The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I ducked, slipping out of Carlisle’s grasp. He hung there, blade between us. I raised my hands, slow, their glow highlighting my retreat.

  Instead of dropping his weapon he hurled himself at me, the blade carving a long gash in my arm. He swung again and I caught his wrist, twisting just hard enough for him to drop the blade. But he didn’t. He clutched the knife, my fingers trembling as I felt his wrist pop. He didn’t even blink against the pain. Because he couldn’t feel any.

  I ripped the blade from Carlisle’s fingers. He watched it glinting in my fist. Eyes manic…almost smiling. Waiting.

  I waited too. For the darkness to try to harness me. For the rage to weaponize my light. For so long it had whispered to me that that’s all I would ever be. And then it had made me hunger for that destruction. The same way it had made Bryn hunger for it. But it hadn’t consumed her. Not because the darkness wasn’t real—it existed in all of us—but because there was something else inside her that was stronger. Something else inside me too.

  The shadow was not my adversary. Neither was Carlisle. They were distractions, carnival mirrors blocking the only exit. Warping my vision and making me think that the only way out of my pain was through. Through flesh. Through bone. Through fire. It wasn’t. The only way out was to loosen my grip on the things that hurt me. To forgive myself and let go.

  Let go.

  The blade slipped from my grasp, the current dragging it straight down. Carlisle shook, watching as it disappeared into black. His eyes snapped to my face and then he lunged, hands latching onto my throat.

  I wrestled with him, never breaking eye contact. Not letting him break it either.

  Carlisle.

  He twitched, listening, still part of my thoughts somehow. I knew he was in there. Smothered. Buried. But not silent.

  Carlisle.

  His eyes were eclipsed by the shadow, a trail of smoke replacing each iris. And then it leapt from his mouth. I snatched the last bit of black, my flames chasing it into the dark before it could evaporate into the current.

  Carlisle convulsed, losing air now that he wasn’t animated by a ghost. I kicked, driving us both towards the surface. We reached the bank and I heaved Carlisle over the side as he gasped for air. He rolled onto his back and I pounded his chest.

  His coughs weakened, air finally making its way down to his lungs. He threw his head back, water dripping from us both until the grass was soaked and muddy. He sighed, not even an ounce of something sinister in the sound. I leaned back too, sucking in deep breaths as I searched for the moon behind the clouds.

  “I’m sorry about your hand.” Carlisle’s voice cut through the quiet, the sound of him living giving me chills.

  “It’ll heal,” I said, finally accepting the fact that this wasn’t a nightmare. Carlisle. My mother. They weren’t nightmares. They were memories.

  “So will you.”

  When I turned to face Carlisle, anticipating a few last words to rival my mother’s, he was holding out a set of keys. He dropped them into my open hand as a pair of headlights pierced through the night.

  The keys jangled and I closed them in my fist. “Who’s waiting for me now?”

  Carlisle tilted his head. “You’ll see.”

  68

  Bryn

  My fists went numb behind my back. I couldn’t see them but I knew they were just as purple as my ankles. I was leaned up in bed, back to the wall as Tracey force-fed me mashed potatoes. They were the boxed kind that tasted like cardboard and the ashes of dreams. At first I was spitting out every bite, letting it roll in chunks down my chin. I would rather have slept in a food-soiled gown, sticky and cold, than to choke down any more drugs.

  The sedatives they used on me were getting stronger, the effects reminding me of Dr. Banz. Of how he’d manipulated me. Of how he’d used my hopes to hold me hostage and put me in danger. Of how he’d killed Sam.

  But every time I’d spit something out, Tracey would scrape it from my smock back onto the fork and shove it in my mouth, her hand over my lips until I swallowed. I’d been fighting her for six months and she was losing her patience with me. Some mornings when her presence in the room stirred me from sleep, I’d catch her watching me from a distance, scowling as if she were imagining slipping the pillow out from under me and pressing it over my face.

