The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

And what would happen to Yolotli? His body was still breathing and barely burned. After delivering so many Dreamers to their deaths, I couldn’t handle another. I couldn’t let Yolotli end up like Malin.

  I closed my eyes, trying to read the vibrations again, but the farther I followed, the more muddled the sound became until there was only static. I couldn’t drudge them up from the soil. I couldn’t move myself to Yolotli’s side. The block he stood on was barely wide enough for his two feet and from the way he trembled, trying to avoid the grass, I knew he was just inches from disaster.

  I crept closer to the fence, squaring my fist up to one of the holes. If I could just get Yolotli close enough I could reach him, transporting him in an instant back to Celia’s house. I knelt again, digging my hands into the soil. The pulse mimicked the beat of my heart and I latched on until it was swimming between my ears.

  I watched Yolotli and he watched me, too panicked to do anything but stare. He barely breathed, instinct paralyzing him. And I could hear that part of him too—his instincts like a slow moving symphony, his terror the loudest note of all. It rose and fell, every twitch and reflex telling his body to breathe or be still. Every move was infantile and animal as if he’d devolved to a time when all humans knew was fear.

  My thoughts stretched, as light as air as they barely scraped the electricity. I sensed each landmine, measuring the space between them. My eyes opened, never breaking concentration, and then I tethered myself to Yolotli. He lurched, almost losing his balance, and I could feel his fear because it was my own.

  It’s okay. I’ve got you.

  I tried to speak to him the way Malin spoke to the ocean, pleading with him to let me lead his steps. I may not have been able to sense every danger but the animal in Yolotli could, and that far away, it was my only map to safety. He shuddered, the wind whipping past him again, and then he took the first step.

  Every inch of him shook, his hands hovering, reaching.

  I remembered Chloe.

  I remembered Sam.

  All of the hands that had risked reaching for me.

  My eyes watered as I maneuvered Yolotli’s steps, winding him across the muddy field. His pulse rioted, so fast I thought he might collapse. But there was something else pounding beneath his fear. Adrenaline. Hope. When he was halfway to the fence I quickened his pace, pinging him from one side of the field to the other, the hum of each explosive more defined the closer he came.

  Heat singed my thoughts and I stopped him short, finding the row of landmines in front of him. He was cornered and the only way out was for him to jump. I stilled, strong; clear. I took a deep breath, trying not to lose my hold. Yolotli took an awkward step back, then another. He bent his knees, my hands trembling as I tried to not just coax him forward but to move every part of him—his legs, his muscles, his lungs, his pulse.

  He staggered, almost falling forward, and then he jumped. He came down wrong on his left foot, twisting onto the ground. I felt the surge from the landmines, his skin too close, the heat mounting. I moved him one centimeter at a time, trying to get him back on his feet. He wavered, grasping at the air, at whatever was controlling him that he couldn’t see.

  He finally stood upright, chest heaving as he looked from me to the block of wood where he’d started. I wondered if he could hear the droning tick of death the way I heard it. I wondered how many times he’d thought about hurling himself straight into it. Being ripped apart. Free. But he hadn’t. Yolotli gazed at me with eyes that wanted to feel something else. Whole. Alive. Safe. That was freedom. That was what I risked with every step.

  I led Yolotli forward, begging under my breath, sweating and trembling the same way he was. I wasn’t sure who I was asking for help. I wasn’t sure who could. But every step Yolotli took was like a corkscrew in my gut, winding me up, splitting me open. I knew Yolotli felt the same but still he followed, zigzagging the entire way. Twenty more yards. Fifteen. Ten. As the space between us closed, his steps grew frantic.

  Slow, I warned him.

  But it was as if he could feel more than just my eyes on him.

  Slow down.

  He stopped. Yolotli barely turned his head, his shaking implying strain. He was fighting something. I rose to my knees, peering over the grass.

  “We’re both in this maze…” Sebastían mirrored Yolotli’s shaking, his eyes wild and bloodshot.

