Casey.
The word slithers around inside her head. There’s no mistaking that it’s Liddy, and it’s all too much. Her voice. Knowing she’s stuck. Evan’s impromptu memorial.
She’s going to be sick.
Casey reaches for the dashboard, bracing herself. When she lets her eyes flutter closed, black shapes flash behind her lids, and she clamps her teeth together as her stomach roils, threatening to empty popcorn and chocolate all over the floor.
“Case … Casey?” Evan says, dropping his popcorn. It spills over his legs and onto the mat, rolling under the foot pedals.
“I need—” She covers her mouth with her hand. “Just a minute.”
“It’s okay,” he says, his voice laced with the kind of panic that comes from someone who can’t handle vomit. “I’ll take you home. Just breathe and keep it together.”
She shoves her popcorn into his hands. Her mind feels like it’s spinning, trying to capture a glimpse of the alleyway again. Is it somewhere she’s been before?
“Stick your head out the window. Breathe fresh air.” The truck starts to move and Evan nudges her shoulder with one hand. “Tell me if you need me to pull over.”
She tucks her knees up to her chest, eyes pinched shut.
Casey.
“What can I do?” Evan asks.
Casey shakes her head. She doesn’t even know how to help herself. “I’ll be fine,” she grits out. “Just drive.”
“Drive. Yep, I can do that,” he babbles.
They drive through the first patches of real night, the kind that’s blanketed in hints of blue. On either side, the trees become a patchwork of navy leaves.
Evan yells suddenly, and Casey jolts forward as the truck brakes hard. She puts her hand out against the dashboard but the seat belt locks first and catches her.
“What is it?” she gasps.
Evan points over the wheel to where the headlights stretch into the shadows. Something shifts in the darkness, gathering itself just outside the light. “I’m seeing things, right?”
“Not unless we’re both hallucinating,” Casey says.
Evan lets go of the brake a bit, crawling toward the shadows.
Casey squeezes his arm. “Stop the truck.”
More shadows take form in the darkness, shying away from the light, but hovering close enough to send Casey’s heart racing.
“Uh, I think that’s a bad decision, the driver’s handbook definitely says to run over creepy death shadows—”
“Evan, stop!” she says.
He does, jolting them forward again. “What are those things?”
The shadows pull away from the asphalt into tall, lanky forms. Some kind of humanoid shape.
“Oh, hell no,” Evan says, rolling both windows up. He throws the truck into reverse, and a thump tells her they’ve run over something. The tires squeal, as if caught. Casey’s stomach clenches as the engine begins to chug. Evan presses his weight onto the gas pedal, but the truck only sputters in answer.
Then, as if sensing a change, the creatures cower at the edge of the headlights’ glow, tripping over one another in an attempt to escape.
Another figure appears, outlined by the headlights. As he turns, Casey recognizes Red.
His skin is yellowed by the lights, but his eyes are glazed white again. Her gaze lands on the twin flashes of silver near his palms; Red’s holding two small blades, twisting them around his fingers with ease.
He slams his fists into one of the retreating creatures, driving it down toward the asphalt. The road erupts before them, chunks of pavement shooting up and out. Red rises to his feet. Casey blinks, mostly in shock, partly in awe.
She reaches for the door and pops it open.
“Wait, whoa!” Evan flings himself across the cab to grab the door and pull it closed again. “Yeah, I think it’s better if we stay in the truck, all things considered.”
“I can’t just sit here,” she insists.
His eyes are wide with fear. “Uh, yes, you can! Be the semisensible nerd who stays in the car because that’s where it’s safe. They’re always the ones who survive.”
Before she can respond, something dives out of the darkness and lands on the windshield. Casey shouts as Evan flails, knocking the windshield wiper knob with his knee. They swipe left, tossing the creature onto the road.
Casey pushes the door open again, slamming it into a patch of darkness. It collides hard with something that is definitely not human.
“Casey!” Evan shouts. “Get back in the truck right now! What are you doing?!”
“Red!” she calls, squinting as she steps into the light.
“I’m very angry at you!” Evan yells. He honks the horn to get her attention. “So mad! Like you don’t even know!” He grabs his snow brush from the floor of his truck and kicks his door open, knocking a creature into the ditch by the side of the road.
“Evan, get back in the truck!”
“Oh, so you can hear me?” he cries, brandishing his snow brush at the dark. “Well, isn’t that convenient now that we’re outside where the shadow-monsters are!”
Casey’s lost sight of Red in the darkness, so she retreats back toward the truck. Evan does the same, holding the snow brush like a baseball bat, and when she’s close enough, he yanks on her sleeve, pulling her toward the open door.
Something hisses in the darkness, and Casey pushes Evan into the truck. She dives in after him, closing the door. A shadow-figure smashes into the truck with enough force to nearly knock it over onto two wheels. When the truck falls back to the ground, the figure clambers up the side and onto the roof.
“What is happening?” Evan groans.
Casey turns the keys in the ignition. Is this what Red meant by darker things finding their way out of Limbo?
The roof begins to pop and sag. Casey presses on the gas and the truck lurches forward, blasting through the figures. They scratch and claw and cry out in high-pitched shrieks. Evan wraps his hands over his ears and Casey winces.
