The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I watched Bryn as she watched them, wondering if she already knew which monsters would be set loose. Wondering if she was in control of more than just how they manifested but when.

  Her eyes tracked to the left, behind the curtains that traced the center ring. We approached the seam just as a tiger leapt out. It was in chains, the chains attached to metal weights that the carneys dropped like anchors around the ring. The beast looked part octopus, metal tentacles latched to its paws and neck. It roared as a man in a top hat taunted it with fire.

  The spectacle was nothing like the circuses I’d seen as a kid where the animals were compliant and controlled by nothing more than the performer’s voice. The tiger jumped onto its hind legs, groaning as the chains yanked it back down again. This animal wasn’t trained. It was wild. And it was angry.

  It twisted its neck, dragging one of the weights through the dirt. The man holding the flame pressed it to the tiger’s shoulder and it screamed.

  “We have to stop this…” I spoke under my breath, forgetting for a second what that would mean. Forgetting how Bryn had stopped Kira and Ian’s captors, how she’d probably wanted to do more.

  “They’re clapping…” Bryn hissed through her teeth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I lit up, heat spiking even though my flames and I were still invisible. I waited for Bryn to let go of me, to make me a weapon. But then the tiger stopped moaning. In the silence it slid to its belly and then it rolled over, letting the man who’d been holding the flames scratch and nuzzle into its fur.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  “It’s not doing that on its own,” Bryn said. “It can’t. Someone else has to be controlling it.”

  We were close enough to see the tiger’s eyes. Bright yellow. It stared at us, one side of its face pressed to the dirt. Tight gasps escaped its lips as if it was still fighting; pleading with someone to let it rise and rip the man apart. Part of me pleaded too, wanting the animal to attack so Bryn wouldn’t have to.

  But instead of approaching center ring, Bryn pulled me behind the curtain. There were more cages, more beasts trapped inside them. A few squawked and hissed and snorted at our footsteps, but most lay still, pressed to their bellies just like the tiger.

  And in the midst of all of those cages and crates I saw a flash of skin. A boy. The animals slowly began to stir, passing along the message that he wasn’t alone. His eyes shot open, two dark orbs that glistened and steeled us back.

  A paw reached out between the bars next to Bryn’s face. She startled, pressing her back against me. The bear cub yawned, it’s face peeled back as if the skin along its jaw had been burned. Bryn brushed its hand and it sniffed, her eyes deepening in a way that hurt to watch.

  The curtain flapped back, a man creeping towards the boy’s crate as Bryn and I ducked out of sight. He banged against the wood, making the boy jump. Then he spat something like a command, the boy responding with a tremble as he stared at the tiger through the slit in the curtain. Suddenly, the crowd cheered, the tiger up on its hind legs, hopping through the dirt. A puppet.

  The man slapped the crate again, laughing before giving the boy more instructions. When he finally disappeared back through the curtain Bryn rushed forward, breaking her hold on me. Up close, the crate was so cramped that the boy was forced to hug his knees, forearms grated against the grain. His knees were bloody and so were his hands.

  My stomach dropped, my mind racing to name the pain. Disgust. Anguish. Maybe there wasn’t a word strong enough for what I was feeling as I stared down at a human being caged and cold and naked.

  “Emir?” Bryn breathed.

  He spat words at us I didn’t understand, trembling and making his cage rattle.

  Bryn looked back at me. “How am I supposed to explain why we’re here?”

  “Just take his hand,” I said. “There’s no time for that.”

  The music grew louder and she winced. “I have questions. I need to know…”

  I cut her off. “You’ll have his memories.”

  “Not before he loses control.”

  “Bryn…please.”

  I was burned by her glare and I felt her slipping…away from the mission, away from me.

  “Bryn, you can’t keep doing this. Find the Dreamers; take them home. But let fate take care of the rest. Please.”

  She seemed almost dazed as she looked from the shadows on the other side of the curtain to the boy, growling under his breath. His wildness was contagious but Bryn wasn’t putting up a fight. She was ready to absorb him, rage and all. She just needed to know what to do with it after.

