The Space Within (The Book of Phoenix #3)

by Kristie Cook

  “We’re not leaving anyone,” Hayden said as he squatted at Brock’s feet. He grabbed the other man’s ankles and pulled.

  “Brock, come on,” I tried to yell at him. If I could muster this much energy, so could he. “Let’s find Asia, Brock.”

  “Why?” he moaned. “So I can break her heart again?”

  “Stop it,” I snarled. Or I tried to. It came out more like a soft hiss, too weak to be a real command. “Just come with us through the Gate.”

  “So we can end up on another fucked up world gone Dark? Guess that’s where we belong anyway.”

  Ignoring him, Bex and Hayden yanked at both of us and managed to pull us through the Gate’s walls. With the last shred of hope I possessed, knowing how much Earth’s souls needed us, I concentrated every fiber of my being and my soul on returning home and to Jeric.

  Darkness consumed us. And Brock was right: that’s where we belonged.

  Chapter 26

  A woman stepped through the walls of the Gate, with curves that made Leni look like a boy, all of them emphasized by her tight, black bodysuit and boots that reached over her knees. Her long, black and white hair blew wildly, and her black eyes were even crazier. They matched the maniacal grin that spread on her face as she looked around. All of the fighting ceased as everyone froze, staring at her. I’d never met her before in person—that I could remember anyway—but I knew for certain this was Enyxa.

  Following her came three dogs the size of cargo vans, each with three heads nearly as big as their bodies. Their black fur was matted and mangy, and their black eyes showed white as they lolled around their sockets. With the putrid stink of rotten eggs, saliva dripped from their foot-long fangs, and I had to cover my nose and mouth with the inside of my elbow to keep the sulfuric smell from gagging me.

  “Yes, I’m here,” she said. “The party can begin.”

  The Lakari jumped back into action, and our Guardians fought back. Enyxa spoke in a strange, guttural language, and many of the other monsters returned to their attacks. Another phrase in another language and the rest sprang into the fight.

  The Darkness had become so deep in our immediate area, blacker than the darkest hour of night, and I could barely see around the manor’s lawn, but I could definitely hear the battle resuming. The sounds of gnashing teeth and metal against metal filled the air. Grunts and groans and battle cries, too. A wail of pain every now and then. Both Guardians and monsters going down. Lakari disintegrated and flew to the sky to regroup. Enyxa cackled like a stereotypical cartoon witch.

  Asia and I only stood there, though, with Hope by our side. Staring at the lights of the new Gate and waiting with our breaths held. Hope and I tried to summon them again. Asia remained a statue, her lips sealed. No more bodies or souls came through the Gate opened by the Book of Phoenix, but more Dark beings continued flowing from the main Gate out in the bay.

  My stomach knotted, and I wanted to throw up.

  “They’re not coming,” I finally said, my words garbled because of the lump in my throat. I tore my eyes from the lights and looked around, taking in the scene of violence and death, of shadows fighting and others lying dead on the ground. We were severely outnumbered. Not that it would matter in the end, but the less Darkness in this world when we went down, the longer the human souls could hold out. “We need to close the—”

  A green-skinned, troll-like beast, size XXXXXL, bowled into the three of us, slamming into my left side. I went down, falling on top of Asia and Hope. Ignoring the crunching sound I’d heard when it hit me and the pain shooting through my left arm, I jumped up and swung my right foot toward the beast’s chest, the highest point I could reach. Asia and Hope sprang up, too, with blades extended. They carved gashes into the troll’s torso, but it only smirked lopsidedly, exposing its crooked, pocked teeth.

  “It takes more than that to kill a Weiran,” someone said from behind us—Enyxa’s voice. “One of the most invincible Dark races in this universe. A nearly perfect soldier.”

  “But not completely invincible,” Hope said over her shoulder, and she slapped her hand over one of the cuts in the Weiran’s skin. A bright light flowed into the alien’s body, coming out at its various openings, including the gashes we’d sliced into it. Its scream was like a sonic boom. The earth shook when it fell.

