The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  Victor spat in his face, his body nothing but a mass of flesh and bone as Anso broke it into pieces.

  “You think you’re hiding? You think you’re invisible and indestructible?” Anso leaned in close. “I see you. She’s in you. I know it.”

  “She…me…what the fuck are you talking about?”

  Victor’s body twisted, the sound of his bones cracking making my eyes water.

  Anso growled. “Your insides are rotten. Dead. You deserve to be.”

  There was another snap, blood streaming from Victor’s nose. I could tell it was ruining him to see his body hanging there, helpless. I could tell he was on the verge of giving in.

  “You’re an abomination. An animal. Show yourself!”

  The sound of his body hitting the floor ignited something powerful in Victor. Rage. Victor exploded, whatever was coursing through him slithering and invisible like a snake ready to strike. I could sense it—the magic, the horror of what he could do—as it manifested in the girl chained next to him.

  She fell, clutching herself, and I could see in Victor’s eyes that he was controlling her. He lifted her right hand, maneuvering her fingers until just the middle one was upright, pointed straight at Anso. Anso growled and then Victor raised the girl’s hand to her face. Her entire body trembled as she fought his pull and then he plunged that finger into her right eye.

  Dizziness hurled my face to the floor, my dry heaves buried beneath the sound of her screams. Sebastían yanked on me, whispering that we needed to get out of there. It was the rush of wind that finally pulled me to my hands and knees. I looked down and the room was severed in two. A vortex opened up behind Victor revealing a dark city street.

  Anso leaned over him. “You’re not the one.” And then he hurled him through, Victor tossed into the night, writhing like road kill as two men emerged from the shadows of the alley and dragged him away.

  “Where—?”

  Sebastían’s eyes begged me not to breathe. That’s when I saw Anso looking up, right at us. We clasped hands, disappearing from his sight just as a wall came down, blocking the way we’d just come. We took off running, following the stone steps until we were dashing across the pit, searching for a way out.

  Anso yelled, calling for the guards. The first clenched his fists until they were all knuckles, each hand made of stone. The second guard disintegrated, his body made of insects that crashed to the ground before skittering in every direction.

  Sebastían bolted while my feet stayed pinned to the floor, our hold almost broken.

  “I need to find Sam,” I whispered. “She has to be in here.”

  “We have to go!”

  The insects angled in on us, making the ground look like it was moving. I backed away, searching every wall for a room or seam or source of light.

  “Bryn.”

  I jolted at the sound but it wasn’t Sebastían’s voice. I took a few more steps, he pulled me back, and then I knew. I had to let go.

  Sebastían tightened his grip. “No.”

  I held a finger to my lips, his unmoving as I heard the voice again.

  “Bryn.”

  It was louder this time. I turned. Nothing.

  The insects carved a trail between Sebastían and me. A sweat broke out on my neck, my hands trembling. Then I broke our hold and started running.

  The voice called my name again, urging me, guiding me. A sliver of light blinked within one of the chambers and I wondered if it was another vortex or another Dreamer trying to lure me out. Maybe trying to kill me. I followed it, the slow bloom making my eyes water, so close I could practically feel the daylight on my skin.

  I finally reached the opening, the light turned to ash. It was synthetic and buzzing from one lone bulb that swayed over a dimpled mattress. And there on the floor, clutching her stuffed owl, was Sam.

  20

  Roman

  Every inch of me was buzzing, the combination of three energy drinks, the solitude of four AM, and the sound of the road against the floorboards making me almost drunk. Because when I’d woken up from another dream with Bryn I knew for certain that it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew that she needed me. That she needed me to do for her what she’d done for me.

  I left a note for my dad that I was staying at Jimmy’s before trading my first paycheck for a bus ticket and taking off into the night, into the hope that I would fix this. Somehow I could feel it in my bones, sitting next to Bryn in that dream, inches and eons from her, that I was the only one who could.

