by Kristie Cook
“We’re opening our Gate,” I announced without beating around the bush. The deadly silent room exploded into chaos.
“The Lakari will swarm through!” someone yelled, and that was everyone’s concern.
I held up my hand, and the room fell quiet again. Huh. No wonder some people became addicted to power. It came in handy sometimes.
“I have a plan,” I said. “If the Lakari are still waiting to swarm in—which we won’t know until we actually open a Gate—we will have to fight. But my plan will keep the fighting to a minimum, and hopefully, the only souls truly at risk are mine and Asia’s. And we’re pretty much lost causes anyway, aren’t we?”
Nobody argued with that statement. Instead, they all looked away—at their feet, at the walls, at each other, anywhere but at Asia and me.
“What’s your plan?” Yoshi asked. He was a senior Guardian from the Gate near Tokyo who’d arrived just today to meet us and help us figure out what to do. He’d planted the idea in my head of bringing in other Guardians from around the world.
“I’m taking your advice,” I said. “We need to bring in as many Guardians as we can get here in the next day. Then we open only this Gate to see what, if anything, is waiting to get in. If the Lakari are still gathering and any push through, they should be easily handled with the number of fighters we’ll have here.”
“And then what?” Uri asked.
“If I know Brock and Leni, they’re waiting for us on the other side of the Gate,” Asia answered. “The Book probably couldn’t bring them back because the Gate’s been closed. We have to try this.”
“And if they’re not?” Melinda countered.
“Then Asia and I go through the Gate and hope the Space Between has mercy on us and sends us to our Twin Flames,” I said.
Yoshi squinted his narrow eyes and stroked and pulled at the dark goatee that hung to his chest. “That’s quite the risk.”
“One we’re willing to take.” I waited for somebody to challenge me, but nobody did. They all had to understand where Asia and I were coming from. Surely they’d all be willing to take the same risk if they were in our position. When I knew for sure I wouldn’t have to argue this further, my muscles relaxed. “We need to do this anyway. We need to know if the Lakari are still swarming, or if we can open the Gates. We can’t help the Lost and the Broken here when the Gates are sealed like they are. With any luck, the Lakari have moved on or gone back to whatever hell they’re from.”
Everyone eventually came around to accepting our plan and began calling for reinforcements. Without having much of a choice, I’d taken my first real step as a leader, and so far, so good. Leni would have been proud.
The direct reminder of her and her absence sent a new stab through my heart that made my lungs seize. This had to work. She and Brock had to be waiting for us, or we’d have to find our way to them, because I didn’t know how much longer I could live like this. The unknown was worse than anything. When I tried to imagine where she was and what she was doing, I came up blank. I couldn’t even be positive she was with Brock, or if Bex had even survived, let alone if she was with them. Had they found Nathayden? Were they all together? I hoped they’d accomplished their mission, and this wasn’t all in vain. I prayed they at least had each other, although if they were on Nathayden’s world, it was a Dark one. I knew nothing for certain. I could feel Leni’s pain, but nothing else. And I hated feeling her pain. I hated knowing she was in pain. All because of me.
If I hadn’t been arguing with her and had followed her like she’d said, we’d at least have been together, if not on this world. Asia and I would have been close enough to them to have gone wherever they had. I’d been trying to learn to follow her instinct as I was supposed to, but when it really counted, I’d failed. And now look where we were: fighting for our very souls.
The pride of my leadership decision deflated. I had to get out of here, where all the dyads were gathered in their perfect, loving pairs.
“We do it tomorrow at noon,” I told Melinda and Uri before pushing my way back through the crowd. Asia followed me.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done,” she said once we were alone, outside again, watching the water. Just in case. It was better than sitting inside, in our rooms, where we shouldn’t be alone. “But if we need to go through the Gate, how do you plan on doing that since we can’t project our souls?”
“They left with their bodies. So why can’t we?”
“The Gate’s under the water, though. We could drown before we even get there, and if not, we will while we wait for it to open.”
I looked down at her. “Ever scuba-dived before?”
A bit of light came to her eyes. “Yeah, actually, I have. Do you think it will work?”
I shrugged. “I can only hope. So … you think you can teach me, because I never have.”
We spent the next several hours renting equipment and Asia teaching me how to scuba dive, a good and necessary distraction. Knowing we had a plan and were already acting on it gave us hope, too, which we needed more than anything.
“What if this doesn’t work?” Asia asked as we climbed the stairs to our rooms on the top floor, finally overcome with sheer exhaustion that should make sleeping possible.
“Then we come up with another plan,” I said. “Whatever it takes, right?”
We entered the hallway of our floor and stopped. She nodded. “Whatever it takes.”
I looked down the hall toward my room, but hesitated. I turned back toward the girl with the slight frame but the strength and resolve to do something most grown men could never do. “And when we’re back with them, you need to tell Brock.”
“Tell him what?” she asked innocently, though I was sure she knew.
“What happened.”
She narrowed her eyes. Yep, she knew. “Or what? You’ll tell on me?”
