Anso was done sending me messages. Now he was sending me nightmares.
Bodies pushed me forward, patients spilling into the room and reaching for Mara. A man fell against my leg, snatching my ankle and trying to twist it off. I bit back a scream, afraid that Sebastían might hear. Mara’s ghosts weren’t meant to destroy me. They were only meant to slow me down long enough for Sebastían to make his move.
A woman crawled over me, smearing her blood across my back as she reached for Mara. I clawed forward, knocking her off and reaching for Mara first. Another body fell on top of me just as I wrenched us both from that time and place.
When we landed beneath the branches of Celia’s willow tree the night wasn’t as quiet as I’d left it. Flashes of red wound between the branches and I parted the leaves. Bodies hung on the horizon, their outlines lit up by the moon. I waited for the corpses from Mara’s nightmares to attack us just like Emir’s monsters. But the ghosts stayed far and still, manifesting one by one within the darkness before blinking out again.
Mara tried to crawl out of my grasp, swiping at my face when I pulled her back. I stared at the stone I’d carved around Celia’s house, imagining the ones it was keeping safe. I knew Roman was inside, probably panicked, probably waiting for me, probably angry that I’d left without him. But maybe he needed to be. Maybe, for once, he could be angry with someone other than himself.
I peeled back the stone surrounding the house, using my thoughts to shift the wall up and out until it revealed the gravesite and hid the moon. The curtains fluttered at the sound, Dani and Roman staring out the window as the barricade doubled in size.
I hid, trying to keep Mara quiet and shielded behind the branches. I imagined Celia’s living room from the old Moroccan rugs to the hardwood underneath and then I placed Mara there like an offering, a sign that I was still fighting, that I was still out here searching for Dreamers, hurting them too.
When Mara vanished from my grasp, the chill she left behind was as unforgiving as I imagined Roman would be when I didn’t appear with her. But there was nothing left for me to do. Vogle would find her body. He and Rafael would carry her to the gravesite. I didn’t want to watch them go through all of that again. I didn’t want to be reminded that I was the reason.
29
Roman
A quiet knock finally tore my eyes from the broken mirror. The wounds were still stinging when Celia let herself inside. I clenched my fists, afraid she’d see what I’d done.
“Roman…” She held my wrists as I burned off the broken skin. She waited for me to face her and then she said, “You can’t lose yourself.”
It was something Adham would have said if I’d let him see how close I was to the edge. But it was Celia who saw. It was Celia who knew.
Her eyes brightened with tears. “I dreamed, Roman.”
My own eyes widened, waiting. “What did you see?”
She pressed my hands to her lips and then she whispered, “Hope.”
The doorframe caught my weight. “Bryn…?”
“It’s not over, Roman. You can’t let it be over.”
“Me?”
She nodded. “You.”
My face flushed and I checked my scars to make sure the wounds hadn’t opened again. I finally forced out, “How?”
“There is someone waiting to be found. Waiting to find Bryn too. You have to find them before Sebastían does.”
“Who?” My chest clenched. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t see who. I only saw Bryn.” Celia squeezed my hands. “Dreaming again. Alive again.”
Alive. My heart raced. “Bryn was—?”
The sound of stones shifting ignited footsteps. Celia cast me a worried look before rushing after the sound too. I followed, almost slamming into Stassi.
She held out her hand, a slip of paper sprouting in her palm. “You’re going to need this.”
I examined the ink, the names. “How did you—?”
Bryn’s list of Dreamers had gotten soaked in Malin’s ocean, the names scratched into Bryn’s skin before the ink completely disappeared. But here it was—dry, the names still legible.
“Bryn’s memories,” Stassi said.
“You’re keeping them alive.” I took the list from her. “Thank you.”
“Bring her back.” Stassi smiled. “Then you can thank us both.”
Back in the living room, everyone was crowded around the windows. I wedged in next to Dani but as I looked through the glass I realized that the stone wasn’t crumbling or letting something through. It was climbing higher, pushing towards the farthest edge of the property line.
“What’s happening?” Dani asked.
My stomach dropped. “She’s not coming back.”
Dani pressed her hand to the glass, searching the darkness. “What?”
“Bryn…” My face fell. “She left without me.”
“She went alone?” Dani shook her head. “Why? What was she thinking?” Then she remembered why Bryn had locked herself in the bathroom in the first place. “She left because of…” She stopped. “I’m sorry, Roman.”
Dani had always kept her distance from me, even before the shadow had taken hold of her. She’d hated me for lying to Bryn and she wasn’t afraid to show it. But the Dani looking at me now had been to hell and back, her suffering scarring her in a way I recognized.
“I know what it’s like to not be yourself,” she said, “to be that angry…” She stared past her reflection in the window. “I know what it’s like to make those mistakes.”
“A mistake…” My voice cracked.
“I remember what it felt like…the shadow taunting me from the inside, controlling my emotions until it was controlling me. I did horrible things too but the only reason I didn’t…” She looked down. “The only reason I didn’t do something worse is because you stopped me.” She looked up. “You. You saved her life, Roman.”
