⸻ ❛𝐖𝐑𝐀𝐏 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐎𝐒!❜
Rory Hargrove is obsessed to uncover the truth behind Barbara Holland's disappearance, while facing her brother's enemy and buried secrets from...
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RORY HARGROVE AND STEVE HARRINGTON COULD HARDLY BELIEVE they were once again trapped in that same dramatic, shadowed, and horribly nostalgic world — only now it was far more decayed than they remembered.
The dry, cracked earth stretched across the drained lakebed, deadly roots jutting out like skeletal veins — desiccated, motionless, yet still damp with the cold, sticky venom of the place. Her throat lurched with the impulse to vomit, but she couldn't afford that luxury.
Lightning flared red across the sky, thunder shaking their ribcages with every violent crash.
The Upside Down felt different now — more restless, more terrifying. No longer simply still and suffocating, but furious, as if the dead world itself raged like the heart of a hurricane. Its energy was violent, alive.
But there was no time to dwell on the grotesque beauty of it. Something Aurora never wanted to.
God, how they longed for a breath of clean air, after their lungs had nearly burst inside their chests. Yet the atmosphere remained heavy, choking, ashes drifting like fallen angels through the gloom.
Except now, those fallen angels were a new breed of furious bats, at that very moment trying to tear into Steve with their fangs. And choke him to death.
Suppressing a cry of pain, Rory pushed through the throbbing ache in her ribs and seized the oar lying on the wreck of the boat beside them. With all her strength she swung, sending one of the creatures hurtling away, screeching and snarling.
Nancy Wheeler followed her lead, while Robin Buckley crushed another beneath her boot. The four fought with whatever they had, while Harrington writhed helplessly on the scorched ground.
"Kill it, damn it!" Eddie Munson growled through clenched teeth, urging them on.
The shrill screams of the beasts, tangled with the roar of thunder, shredded their nerves, clouding already-dulled minds starved of light.
And still the animals came, from every direction — more than their peripheral vision could take in.
"Nancy! Watch out!" Robin shouted as she spotted a flying monster about to land on the girl's back. Rory swung the oar hard, striking the bat, which crashed to the ground — missing Nancy's head by mere inches. What mattered was that another tragedy had been averted.
She did not recall ever glimpsing such a species before — bats whose wings made them resemble raging dilophosaurs, swooping in from every side. Their pointed, thin, agile tails whipped like ricochets, coiling around arms, necks, legs — any limb they could seize. All the while their tiny sharp teeth sank into flesh, carving deep wounds that burned as though the skin were being shredded.