I cocked my head and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not talking about what happened at Mason’s condo. I’m talking about what happened to you. Brock deserves to know. Your relationship deserves it.”
She shrugged my hand off her shoulder and strode down the hallway.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jeric,” she said over her shoulder before opening her door and disappearing inside.
I did know, though. Leni and I didn’t keep secrets from each other, and I knew Asia had confided that she and Brock didn’t have the same relationship we did. There was a wedge between them that shouldn’t exist between Twin Flames. Something big and bad had happened to Asia that had driven her to stab that broken bottleneck into Mason’s balls. Something significant enough that it had probably changed her. Brock deserved to know what made her the woman she was with him.
With the unhesitating vehemence she acted with, I had a pretty good idea what it had been. Another fucking coward bully who’d probably claimed to love her.
Men like those made me wonder why I should even care about Earth’s souls. They were all doomed anyway.
* * *
The next day found hundreds of Guardians gathered to give my plan a try. The number who came had surprised me at first, but Melinda and Uri made a good point when I said something at breakfast—with the Gates sealed, the Guardians really had no purpose. They had nothing to guard, and they had no way to help the Lost and Broken souls. Their former lives had been wiped out, so they couldn’t go back to those. And the thought of being able to live normally and maybe even long sounded nice, except that’s not who we were. Not as long as the Lakari were still here, threatening Earth’s souls. It had taken me a while to accept it myself, but I knew deep down what I was. What we all were. We were warriors, and we had a purpose, and without purpose, there’s not much to life at all.
We needed the large numbers, because we needed some pairs to project to fight the Dark souls, others to g
uard those bodies, and more to fight any physical Shadowmen that dropped into human form. Asia and I were the only ones who had to swim out to the Gate. For such a tiny thing, weighed down with the equipment, she had no problem making the swim halfway across the bay. More proof we could never lead ordinary lives again: our bodies were altered. We were meant to fight and to protect, whether it was against assholes like Mason Hayes or Dark souls that belonged in the realms of Hell.
Once we reached the island where the weeping willow stood, Asia and I dove down to the bottom of the bay. Several dozen ghost-like figures stood at attention—Guardians’ projected souls waiting for us. As soon as Asia and I were in place, I gave the signal. Two of the Guardians opened the Gate.
Bright light flared up around Asia and me. We both tensed for the fight. Lakari would come through in spirit form, so it would be difficult to fight them like this, but we had to be prepared for anything. When the Gate took us through, we didn’t know what we could end up facing. Hopefully, we’d be facing Leni and Brock, or, at least, the Space Between that would lead us to Leni and Brock.
All we needed was for the walls to close completely around us and the Gate to sweep us away without any interference. As the light reached higher toward the water’s surface, it began to thicken. Asia looked at me with hope in her dark eyes. I gave her a tight smile. Our surroundings faded away as the wall of light solidified. My smile began to grow real when the water drained away, down through the sand below our feet. We both removed our air regulators.
“No Lakari,” Asia said. “They’re gone!”
A hole stretched open behind her, and I nodded at it. “There it is. Get ready.”
We both prepared to be sucked into the hole. I could barely see through the small opening, but light shone through it, not darkness. Lakari weren’t waiting to swarm through. The Gate was working for us, helping us to reunite with our Twin Flames. I had no idea what to expect once we passed through, but relief already flooded over me. Not long from now, I’d be holding Leni again.
The hole widened. It grew taller than Asia and wider than both of us standing side-by-side, and I began to wonder if it would suck us in after all, or if we needed to jump through it. I couldn’t tell if we stared at a gray sky or a gray wall or gray water. It didn’t matter.
“We better go through,” I said. “Before it’s too late.”
Asia gave a sharp nod, and we both tensed to jump. But something large and dark flew at us through the hole. A rush of Lakari souls, but that wasn’t all. A giant human-ish body with a torso the size of a truck, bulging limbs as thick as redwoods, and a reptilian-like head with multiple horns, everything covered in a green, leathery skin. It charged through the hole in the Gate.
The light walls cracked and disintegrated, and water rushed over us. I tried to find my regulator, while also reaching for Asia’s to help her. The hole from another world somehow remained open, though, with Darkness filling it and trying to push through. Guardians fought back, keeping as many as possible from entering our world. Especially that beast.
Once the regulator was back in my mouth and I could breathe again, I pushed off the bay floor and shoved at the thing’s head with my whole body. It pushed back with a force stronger than anything I’d faced before. I palmed the knife strapped to my leg and yanked it out. As Asia and the Guardians’ souls held the creature half in and half out of the hole, I stabbed it in the eye and plunged the blade deep into its brain—assuming it had one. It fell still, its head hanging through the gap in the Gate’s wall as a thick, black substance swirled into the water around us. We shoved the creature back through, and the hole closed up. Several Guardians shut down the lights of the Gate and sealed it up again. Others took off after the Lakari souls that had made it through and had already soared for the Earth’s surface. Asia and I swam back for shore slower than we’d come, impeded not so much from the physicality of the fight, but from the defeat weighing heavy in our souls.