  Enyxa snarled, and I took advantage of the moment. With my blade held high, I charged at her. Her arm swept out, and without her even touching me, a force flew into me, slamming into my chest and sending me sailing. I landed several yards away on my back, my breath flying out of me and pinpricks of light shooting across my vision.

  “You want to play that way, young angel?” Enyxa said, and she let out a wicked laugh. “You’re on!”

  A wave of Darkness blasted at me. It blanketed me, soaked into me, consumed me. A vision of Leni’s body sprawled out on a sheet of blue ice filled my mind. Her opened eyes stared upwards, not sea-green and beautiful, but cloudy gray and empty of life. Enyxa’s own memory of what she’d left behind to come here. The pain I’d been living with for the past several days didn’t compare to the agony that ripped through my heart and soul now. I tried to cover my head with my hands, as if that would help, but physical pain in my arm knocked me back to reality. Asia’s screams sounded from somewhere nearby.

  I forced my eyes open, in time to see Hope blast her light at Enyxa. The bitch sprang upwards and flipped in the air. The light blasted into an alien, and it exploded. Enyxa landed and ran off, out of my line of vision. I rolled over and tried to push myself to my knees with one arm. The ground quaked underneath me, and I looked up and around. One of those fire-breathing elephant-like things that had been coming through the Gate was barreling through the water, headed right for me. A shot of adrenaline forced me to my feet.

  “Close the fucking Gate!” I yelled right before the beast rammed at me.

  I lifted my knife up and slashed at its neck. Black blood spurted, spraying me, and it blew out a burst of fire. Someone in the direction of the flames screamed. Asia flew over the top of it and pierced her blade between its shoulders before sliding down its side. She landed next to me, panting, as the monster reared up, blowing more fire with its anger. Its tree-trunk-like front legs waved in the air before they crashed back to the ground, leaving divots in the earth and forcing us to stumble backwards.

  “We’re only making it mad,” I said, and even I could hear the defeat in my voice. The image of Leni’s dead body hadn’t left my vision. The Darkness weighed me down more than ever.

  “I … I can’t fight like I used to,” Asia said, still working to draw in breaths. “I couldn’t even jump all the way over it, let alone actually hurt it.”

  “We can’t fight like the rest of them,” I agreed, jutting my chin toward the other Guardians. They weren’t entirely successful, but at least most of them were holding their own for as long as possible. Without our other halves here, Asia and I were comparatively weak and worthless.

  The beast swung its head toward us. A Guardian came running in our direction, wielding a long sword. She jumped upwards and arced the blade downward, severing the trunk just as it hit us and knocked us down. Upon impact, the appendage shattered into hundreds of wriggling pieces, but the monster itself was only angered more. The skin at the amputation site split apart and several thin, white tentacles curled out of it, toothy, snapping mouths at their ends.

  “That’s disgusting,” Asia muttered. The other Guardian screamed, swinging her sword wildly as the tentacles swayed toward her. She managed to land a few swipes, cutting the monster, but it wouldn’t go down.

  “Its eye,” I said, staggering to my feet once again. It was a guess pulled out of my ass. No more than a gut feeling. But stabbing the beast in the eye was the best thing I could come up with to defeat it. “Get it … in the … eye.”

  It took every ounce of effo
rt I had to raise my knife in the air again. No way would I be able to jump to reach its eye when I felt like the entire planet was strapped to my waist, pulling me down. So I arced my hand behind me and swung the blade up, letting go at the top of my swing. The knife spun end over end. I stumbled backward and fell onto my ass from the effort. As I hit the ground, the blade’s point plunged right into the beast’s orb.

  A fountain of black blood spurted everywhere. The creature wailed, blowing fire in the air. People screamed. The monster wobbled on its legs, and then it started leaning over, toward Asia and me. We tried to scramble backwards, but it fell onto us, crushing our legs and pinning us under its weight. My head cracked against the ground again. The little black pieces that remained of its trunk wriggled and jumped their way onto Asia’s body and mine. Dozens of the fuckers latched onto us, little spindly teeth or barbs piercing into our skin. I tried to brush them off, but they were hooked on like leeches.