  She wasn’t looking at me like that now. Because I was swallowing every bite, which meant that in the morning I’d be waking up without the memory of my third grade science project, or the name of my grandmother’s sister, or maybe the sound of my mom’s voice. She hadn’t come to see me in more than a week but today she was going to sit in on one of my psych sessions with Dr. Cal.

  She’d visited me three times and each time I’d refused to speak and each time they’d drugged me with something that didn’t just make me sleep. It made me sad. Whatever was in it amplified everything—my fear, my missing Roman and my mom and Dani, my guilt. The truth.

  I didn’t know if there was really a serum for that but the fear of feeling it again was enough to get me talking. I just didn’t know if waking up from this nightmare would require telling them the truth or telling them what they wanted to hear. I still didn’t understand this place the way Calvin did and without him I wasn’t sure I ever would. For months I’d been fighting. What if winning this game meant giving up? Or at least letting them think I had.

  “So, these are recurring nightmares that you’ve had since you were…” Dr. Cal glanced down at her notes, “around twelve years old?”

  My mom watched me tentatively; anxious as she waited for an answer that strayed from whatever “delusions” I’d been living in most of my life. Delusions that had driven me to do something horrible to people I loved.

  “Yes,” I said. “Just dreams.”

  “Just?” Dr. Cal repeated the word with a slight suspicion. “In the interview you gave the week you arrived you claimed that there was no such thing, that the dreams were real. Do you remember saying that?”

  Sweat tickled my hairline as I tried to think back to that first week. In some ways it felt like I’d arrived just days ago and in others it felt like I’d only ever existed between these four walls. Time out of my restraints was rare and yet I couldn’t remember having been interviewed like this. I couldn’t remember having been coherent enough to answer questions.

  “It’s alright,” Dr. Cal said, noticing me struggling. “It’s normal for psychosis to alter one’s memories.”

  Psychosis. According to Vogle I’d suffered psychosis before. After the shadows had attacked me in Germany, I’d gone from being brain dead to comatose and then I’d woken up. But I’d still been lost in Anso’s prison, something else animating my body and making it fear things it shouldn’t have. Like Roman.

  “Why don’t we try another question,” Dr. Cal said, wary of me drifting. “Have you been dreaming lately? Seeing things?”

  I shook my head, still thinking about the day I’d woken up in the hospital, my father on the phone in a chair by my bed. I’d dragged myself out of my own nightmares and woken up back in my body. I’d escaped.

  “Bryn…” Dr. Cal set down her notes. “It would appear that you’ve made progress. I know it’s what we’ve all been hoping for. But there is one way that we can find out for sure.”

  My throat dried up. “How?”

  For the first time I noticed the nurse standing in the doorway. She clutched a narrow box, lifting the lid as she approached Dr. Cal. The vials were the same color as the ones that had been used on Mara. The same ones I’d used on her doctor.

  I stiffened, trying to hide my fear. I was hiding it better than my mom. But she wasn’t afraid of what the drugs would do to me. She was afraid of what I’d do if they didn’t work.

  The three of them approached the bed, my mom taking my hand for the first time in months. She squeezed and I almost cracked, tears drowning me from the inside instead. Dr. Cal eased me to the bed as my arms and legs were strapped in their usual position. I wai
ted for instructions or some kind of explanation while the rest of them waited for me to fight back. There was silence. Maybe we’d all come to the conclusion that both options were useless.

  Instead of telling me what the drugs were going to do to me, Dr. Cal told me what I was going to do once I woke up. “You’re going to feel like yourself again, Bryn. I promise. You’ll be much more clear-headed, emotions won’t be amplified the way they are now, and you’ll never have the dreams again.”

  I tensed, staring at the vials. Never again. In this reality, in this nightmare, I didn’t know what that meant. Never. Did it mean that I’d never see Roman again or the other Rogues? What would happen to Stassi or Cole? To Celia and my father? My father. Would he die?

  Would I die too?