My eyes burned, wet, and I pinched them shut. “No, I didn’t.” Not yet. I squeezed the list in my pocket. Not yet.
Andre cleared his throat, one hand holding back the curtain over the window that looked out into the clearing behind the house. “There’s a clear path to the gravesite.”
Dani exhaled. “She really isn’t coming back…”
Adham craned his neck, examining where the stone climbed over the house, shutting out the moon. “Maybe she knows something we don’t.”
The body landed with a scream, bloody and writhing like a wounded animal. We circled it, waiting for Bryn to crash right next to her. A minute passed, maybe longer, before I realized that Bryn wasn’t planning on returning the woman to her body. She was leaving that to us.
“Which room?” I asked Vogle.
“She’s with the dead.”
“On it,” Andre said as he headed up the stairs.
Her burial was brusque. Without Bryn’s inherited memories we knew nothing about the woman except that she was dead. She had no identity. No name. No story. I wondered what nightmares had covered her in blood or maybe that was what she dreamed about, what she could do. I wondered if the world was safer now that she was dead. But all I had to do was look up at the cage Bryn had put us in and I remembered that every nightmare anyone had ever dreamed up was ravaging the world outside these walls.
“What the hell is she thinking?” I growled.
Vogle sighed. “She thinks she’s protecting you.”
“That would mean that she still cared about me. That she still cared about anything at all.”
Vogle crossed his arms, as close to angry as he could get this long without sleep. “Have you already forgotten…?”
“What?”
“That she’s dead.”
I winced against his words. “No.” My voice dropped. “Of course not. But that doesn’t change—”
“That changes everything, Roman. Everything.”
A low banging echoed within the stone walls, making the hair on my arms stand on end. The sound intensified and
I took slow steps through the yard, trying to find which direction it was coming from.
“What’s out there?” Adham asked.
There was a sound like lightning, dust scattering as a deep crack raced up one of the walls.
“I don’t know,” Andre said. “But whatever it is, it definitely wants in here.”
“Do you think it’s the crows?” Adham turned to Andre. “What about those monsters that followed you back here?”
“Or the monster that chased you and Cole,” I added.
The weight against the wall definitely sounded like a monster. A really big monster.
Dani leaned out the front door, a cellphone ringing in her hand. “Andre. Phone.”
“Since when did you get a cell phone?” Vogle asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “I thought you preferred the spittle and bad breath smell of payphones.”
“Or maybe it was just the no one being able to get ahold of you that you really fancied,” Vogle said.
Andre grumbled. “It’s a burner. Besides, Michael’s dead so we don’t have to worry about him tracking us anymore. Us Rogues just needed a more consistent way to keep in touch.” He took the phone and pressed it to his ear, flinching as another loud bang erupted on the other side of the fortress. “Hey, we’ve got a bit of a situation—” He hissed, “Well, Christ!”
“What is it?” I asked.
He handed Dani the phone. “We were wrong. It’s not a monster out there. It’s something much worse.”
“What?” Cole asked, quaking.
Andre groaned. “Valentina.”
I headed straight for the cracked stone but Andre yanked me back.
“We have to let her in,” I said. “It’s dangerous out there.”
Andre lowered his voice. “And it’s about to be a lot more dangerous in here.”
“What are you talking about?”
Andre gripped the back of his neck, taking a few steps.
“Andre…”
His arms fell. “She…”
“Spit it out, Andre.”
He looked away. “She doesn’t know about her Dreamer.”
“You mean she doesn’t know his body is dead?” Vogle snapped.
Andre whistled through his teeth. “Keep it down.”
I stepped to Andre. “Why doesn’t she know?”
“More importantly, why didn’t you tell her?” Vogle demanded.
“If I had told her that Rodrigo was dead she wouldn’t have come. She would have found him and fled.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. “She knows what Bryn has to do.”
“And that took some coaxing too, believe me. Look, you don’t know Valentina like I do. If she finds out he’s dead she’ll run. She’ll fight. She’ll burn this goddamn house down if she has to.”
There was another bang, the crack stretching, moonlight barely peeking through.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Don’t say a word. No one can tell her the truth.” Andre watched the small opening, Valentina groaning and still trying to break through. “I’ll tell her when the time is right.”
“You mean after we’ve already put him back in his body?” Vogle asked.
Andre shrugged. “Something like that.”
There was an explosion, the wall coming down in a mist of dust and firelight. Valentina heaved her Dreamer over her shoulder, climbing over the rubble as Andre raced over to help.
“Thanks for blowing a hole through our fortress,” he grunted.
Valentina glared. “Didn’t you hear me knock? And whose genius idea was it to make the thing invisible from the outside? I ran straight into it searching for the coordinates you sent me.”
Andre’s instructions to hide Rodrigo’s death from Valentina were passed along the house in whispers as they made their way inside. The moment she stepped across the threshold, Rodrigo still in her arms, there was nothing left but silence. It didn’t take her long to sense that it was manufactured.
“What is everyone staring at?” she asked.
Andre led them both to the couch. “We’re just glad you’re alright.”
“Absolutely.” Vogle dragged his bag of medical supplies over. “Let me check out these wounds.”