  Instead of sucking my blood, however, the opposite seemed to be true. The things were spurting thin streams of venom into my flesh—an ice-cold venom of Darkness that leaked into my blood and carried throughout my system. As if my heart and soul could take any more of the Dark.

  I couldn’t move my body. My legs, shattered and pinned by the alien monster, and my broken arm screamed in pain when I tried. My good hand scrambled to fling off the leeches, but there were too many of them, each streaming Darkness into my blood, my heart, my soul. It overcame my last bit of energy. My arm fell to the ground. Splotches of black burst like fireworks in my vision.

  I rolled my head to the side to see Asia lying on the ground next to me in the same predicament—half of her body wedged under the creature and her skin dotted with alien bits shooting Darkness into her veins. Her head lolled toward me. I was sure the defeated expression on her face and the despair in her eyes mirrored my own.

  “Maybe we’ll meet them in the Space Between,” I whispered hoarsely.

  Her glassy eyes watered, and she gave me the slightest smile. “I never thought of you as the optimist.”

  “If there’s any chance of finding my Leni, I’ll hang onto whatever hope I can get.”

  Her focus moved from my eyes to something behind me. “Good news is it looks like they closed the Gate.”

  I forced my head to roll to the other side. The lights in the distance, out by the island, had gone dark. The main Gate was closed. The lights nearer to us, barely off shore, began to dim. The Gate the Book had opened was closing, too. My own soul Darkened even more along with its lights.

  I’d failed my girl. I’d failed the Phoenix Guardians. I’d failed the world. The only thing left to do was to submit to the Darkness.

  Chapter 27

  As the Gate we’d opened with the Book of Phoenix dimmed, a tear leaked out of the corner of my eye and slid across the bridge of my nose before falling to the ground under my cheek. I thought, at first, the sense of loss inexplicable since I had given up hope for Brock and me long ago, but it hit me hard nonetheless. Then I realized it was the thought of everyone losing Brock that broke me. That shattered my heart into a million pieces. A world without him—a universe without his soul—was unimaginable. Devastating. The loss of his soul completely wasn’t fair to all of those who loved him, especially his other half. That other half wasn’t me, I knew in my head, but I felt the pain as if it were my own.

  The ice-cold Darkness from the little slug-like things all over my skin seeped into my blood, and I waited for its numbness to take over. To push the pain away completely. To Darken the last bit of Light that remained in my soul and to fill that space within me that had become so empty. I’d been longing for the promised peace of the Darkness for what felt like half a lifetime. But if I hadn’t been ready for it before, I was now, especially as I watched the Gate before me fall completely dark. I closed my eyes.

  A blast of Darkness hit me again, as if to say, “Come with me.” Along with it, Enyxa flooded me with the worst memories of this lifetime. Walking into the abortion clinic and running out of it, losing my baby anyway, fighting the deepest pits of depression in my room, leaving my life and everything I knew behind, living out of my car, seeing Kami return for her family, hearing Brock say those words: “You don’t belong in my life.” The memories crushed me. Ground the pieces of my heart into powder. Opened my soul so the Darkness could wash in.

  But it wasn’t Darkness that filled me.

  Warmth. Light. Hope. Love.

  “NO!” I silently screamed, wishing I could explain to whoever was trying to help me—probably Hope—that it was too late. That the Darkness was what I wanted.

  Thankfully, the feelings subsided. They were too weak to overcome what already possessed me.

  “I’m sorry,” someone whispered above me. “So sorry.”

  A heavy weight fell on top of my chest. The Darkness within it was nearly as thorough as my own. The being’s essence lifted, and I only knew this because it pulled at my own, wanting to take me with it. My soul rose, too, unable to fight it. Not wanting to fight it. Because this was the one I belonged with. This soul, as Dark as it was, was my true other half. My Twin Flame. Wherever it had come from, whatever Dark world it had been on, it had finally found me. I felt it in the space within me—in every fiber of my soul.

  “Welcome back,” my soul whispered to the other one, and they both crashed into each other.

