The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “I mean she was dreaming and now she’s not. Something must have woken her up.”

  “But she was here…and I could feel her.” I strained against my shackles. “She was real. It was her.”

  “Shit, Michael. They’re so young,” Valentina said. “It’s not supposed to happen like this.”

  “I know.”

  “Untie me!” I yelled.

  Michael gave Andre and Charles a nod and they started undoing the cuffs on Vogle’s wrists and mine. I jumped to my feet, rubbing the skin where it was raw.

  “If you want our help, no more games,” I said.

  “This isn’t a game,” Michael said. “Not if you meant what you said earlier about helping us.”

  “I’m doing this to help Bryn,” I corrected him.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But if you really want to help her then we start right now.”

  The sun was so white it looked like a block of ice. Felt like one too, the morning making it hard to breathe. I zipped up my jacket, following Michael and the rest into the back of their truck.

  “Where are we going?” Vogle asked.

  “There’s one more Dreamer in the city. We think she travelled here from Spain.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “You have some sort of tracking system?”

  “Something like that.” Michael nodded to a thin guy with grey eyes and he tapped his forehead. “Domingo here has the very useful ability to sniff out anomalies, which is how we tracked you two down. We knew your doctor friend had two more stashed away in his lab for testing. Bryn and…”

  “Sam,” I said.

  “But besides them Domingo was picking up the vibe of one more somewhere in the city.”

  “How did you know about Dr. Banz?” Vogle asked. “Or that he was running tests on Bryn and Sam?”

  “We were following you a lot longer than you think. You didn’t fit the profile of a Rogue—isolated and suffering from an incurable death wish. You were living and working and when we noticed two more anomalous energies enter into the same lab where you worked, we knew it couldn’t be a coincidence.”

  Vogle was quiet. I knew he must have felt strange knowing Michael had been watching him for all that time. Violated somehow. And I could tell he still wasn’t sure about trusting him but for some reason he’d followed me onto the truck, not willing to let me go alone either. If anything happened to us now I knew it would be my fault so I stared at the muddy road tapering out from behind the truck, avoiding Vogle’s eyes for as long as possible.

  But then he nudged me. “You sure about this?” he said under his breath.

  “I’m not sure of much these days,” I said. “But they know more than we do.”

  “They say they do.” He dropped his voice even lower this time. “But if they just wanted us to join their little gang, what was with the shackles and all that? Making people feel like prisoners usually doesn’t make them feel welcome.”

  “We fought back, and like Michael said, they had to make sure we weren’t being controlled by one of the shadows.”

  “And what told us to fight back?” he said. “Instincts. Maybe we should be trusting them now.”

  I looked away. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Vogle had a point it was that I wanted to believe Michael. I needed to.

  We rolled into the city, a few shop owners unlocking their doors and opening their blinds. The truck stopped and Michael jumped down after Domingo. I expected Domingo to raise a flaming hand or some kind of amulet or tracking device, but instead he just lifted his chin, closed his eyes, and then he pointed.

  “Guess he caught her scent,” I said.

  The rest of the group jumped down and followed after them, a few breaking up into pairs and checking down alleyways. Even without their other halves they still found a way to work together. I guess old habits died hard.

  “Checking for trackers,” Michael said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “That’s what we call the shadows,” he clarified. “And now that some of the Dreamers seem to be without their handy-dandy metaphorical invisibility cloaks there’s nothing keeping us or them from having our brains scrambled by those leeches.”

  “But you said Bryn’s still being protected somehow, right? How do you know for certain?”

