The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Bryn slipped into a coma.”

  I sunk down to the floor. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Roman.”

  He’d said the same thing when he’d stopped me in front of Bryn’s hospital room in Germany. I’m sorry. Because before those words had come two more. Brain dead. Dead. Bryn was dead. But then she wasn’t. She’d woken up. She’d spoken to me. But now…

  “No.” I gripped the floor. “How did this happen?”

  “We’re not sure. We’d just moved her to the mental hospital, hoping it would be easier to monitor her there. Her level of aggression seemed to reach its peak, but before Dr. Sabine had finalized her recommendation for some kind of medication, she just...I’m not sure, wore herself out, I think. She went to sleep and she hasn’t woken up.”

  “And you don’t think it’s just another episode? It could—”

  “I don’t think so. Her breathing’s irregular and she’s not responding to any stimuli. Also, whatever urge was driving her to leave her room is gone. Roman, she hasn’t moved or opened her eyes in almost three days.”

  I heard the pipes whistle downstairs. The shower shutting off. My dad’s footsteps. I crawled into the bottom of my closet and closed the door.

  “But it’s not like before,” I said. “She isn’t brain dead. She isn’t—”

  “No,” Vogle said, “she isn’t brain dead. But what happened in Germany…Roman, it was a miracle. She was dead and then she…”

  “Woke up.” My breath caught and I clutched at sleeves and pant legs, trying not to let the panic suffocate me. “So, we wait. We wait for her to wake up.”

  “Roman, I watched Eve die without even realizing it. Because I was waiting.”

  “Then I’m coming.”

  “To do what exactly?”

  My skin was hot, every useless word from Vogle raising the temperature inside me. “Fuck, I don’t know, but we have to do something.”

  “We’re monitoring her and making sure her body isn’t rejecting any of the nutrition she’s receiving intravenously. But besides that there’s no—”

  I hurled my cell phone against the closed door. A moment later the light of my room was cutting across my shoes as it pulled open.

  “Roman?”

  I sank against my knees, face buried in my hands.

  Bryn was in a coma.

  I waited for my dad to leave but he didn’t. I waited for him to ask me a million questions but he was quiet. The hangers above me rattled, sleeves brushing the top of my head as my dad sat on the floor of the closet.

  He was a giant next to me and all I wanted was to fall into his lap. Because Bryn was in a coma. Because I was sorry. I was so fucking sorry for everything. Everything I’d done and everything I hadn’t. Everything…I was so sorry for everything. And why couldn’t I just say it? When I was so awful and he deserved it. How could I lean on him, how could he let me after all I’d done?

  My face fell into the crook of my dad’s arm. He squeezed, I inhaled.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He gripped me tight. “I know.”

  We sat there in the shadows, not speaking, just hurting, and all I could think about was the dream I’d had of Bryn sitting on the ledge of that cliff face, those vines trying to coax her over the edge. Into nothing.

  And what if they had?

  What if she’d finally listened to them? What if Bryn had finally made that jump?

  17

  Bryn

  They were right about days being minutes. There was no sun, no urge to sleep. Not even thirst or hunger could penetrate this place. Because those are things a body needs and I wasn’t in my body. I was somewhere else—the place just on the other side of my nightmares where I realized what they were really made of. Me. And that’s what I was losing here. Not my gall or even my will to live but my mind.

  We all straightened, feeling the footsteps against the floor. My pulse hitched to the beat. One. Two. One. Two. They stopped and so did the blood in my veins.

  The sound of the bolt was like a gunshot in the silence. For the others it was more like a starter bell, Sebastían, Victor and Joseph getting to their feet. Their eyes cut to the corridor, probably wondering for half a second if Sam’s disappearing act could really work. No one had time to even attempt it, or maybe they just couldn’t, because suddenly the guards held out those small metal boxes, lightning striking the floor like a lapping tongue.

  The guard on the left looked right at Victor. “Your turn.”

  “No,” Victor growled, though he couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice. “I’m not fucking going without a fight.”

  The guard shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  They each latched him by the arm, Victor catching one in the chin as the guard on his left pressed the metal box to his throat. A flash of light sent Victor to his knees.

  Joseph rushed the guards with outstretched hands while Christine and Kira erupted from behind, screaming and throwing their weight into the guards’ unprotected backs. The guard who’d almost deafened me, thrust Kira back, Christine crawling after her to see if she was alright.

  And I just stood there, my pulse in my throat, my back pressed to the wall, hard and reminding me that I was trapped and this was my only chance to escape. I watched Sebastían try to manipulate himself, his face twisted, frustration painting his cheeks. And I knew he couldn’t do it. I knew I was the only one who could.

  I concentrated all of my energy on the blood running through my veins as I tried to strip myself of one cell at a time. The feeling was so slight, a strange current filling me, but I wasn’t disappearing fast enough. I wasn’t disappearing at all.

  Lightning struck, separating Kira, Joseph and Christine from where the guards stood. A lattice of light spread from one side of the cell to the other, but just before the final seam was woven closed, someone latched my wrist—Sebastían—and I was pulled through the opening.

