Page 14 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)

Chapter fourteen

N ora choked before whispering, “I’m glad that Ezra convinced me to bring you along as a guard.”

Her heart hammered so hard that it might have been fighting to get out of her ribcage, and her skin crawled as she watched the creature claw its way up the wing of the plane, getting closer to the main body by the second.

Adam glanced around frantically.

“By the Titans’ tentacled testicles!” He swore loudly enough to wake up their row mate, an elderly lady whose eyes went wide with shock as she glared at him.

“Sorry, just realized I forgot something,” he offered by way of explanation. That satisfied her as she closed her eyes again and Adam turned back to Nora.

“I don’t have a weapon with me,” he whispered into her ear, making Nora draw back in shock, doing nothing to help her still accelerating heart rate.

“You’re supposed to be my guard and you didn’t bring anything to fight with?”

Adam shushed Nora, her rising hysteria having made her careless with her volume.

“I can’t exactly get a sword through airport security. Not to mention, the Shadow hasn’t attacked you while you’ve had a guard before. We figured just having one of us here must be the equivalent of a nuclear deterrent for them.”

“Did you just compare yourself to a nuclear weapon when you didn’t even have the sense to bring anything to use to protect yourself?” Nora hissed.

Adam chanced a glance out the window toward where the Shadow was halfway up the wing, “Now is not the time for scolding, Nora. We need solutions.”

Nora furrowed her brow as she observed the creature’s progress. “It won’t be able to get inside the plane anyway, will it? The fuselage is designed to be airtight.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. That is a Shadow born of wind and storm, and they don’t have a particularly high regard for the laws of physics. What I need is something to fight it with.”

Nora wracked her brains.

“Coffee pot? You could smash it and use one of the shards as a dagger?” she suggested.

Adam nodded. “Maybe we should have let you continue to use household objects as weapons. I’ll go to the galley in the back to grab it, but I need you to create a distraction so the flight attendant who’s back there doesn’t stop me.”

Before Nora could ask what he had in mind for a distraction, he was out of his seat and striding to the back of the cabin. The creature was mere feet away from the body of the plane, and she unbuckled her seatbelt as quickly as she could, improvising as she went. The sudden spike in adrenaline made her fingers as useful as raw sausages, but she freed herself and launched into the aisle.

She hesitated a moment before doing the first thing she thought of that would get everybody’s attention and not end with her in handcuffs. She gave a dramatic gasp before crumpling to the floor as loudly as possible in her best impression of a faint. The hand pressed to her forehead might have been a little much, but she was fully committed to the role of damsel in distress.

The reaction in the cabin was instantaneous, and feet pounded down the aisle toward her from both directions even as she kept her eyes closed. It was only a few moments before cool hands grasped her shoulders, and there was an announcement over the communication system.

“Could any licensed medical professional on board please report immediately to the back of the aircraft?”

The hands on her shoulders rolled her over onto her back, but she let her head loll limply to the side, still feigning unconsciousness. She needed to keep all eyes on her for a few moments longer. It was difficult to stay limp when every muscle in her body strained for any indication that the Shadow had boarded the aircraft.

Just as fingers searched her neck for a pulse, a violent bout of turbulence shook the cabin so forcefully that Nora slid into the base of the seat next to her, hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs. The fingers flew from her throat, and a crash came from the back of the cabin. Nora prayed that it was Adam smashing the coffee pot even as she wheezed to catch the breath that had been knocked from her.

As soon as she heard voices screaming, Nora sat bolt upright and whipped her head around, dropping the pretense of unconsciousness. Swirling down the center aisle from the back of the plane was the Shadow, this one the dirty grey of the tornados Nora saw on TV. It looked like a nightmare of storm clouds and dust, but with the same glowing eyes and demented shape of its fiery counterparts. Catching sight of her where she sat sprawled on the floor, it advanced down the aisle, and Nora scrabbled away from it as best she could in sort of a demented crab walk. The skin of her hands burned as they dragged against the carpet.

Just as the Shadow was within arms reach of her, so close that Nora could practically taste the death and dust that made up its flesh, there was a wild cry from the back of the cabin. Adam barreled down the aisle, a long shard of glass clutched in his raised fist. The sound was enough to draw the Shadow’s attention, and it whipped away from Nora, the motion causing hot wind to lash across her face so hard that she almost fell backward again.