  “When Andre dragged her in she barely made a dent with that punch. Whatever abilities she has, they’re not showing just yet, which means that whatever’s hiding them is most likely still hiding her too.” Michael met my eyes. “Like I said, she’s safe for now. You aren’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “That whole brain scrambling thing’s not exactly a metaphor.” Michael chewed his cigarette until it was in the corner of his mouth, hanging back until the rest of the group got ahead of us. “That’s how they kill us. When it comes to the Dreamers, the shadows force them into a deep sleep before driving them bat shit crazy, trapping them in some kind of infinite nightmare and then they off themselves or slip into a coma and never wake up.” He ashed his cigarette. “That friend of yours sure doesn’t know much about his own kind does he? Good thing we found you then or else you might both be licking gum off a stray shoe somewhere.” I eyed Michael, confused, and he continued. “The shadows can drive us mad too, except they’re a bit more creative when it comes to torturing our kind.”

  “Torture?”

  “They drive the Dreamers mad with fear but us, they drive us mad with hate. Make us think our best friend is our enemy or even worse, that we’re the thing the Dreamers should fear. And to Dreamers the shadows are just that, a creeping fog or a strange darkness but to us they can appear to be all kinds of things.”

  “But they can’t kill us,” I said, remembering what Michael had said earlier. “Right?”

  “They couldn’t but for the time being I’d rather not make any definitive statements.” He dug his cigarette into the ground with the toe of his boot, lit another one. “Let’s just say that now we’re not exactly sure what they can do. I do know one thing, though. I can’t imagine much worse than being possessed by one of those things.”

  “You suspected Vogle was,” I said, putting the pieces together. “Is that why you watched him for so long before making your move?”

  Michael winked. “Smart kid. We don’t have a lot of experience with Rogues turned shadow puppets so we were trying to tread carefully. All we know is that it seems to be the shadow’s last resort. If they can’t destroy the Dreamer and they can’t destroy us, they slither inside when we’re at our weakest and force us to kill the Dreamer for them.”

  Before I could ask Michael if that was even possible, Valentina waved us over.

  “Domingo thinks he’s got something,” she said.

  We headed down a grey-washed alley where some of the other Rogues had headed earlier. I noticed Michael glancing at me in the corner of his eye and I knew he was looking at my legs. I sucked in a breath and tried to focus on every movement from my calves to the soles of my feet but it didn’t matter.

  “What happened?” Michael finally looked straight ahead.

  “Car accident,” I said, trying to keep the conversation short.

  “Ah.” Then he paused, glancing at me. “Couldn’t quite snuff you out, could they?”

  There was rustling, stones skittering across concrete, followed by a loud crash.

  Michael grinned. “Time to zap ‘em.” He gripped my shoulder, jolting me with a charge that rattled my bones.

  “Shit, man.” I jerked away.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve got more than that in one fucking sneeze.”

  “I do?” I hadn’t meant to sound clueless but I sort of was.

  Michael gave me a sly smile. “You’re an inferno kid. A nuclear bomb.”

  “So, I’m just a giant flame,” I said, still confused by what it all meant and what it was for.

  “Light,” Michael clarified, suddenly serious. “Plain and simple. It’s the only thing that can truly banish darkness.”

&
nbsp; He stepped past me without another word, following Vogle through a doorway. As I stepped in behind him, he placed a hand on my chest and when I looked down, slithering across the floor was a shadow, mangled and writhing like an insect.

  “No face this time,” I breathed, even though I didn’t mean to.

  “This one must be weak. Usually it’s only the Dreamers who see them as nothing more than smoke,” Michael said.

  Andre circled the shadow, his face cracking from the heat inside him.

  “I want the boy to kill it,” Michael said.

  I braced myself, remembering that first time I’d destroyed one, feeling it inside me. I couldn’t imagine having to endure that pain again.

  “No.” Vogle stepped in front of me.

  “I’m not a boy.” I pushed past him. “I can do it.” Shit. This is going to hurt.

  Michael smirked. “Is that your fighting stance?”

  I was standing there limp-armed, waiting for the right moment to open my mouth and invite it inside to tear me apart. Andre held a hand out, the light pinning the thing to the floor, but I could see he was breaking a sweat, waiting for me to make a move.

  “Let it go,” I said to Andre.

  He hesitated but then the light flushed back into his skin as he released the shadow. It grew, seething until its ashes were standing like a man.

