Insanity Read Online Free

door open so hard I nearly fell when it swung, then lunged into the hall in time to see a silveryglow explode through the whole space, turning the limestone walls to polished stardust. Everything looked sparkly and new and unreal.
    A guy ran past me. Jeans. Dark skin. Screaming. He wasn’t anybody I knew from the wards.
    Dogs charged after him, yelping like they were chasing a fox, and goose shadows slid along the ceiling where the lights should have been.
    And behind the dogs—
    Who was that ?
    My hands curled into fists as he came toward me. I opened my mouth to yell, but no sound came out.
    He was six feet tall, maybe taller. Thin. Black jeans, black shirt, black coat dusting the floor. His hair was black, too, and longer than mine. Massive winglike shadows arced into the nothingness behind him.
    He was glowing. He was both the light and the darkness, and he had teardrops etched under his right eye—so, so red and terrifying, and I knew in my guts they weren’t made with ink. They were some kind of blood tattoos.
    The hounds cornered the first guy at the clothing room door, and the dark-light guy passed me by as if I didn’t exist.
    “It’s time to go, Decker,” he said to the guy cowering from the hounds.
    “No!” the man he called Decker yelled, and I figured he was a patient, even if I couldn’t remember him. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even walk.
    The dark-light guy got to the dogs and waded through them.He grabbed Decker with one hand, and with the other he ripped open the clothing room door.
    “Leave me be!” Decker yelled. He beat against the dark-light guy, and I tried to clear my thoughts, because at Lincoln Psychiatric we didn’t lay hands on patients except to provide care, and whoever this jerk with the coat and dogs might be, I couldn’t let him hurt some helpless sick person.
    “Stop!” I shouted, stumbling away from the canteen door. “You with the dogs. Knock it off!”
    The dark-light guy was in the clothing room now, dragging Decker after him. The dogs streamed inside along with the goose shadows, and the bells kept ringing and ringing.
    “Hey! Guy in the duster. I’m talking to you!” I picked up speed and reached the clothing room just as Decker’s feet went sliding across the threshold.
    I pitched myself forward and got a grip on his ankles. I expected to get pulled inside and eaten by a thousand dog teeth, but Decker stopped sliding like he’d hit a solid wall.
    From inside the clothing room came the sound of a body hitting the floor and noises of surprise—dog and goose and human, too. I didn’t stop to think about it. I kept my stranglehold on Decker’s ankles, struggled to my knees, then leaned back and used my body weight to haul him out of the clothing room. He came without fighting, eyes wide, mouth hanging open in shock.
    Dark-light guy came with him, still holding Decker’s arms until he saw me and turned loose.
    I’d had hours of training on separating patients who were fighting, so I risked letting go of Decker long enough to scramblepast his legs and shoulders until I could force my body between the two people. As they stood I straightened up with them, straddling the entrance to the clothing room. My left hand rested on Decker’s chest, and my right stretched toward dark-light guy.
    Dizziness made me blink, and my head swam like I’d been punched—but at least the bells stopped ringing. Lights flickered back to life. The dogs and the goose shadows vanished, and the walls weren’t made of stardust anymore. Dark-light guy looked like an escapee from a vampire-movie casting call, and he really was wearing black jeans and a black shirt with long sleeves, but he didn’t have any wings.
    Man, did he look pissed.
    He stepped forward, his chest meeting my palm with force. Lightning shocks made my arm jerk as he bounced backward from the contact. Rainbows shot through my vision, and I winced at the sharp scent of mothballs and dusty old