  If I hadn’t known for sure before, I definitely knew now. We filled each other with utter completeness. Our Darkness swirled together, as did the little bit of Light until the black became a dark charcoal gray. The more our essences mingled and combined, the stronger mine became. A new hope blossomed, bringing with it love. We gave it back and forth, sharing it with each other until it became one love, both of ours, nobody else’s. Love like no other, so complete and solid like I’d never felt before. A bond so tight, it could only belong to Twin Flames. This was my true love. My Twin Flame. My other half of our dyad pair.

  “You are mine,” his soul sang into mine.

  “Forever and always,” I confirmed into his.

  “I don’t deserve it.”

  “Don’t ever doubt it.”

  “Never again. Your love is my life force.”

  We looked down at our bodies. If I’d been in my physical form, I would have wept. If my soul wasn’t a part of his this very moment, I would have never believed it. I’d already written us off, believing we’d been Forged together even though we didn’t belong together. But all of that doubt disappeared the moment I felt his soul with mine again. The Darkness had tried to deceive me, but the Light won. Brock’s body was draped over my torso, his thickly muscled arms wrapped around me. Hope knelt by the two of us, her head bent, probably crying.

  “She’s alive!” His emotions ran through me.

  “She’s been our Hope all along. Let’s give her a little now.”

  She looked up at us, at our souls, as if she could see us. Maybe she could. But we slid into our bodies anyway. Brock lifted his weight off of me, and I opened my eyes to find his dark ones hovering right over me. He lowered his head and pressed his lips gently against mine. Hope let out a cry. The joy in it was nothing compared to what filled me.

  “You’re back,” I whispered.

  “Only because of you. I’ve been to Hell and back, literally I think. And I almost gave in. I almost bought the lie Enyxa tried to feed me. But when we finally landed back here, I knew this was where I belonged. With you.”

  “You remember me? Everything?”

  He cocked his head. “How could I ever forget you? You are my one and only love, Asia.”

  “After everything I’ve done …” Even knowing now, feeling it in my soul that his and mine belonged together, I still didn’t know if this current person—Brock Verdor—could truly love me, who I was right now, in this life.

&nb
sp; “You’ve done nothing but love me, Asia. Don’t blame yourself for what Enyxa did to us. Just focus on us, babe. Focus on what matters most.”

  I blinked away the tears of gratitude and gave a tiny nod, the most movement I could muster against the pain of my crushed legs. “Us. Our love. That’s what matters most. I feel it in every space within my soul.”

  His lips turned up into a smile. I wanted to feel them on me again. I wanted to kiss him until I could feel nothing else but his lips moving against mine. I wanted his mouth to drive away the pain and bring the bliss it always delivered. But what I wanted would have to wait. The sounds of war still surrounded us, and our fellow Guardians needed our help.

  “Let’s shove this bitch back to the Dark where she belongs,” Brock said as he rolled completely off of me and lay next to me. His fingers intertwined with mine.

  “I’ll guard your bodies,” Hope said.

  Brock and I projected our souls from our bodies again. We swirled together for a moment for another boost of strength.

  And then we went to battle. Together. As one, as we were always meant to be.

  Chapter 28

  Something changed. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the Dark, how long I’d been wherever I was now, but I felt the change in my chest … in my heart. A bit of Lightness that made it pound out one more beat, as shriveled as it was. And then another. My heart rate picked up pace, although blood already rushed in my head, drowning out everything else. It began to quiet, though, allowing other sounds in as my vision cleared as well. I blinked against the blackness surrounding me, trying to make sense of what I heard—roars and growls, cries of pain, metal clashing against metal. It sounded like a battle.

  My surroundings became clearer as I grew fully alert. I stood in water, facing the shore. It was night and hard to see, but I thought a large shape loomed just ahead. I squinted. A big building? Between it and me were dark shadows moving against the darker night. Fighting. Why? Where was I? What was going on? I shook my head, trying to clear it, but nothing made sense. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived here. Why I would be standing in a body of water. I didn’t even know if I was in a lake or a sea, although the waves pushing at me told me it was at least bigger than a pond.