  He looked broken, but not just from what I’d done to him. He’d been bloody, pieces of him stuck to the front of the car but then I’d watched the shadows airlift him to safety. I examined him closer, realizing that the brokenness that plagued him now was…inside, forged by a beating too savage to even imagine. Maybe it was some kind of punishment for not killing me in Spain or maybe he was finally being haunted by all of the Dreamers he’d led to their deaths.

  His eyes narrowed but I couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger that ravaged him more. All I knew was that I still stoked something in him, the sight of me reminding him of memories that weren’t real. Memories Anso had used to harness him and drive him mad.

  “Seb—” I stopped, breathless.

  Our voices were just as potent as the charge beneath our feet, the wind slicing through the grass setting me on edge.

  “But you keep shifting the walls,” he went on. “Trying to lose me.” He took a step towards Yolotli, a shiver gripping me now too. “I’m lost, Bryn. I’m so lost.”

  “Let me help you.” I didn’t know what those words even meant but he was ghostly and fragile as glass. “Sebastían, you have to fight him. Anso’s in your head. It’s all in your head.”

  Sebastían paused, watching me with a strange sense of surprise. “He’s not in my head, Bryn.” Then he frowned. “We’re in yours.”

  My mind raced, trying to read his every move and every thought, waiting for him to strike. But he didn’t move.

  “Where is he?” I finally said. “What does Anso want?”

  Anso had been in hiding, setting Sebastían on my trail instead. But if he wasn’t trying to destroy me then what was his plan? To drive the Dreamers mad before I could reach them, to drive me mad too? To let me become the chaos his daughter was? I couldn’t just let him sit back and watch Sebastían and I destroy each other while at the same time I was destroying everything else. If he wanted a war he was going to have to fight on the same battlefield as the rest of us. I would make sure he died there too.

  “He wants you…” Sebastían grimaced as if the words he spoke were poison, “to set the world on fire.”

  A hiss kissed my cheek, Anso’s daughter breathing a quiet shriek. “I can show you how.”

  A ghost, just as manic, circled Sebastían. He was his mirror image, a deadly version of Sebastían’s past. Maybe his future. He whispered in Sebastían’s ear the same way Anso’s daughter whispered in mine, whatever secrets he shared making him shiver. I looked closer at his skin, sopping wet and covered in stains. Unlike his sister who’d fallen from the stars he looked like he’d been drudged up from the earth. His eyes followed us both, lip curling into something savage.

  Anso’s son traced a hand down Sebastían’s arm, maneuvering him and making him wince. He hissed something in Sebastían’s ear and then they both focused on Yolotli.

  Yolotli clenched his fists and I knew he wanted to run. But he was tethered between us, a ripple racing up his body and almost cutting him in half. He called out, gritting his teeth. His eyes burned red as sweat painted his face. And I let go. Yolotli twisted, rolling his ankle, a stone tumbling out from under his foot.

  It rolled.

  My eyes locked with Sebastían’s and then my ears were ringing, smoke and ash engulfing everything. Voices shouted over the ridge above us, the only thing human. I found Yolotli’s silhouette and forced him into a run, his footsteps dodging more than just landmines. His captors were nothing but the sharp slice of bullets, dark specks careening off the muddy water, spraying at Yolotli’s ankles. A few stray ones set off more explosions, Yolotli blinking in and out of
the ash and dust until he was swallowed whole.

  I stood at the fence, just my fingertips reaching through.

  Come on. You’re almost there.

  Another landmine ignited behind him and he fell to his knees, clutching his ears. His hands were stained and bloody and I wondered what had caught him when I’d lost him in all that smoke.

  Just a few more steps.

  He limped back onto his feet, screaming from the pain. From the hope. He flung himself towards my outstretched hand but it was slick and I lost my grip. He fell to the ground, something burning my eyes. Blood. I saw where they’d clipped him, another bullet coming fast. Before I could change its direction or make it disintegrate into nothing, it was lodged in his neck.

