Page 52 of An Academy for Liars

He shoved her, roughly, into a stall. Lennon, gasping for air, caught herself on the steel toilet pump, and braced there, panting. “What thefuckis that thing?”

“Listen to me,” said Dante. “I need you to raise a gate and get out of here. Now.”

“I—I can’t. It’s too much. I can’t concentrate here—”

“Try,” he ordered, putting real force behind the words.

Lennon shut her eyes, grabbed at something deep within herself that felt like power, and tried to transmute the graffitied door of that bathroom stall into an elevator. She gritted her teeth so hard she thought her molars would crack in two at the back of her mouth. Nothing. “I just can’t,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“All right, then,” said Dante, nodding first to himself, then her.He reached back into his waistband. He produced a small handgun. Extended it to her. “If it comes through these doors instead of me, you put this gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.”

“What?No, I can’t just—”

He pushed the grip into her palm, folded her fingers tight around it. “That thing out there will do worse to you than a bullet ever could,” he said, already backing away, but she reached out a hand, caught him by the arm.

“What was that out there?”

“An ambush,” said Dante. “An abomination.” And with that he turned and left, leaving her alone in that empty bathroom as the fluorescents flickered overhead. Moments later the room plunged into outright darkness.

Lennon heard sounds, words exchanged, but the interactions stretched—like a recording slowed—becoming incomprehensible. It was almost as though time itself was warping, malfunctioning, the flow of the moments interrupted. She felt the sudden and violent urge to be sick. Then—splitting the silence—a horrible, inhuman scream.

Things went quiet for a few beats after that, and then, footsteps. Lennon raised the gun to her parted lips, fitted the muzzle between her teeth. The barrel pressed her tongue flat against the basin of her mouth. She tasted the bitter tang of cold metal.

She slid her finger over the trigger.

The bathroom door swung open with a groan.

To her shock, it was Dante that stood there, bleeding but alive. She lowered the gun, stunned. In the time that he’d been gone, Lennon had come to terms with the fact that the both of them were going to die there in that club. That she would be slaughtered in that bathroom stall, that the memories of her loved ones would be extracted, and they would not even remember her well enough to mourn.

She ripped the gun from her mouth. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me it was you? I almost blew my head off. I—”

Dante put a blood-slick finger to his mouth, a silent shushing.

“You’re hurt,” she said, but couldn’t see where the blood was coming from. “What happened out there? Are you okay—”

“I’m fine,” he said, but it sounded pained. “And we don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here.”

He caught her by the arm and dragged her sharply down another hallway and through a pair of black doors. They staggered out into a narrow alleyway and started down it, toward a high (it must’ve been more than eight feet) chain-link gate that cut between the two buildings. It was topped with vicious snarls of barbed wire. Lennon, upon testing the lock, moved to climb over it when Dante, eyes closed, lids twitching slightly, made a motion with his fingers and the bolt—inexplicably and with a sharp click—released and struck the asphalt at their feet.

“It’s just an illusion,” he said. “One so good that it became reality, if only for a moment.”

The gate swung open, and they slipped through, cutting fast down the last of the alley and stepping into the deserted street.

Lennon had expected to see police cars and firetrucks, the emptied crowds of the club and perhaps a handful of news reporters there to cover the scene of the stampede. But there was nothing, no one, except a few pigeons and a plastic bag tumbling like a lone phantom down the long stretch of the road. In the far distance, she saw a bruised girl hobbling down the sidewalk with a cell phone raised to her ear.

“Where did everyone go?” said Lennon, and even though she was whispering, the words seemed loud and grating, like laughter at a wake.

Dante nodded down the street. “Keep pace,” he said, so quietlythat Lennon wasn’t sure whether he’d spoken aloud or if she’d merely read his lips.

They walked with urgency but didn’t flee. Kept their hands in their pockets, their heads down. Moved along at a steady but measured pace, entering the Red Light District.

“Are we being followed?” Lennon asked, when she felt it was safe to speak in something above a whisper.

“Yes,” said Dante.

“Are we in danger?” she asked, risking a glance up at him. The blood on his hands.

His expression was totally taciturn. “Yes.”

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