Valentina helped Rodrigo get comfortable. He was emaciated but his wounds weren’t fresh. They were old, some already turned to scars. Vogle looked him over, faking a sense of urgency. We all knew there’d be no healing for Rodrigo. Once he was gone, there’d be no healing for Valentina either.
In that moment I ached for Bryn’s callousness. I wished she were here, unafraid and unforgiving. She would put Rodrigo where he belonged before Valentina could even make a move and then it would all be over. But she wasn’t here—I didn’t know where she was—and the moment dragged so slowly I could feel the scrape of time like teeth.
I wasn’t the only one in pain. Vogle remedied his with gauze and ointment and elixirs. Celia remedied hers with food and drinks and waiting on Rodrigo hand and foot. Andre tried to hide his with stories about the past. When Dani and Adham escaped to the dining room where Felix, Cole, and Stassi were glued to the television, I let the sound draw me inside too.
Felix was supposed to be resting, whatever elixir Celia had concocted probably making him feel better than he actually was. Cole was supposed to be resting too but he had his own fears about falling asleep. They sat side by side, flipping through channels, a flash of horror on each one. Giant spiders, rivers turning to blood, falling stars setting wildfires that grew haunches and climbed from one county to the next.
“They’ve been posting pictures of the horde of locusts taken from the space station.” Felix pointed. “That huge shadow over central America.”
Cole flipped to the next channel. “Over a hundred whales have beached themselves along the California coast.”
“I can’t even imagine what kind of horrible things are lurking in the ocean,” Adham said.
“One cruise ship’s already been capsized,” Cole added. “They’re not sure what caused it yet.”
“People have posted a few blurry videos online.” Felix swung the laptop around to face me.
The video was nothing but shadows and screaming, the sound of the ship coming apart at the seams reminding me of Malin. The ocean had churned itself into a storm in order to keep us from taking her. Maybe Sebastían had taken her dreams before she could calm it back down. Or maybe that same storm was still moving, still wrecking everything in its path. Wound up by the grief of losing her.
“What’s that one?” I pointed to a video in the sidebar that looked like a giant dust storm.
Felix clicked on the video. “We saw this one earlier. The whole Sahara’s turned to quick sand.”
The video looked like it had been taken from a helicopter, sand swiping past the camera lens, people coughing and yelling in the background. The desert below them was empty, the sand shifting and tumbling like giant waves.
“It’s a sand tsunami,” Cole said, pointing to the back of the frame where giant folds rushed from east to west, climbing higher but never stopping.
“How far are they from actual people?” I asked. “Villages, cities?”
“I’m not sure.” Felix clicked on a recent upload of an African news broadcast that showed people being evacuated from a major city in Egypt.
He played video after video, nightmares waking in every major city. Fire, sand, blood, teeth. There were monsters everywhere. My knees buckled and I crouched, trying to count the cities, the number of fatalities. Nausea gripped me and I slid to the floor. Then I stayed there, trying to reconcile Bryn waking me up on that beach in her dreams with her grandmother’s death, and Michael’s, and Anso, and his daughter, and now this. How did we get here?
“There are still some safe havens.” Valentina appeared in the doorway. “The nightmares seem to thrive on fear. That’s why they’re being drawn to such highly populated areas. Rural communities seem safe for now.”
“Is that
how you got here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Back roads and sewer systems. Broke into a few abandoned churches when Rodrigo needed to rest.”
I pictured the city we’d wound through to get to Celia’s house and measured the miles between the airport and us. How many dark alleys would we pass on the way? How many burning buildings or mass graves, streets shut down and in complete chaos?
“I see your wheels turning,” Felix said.
Dani gripped her hips. “Don’t tell us you’re thinking about going out there.”
I looked to the window. “Bryn’s out there.”
Everyone was quiet, probably trying to imagine which nightmare Bryn was wading through now, which nightmare she was waking… All I could think about was what Celia had said. That there was hope. That it was someone out there who was the key to bringing Bryn back to life. The key to bringing her back to me.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out Bryn’s list of Dreamers—the one Stassi had saved.
“Did she give that to you?” Dani asked.
I stared at it. “Not exactly.”
Dani sighed. “Then it’s not meant for you.”
“When is Bryn coming back?” Valentina asked, slightly anxious.
Dani said, “We don’t know,” at the same time I said, “She’s not.”
Valentina crossed her arms, the wary look on her face drawing Andre to her side.
“Rodrigo needs his body,” she said. “If Bryn’s not going to do it, I will.”
Andre paused for too long, face turning the faintest shade of pink.
“It’s too dangerous,” I jumped in.
Valentina read my expression, searching for even an ounce of the discomfort Andre had revealed. “Why?”
“His wounds,” Vogle added. “They’ll carry over if he doesn’t heal properly first. We’ve discovered that Bryn taking the dreams and transferring the Dreamers back into their bodies is a much more delicate process than we originally anticipated.”
I nodded. “There have been a few complications from not doing things in exactly the right order.” I stood, still gripping the list. “But Bryn will be back soon. I’m going to make sure of it.”
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 116