  I stumbled as we reached the doorway, my eyes locking with Kira’s as the matrix between us turned into a storm. But suddenly her eyes strayed, darting around the room as she mouthed my name, frantic and confused.

  Because she couldn’t see me.

  No one could.

  Except…

  Sebastían yanked me out into the hall, my back pressed to the corridor wall. I sucked in air, tried to speak, but he held a hand over my mouth just as the guards dragged Victor out of the cell.

  Be invisible.

  Be invisible.

  I bit down hard to keep my teeth from chattering, sweat sticking to my cheeks and neck. The guards brushed past us, not seeing, not feeling a thing as Victor clawed and kicked and stared right through us. And we just let them take him. We stood there, completely still, as if Victor writhing on his hands and knees was just as invisible as we were.

  I pinched my eyes shut until they disappeared around the corner, too afraid to open them again, too horrified of what I’d just done, Kira and the others still trapped behind that cell door. But Sebastían’s hand was still resting over my mouth and it was the buzzing against my lips that tugged my eyes open again.

  I looked down and his skin was effervescent. So was mine. I sidestepped, breaking us apart, but the patter of falling water startled us both and Sebastían took my wrist again. The heat was subtle, a wave inside me breaking in reverse. It travelled from the balls of my feet, the tingle spreading until I knew I was invisible again, that we both were.

  I narrowed my gaze, examining him just as intensely as he was examining me. “What are you?”

  The moment I’d first seen him I’d sensed there was something…off about him. Different. Wrong maybe. But despite believing that Sebastían was somehow stronger than the others, I knew he wasn’t stronger than me. He couldn’t be.

  Sebastían grimaced. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know?”

  The light trickle of water turned into footsteps. We both pressed against the wall, staring from one end of the hallway to the other.

  �
�Now’s our chance,” he whispered.

  I stared past him to the cell door. “But Kira.”

  “It’s too risky. If the guards come back and notice the cell is completely empty—”

  “We can’t just leave them in there,” I hissed.

  The footsteps grew louder.

  “We won’t.” He inched closer, severing my view of the door. “We’ll come back for them.”

  This close, his irises were transparent and I knew he was lying, but I also knew he was right. And at the sound of those nearing footsteps, I wasn’t being driven toward the door, I was being driven toward Sam. Toward freedom.

  “We’ll come back for them,” I whispered, praying that this was a promise I would keep.

  We’d taken no more than a few steps when a rush of air blew past, steeling me against the wall again. It died out in a gasp, something hard and heavy snapping into place.

  Sebastían pointed to the end of the corridor, a wall cutting off one of the openings. There was nothing but stone now, hard-pressed and sealing us in. We turned toward the opening where the guards had just dragged Victor through and took off running. A rumble raced up from the floor, knocking in my knees as the walls shifted and snapped closed behind us. We were forced straight into darkness, nothing but the smell of stagnant air ushering us forward.

  I held out my hands, my shoulders scraping against the walls as they closed in. Our feet tangled, Sebastían hanging behind me when we were no longer able to run side by side.

  “We have to hurry,” he called out, voice muffled beneath the grinding of the walls.

  “I’m trying.”

  I tripped, hands clawing at the air as Sebastían came tumbling down too. He groaned, trying to push us both through, the walls on either side of us grazing my hips. I crawled forward and we both rolled free just as the walls slammed closed behind us, not even a seam left in the stone.

  We lay there, panting and hugging the floor as we waited for the walls to move again.

  “You okay?” Sebastían asked.

  I crawled to my hands and knees, my shoulder smeared with blood. I dabbed at it with my shirt, the wound nothing more than a scrape.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It’s nothing.” I tugged my sleeve back down, shielding it before he could get a closer look. We didn’t have time to stop and think, let alone tend to ephemeral injuries.

  The room we were in revealed itself one blink at a time, my body aching as I struggled to my feet, every muscle ready to break into another run. A faint slit of light cut across the center of the room, revealing the chains first, glinting and hanging over the side of the table. I remembered how cold it had been pressed against my back, my bones grinding against the surface every time Anso slammed me down.

  An abomination. Just like you.

  My throat clenched and I had to look away, Sebastían letting out an awful groan as he reached for one of the empty restraints. He gripped the metal, squeezing until he was shaking and the links were glowing red. I tried to imagine what he must have been remembering, but when his fist burst into flames, I realized that I didn’t want to know. Sparks hopped from the tips of his fingers onto the table, something in his eyes fanning the fire until it was almost reaching the ceiling.

  I wondered if fire was the element he manipulated most often, if it was fueled by rage or something worse. The flames grew higher and it made me think of Roman; of the way the light had cracked beneath his skin.

  “Did he tell you who he was looking for?” The flames simmered, burning blue, and I knew Sebastían had caught the lie I’d told earlier. “Please,” he said, “the truth.”

  “Do you know?” I asked, still not sure whether or not I trusted Sebastían or if I should. “Did he tell you?”

  “Before or after he broke every vertebra in my spine?” Sebastían braided the flames as they climbed straight into the emptiness over our heads. It was endless. “He said he was looking for someone special.”

  “An abomination,” I added.