  The fatigue hit me the moment I stepped through those sliding glass doors of the hospital, along with the nausea and the anxiety and the fear, all churning like a storm inside me.

  I followed Vogle to the elevator, my fingernails still grease-stained from working at Moretti’s all week. I wondered if I smelled like garlic bread and marinara sauce, the thought stopping me in the middle of the hallway. I didn’t want Bryn to know that I was doing anything other than waiting for her. I didn’t want her to think that I was out there living, planning some kind of life without her. I didn’t want her to think that I even wanted one.

  Vogle led me to the second floor, her room just off the elevators.

  “You ready to do this?” he asked.

  I nodded, taking a step towards her room, then one back. “Can I go in alone?”

  “I’ll wait downstairs in the lobby. The doctor should be doing his rounds in about an hour.”

  Vogle left me by the door, the sound of Bryn’s breathing luring me inside. I pulled it closed behind me, imaging those first steps Bryn had taken into my hospital room the night she’d found me. I imagined her standing in this very spot, looking down at me, and I tried to summon the same hope that had led her to the bed, to take my hand.

  But I was terrified.

  She was pale, her black hair highlighting shadows and bruises that hadn’t been there before I’d left. Her right arm was wrapped and I wondered what was hidden beneath the gauze—scars or scratches, hurts she’d been willing to risk those nights she’d crept out of her room.

  I brushed the bandage over her wrist.

  Where were you going?

  I couldn’t remember hearing Bryn’s voice the night I’d woken out of the coma but I’d known it was there. I could feel her even in those trees after I’d faced the shadow, the pull of her like gravity luring me back into consciousness. I wondered if she could feel me now, if she knew I’d come back for her.

  “Bryn.” My lips barely moved, my voice coming from someplace foreign.

  I tried to say more but everything felt arbitrary and wrong and stupid. Because she couldn’t hear me. Somewhere inside me I knew it. Even as I inched closer to her face, even as I stared down at her lips, there was a part of me that knew it wouldn’t work.

  But I had to try.

  I had to touch her.

  Every other time I’d been this close she’d recoiled. I hadn’t felt her in months but what if she’d needed that touch? What if she’d needed that spark that only she could ignite in me, my light the only beacon that could guide her out of this?

  I had to know for certain whether or not she was somewhere I couldn’t reach; whether or not just waiting for her, wishing for her was enough. Because maybe that was all I had in me. I wasn’t as strong as Bryn. Without her I couldn’t think and the mystery of what was happening to her wasn’t something to unravel but something that was unraveling me.

  I was so close to her that I could smell the trees around the farmhouse, the sweet sulfur of the tide. She smelled like drowning and after all this time away from her that’s exactly what I wanted to do.

  I pressed my mouth over hers, leaning in, feeling everything. It was quiet and desperate and strange. It was awful.

  Her mouth twitched and I held my breath, waiting for her to stir and see me there. I leaned deeper into the kiss, trying to draw her out. But the air in her lungs wasn’t stirring her awake, it was pushing me away.

  The second our lips parted she was stil
l again.

  And I was a mess on the floor.

  21

  Bryn

  Sam was right in front of me. Solid. Whole.

  Alive.

  Sam was alive and I was paralyzed, the sound of her, the sight of her in this place snatching my breath and making me crumble. I knelt in front to her, speaking in a whisper. “Sam. Are you…How…?” I reached, pulled back, afraid to touch what might not be real. “Is it you?”

  She smoothed the owl’s feathers, strangely content, or maybe just oblivious. For some reason she wasn’t afraid or even surprised to see me. “I fell asleep and this is where I woke up.” She wrinkled her nose. “How did you get here?”

  “The same,” I said, knowing it was a lie; that maybe this was too. I just couldn’t bring myself to say more.

  “You look sad, Bryn.”

  My pulse was in my throat. “No, I’m…I’m really happy to see you.”