Adam’s battle cry had given the Shadow just enough warning of his position. It flung a long arm out and caught Adam by the throat even as he attempted to charge forward. The Shadow lifted him clean off the ground, the toes of his loafers scrabbling for purchase on the rough carpet of the aisle. He made a terrible gargling noise and swung the glass shard wildly with one hand, the other hand trying to dislodge the creature’s grip on his neck. The Shadow just held Adam away from its body, its arm long enough to keep Adam at a distance where none of his attacks could connect.

Nora sprang to her feet, ready to go at the Shadow with her bare hands. The flight attendants yelled behind her, but she didn’t spare a moment to look at them. She drew her arm back, but before she could throw a punch that would make Ezra proud, Adam’s eyes began to roll back in his head. With his last flail, he managed to fling the glass straight at the creature’s chest, where it embedded itself.

The Shadow let out an earsplitting screech, dropping Adam to the ground with an ungraceful thud. Nora lunged toward where he lay crumpled in the aisle, but she never reached him.

The Shadow creature, which had begun writhing in its death throes, coalesced into a swirling ball before shattering apart with a clap like thunder. The force of the detonation threw Nora to the ground and shook the plane even harder than the continuing turbulence.

There was a horrible sucking sound that came from nowhere and everywhere all at once, and Nora clapped her hands to her ears, which exploded in her head. Within seconds, yellow masks dropped from the bulkheads, and people hurried to put them on. Nora was already lightheaded, and she scrambled to her feet to snatch the one above her unoccupied seat, clutching it to her face.

Within two deep breaths, Nora’s world steadied even as her skin grew cold, and she could taste blood dribbling from her nose onto her lips. She glanced around, still holding the mask to her face with one hand, but nearly fainted all over again as she caught sight of Adam still sprawled on the floor.

She inched toward him, reaching her hand out as far as she could, but her fingertips could just brush his hair while keeping her mask pressed to her face. She took in Adam’s pale face, turned to the side so Nora could just make out his dusty blue lips and the blood trickling from one ear. She took one last bracing breath before letting go of her mask and lunging toward him.

She managed to catch Adam’s limp body under his arms and heaved him toward her. He only moved a few inches with the first tug, but she kept yanking at him, pulling so hard that she was surprised his arms didn’t pop right out of his sockets.

Her other arm reached toward the dangling mask, still just out of reach, as black spots began forming in front of her vision, but she willed herself to keep moving. Several other passengers, noticing her struggle, reached out to help her, and Adam’s body slid more easily down the aisle. Nora gasped for breath and gave one final heave, moving Adam the final inches. Her fist closed around the mask, and she smashed it to her face, taking deep, panting breaths. She snapped the elastic around her head before scooping up Adam into a seated position, silently thanking Ezra for her better-developed upper body muscles. As quickly as she could, she grabbed the mask from above Adam’s seat and brought it to his face, working the elastic over his head with trembling fingers.

There was a horrible moment of stillness filled with nothing but the shaking of the plane and Nora’s own panting breaths raking at her throat. It could have been one second, or it could have been a minute.

Adam’s long eyelashes fluttered a few times, and when his eyes opened to meet hers, Nora choked on a sob. She didn’t try to speak to him through her mask, just nodded at him in reassurance. He blinked in understanding. She helped him into the seat as the pilot announced an emergency landing, and the plane started to descend.

Nora slid into the seat of the rental car and slammed the door behind her, resting her forehead on the steering wheel in relief. Ever since the airplane had touched down in Cleveland, she’d been holding her breath all over again.

Thankfully, Adam had recovered from his unconsciousness and handled most of the questions from the authorities. Nora just did her best to play the part of a hysterical woman too rattled to remember everything clearly, which was remarkably easy after the harrowing flight. Everybody readily believed that any number of strange hallucinations could be caused by oxygen deprivation and wrote the whole thing off as a freak accident.

As Adam slid into the passenger seat beside her, Nora mumbled into the steering wheel, “You’re remarkably good at explaining impossible happenings away to authorities while simultaneously brushing off the paramedics.”

He tried for a joke as he buckled his seatbelt. “It’s almost like I’ve done it before.”

Nora wasn’t in the mood to laugh and just nodded against the steering wheel.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Adam continued more softly. “You’re pretty shaken up, and a nap might do you some good.”

Nora hoisted herself upright and put the key in the ignition as she shook her head.

“No. I’d rather drive. I think I just need to feel… in control for a second. Thus, the renting a car and driving back to Chicago.”

Adam didn’t say anything, and she pulled out of the lot and got herself onto the expressway in silence. As farm after farm whipped by, Nora felt herself easing back into a sense of normalcy. Adam eventually hooked up his phone to the car’s stereo, and Nora found herself enjoying his predictably eclectic playlist, switching randomly from Beethoven to heavy metal to everything in between.