  I forced my hand under the fence, my nerves screaming from the shock, spokes tearing open my skin as instinct ignited Devyn’s metal scales. Gunmen shot into the ash, their silhouettes within the smoke smeared red by the moon. I searched for Sebastían but I couldn’t tell which ghost was his. I couldn’t tell if he was gone or whole or in pieces. I couldn’t tell if he’d given up.

  A bullet struck the fence, sending lightning like a shot straight into my bones. Yolotli rolled, coughing, drowning in his own blood. I waited for every single one of his captors to step inside the fence and then I cast the lightning like starved tree roots across the field, waking each landmine until the sky was black.

  34

  Collin

  I rest my face against the window, clouds whipping past on the other side. I stare into them until the shapes change, memories carving them into dust and rust. I’m surrounded by bars and shadows and blood. Screaming. Everyone is screaming… I wrestle myself from the vision and close my eyes, wishing for sleep. But I can’t. Because I already am. I’m dreaming, trapped in this visage, in this plane, in this in-between where not even my breaths are real. I’m not real. Out of my body, out of my mind, nothing is.

  I stare into the glass until I can see every imperfection up close, the bubbles and chips slowly fighting off every memory. The moon swells right next to me and I shiver. I have been trapped so long that I didn’t see when it changed. But it saw me, the red stain more of a mirror than a moon. It watches like the scope on a sniper’s gun, making it feel as if we’re running straight into the danger instead of away.

  It’s over. It’s over. You’re safe.

  They aren’t my words and even though I don’t believe them yet I can’t help but chant them. Over and over as I tear my eyes from the moon and focus on its reflection in the waves down below. This is the first time I have ever seen the ocean. The wind of the plane drags the current and I can almost hear the clap of the dark waves. I stare into the darkness, trying to make out sand or shoreline, some sign of civilization.

  But then I catch the shadow of something else, just barely blooming, wider and wider until it’s the length of the plane. I shake off the sight, another vision meant to scare me and send me back to that place. All it would take is one wrong thought, one bad dream to get my pulse racing and then I’d be back on his torture table.

  But when your mind is so accustomed to trauma that it…yearns for it; that it seeks it out to make sense of things, it becomes a dark place to live. A place where other things start living too.

  A shriek races past my ear and I shrug it away like an insect. The last time I let my fear grow arms and legs it crawled right out of my nightmares and devoured the man in the adjacent cell. While I watched.

  My arm burns, crystals climbing my skin. I slam my arm against the seat, shaking them off. It’s not real. Don’t let it in. I try not to picture them, the devil not just hiding in the details but lying in wait. I try not to see their outlines but my mind can’t help it, carving shape after shape. Don’t…don’t…don’t… I lock my mind up tight. Blank. Quiet.

  I exhale; finally ease my vision back to the waves. The shadow is gone and I almost smile. But then I see that the moon is gone too, blocked by something too big to see, a dull red halo carving a pulsing shape in the night.

  I fall back in my seat, trying to catch my breath.

  It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s in your head. Just in your head.

  The plane dips and I know it’s heard me.

  I grip my seat, sweating, waiting, and then it answers.

  35

  Bryn

  Yolotli writhed on Celia’s porch steps. I pressed my hands to his neck, blood trickling between my fingers.

  “I wish we could have seen it.” Anso’s daughter sighed, leaning against one of the porch columns. “Their faces. Their blood.” She tsk’d. “You should have taken their dreams first.”

  My stomach dropped as I thought of Sebastían lost in the smoke, the ashes still stuck to my skin.

  “Did you feel it?” she whispered. “I felt his death the first time.” Anso’s daughter dug into her forearm, clawing until there was blood. She frowned. “Nothing.”

  Yolotli coughed, his blood spilling between the wooden slats of the porch, the grain already washed red from the moon. I followed the light to where it carved straight through the stone, the fortress I’d created cracked and crumbling.

  Anso’s daughter smiled. “Monsters.”

  I fell back, panting as Yolotli clutched me and tried to speak. “Don’t move,” I pleaded.