  “There’s already people out on the street,” Michael said, a sense of urgency in his voice.

  The shadow took a step towards me and I let it. But before I could ignite or even take a breath, it collapsed again, swimming towards the ceiling before disappearing in a crack in the rafters.

  “Shit, I thought you were going to kill the thing!” Michael yelled.

  Andre and Valentina raced after it.

  “I was going to. I was…”

  “You were what?”

  “I was going to…swallow it.” The words sounded ridiculous but I wasn’t sure how else to describe it. I clenched my fists, face burning.

  “Swallow it?” Michael turned to Vogle. “Shit, what have you been teaching this kid?”

  “That’s how I destroyed one last time,” I said.

  “You mean you fucking ate it?”

  “The first time I was attacked it climbed inside me and then it burned into nothing,” I said.

  Michael tilted his head, examining us curiously.

  “That’s never happened to you?” I asked.

  “I’ve never let one of those things get close enough to me to find out what they’d do.”

  “Then how do you kill it?” I asked.

  “With these.” Michael pulled a small glowing grenade from his pocket. “Shay figured out how to maneuver her energy inside an object and came up with these a few years ago.”

  He tossed one to me and I shuddered as it fell into my hand.

  He laughed. “Don’t shit yourself, I didn’t pull the clip.”

  I gave it back to him and he tucked it away.

  “There’s also the old fashioned way,” he said, clapping his hands together with a cosmic bang.

  Sparks flew as the flames grew until everything around him was as white as the sun. I shielded my eyes but I could still feel the pull, the light a spinning vortex moving too fast to even see.

  “Shadows get sucked in here before they know what hit ‘em.”

  The light blinked out, the bright echo still clinging to my vision, blinding me. I rubbed out the sting and then I looked down at my hands.

  “Try it,” Michael said.

  I huffed a dry breath into each palm as if I was gearing up to pitch and then I clapped my hands together, forcing every ounce of my energy up through the lines on my hands. It stung but the flames didn’t catch.

  Michael’s eyes urged me on and I tried again, this time slapping my hands together as hard as I could. The light shot out like the kick back on a rifle and I slammed into the wall. It shot a straight beam through the room, longer than the one Michael had made, spinning faster too.

  I saw Vogle in the corner of my eye clutching the doorway, his boots scraping against the floor as he fought the current. I fought to close my fists, snuffing out the light, but the pull was so strong. I twisted my fingers, bending them until it felt like they were breaking. My nails bit into my palms and then the light disappeared in a searing flash.

  Vogle doubled over, catching his breath as Michael crawled back onto his feet.

  “Shit,” Vogle said. “What the hell was that?”

  My mouth hung open, straining for words, for air. I waited for Michael to say something, to explain to us what just happened. But his smirk was gone, his voice was cool, and as he took a step towards me it wasn’t curiosity in his eyes anymore, it was fear.

  “What are you?” he said.

  But before any of us could say another word the floorboards quaked beneath our feet, reeling from an explosion somewhere down the street.

  The three of us took off running, Vogle and I following Michael’s lead. Andre and Valentina were circling the small square, looking dazed.

  “What the hell happened?” Michael said.

  “Lost it.”

  “And the explosion?” he hissed. “What happened to being discreet?”

  “There!” Valentina pointed to a shop with busted windows, the door unhinged.

  I jogged ahead and caught sight of two silhouettes in the center of the room. Sunlight crept over the clouds, washing their shoes, their hands. When I saw Bryn I jumped into a full sprint, vaulting over the window and almost stumbling over the mess on the floor. Glass crunched under my feet and she spun.

  “Roman?”

  The shadow swirled around Dani, wisps carving themselves into fingers that curled into her hair and caressed her chin, goading me. The face flexed into a smile, my smile, but I knew Bryn could see only smoke. Dani was even more oblivious, her eyes wide as something she couldn’t see paralyzed her.