  Smoke billowed near the tip of the flame, washing down over our heads like a sheet of summer rain. It thickened, instinct driving me back a few steps. Sebastían maneuvered the ashes until they looked just like the shadows that had haunted both of us.

  “What else did he say to you?” he asked, lowering the shadow until it was even more frightening than I remembered.

  I looked away. “Please, stop.”

  I heard the sound of falling ash and then the shadow was gone, the fire too, that lone slant of light cutting across Sebastían’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, looking away. “I didn’t mean…”

  “You didn’t mean to what?”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked up. “Do I?”

  I spoke without thinking. “Yes.”

  He shivered, looked away again. “I scare me too. I…I think there’s something...” He chewed his bottom lip as if fighting the words. “There’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s something wrong with all of us,” I said.

  Sebastían stared at the torture table. “But he looked at me like….”

  “Like what?”

  Like he hated you. Like he feared you. Like he wanted to destroy you.

  Sebastían stiffened. “Nothing.” His familiar stoicism took hold as he nodded past the light to three openings leading out of the room. “You should pick.”

  The doorways seemed to manifest out of nowhere, the night within each one beckoning us forward.

  “The third one,” I said.

  The moment we stepped through, the doorway sealed behind us, the aftershock making my bones quake. I bit down on my chattering teeth as Sebastían lit the way forward.

  “Do you think we’ll ever be able to find our way back to them?” I asked.

  “Do you think we’ve made a mistake?”

  “No.” I took a hesitant step forward. “But we can’t be the first to ever try to escape.”

  “Maybe all along they wanted us to.”

  “What?” I stopped. “Like some kind of test?”

  “He has to know that most of us weren’t telling the whole truth about what we could do. Maybe he wants to see what we’re really made of.”

  We took careful steps, the corridor bending and twisting as the sound of shifting stone echoed ahead of us. A set of stairs emerged, the draft thicker and colder the farther down we went.

  “This place,” I said, “what do you think it is?”

  “Who knows? It might not even be real. I just want to get the hell out.”

  “Out.”

  I stared into the blankness, the steps manifesting one at a time, the ones behind us disappearing beneath new walls.

  Sebastían caught me by the arm, the sting jolting me. “Where do you think it’s leading us?”

  I pulled away before the spark spread. “What are you thinking?”

  A low creaking sifted out of the darkness, the chill in the air growing thick. It smelled like mud and rainwater. Like rotting leaves and smoke.

  A crack sounded like lightning striking and I waited for one of the guards to come barreling towards us. But the darkness was still, moaning and unmoving like an animal paralyzed in a terrible dream. And then it woke up.

  Vines crawled up the steps, slithering, reaching.

  For me.

  Sebastían lit up. “I’m thinking that maybe we haven’t escaped anything yet.”

  It was slow at first, the emptiness below us shifting and snake-like. I turned, pressing my hands to the stone, pushing and running my fingers along the cracks.

  “What are you looking for? Bryn, we don’t have—”

  Dust trickled down over our heads, another crack bursting like fireworks within the stone. A flash of red slithered out, wild petals weaving a bloody canopy.

  I turned to Sebastían. “The only way out is through.”

  He placed his hands next to mine, both of us glancing back as the receding staircase began to crumble, vine
s choking every step.

  “Could you do it?” I asked, trying not to panic. Sebastían looked like he already was. “Is that something you’ve ever done before?”

  He was shivering, eyes darting from one wild thing to the next. I tried to force him to face me, to hear me, but he was paralyzed.

  “Sebastían…” I felt the first drop of rain.

  He didn’t move and I wondered what he was feeling and where he was, the terror of familiar memories stalling us both.

  “Sebastían?”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “I know you can’t burn through this wall but what about the other elements? There’s water, earth and wind.”

  His focus sharpened on that last word. “Stand back.”

  I ducked down one step but there was nowhere else to go. The vines twisted into thick braids, cracks above and below me widening. Sebastían braced himself against whatever was inside him, quaking with it, the first hints of a breeze swirling in his hair. It stuttered out, his hands twitching and empty.

  He looked back at me. “I can’t.”

  “You can,” I pleaded.

  He stared at the wall. “I can’t control it. I never learned how.”

  I rose, meeting him halfway, but I was snatched off my feet, chin coming down hard on the stone steps. A vine laced up my leg and I tore at it, kicking, Sebastían trying to pull me free. He pinched it with a flame and it slithered back, the flowers trembling overhead, the rain falling harder.

  “Sebastían, we have to hurry.”

  “What Victor said, about what I did…” He grimaced. “It was true. I hurt someone. I’ve hurt a lot of people.”

  “You were made for this,” I said. “You just have to try.”

  He nodded, relenting only because he had no choice. He closed his eyes and I heard a guttural moan so deep I thought it was coming from the walls. The first crack sprouted and I realized it was.

  “Get—” Sebastían’s voice was shred to nothing, the wind swirling into a frenzy.

  I pressed myself to the stairs, hands braced over my head as the concrete snapped off in shards. Pieces scraped across my legs and knuckles. I tried to look up but the current held me down, the force stealing the air from my lungs.