a ghastly shade of purplish-blue. “Oh my God!” I cried, shaking my purplish-blue hands. “What’s happening to me?”

Alex enclosed his hand around mine. His skin felt sooo warm. “Try to relax,” he told me. “Aislin will have us out of here in just a second.”

Try to relax. Was he kidding? How was I supposed to relax when my death was waiting for me just outside the frozen walls of the bus? And how on earth did he expect Aislin to get us out of here? With her magic-candle-voodoo-witch thing she was doing? Yeah, all that was doing was creating a cloud of violet-grey smoke that was starting to fill up the bus?

I shook my hand fiercely.  Please change back. Please change back. Please change back!

“Just stay calm,” Alex lulled. “I promise everything will be okay in just a minute.”

Yeah, I wasn’t convinced.

The bus gave a sudden jerk to the side and fog began to swarm beneath the cracks and crevasses of the doors and windows. The temperature shot down. My bodied burned—it was that cold. Suddenly feeling exhausted, I let my eyelids drift shut.

“Stayyy awwwake.” Alex voice sounded so far away.  I cracked open my eyes and he hugged me against his chest, his voice reverberating in slow motion as he said, “Aislinn hurrrry Uppp.”

“Perrrr is calxxxx EGO lux lucisss viaaa,” someone whispered. At least I think someone whispered, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure. At this point, I could have been hallucinating.

The interior lights blinked off, and all I could see were the yellow eyes fireflying all around the outside of the bus. Then a purple glow swallowed up my surroundings, and I let my eyes close as the windows shattered. I felt Alex’s arm come up over my head protectively. A sharp pain ripped up my side, and I let out a scream.

The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air.

Chapter 13

I’m not sure how long I was in the air—or if I even was in the air. It was hard to tell with the thick blanket of blackness all around me. When I finally did see light again, my face was inches away from the floor, about to smack into it, hard.

And hard it sure did smack.

My forehead throbbed. With my limbs aching in protest, and my brain swirling dizzily, I got to my feet.  I was no longer on the bus, but in a room with red walls and an ash-black hardwood floor. An L-shaped leather sofa trimmed the far back corner, and there were bookshelves all over the place. Dark curtains blocked all the windows so I wasn’t sure what was outside.

“Where the heck am I?” I said.

A hand came down on my shoulder, sending a surge of electricity spiraling down my arm. I spun around, knocking the hand away from my shoulder. Alex stood only inches away from me. And right behind him was Aislin. For a split second, I was overwhelmed with the impulse to run to him. But the feeling quickly dissipated as the memories of what had just taken place hurricaned though my mind. I stumbled away from him, my hands shielded out in front of me.

A razor-sharp pain radiated up my left rib, and I let out a moan as I hunched over and wrapped my arm around my waist. My ribs were throbbing

“What’s the matter?” Alex asked, concern lacing his voice.

I held up one hand, keeping the other on my aching ribs. "Stay away from me.”

“Gemma, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, sounding very convincing. But I wasn’t buying it. Not after what had happened.  “You need to hold still. You’re hurt.”

Something warm and sticky dripped down along the back of my hand. Blood.  I lifted up the edge of my coat. A small piece of glass was lodged in my skin. I gasped.

“Just relax.” The tone of his voice was tolerant, not relaxing at all. He turned to Aislin. “You better go find Laylen and see if he has a first aid kit or something. Although I’m not even sure why you brought us here in the first place.”

Aislin blushed. “I wasn’t trying to. It was an accident. You should just be grateful I got us out of there before—” She glanced at me and stopped. “I’ll go find Laylen,” she said and whisked out the door.

“Who’s Laylen?” I asked.

Alex motioned at the L-shaped couch. “Go sit down so I can look at that.”

I shook my head, my hand still grasping at my wounded side. “Not until you tell me where we are? And how in the world we got here? And—”

Alex cut me off.  “I really don’t think that’s the most important thing right now, considering you have a piece of glass sticking out of your rib.”

He had a point, I guess, but I deserved some answers. “Fine. I’ll go sit down. But I’m not going to drop this. You are going to tell me what’s going on.”

He studied me with a curious expression. “You know, you’re nothing like what I thought you’d be.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” I said hotly. “You always say things that make no sense at all.”

He sighed. “Just go sit down and I’ll try and explain things the best that I can.”

I was stunned. Had I actually won the argument? “Are you serious?”

He nodded. “But hurry up. You’re bleeding all over the floor.”

After settling on the couch, I let my questions pour out of me. “Okay, so how did we get here?  And what were those things back there? Those...Death Walkers? And how do you know about them? And how do you know Sophia, because I could tell by the way you two were talking that…”  The way Alex was staring at me made me trail off. He looked totally baffled.

“Are you going to give me a chance to talk?” he asked. “Or do you want to just keep going?”

I bit my bottom lip. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

He pressed his lips together and stared off into empty space. “Take off your coat.”

I blinked. “What?”

He met my eyes. “In order for me to get the glass out, you have to take off your coat.”

“Oh.” For some stupid reason, I suddenly thought about the kissed we’d shared right before all hell had broken loose. It could barely be considered a kiss, really soft and brief like the touch of a butterfly’s wing. Still, I could almost feel the lingering sparkle of electricity where his lips had brushed against mine.

I carefully eased my coat off, wincing as the glass shifted.

Alex took off his gloves and coat and pushed up the sleeves of his long-sleeved black thermal shirt. Then he reached for me.

“What are you doing?” My muscles tensed as I leaned away from him.

He pointed to my side. “Looking at that.”

“Oh.” I said stupidly. I took a deep breath and held as still as I could.

He lifted the edge of my shirt up just enough so he could see the piece of glass sticking out of my blood-covered skin.  He examined it, gently tracing a circle around the cut with his finger.

I held my breath, trying to hold in the gasp that desperately wanted to escape my lips. It would end up being the good kind of gasp—the kind of gasp that might get him thinking I was okay with everything. And I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he moved his hand away. His face looked dead serious. Worried even. It made me anxious.

“Is it bad?” I asked in a high-pitched voice.

His mouth curved into a grin.  “No, it’s not that bad at all. The piece of glass is small, and you’re barely bleeding anymore. I should be able to get it out and stitched it up without any problems.” He rested back against the couch and glanced at the door. “Just as soon as Aislin gets here.”

I tugged down the corner of my shirt and frowned. “That wasn’t funny. You had me thinking I was seriously hurt or something.”

He laughed. “Actually, it kind of was.”

I glowered at him. “Do you even know how to do stitches?”

“What, don’t you trust me?”

I chose not to answer that. “How about you answer some of my questions?”