She steps on the brakes again when she sees Red crawling out of the ditch, hunched over, a hand pressed to his abdomen.
“Take the wheel,” she tells Evan. “Keep the engine running.”
“What are you doing?” he cries. “Casey? Casey! Have you lost your mind?”
She’s already gone, pushing the door open and racing across the pavement to meet Red. She reaches for him, shoes skidding on the pebbled shoulder of the road, and loops his arm over her shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’ll be fine.”
“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”
She leads him back onto the road. When they’re close enough, Casey guides Red into the truck and jumps in behind him.
“Drive!” she yells.
Evan guns the engine. As they speed down the road he glances over at her and Red, jaw slack. “What the hell were those things?”
“Don’t say that word!” Red hisses. He drops the pair of daggers onto the floor of the truck. They hit the mats, bouncing on impact. When they flip over, the metallic sheen in gone, and a pair of feathers lie in their place.
“Don’t say what?” Evan demands. “‘Hell’? Why the hell not? I think it’s perfectly acceptable given the current circumstances.” He gestures to the road. “What the hell was that?” He gestures to Red. “Who the hell are you?”
Red hisses again. Casey looks down as he pulls his hand from his body. All she can see is a dark spot spreading across his stomach.
“Evan, just drive,” she pleads.
“Fine. But someone tell me what the heck is going on!”
FIVE
“SO LET ME get this straight,” Evan says from behind the wheel. “Casey died and then came back to life with superpowers, which you, angel-boy, have come to teach her how to use. And her mission, if she chooses to accept it, is to rescue our dead best friend from hell.”
“Not hell.”
“Sor
ry, heck.”
Red groans. “That’s not what I meant.” He leans forward, reapplying the pressure to his wound. Beneath the streetlights, the blood that leaks around his hand looks almost black. “Look,” he says, “let me simplify this for you. There’s an upstairs. That’s where I’m from. There’s a downstairs. That’s where those things came from. And there’s an in-between, where souls … among other things … sometimes linger. That’s where Liddy is. Limbo.”
Each time Evan glances at Red, the truck drifts right toward the woods, and Casey’s hand shoots out to correct him.
“Want me to drive?” she asks again.
“No. No. I’m fine,” Evan answers, waving her question away. He looks at Red again. “So it’s Casey’s job to secure Liddy safe passage or whatever.”
“More or less.”
“And those things back there were … what … the welcoming committee?”
“Obsii.”
Casey’s brows draw together. “Which is what, exactly?”
“Lesser creatures of darkness. A minor nuisance on their own, but dangerous and deadly when they gather,” Red says, gesturing to his abdomen. “They bring chaos into your world and in the wake of their movements, leave destruction.”
Evan makes a face. “What kind of destruction?”
“Disease. War. Famine. The obsii are the bringers of death. The grim reapers from your human stories.”
“Basically bad news,” Evan says.
“Very bad news.” Red looks at Casey. “Which is why the connection between you and Liddy needs to be closed.”
“Riddle me this,” Evan says, taking a corner sharply, sending them all crashing against one another. “You’re like an all-powerful being or whatnot.”
“Or whatnot,” Red agrees.
“So why don’t one of you just waltz on into Limbo, grab Liddy, and head back to wherever it is you came from?”
“Angels can’t hear the whispers of the dead.” Casey shudders at his words. “It makes it more difficult to locate them.”
“Might want to rethink that ‘all-powerful’ description, then.”
“The best we can offer is guidance and protection. Casey and others like her … they’re a special kind of being. She gets little glimpses of Liddy. What she sees. What she says.”
“What is this,” Casey asks as Evan opens his mouth again, “an interrogation?”
“No,” Evan says sarcastically, “it’s a friendly conversation between two people who aren’t friends because one of them is a supernatural creature of mythical origin.” He sucks in a breath.
Beside her, Red adjusts in the seat, his face contorting in pain.
“Are you really okay?” she asks. She reaches down to pluck the abandoned feathers from the mat, twisting them between her thumb and forefinger.
“I’ll be okay once I heal.”
“Yeah, that’s usually how things work,” Evan mutters.
Red rolls his eyes.
Casey hands Red the twin feathers he’d carried into the truck as daggers and he accepts them with a grimace of pain. “Guess that’s why you went chasing feathers around when we first met.”
“Yes,” he nods. “Angelic feathers are imbued with power. Their wielders are able to manipulate them into weapons.”
“Any wielder?”
He hands her back one of the feathers, then folds her hand around it. “If given freely by their owner, angelic feathers may be used by anyone.”
As if in response to his words, Casey’s hand tightens around the hilt of a dagger. Transformed once more, the feather now shines under the passing streetlights, the metal cold against her palm.
“They obey touch and need.”
“Need?” Casey says, lifting the dagger, only to find a feather in its place.
Red chuckles at her look of shock, then winces. “There is no threat presently.”
“A feather can sense that?”
He nods. “They are as much a part of me now as they were before I fell.”
“Your own feathers?” she says, surprised.
“Yes, from my wings.”