  “What if Sebastían already knows where we are?” I pressed. But then it hit me. Maybe Bryn’s decision to manipulate time wasn’t just about trying to outrun Sebastían. Maybe it was about this—about giving herself time to get revenge.

  Bryn stared at the boy as he gnashed his teeth, as feral as the animals caged all around us.

  “He’ll understand freedom,” she said.

  Bryn ignored me, reaching for the crate, wood splintering and snapping off in her hands. I ripped at the wood too, pieces smoking against my skin. I breathed through my nose, trying not to ignite. But whatever was boiling inside Bryn began to seep out, mixing with the flames. She swiped a hand, still in control, and the flames turned to ash.

  The walls on the crate came down and Emir stared up at us, shaking. Bryn hesitated. Something about the boy already looked dead and the thought of Bryn letting that inside her forced me between them.

  He growled, neck straining to see Bryn. But instead of reaching for him, she reached for me instead.

  “Give him your hand,” she said.

  I hesitated, confused.

  “I want to try something.”

  I snaked out a hand, slow, letting Emir make the first move. He stared at it for a long time but then the sound of the crowd grew louder and he pressed a trembling finger to the center of my palm.

  The current was almost crippling. But not from pain. From power. I could feel Bryn and Emir reaching for each other, my body conducting whatever connection they had. I waited for an explosion, for Emir to collapse, manic and out of his mind like all the others. But it wasn’t a sensation that startled me. It was a sound.

  Bryn’s voice echoed inside me. “We’re here to help.”

  Emir startled too. I wondered what her voice sounded like inside him. Did he hear words or something more, something deeper? Bryn’s voice inside me was like a lightning rod, energy striking all around it. But there were hardly words, only meaning. I could understand everything she was trying to convey right down to the emotion. Sorrow.

  “Who are you?” Emir’s voice was rougher and heavier, the sound of him like a stone settling deep at the bottom of my stomach.

  “I’m like you,” Bryn said.

  Something scraped across the floor—animals shifting in their cages—and for the first time I noticed the music had stopped. Everything had stopped—the voices, the laughter, the cheers from the crowd.

  Wind tore through the tent and I imagined those giant crows following us all this way, swooping down, ready to snatch us up. But soon the wind died down too, whatever it had ushered in, still silent and invisible on the other side of the tent walls.

  Bryn turned back to Emir as a scream rang out. It cut through us just as sharply as that cold gust of wind. Chairs toppled as footsteps pounded for the exits, the crowd alive again as they ran and called to each other. The revelry in their voices was replaced by panic, some crawling back into the safety of the tent as something tore through the yard.

  I waited for the buzz of locusts, the flap of wings. I knew one of Bryn’s nightmares was out there, I just didn’t know which one. My insides shifted again, Bryn’s hold on me tightening, and I knew we were hidden. But Emir’s hands were gripping the floor, his connection to us severed.

  The man who’d taunted Emir earlier spotted him over the cages, yelling something as if Emir was just another animal.
At the command, Emir stopped cold. The man charged straight for him but then he was snatched back by a giant claw, his body flung against one of the metal cages. His head fell between the bars, the tiger inside crawling forward. It ground a paw on the side of the man’s face until it cracked.

  Emir’s voice was still in my head, his arm brushing mine as he got to his feet. “Good, Jasmina.”

  The tiger purred and it turned my stomach.

  “We have to get out of here,” Bryn said.

  More animals thrashed against their cages. The metal screamed, bolts clanking to the ground as the bars came loose.

  “No.” Emir looked around, frantic, and I realized that he wasn’t afraid of the animals escaping. He was afraid of what would happen to the ones that didn’t.

  “He doesn’t want to leave them,” I said.

  “Are you controlling them?” Bryn asked him. “Can you?

  “Not control,” he communicated, cowering behind me now, one hand on my shoulder. “You can’t control anything that wild. But I can speak to them and sometimes they do what I ask.”