  She smiled. “I’m happy to see you too.” Her eyes narrowed over my shoulder. “What’s coming?”

  The sound of skittering feet forced me to my own. When I looked back the way I’d come, there was no doorway, no slit in the stone. There was a black hole. Smoke barreled down from one side of the chamber while the insects multiplied on the other, everything converging in a black tidal wave that was headed straight for us.

  I pulled Sam up by the arm. “Sam, we have to go.”

  “But he said I have to stay.” She was adamant. “He wants me to find something for him.”

  “What did he want you to find?”

  Her eyes flicked up to mine. “A body.”

  I smelled rain, felt the first drops. I knew what was coming, the sound of living things muscling their way out of the stone as shapes raced across the walls.

  “What’s happening?” Sam cried. Insects scaled her leg, digging into her skin, and she screamed.

  There was just enough light behind us that I could see the insects rising, the crest carving itself into a man. The first guard was whole again and he hooked me by the throat, my feet coming off the ground. I coughed, tearing at him. He opened his mouth, unhinged so wide that I could see the black bodies trying to claw their way out. He pulled me in, ready to drown me with them, to devour me. I kicked him in the knee but he didn’t buckle. Sam dug her nails in his forearm, screaming, and he flung her back.

  I hung there, my lips pinned closed, trying to think, to breathe. All at once the guard loosened his grip. He dropped me, both of us falling to our knees. I clutched my neck, rubbing the rawness, forcing down air. He tore at his scalp, eyes frantic and following something I couldn’t see.

  Sam crawled over to me just as Sebastían appeared behind the guard. All this time I’d thought Sebastían’s eyes were black, but opened wide, churning with every element of destruction, I could see that they were jade—green and charcoal colliding as he arrowed in on the guard.

  Sebastían stood in front of him, growing ten inches in every direction. His body swelled, his skin peeling back to reveal a stranger. A man holding a long switch covered in knots and burrs stood over the guard, slapping it against his open palm. Sam hid her face as the first lash came down. The guard trembled as the stranger hit him over and over again, the thorns catching on his bare skin and drawing blood.

  I waited for the stranger to stop, for Sebastían to stop, but he just kept hitting him, the sound making me sick.

  “Please.” My voice was barely a whimper. “Stop. Please.”

  He did. Sebastían stopped, returning to the body I knew. The guard fell apart, the insects skittering away until there was nothing left but blood.

  A drop of rain slid down my cheek, and as the drizzle grew, I knew the vines weren’t far behind. But I was stuck there, stalled by the blood, by the look on Sebastían’s face.

  “What are you?” I said.

  His body tensed, shame and fear and remorse covering him from head to toe. “I don’t control the elements.” He hung his head, staring at the blood. “My dreams…they’re not dreams at all.” He met my eyes. “They’re nightmares.”

  I stared at the stranger’s crimson footprints, double the size of Sebastían’s. “And that was his?”

  He nodded.

  A lone flower came down with the rain, hanging on a stem that was rooted somewhere in the blackness all around us. The room was gone, the reality of it as ephemeral as we were. But that didn’t mean that it couldn’t still hurt me.

  I inched away from the bloom, the center following me and making my blood run cold. “This one’s mine.” I faced Sebastían again, trying not to jump out of my skin. “Please, make it stop.”

  Sebastían cocked his head, confused as the scene unfolded layer by layer. The vines. The damp grass. The stinging rain.

  “Please.”

  “This one’s not for you,” Sebastían said. “It’s for him.”

  I turned and saw Anso, those bruised eyes mesmerized; terrified as he examined the landscape Sebastían had created. He looked even more menacing than he had when I’d first woken up on his torture table. Only this time there was something else on his face besides hate.

  Relief.

  He looked down at me. “You.”

