Page 69 of Escaping Wonderland

I’m not losing my mind. I heard the music—and this seems like the kind of place where the musicneverstops.

Alice turned and stepped through the open doorway, reentering the hall. Nothing changed—no strange, ominous mist rolled in, the lights didn’t flicker and go dark, she didn’t find herself suddenly in a different place, and she could still hear Shadow and the aliens talking behind her.

But the door at the other end of the hallway—the door through which they’d entered—seemed far more imposing now than it had before.

“N-no! We’ll talk,” Grithis stammered. “We’ll talk, it’s just…”

She stared at the door as she continued forward, and the silence seemed to thicken with her every step. She needed to know what was going on. There’d been hundreds of people on the other side of that door, most of them caught up in drug-addled passion. There was no way they could have just disappeared…right? If anyone had realized the guards at the red door were dead, there would’ve been screaming, chaos,noise.

“You’re not going to win this time, Shadow,” said Bokki. “You werenevergoing to win in the long run. However powerful you think you are, he’s ten times more so. Even you won’t stand against him much longer.”

“Where is he?” Shadow asked, voice dangerously low.

“He’s already here,” Bokki replied.

Alice halted at Bokki’s words.

Grithis tittered fearfully, and there was a loud thump, as though a chair had fallen over.

The quiet, the stillness…was because the king was alreadyhere.

Before she could retreat, the door to the dance hall burst open. Her eyes widened, and her breath hitched; several of the king’s dark-armored robots filled the doorway.

He’s already here.

He’s alreadyhere.

Alice spun around to run to Shadow, but merciless metal hands clamped over her arms and dragged her back toward the dance hall as more of the robots marched around her, their movements stiff but sofast.

Terror flooded her. She fought against the metal hands, but they only tightened, threatening to shatter her bones in their viselike grips.

“Shadow!” she screamed.

CHAPTER 19

It was already too late by the time Shadow turned toward Alice.

Should’ve known! Should’ve been ready.

Bokki’s words, though unsettling, hadn’t been surprising. The Red King had spent a lot of time hunting Shadow, had laid a great many traps, but he’d never been successful. His persistence had always struck Shadow as half-determination, half-madness. Why wouldn’t the chance of killing Shadow once and for all rouse the king to action again?

And now the king’s automatons had Alice.

Alice, Shadow’s weakness. Shadow’slove.

Shadow forgot about Bokki and Grithis in that moment. He had no doubt they’d communicated with the Red King, that they’d somehow alerted the king when Alice and Shadow had arrived, but they weren’t important now. They were little more than messengers.

He raced into the hallway as the automatons dragged Alice through the far door. The way she screamed his name pierced Shadow to his core—she instilled those two syllables with an overwhelming amount of fear, desperation, love, and hope.

The automatons that had walked past Alice spread out in two rows of two to block the hallway. Simultaneously, they raised their guns, aiming them at Shadow.

Behind him, the door to Bokki and Grathis’s room slammed shut, and a heavy lock thumped into place.

Shadow phased as the automatons opened fire. The booming of their weapons, amplified in the tight space, was powerful enough to put thunder to shame. Shadow felt the projectiles distantly; they were brief, dull pinches on his abdomen and chest that vanished in the same instant that he materialized behind the machines.

Alice and the automatons holding her were already out of sight, but he could hear her grunts and shouts from inside the dance hall. They couldn’t have made it far. He wasted no time in debating whether he should chase them or eliminate the threats now behind him.

If the Red King got his hands on Alice, it wouldn’t matter how many automatons were still standing.

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