  My mom stiffened too but she was staring at something else. She bent over, slipping the pages I’d written from beneath the mattress. I’d buried them there for safekeeping but I’d been having seizures in my sleep, probably shifting things out of place as my body wrestled with the restraints.

  She stared at the endless scroll, shaking and loosing her grip. The pages spilled over me, my eyes picking out the most damning words—Roman, shadows, Dreamers, Anso—proof that I wasn’t better. That I never would be.

  “Mom, plea—”

  My crayon had been upgraded to a pen for good behavior. But they’d taken it from me months ago when I’d jammed it into the hand of one of the male nurses who’d let it slide up my thigh after fastening my legs into the restraints. Then I’d yanked it out and jammed it into his other hand.

  I wanted to tell her. To prove to her that the pages were from before. When I still thought I was stronger; when I was still fighting for a way out that didn’t exist.

  “Mom, they’re not—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  She refused to listen, handing what was left of the pages in her hand to Dr. Cal. She examined them, the expression on her face more concerned than disappointed. But my mom wasn’t just disappointed. She was angry.

  “Mom…”

  She turned her back to me.

  My throat tightened. “Mom?”

  She gathered her things, hesitating.

  “Mom!”

  Her shoulders dropped and then she headed for the door.

  I strained off the bed, choking past tears. “Mom…mom!”

  The door fell closed.

  The nurse knelt over me.

  I thrashed. “Don’t touch me!”

  She squeezed my right arm, angling the needle.

  I reared back, shooting a wad of spit straight at her.

  Dr. Cal pressed my face to the mattress. Then she turned to the nurse. “Double the dose.”

  69

  Dani

  Suddenly, everything stopped. The cracking plaster, the falling furniture, the trembling and the quaking and the screams. Everything stopped falling apart and it was silent.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Stassi said, still trying to catch her breath.

  “I’ll send up Domingo.” Adham examined the cracks as if he was afraid his voice might set the chaos in motion again.

  He led the way to the stairs, a two-foot gap between the first step and the landing. I looked down into the divide. There was nothing but black.

  “Be careful.” Adham helped us across.

  The railing was gone, a few steps missing too. The Rogues downstairs appeared one at a time, everyone separated by the destruction. They were already passing each other pieces of wood and broken furniture, building makeshift bridges. We used them to find Vogle, his stomach pressed to the kitchen floor as he reached for something that had fallen into one of the cracks.

  Adham hopped to his side, bracing his ankles.

  Cole gripped himself. “What the hell’s down there?”

  “My bag of medical supplies,” Vogle said.

  A foul stench wafted from the hole, the smell so potent it was almost green.

  Cole pinched his nose. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Vogle inched forward, grunting as his hand swiped part of the bag. Beneath the sound of his exasperation I heard a low trill. Click-click-click-click.

  Vogle barely missed the bag again. “Almost…”

  And then something scratched back. Vogle bucked, howling as Adham yanked him away from the edge. The bag tumbled, straps flapping as it disappeared into nothing. Vogle kicked one of the kitchen chairs and it wedged itself in a crack in the wall.

  “Let me see,” Adham said.

  Vogle’s hand was shredded. There were no clear claw marks, the flesh scraped clean off. So deep I could see traces of white beneath the wound.

  “Here,” Felix called out from where he’d found cover with Celia and Rafael. He pulled some gauze from his pocket, leftover from when his own wound was fresh. “Catch.”

  Adham swiped it from the air, dressing Vogle just as I heard that low trill again. Except now I wasn’t the only one. Vogle slowly got to his feet, searching for the source of the sound.

  Without a word he tilted his chin, nodding towards the dining room. We all took slow steps toward the sliding doors, Vogle and Adham inching them open at the same time. The smell almost knocked me back, Cole clutching my arm as he tried not to gag.

  As the doors parted, the first thing I saw was Oswald. Still strapped to one of the dining room chairs. Still bleeding. Shaking. He was awake and he was terrified.