  He sounded so much like Malin talking about the ocean, about how it listened and sometimes spoke back.

  The cages rattled, the animals seeming to sense Emir’s panic. The birds shed their feathers against the chicken wire as the steer and cows knocked their heads against the bars, the lions and tigers moaning just as loudly as they tried to claw their way out.

  “I can’t leave them,” Emir said. “If I do they’ll starve them to death.”

  “What do you mean?” Bryn asked.

  He looked back at the cages. “They’re cast-offs from other travelers because they were too wild or too dangerous. They’ve threatened me before that if I ran there’d be no use for the animals anymore and that they’d starve them to death.”

  My throat clenched as I felt the stare of dozens of wild eyes on me.

  “We can’t take them with us where we’re going,” Bryn said.

  Emir shook his head. “Then I’m not going.” He let go of my shoulder and crouched in front of one of the lion’s cages.

  Something big rushed the curtain, its large body tangled in the fabric as the man in the top hat scrambled for safety. He fell within arm’s length of Emir, another man falling in behind him. He was clutching a gash in his stomach that was pouring blood.

  Emir didn’t have a chance to run before they each grabbed him by an arm, the man in the top hat punching him in the stomach so hard he fell limp. He screamed something at Emir, holding him out like a small shield as the elephant wobbled on its giant feet.

  Bryn was combustible, her anger so wild that neither of us could fight its current. It locked my knees and jaw, so tight I couldn’t run or scream. Bryn. Bryn. Bryn. I called to her…and then I stopped. I stopped thinking. I stopped everything and just stood in that geyser of smoke and hate.

  “Do it or she will.” Blood and snow Roman was perched on one of the cages, legs swinging over the side. “You’re better at it, anyway.”

  I’d been waiting for my dark reflection to manifest again…to manipulate me and drive me mad. And here he was, gawking, goading; giving me another reason to be afraid.

  I didn’t speak, trying to force him back where he’d come.

  It’s not real. It’s not real.

  My doppelganger gripped the cage he was sitting on, rattling it and making the beast inside roll and scream. He laughed, a sick thing that made me sweat.

  It’s not real.

  “She’s trying to tell herself the same thing.” He watched Bryn, moving slow and sweating too. “But you’re both wrong.”

  Time snapped back into motion and with one look Bryn sent both of the men to their knees. She twitched and they flew back, slamming against the cages. A claw swiped out, dragging across one of the men’s chests. He twisted, thrashing as the beast tried to drag him into the cage. The smell of his blood made the animals feral, bars snapping clean off as their wide bodies barreled through.

  And Bryn was frozen. Staring at the blood, at what she’d done. I threw my arms around her, the flame of my skin forcing the stampede around us instead of straight through. The ground quaked with the pounding of their hooves and paws but it was nothing compared to the tremor ripping through Bryn’s body.

  “Don’t look.” I pressed my hands over her eyes, tears slipping between my fingers.

  Emir was backed against the lion cage, his face blank as the animals turned the men’s bodies into mush. I wondered what kind of awful things he’d already seen to make him not even shudder. Bryn grew just as still and I gripped her arms, forcing her to look at me. I needed to see her, to see that she was still in there.

  Instead of looking back, Bryn’s gaze shifted from one cage to the next as she tore the bars away, releasing the animals that were still trapped. Emir spoke in a rush, the animals crowding around him, and I knew he was trying to tell Bryn not to leave them, that if we did they would all starve to death.

  But she understood. As Emir tried to wrangle the horde, frantic, Bryn looked down at the blood, her eyes drawn to the firelight coming through the tent, to the shadows of people running.

  Then she said, “Not today.”

  The animals took off at the sound of her voice, ripping straight through the tent walls. In all the chaos Emir was swept up with them.

  We exited the tent in search of Emir but the horde of hooves and gnashing teeth we’d just set free was nothing compared to what else was barreling between the attractions of the corroded carnival. The stench almost knocked me back as Bryn and I edged into the shadows. Monsters ripped apart flesh and tents and the moist ground. They were animals but not like the ones we’d just released.