How could that thing be so solid and pass through? We’d thought only spirit forms could enter the Gate, and Asia and I had been banking on a slim bit of hope that it would take us since it had taken Leni, Brock, and Bex in their bodies. We hadn’t considered physical bodies coming in, however. This changed everything. If huge beasts like this could get through to Earth, what would we truly be up against?
By the time we waded out of the water, the fight with the Lakari was over and most of the projected souls had returned to their bodies. Dozens of Guardians stood by the water’s edge, waiting for us.
“What the hell was that thing?” I demanded as soon as I could talk. I yanked the equipment off and threw it on the ground.
“Nobody knows,” Kel, a Guardian from our Gate, said.
“Never seen anything like it,” Yoshi added. “Nobody has.”
I scanned over the dozens of faces in front of me. “Nobody remembers anything like that? Not from any world you’ve ever been on? Any life?”
Silence met my question.
“So where did it come from?” Mat, Kel’s boyfriend, asked. “Because that’s not something easily forgotten. I know I’d remember it, and I don’t care how long ago the past life was. That thing was fucked up and something that would stick.” He jabbed at his temple as he said it.
Several people murmured in agreement. I was right there with him. We only had glimpses of past lives and worlds, but that thing would be one of the first memories I’d be able to recall. No doubt about it.
“It’s obvious,” Asia said, her voice heavy. “It came with the Lakari, none of us remember seeing one before, and its Darkness was … solid. It had to have come from one of the lowest worlds. One of the Darkest.”
“If any of those get all the way through, Earth will go Dark fast,” Kel said. “We can’t allow them in.”
“Damn straight,” Mat agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. “It was solid. In. Its. Body. We can’t let that shit into this world.”
Everyone nodded in consent, and some shouted it out.
“Sorry, Jeric, but there’s only one thing we can do,” Melinda said. “We have to keep the Gates sealed. We have no choice.”
Asia and I looked at each other. Her eyes filled with the same mix of emotions roiling through me. I pushed my hands through my hair, blew out an angry breath and stalked off. My chest felt like cement had filled my lungs. My heart was tight and small. I’d never felt such an overwhelming sense of loss, not even when my parents and sister had died.
With long, forceful strides, I walked until I was far enough away to be out of sight. When I stopped, one hand dropped to my hip and the other squeezed the bridge of my nose. I had to compel myself to breathe, the air tearing through my lungs as they tried to inflate against the thousand-pound pressure on my chest. My eyes squeezed shut against the burn in them, only to see Leni’s face and those beautiful sea-green eyes on the backs of my lids. A sob pushed at my throat.
I may never see her again. We may never be together—not just in this lifetime, but ever. Our souls would be lost to the Darkness. Because if the Gate had been trying to connect Asia and me to where Brock and Leni were, then they were stuck in the same world where that evil beast had come from. They were in the lowest realms of Hell, and we had no way of getting them back.
Chapter 3
Two more days had passed that felt like two lifetimes. When I wasn’t taking Bex outside to pee, I remained curled in a ball by the fire with my one measly blanket wrapped tightly around me, as if it could hold the pieces of me together. My chest ached. My stomach remained in a tight knot. My muscles felt weak and quaky when I used them, and my skin constantly crawled like something lived underneath it. I couldn’t believe I’d become addicted to a damn man—a man!—but here I was, having serious physical withdrawals. Sometimes this Twin Flames crap was really screwed up.
I couldn’t say if Brock was handling
it better or worse than I was. He was taking it like a man—with anger. He constantly paced around the cavern, threw punches at the air or even the wall, and muttered or yelled obscenities. He should have been bald by now from all of the pulling he did at his dark hair while he groaned from the pain living inside him.
The agony of being apart from our other halves had become a living and breathing beast within us. It clawed at our hearts and ate on our souls, never satiating itself but definitely growing. Before long, it would consume us whole. Sometimes, letting it devour me felt so easy. I’d wanted to succumb so many times. But that was the Darkness of the world niggling its way in. I couldn’t allow that. If I gave into the Dark, Jeric would be forced to, as well. I couldn’t do that to him.
Bex and Hayden weren’t much better off than Brock and me. Although her injuries were healing miraculously fast, their souls were not. The effects of their Bonding every day kept them from worsening, but the melding no longer provided improvement against the Darkness. I could feel it settling in on them almost as quickly as it had on Brock and me. Before long, their bodies would start failing.
“Hayden, we have to go soon,” I said, my voice raspy from another night of whimpering and sobbing. Or a day of it. I’d lost track of time, but it seemed like it had been a while since the screaming that came at night. “We can’t stay here much longer.”
“We have enough meat to last a few more days yet,” he said from his spot next to Bex on the other side of the fire, where he drew lines in the dirt floor with the tip of his dagger. The gozzard may have been huge, but only certain parts of it were edible, and the four of us had been starving before it followed Brock into our lair. The meat didn’t last long. “That gives Bex a few more days to heal. She’s still too weak.”