  And I knew that he’d been watching. Sebastían and I had been tumbling in this kaleidoscope of his creation, running from his guards, breaking down his walls, all while he looked on, waiting for us to reveal the truth. And I just had. This was my worst nightmare and somehow it was Anso’s too and it was all the proof he needed that I was the girl he was looking for.

  With just one glance from him, cracks ignited down my skull, searing and sending my face to the floor. The pain was so fierce it was white—one note, one color.

  I thought I heard Sam’s voice or maybe it was my own, the sound severing the pain for only an instant. I fought against its current, Anso’s hate, his hunger trying to force me into that blank emptiness. Because he wasn’t just trying to hurt me, he was trying to kill me.

  No. I blinked, forcing my thoughts past the pain. No. Sam. Sam needs me.

  Bryn, Bryn, “Bryn…” Anso’s voice cut straight through me. “Sleep, Bryn.”

  No.

  “Sink.”

  No. No.

  “Give up.”

  Never.

  “Die.”

  I won’t.

  My insides were on fire, only this time the hurt was my own. My thoughts became tangible, exploding in every direction until the Dreamer in me, the power in me, was forcing Anso out. His voice grew distant; his threats nothing more than whispers.

  When the blankness receded I saw the vines—Sebastían’s chaos set in motion—and tangled in them, staring at me, was Anso. Blood stained the corners of his eyes, the pain he’d poured into me striking in reverse. But it wasn’t killing him.

  “I should have known.” He spoke past the vines strung around his throat, growing weak. “I should have seen her.” He smiled, maddened. “She’s right there. Right there. I should have known those were her eyes.”

  Ice raced up each vine, turning them to glass. They shattered and beneath the brokenness Anso was already disintegrating, a storm cloud torn apart in wisps. He twitched like static before disappearing in a gasp and then he was gone.

  “You?” Sebastían’s voice pierced me just as fiercely as Anso’s had.

  I didn’t have time to lie. The room was in pieces, the black hole leaving behind wreckage that seemed to be moving.

  “I don’t like it here,” Sam said.

  A stone clipped off one of the crumbling walls, spurring an avalanche. The ground quaked, splitting in two. Sebastían dodged the widening hole, taking Sam’s left hand as I took the other, the three of us breaking into a run. Away from the destruction. Away from the cells and the Dreamers trapped inside them.

  “The others!” I yelled.

  “And then?” Sebastían frowned. “We can’t…”

  “But Kira…”

  The way back wasn’t as long and winding as the way out. The hallw
ays had collapsed, the entire prison gutted. We reached the first cell door without being seen, Sebastían burning a hole right through it.

  Kira stood. “You came back.”

  There was a grating sound, another wall crumbling or snapping in place. We were running out of time.

  As I ushered Kira and the others out, Sebastían charged at the remaining doors. We couldn’t go back for the Dreamers Anso had discarded of but at least we could free the others. As each door disintegrated, more Dreamers stumbled out, cold and confused.

  A little girl even smaller than Sam pulled on my shirtsleeve. “Am I going home?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We all are.”

  Sebastían was facing the last door when the guards barreled around the corner. Five of them. But outside the cells we were just as dangerous as they were and now they were outnumbered.

  The guards hesitated, each reaching for the small metal boxes they’d been using to subdue us. Before the first lightning strike, a man broke from the Dreamers, hurling himself at one of the guards. His limbs stretched, snake-like, until he was coiled around the guard from head to toe.

  One of the other guards tried to claw him off but Sebastían held two flaming hands to his face. Lightning struck, knocking Sebastían back, the electricity exploding in every direction. People ran, tripping over each other as they struggled to get out of the way. I clutched Sam, shielding her just as someone pushed past us both.

  A girl with wild blue hair dove straight for the electric current, her veins lit up as she absorbed the storm. She screamed, hands outstretched as she hurled the light back at the guards. It was webbed, glittering like spider’s silk as it pinned them to the wall, electrocuting them.

  Each guard’s jaw unhinged, the light eclipsed as a shadow swam out of each of them.