They make their way through downtown. Evan slows to the speed limit despite traffic being nonexistent. The last thing they need is to get pulled over.
“Where are we going?” Evan asks.
“My place,” Casey says immediately.
“Is Karen home?”
“She should be asleep by now.”
Evan nods, taking a left off Main and pulling down the oak-lined street, driving through pools of orange cast down from the streetlights above.
They turn into the driveway and hop out of the truck. Casey watches the agony on his face as Red stretches up to his full height. The bloodstain spreads around his hand.
“Here, let us help,” Casey says, slipping beneath his arm. Evan takes his elbow. Casey staggers a bit. “You’re heavier than you look.”
His arm rests like dead weight on her shoulders. Sweat beads along his brow and neck; Red walks on, grunting and shifting pressure on the wound, but otherwise never once complaining about the pain he must be in.
They guide him up the porch steps, hesitating in front of the door.
“Just,” she says, reaching for the doorknob, glancing from Red to Evan, “try to keep it down.”
“Yeah, Red, bleed quietly,” Evan whispers.
They step inside and she closes the door behind them. She flicks her hand against the wall and the lights blink on in the dining room. “Evan, can you grab the first aid kit?” she whispers, hyperaware of her aunt sleeping upstairs. “Red-and-white bag under the bathroom sink.”
“On it,” he says, dashing off down the hall.
Red pulls away and staggers on his feet, using a nearby chair to keep from tipping over. His hand drops and the blood oozes freely.
“Keep pressure on that,” Casey urges. “If—”
Red whips his shirt over his head before she even has time to finish her thought. He crumples the shirt into a ball and presses it to the middle of his gut, right alongside his navel, hissing through his teeth.
Evan returns, dropping the first aid kit on the dining room table. He unzips it, pulling out some gauze pads and handing them to Red. “Oh man, that’s a lot of blood.”
Casey nods in agreement. She’s learned basic first aid—mostly at Karen’s request—but now that she’s gotten a look at the wound, she knows this is beyond what she can handle herself. “We should take you to a hospital,” she says.
“No.” Red’s face contorts in pain. “I just need some time.”
“You need help! This is bad.”
Red doesn’t look convinced. “I can’t go to a hospital. There are too many people.” He grips her hand, pulling her attention from the blood-soaked shirt to his face. “I can’t be seen like this.”
Like what?
His eyes are intense, focused, and she feels dazed looking at him. Turning her head helps. She shakes it off and remembers that she wants to scream at him. “I can’t help you. I don’t know what to do!”
“And I can’t help you if I’m dodging invasive questions at the local emergency room. You think a few people talking about a giant hole in the ground is bad, wait until they try to explain me.”
“Wait,” Evan says, “how did you know people were already talking about that?”
“We’re always aware of the marks we leave behind.”
Casey still wants to yell, to rage against his stubbornness, but he’s right. Red’s peculiarity must extend beneath the surface of his skin. The look of dread on his face tells her as much.
She rubs her hand over her eyes, blinking as she pulls away. At first, she thinks it’s a trick of the dim dining room light, but it happens again: a glimmer along his shoulder blades. She steps to the side, pushing gently on Red’s arm, urging him to turn around. When he does, her breath stills in her chest.
Eventually, her thoughts catch up and her fingers freeze inches from his skin; she’s transfixed by the miniscul
e remnants of feathers that run along his shoulder blades and down his spine before receding into his back, each piece jagged and torn as if his wings had been ripped …
She shakes that very unpleasant thought away.
Beneath the skin, they rest like a muted, unfinished tattoo, but when she reaches out, fingers finally connecting, the shape is raised. Red’s back arches and the feathered remains cut through his skin again, leaving thin rails of blood beading from the tiny wounds.
He hisses as the feathers recede once more. “I can’t control it right now. Everyone would see.”
“Can you fly?” she asks.
He scoffs. “You do remember me falling out of the sky and almost colliding with your car, right? Giant crater in the road ringing any bells?”
“Uh … right.”
“Yeah, that’s a big flashing sign that says ‘Not from here,’” Evan says.
His words snap Casey from her daze, and she yanks her hand away. “Okay, all right, no hospital. But you have to see someone.”
Evan pulls out his phone. “Sure, let me just find the closest supernatural walk-in clinic.” He shakes his head. “Yeah, nothing popping up for wingless angels.”
“I don’t need medical intervention,” Red growls. “I can’t be seen like this.”
“Let me guess,” Evan says, “rule number one, do not reveal your secret identity?”
“Something like that.” Red readjusts his grip on the shirt, moving it to inspect the damage. Casey tries not to notice how much of it is soaked in blood.
“I think it’s stopping,” Evan says, face contorted. “The blood.”
“It won’t,” Red says. He presses his hands to either side of the wound, squeezing a black, bile-looking substance from it.
“Stop,” Casey cries. “Don’t do that.”
“I can’t heal with that vileness still inside me. Raphael, give me strength.” Red’s eyes ghost over, white and pale, and he sways a bit.
Evan puts his hand on Red’s shoulder, steadying him. “Look, I don’t know who this Raphael guy is, but you better sit down before you fall down.”
The Dark In-Between Page 6