  Michael and the rest of the group were suddenly behind me, tensed. When I looked toward the ceiling I saw why. Through the open window I couldn’t even see the sun anymore. Dark clouds billowed toward the opening but when the cold stung me I realized that they weren’t clouds at all.

  “Found them.” Valentina barely breathed the words.

  They swirled around us, the cold turning them to ice until they weren’t phantoms anymore but the kind of monsters you can feel. Bodies knocked into me, the frost turning my skin black. The one with my face stood over me, dark eyes swimming with my scared reflection.

  “Roman!” Bryn yelled my name, breaking its hold on me, and I clapped my hands together, electricity surging between my fingers.

  Light pierced the shadow in front of me, ashes littering the ground. The light swelled, joined by Michael’s and Andre’s and Vogle’s. But it wasn’t enough. The room was shuddering, ready to burst at the seams, so dark that I couldn’t even see Bryn.

  Her fingers scraped my shirtsleeve, reaching, but then she stumbled. A shadow dove for her and I drove it back with a raised hand, its ghostly sheath igniting into flames.

  “Dani!” she yelled, struggling to get back on her feet.

  I aimed the vortex, my light blotting out all the others until I thought I was about to explode. But there were so many, too many. I pushed myself forward, fighting against the current, reaching for Dani’s body as it hung inches from the ceiling. Her back was arched, her hair swirling around her wide eyes, every inch of her still. Even the small tear clinging to the corner of her eye was turned to ice.

  Bryn called her name again, trying to push past me, but the moment we touched, her hand on my forearm, the light swelled until it was all I could see. It ripped through the room in a flash, the shadows caught and disintegrating to ash at our feet.

  Once the light blinked out the shadows were gone and everyone else was strewn across the shop. Vogle was hanging over the window while Michael and Andre were rolling out on the street. Valentina was lying on top of one of the only upright bookcases.

  Bry
n looked up at me, something like fear in her eyes, and then she crawled toward Dani’s body on the floor. “Dani?” She pressed an ear to her mouth, shaking her. “Dani.”

  Dani’s eyes opened. “Bryn?”

  “Are you okay?” Bryn asked.

  “I’m…” Dani tried to sit up, sank back down. “Where am I?” She finally managed to sit up and spotted me standing over them. “We found him?”

  “You were looking for me?” I asked.

  Bryn didn’t meet my eyes. “I thought you were in trouble.”

  “Well, he looks fine to me,” Dani said. “Me on the other hand. Shit. What happened? Did I trip and hit my head or something?”

  Bryn tried to steady her voice. “Yeah. You just hit your head. How’s it feel?”

  “Like I was just knocked unconscious.”

  Bryn helped Dani to her feet and then over the rubble and onto the street. Vogle and Valentina followed us out, everyone circling her.

  “Oh, you’re here?” Dani said, looking at Vogle. “Wait.” She faced Bryn again. “What’s going on? Who are all of these people?”

  “Oh, we’re just, uh…” Valentina pulled Andre back onto the sidewalk. “Shoppers. We heard the commotion and wondered what was going on.”

  “Yeah,” Michael said, wandering close behind them. “Better get back to my store before I get, you know, robbed or something.”

  Dani scratched at the bruise starting to peek through her hairline. “Can we get back to the hotel? I’m feeling kind of…well, like shit.”

  Bryn held onto her arm, guiding her back toward the bridge. I walked with them, waiting for Bryn to look at me. But when she finally did, her eyes were vacant, the chill I’d felt in that shop clinging to her voice as she said, “What the hell is going on?”

  Dani eased down onto a bench as they waited for the tram, leaving Bryn and I on the empty street.

  “They’re like me,” I said, staring down at the dim light fluxing beneath my fingernails. It was the only thing I could think to say, hoping those three words would explain everything. Even though she was right and I should have found a way to let her know I was all right. I shouldn’t have just disappeared like that.

  “I was so…” She looked down, voice cracking. “I was so afraid that something had happened to you. And then when I saw you, you were chained to a chair, Roman. What was I supposed to think?”