  Lights flickered, bright red strobes turned to sparks that cast a sinister glow over the bloody beasts. A loping tiger, its neck snapped and sutured with the head of a horse stumbled past us.

  Bryn’s knees buckled. “I can’t breathe.” She sucked in air, tried not to gag. “What’s that smell?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “Death.”

  An elephant swung its trunk, the flesh pocked with bolts and wires and sharp pieces of metal. One lodged into the hip of a man trying to scamper out of the way and he was lifted off his feet before being flung into the debris of one of the tents. A hairless wolf whose paws were nothing but bloody stumps stumbled under the elephant’s spiked feet, the whimper making my eyes water.

  “What are they?” Bryn whispered.

  I choked down bile as an alligator crawled to the wolf carcass and tore open the flesh, nothing but black oozing into the moonlight.

  “Someone did this to them,” she said.

  “Like experiments?”

  The alligator turned, revealing its exposed torso, ribs and bright pink flesh glistening.

  “How could a thing survive like that?” Bryn said.

  I shook my head. “They didn’t.”

  “Corpses?”

  These monsters weren’t living but they also weren’t dead. Whether or not they had been animated by the same sick bastards who’d taken Emir or by something much worse, now they were more than that.

  I looked at Bryn. “They’re nightmares.”

  That one word, that one truth spurred Bryn forward. I grabbed her arm, yanking her back.

  “I have to do something,” she said.

  “We are doing something. We’re finding Emir and then we’re putting him back in his body.”

  Hot breaths barreled down the back of my neck, the reflection of something alien in Bryn’s eyes. Just as its jaw snapped I went up in flames, the beast whimpering. Bryn clutched the tent, yanking the frayed end into the light. The flames caught and then we ran, glancing over our shoulders every few seconds to see the fire as it crawled over the entire camp.

  In the trees surrounding the carnival there was only darkness, the sound of trickling water ricocheting like a dream. We stopped, trying to catch our breath, Bryn scanning the shadows as she called Emir’s name.


  “I thought I saw him go this way,” she said.

  I shone my light on the leaves and churned soil. “Track marks. Some of the animals came through here. Maybe he did too.”

  At the rustle of leaves I shot up, the sharp snap of twigs warning me that it wasn’t just the wind. Bryn and I stood back to back. I held out a hand but the light was too harsh, whatever was behind it hidden. My skin dimmed and suddenly the forest was twenty degrees colder, my breath barreling out in a fog.

  “Emi—?” Another twig snapped and Bryn stopped short.

  All around us were eyes, some narrowed into slits, some wide and hollow. They glistened like dead stars, the animals’ bodies invisible as they floated closer.

  The first growl ignited the rest, white teeth and red gums glowing like phosphorescent traps. There was something hypnotic about them; my body paralyzed as I watched each horrible beast reveal itself in pieces—some natural, some stolen and stitched together.

  There was no time to think or run or even ignite. The first beast tore free from the pack and just before I struck it with a kick like burning coals, I felt the sting of teeth, the sharp points abandoned in my skin as the monster tumbled onto its back. They all charged at once and I flung myself on top of Bryn, my back covered in flames as I waited for her to make us disappear. When she didn’t, I braced for the next blow, the next set of teeth. When that didn’t happen either I dared to look up, their growls turned to silent steam.

  They pranced and dug at the dirt, arrowed in on something to our left.

  “Emir?” Bryn whispered.

  One of the beasts swung its head, blind and moaning. The others gnashed at the darkness. And then the darkness gnashed back—shadows just like the ones that had accompanied Michael the night he attacked the Rogues’ reunion with Lathan. They growled like hounds, standing tall and shielding something. Someone.

  Bryn slowly got to her feet. “Sebastían…”

  The shadows turned the color of ash until Sebastían’s face was backlit and pointed in our direction.

  Bryn was quiet and then all she could force out was, “Why?” Her knees buckled and she almost took a step in his direction.