It almost made her feel better about the fact that she hadn’t been able to make it to Pittsburgh in time to give her presentation. Almost.

She had spent weeks desperately trying to spin the way the discovery of the Eteria had upended her life into a positive—a way to learn more about ancient weapons, and even a promising friendship with Adam. But the Shadows were determined to destroy everything they could reach, even endangering innocent lives to get at her.

Adam stayed quiet enough to give Nora space to think, but she could still tell he was desperately trying to cheer her up. His music choices became increasingly absurd, and he even went inside when she stopped for gas and picked up a package of sriracha-flavored beef jerky that was admittedly very good.

It was dark by the time Nora pulled up to a sleek apartment building in Lincoln Park to drop Adam off, and she had begun to breathe easily again. After grabbing his luggage out of the trunk, Adam stepped up to Nora’s window, and she rolled it down.

They were quiet for a moment longer, and Adam’s throat bobbed in the dim light from the streetlamp behind him.

“I’m sorry about your conference. And… thank you.”

“Any time,” Nora replied, trying to sound casual but failing when her voice cracked.

Adam’s hand gripped the edge of the car window, and Nora chose to examine the gold ring he was wearing instead of meeting his eyes.

“Seriously, I owe you my life today,” he said.

Nora continued to examine his hand as she responded, “The way I see it, I still owe you one. I think you’ve saved me more than once.”

“I wasn’t keeping track.”

When Nora lifted her head to meet Adam’s eyes, they glittered in the streetlights, full of something so heavy that it was hard to look at. Nora’s mind was so full of the thought that his expression was almost one of longing that she didn’t notice him leaning in until his breath tickled her face. His lips just brushed her cheek, but a shiver still ran through Nora’s body, colliding with the residual adrenaline and causing frizzling sparks to dance across her skin. Before she could recover, Adam turned away and made his way into his building. She shook herself before rolling up the window and pulling away from the curb.

Nora thanked her lucky stars when she managed to find street parking near her apartment, telling herself she could return the rental car tomorrow. However, as she dragged her suitcase toward her apartment door, she found somebody already sitting on her stoop.

“Nora!” Odelle shot to her feet and crashed into her, clutching her so tightly that Nora’s ribs creaked.

“Odelle! What are you doing here?” Nora asked, her voice muffled by her face in Odelle’s hair, which smelled of expensive perfume and roses.

“Oh my gosh, you’re all right! I was at work when we covered the story about the flight to Pittsburgh and I heard from Irina you were going there for the conference this week. I was so worried it was your flight, but I couldn’t get away while we were on the air, so I came here right after work and—”

“I’m okay, Odelle. I’m here now, and I’m just fine,” Nora said, trying to sound calm, even as her eyes grew damp.

Odelle took a step back and held Nora at arms-length as if to inspect her. Odelle seemed to be fighting a case of wet eyes, too, although she was doing a much more admirable job of it, managing to look teary without ruining the thick mascara that she still had on from an evening of broadcasting.

“I just kept thinking about how if your plane crashed when we weren’t on speaking terms, I could never forgive myself. And then you weren’t home and…”

“You don’t have to worry about it. The plane depressurized and made an emergency landing, but nobody was hurt,” Nora reassured.

There was a tense pause, and Odelle’s hands stiffened on her shoulders.

“You mean you were on that flight?”

Nora flinched. “Umm…”

“This is the second major disaster you’ve been a part of this month.” Odelle’s voice trembled a little, but she still sounded icy as she stepped away and dropped her hands to her sides.

“This one was just a coincidence,” Nora tried, taking a step towards her sister, but Odelle was having none of it.

“So, you’re saying the other one wasn’t a coincidence?” she asked with a raised brow.

Nora buried her face in her hands for a second. “That’s not what I… I thought you were regretting not being on speaking terms?”

Odelle sighed and Nora took her face out of her hands to find that Odelle’s had softened and now looked resigned.

“I am. And I’m glad you’re all right.”

“Thanks.”

There was a long silence, and Nora was about to invite Odelle upstairs for tea when her sister spoke again.

“I’m not letting this rest, you know.” The severity of Odelle’s tone was enough to make Irina proud. “But please, call me sometime, okay?”

Nora chewed at her lip. “Okay. Goodnight, Odelle.”

Odelle nodded and stepped out into the street to hail a passing cab with a flick of her fingers while Nora trudged up the stairs to her apartment. By the time she flopped down on her bed and buried her face in her pillows, she was wondering just how much more it would take before her life imploded, just like the airlock on the plane.