Page 148 of Sweet Nightmare

I turn to look around, only to find that Jude and Luis are doing the same thing. When our eyes meet, Luis grabs my arm and says, “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“You hear it, too?” I ask, the chill inside me getting worse as the sound gets louder. “Oh, shit.”

“Oh, shit is right,” he answers.

“What’s wrong?” For the first time since she killed Jean-Luc, Izzy actually sounds interested. “What’s hap—”

She breaks off in the middle of a word, her eyes going wide. Which…fuck.

And even though I tell myself it can’t be, that we need to stay the course, I can’t resist turning around to look at what she’s seeing.

Then really, really wish I hadn’t as hundreds of pissed-off chricklers come racing down the path straight at the whole group of us.

“What do we do?” Luis hisses as the rain continues to pour down on us.

“Freeze,” I tell him, because all our options are bad at the moment, but of all the bad ones, that is definitely the best one.

“Seriously? You want us to let them catch up?” he hisses.

“What I want is to give the rest of the students a chance to make it to the gym,” I answer. “So, yeah, I want to let them catch up.”

He rolls his eyes. “Picking the self-sacrificing best friend was so not the way to go,” he grumbles. But he moves to position himself directly in the middle of the center walkway.

The others are catching on to what’s happening now, too, and it only takes about thirty seconds for us to make a kind of blockade with our bodies. I really hope Danson appreciates the help this time, because if he gives me a hard time about not following him to the gym, I might break my own rules about my tail and deliberately sting him.

“What now?” Simon asks as he moves to my right.

“We wait,” Jude tells him grimly. “And something tells me it won’t be very long.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY

WAY TOO HOT

TO HANDLE

He’s right. It’s not. Because, less than a minute later, Ember asks, “What are those things?” She sounds more curious than afraid, which is proof that she’s never had to deal with the evil little monsters before.

“Chricklers,” I answer, my heart dropping to my toes as what looks like an entire army of the assholes scampers up the walkway toward us.

“Chricklers?” Mozart repeats. “Those tiny, fluffy little creatures are what you keep complaining about?”

“They’re evil,” Luis tells her flatly as he starts to back up, a horrified look on his face.

“Don’t move!” I bark at him, and he freezes instantly.

“No way! They’re adorable.” Mozart crouches down so they can get to her more easily.

“They’re the devil incarnate,” Luis corrects her, though he’s obviously heeded my warning about not to move seriously because he’s talking out of only the corner of his mouth. “They each weigh less than five pounds each, and the wind hasn’t been able to move even one of them off course. What do you call that if not a direct line to Hell?”

“But what should we do here? Should we run or…” Simon asks as he starts backing away slowly.

“No! Whatever you do, don’t run!” I tell him. “They respond to movement.”

“Like a T-Rex,” Luis adds.

The others laugh, but he’s not wrong. It’s why feeding them and cleaning their cage is always so hard.

“Can’t you just portal us all out of here?” Izzy asks Remy. “Get us to the gym and away from those things? Or better yet, portal us the fuck off this island.”

---