  The ground had opened up around him, the chair balanced on a sliver of foundation. His feet hugged the wooden legs, the toes of his boots barely hanging off the edge. When he saw us, his trembling intensified, the fear of falling almost hurling him straight down.

  “Don’t move.” Adham’s voice was cool. “You have to stop shaking or you’ll fall.”

  Adham spotted a piece of flooring that was still intact and he slid it over with his foot. He heaved it over the edge, trying to rest it beneath Oswald’s chair.

  “No way.” Cole seethed. “You’re not risking your life for him.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Adham said.

  “No…” Cole gripped Adham, trying to force him away from the edge. “Adham, please don’t do this.”

  Adham pulled his hands away, landing one foot on the wood. He checked his balance and then he took another step.

  I swore I could hear every heartbeat, everyone watching, waiting. The board teetered just slightly.

  “Be careful,” Vogle said.

  Adham shot out a hand, hips tilting as he tried to catch his balance.

  Cole slammed his face into my shoulder. “God, I can’t look.”

  I held onto him, just as afraid. A week ago I barely knew Adham and Cole. Now I was certain that if Adham disappeared into that abyss a piece of me would too.

  “Is he almost there?” Cole whispered.

  Adham wasn’t even close. Because he wasn’t moving…

  He almost turned his head but then he stopped himself, projecting his voice instead. “Does anyone else hear that?”

  At first the trill was so low that I couldn’t discern it from my own heartbeat. But then the clicks quickened, the sound scaling the walls of the hole.

  Vogle snatched Adham back by the jacket just as something giant and dripping latched onto Oswald. The blob sucked him into its folds, every loose bit of skin hiding a mouth and row after row of snapping teeth. Oswald’s screams were muffled, blood oozing down the side of the monster as it frantically chewed him to pieces. Those pieces were flung across the walls, an eyeball landing right at Adham’s feet.

  The blob stretched, sniffing past Oswald’s blood until it found something even fresher—us. It lurched, oozing and rolling in our direction. We pushed through the narrow doorway, Vogle and Adham lit up as our last line of defense. The other Rogues lit up too, their flames ushering us back to the heart of the house. And then they were all any of us could see.

  Every bulb shattered, the darkness as deep and black and endless as the cracks that were now invisible beneath our feet. The m
onster screamed, the sound strained and slowly drifting down, down, down. But it wasn’t falling. From the sound of the smashing rock I could tell it was being dragged.

  “Dani, are you alright?” Felix’s voice barely registered.

  His face was pressed to mine, all of us huddled as close as possible. We were backlit by Adham and Vogle, their glow cast on the ground, on our faces.

  “It’s not spreading.” Adham shook out his arms. “Something’s draining the light.”

  I counted the faces that were lit up, making sure none of the Rogues had fallen or fled.

  “Wait…” I nudged Adham. “We’re missing someone.”

  He counted the Rogues too, noticing that we were one short. “Who?”

  The Rogue farthest from us trembled. “Damon.”

  “Where was the last place anyone saw him?” Adham asked.

  The Rogue who’d answered let out a moan, arms outstretched as something dripped from the ceiling and onto her skin. This far away I couldn’t see the color but I could see that it was thick.

  “What is that?” one of the other Rogues murmured.

  It was dripping from somewhere her light couldn’t reach. She trembled, forcing herself to look straight up. She was snatched toward the ceiling, her screams severed until all we could hear was the punch of air from her lungs. There was a crack, her light dimming, followed by the slow and steady drip of blood onto the floor.

  70

  Roman

  It wasn’t the familiar bend in the road or cresting the hill at 90 miles per hour that reminded me where I was. It wasn’t my hands around the steering wheel or the sound of Mismatched Machine humming just below the growl of the engine. It wasn’t my bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t the leftover taste of bile.

  It was the pit in my stomach.

  The ache in every bone in my body.

  The voice in my head begging me to make it stop.

  I’d forgotten how it used to sing to me. How every word and every whisper wasn’t just a plea. But a song.