  I pressed on the wound again, Yolotli crying out. I stared at the front door, afraid of what might be behind it.

  “Vogle?” I trembled. “Celia?”

  Yolotli twitched, his back arching. “Give him…your life.”

  I stilled. Yolotli’s consciousness wasn’t supposed to be intact. But his voice was clear even if the message wasn’t. A message…I retraced Yolotli’s memories, searching for some cryptic clue; some taunting words from Anso. There weren’t any. What if this was it?

  I leaned over Yolotli. “What—?”

  “Your life...the way…it’s the only…” He spat each word, eyes rolling back.

  “Please…I don’t—”

  Yolotli gasped, growing weak.

  “No, no, no.”

  I remembered Roman’s hands suturing my uncle’s wound; his flames made of thread and putting Felix back together. I flexed my fingers until each one was a wick and Yolotli was on fire. The trickle of blood thinned, the smell of Yolotli’s burning flesh making my throat clench. He quaked as I closed the wound but he’d already lost so much blood.

  He fell back, faint, and then I heard the creak of the door. I braced myself over Yolotli but it was Vogle who appeared at my side. His voice swam in my head; Celia’s hand on me nothing but air. I tried to crawl out of reach but Dani pulled me inside.

  “He’s alive.” It was all I could force out. “He’s alive.”

  I sat at the kitchen table, watching Yolotli on the couch with one eye and Stassi at my feet with the other.

  She watched me too, face pained. “There’s blood all over you.” But she wasn’t looking at my hands. She was looking at my eyes.

  I didn’t know what she saw but I knew what I felt and the weight of it almost dragged me to the floor. Stassi wrung out a wet sponge before handing it to Dani, the warmth waking my skin as she washed off the blood. They worked quietly but I could tell by Dani’s wrinkled brow that she had a whole string of things—expletives mostly—that she wanted to say.

  I spoke first. “You shouldn’t have let them go.”

  “You shouldn’t have left without him,” Dani shot back.

  I grabbed her wrist, forced her to look at me. “Maybe I had a good reason. Maybe…” I stopped, not wanting to remember, to say it out loud.

  “Maybe, what?” Dani sighed. “You know things we don’t. You see things and feel things we can’t even imagine but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t understand. You’re doing this alone because you want to.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is.”

  “How do you think he feels?” Stassi kept her eyes down, tracing the soap bubbles in the bowl on the floor. “Roman has
a destiny too.” She looked up. “How do you think it feels not being able to protect you?”

  I didn’t answer. All this time I thought I was saving Roman from something but what if I’d robbed him of something too? All those years of being misdiagnosed and of living in between the waking world and my memories had made me feel…lost. I’d never felt like I belonged and the solitude of the dream-state had only made me feel even more alone. Living all those years on the brink of my destiny had been painful…but not as painful as the idea of losing Roman forever.

  “You should let him do what he was born for, Bryn.” Dani squeezed my hand. “You either believe in fate or you don’t.”

  “Fate…” My face fell. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  “Believe in yourself,” Stassi said. “Believe in Roman.”

  I twisted the towel in my lap, staring at the floor. “We barely recognize each other.”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of?” Dani asked. “That after all of this he won’t love you anymore?”

  I tried to swallow but there were only thorns. Dani still viewed our love as something human, something simple and sacred. But nothing was simple. Nothing was sacred anymore.

  I shook my head. “I know he still will and I’m afraid I might hate him for it.”

  “Why?” Stassi asked. “Why hide from each other when you’re so much the same? There’s blood on him too, Bryn. All over him. But you don’t see that when you look at him, do you?”

  I was quiet. I wasn’t sure what I saw when I looked at Roman. I wasn’t even sure what I saw when I looked at myself.

  “He doesn’t see it when he looks at you either,” she said.

  I knew she was right but if she could see past the blood, she’d see the shame. It was all over me too.

  “I’m not the same person I was before.” My voice shred to a whisper. “Something happened to me when I woke up.”

  “What do you mean?” Dani asked.