I fell against the wall, sinking to my knees.
“What the hell was that?” Cole and the stranger spoke at once.
I couldn’t answer either of them. The shadow had never touched me… not like that. Even when it had been inside me, I’d been the one in control, the one destroying something. But as I clutched the place where she’d been, the place where she’d dug inside, I could tell that this time it was something inside me that had been destroyed.
The door to the alley slammed against the wall, Chelsea stepping out. “Cole, what the hell? We’ve been looking for you for twenty minutes. You left two orders on the grill and now they’re all burned to shit. Get your ass inside now.”
He looked rattled but he also looked relieved. He glared at the stranger one last time before following his sister inside.
The dumpster slid across the pavement and I finally got a good look at the force behind it. He was almost as tall as I was, his skin a shade darker, his almond eyes the color of burned saffron. I watched him and he watched me, his hands sparking beneath the sleeves of his coat.
“What’s your name?” He had a slight accent, something that clipped the words and gave them a spine.
“Roman.”
His shoulders were heaving. “Roman. Talk.”
27
Bryn
The sounds were like daggers—voices and footsteps and stones skittering across the floor.
“Bryn?”
I coughed, tried to move, but my chest was on fire. My pulse throbbed in my cheek, hard stone beneath it.
“Bryn!”
“I’m here,” I choked out, every inch of me throbbing.
“Can you move?” Christine asked.
“I don’t…” I wriggled my toes in my shoes, working up to my knees. I stopped. The top halves of my legs were numb.
“Bryn, Clarke’s trying to get you out.”
I heard stones being tossed but they weren’t moving fast enough, the closeness all around me making it hard to breathe.
“I’m trying to reach you,” an unfamiliar voice called back. I assumed it was Clarke. “There’s a lot of debris in the way.”
I gripped the floor, trying to push instead of panic, forcing all of the fear down through my muscles and joints. The stone above me trembled but it wouldn’t budge.
Breathe, Bryn. Breathe.
“Bryn!” It was Sam. “Remember the bookshelf.”
The night Sam and I had been attacked in that antiques shop in Germany, I’d been pinned beneath a bookshelf, the shadow and the body it had stolen standing over me. I’d pushed and pulled, pleading with every muscle in my body to set me free. And then the shelf had given way, the shadow retreating as I rose to my feet. Because I’d remembered it was all a dream. Now Sam was reminding me that this was too.
I sucked in as much air as I could, concentrating on her voice.
“Push, Bryn. Push!”
I braced myself, pretending the stone was air and that I was stronger than anything. I lifted my chin, smearing blood. Then I pushed. I pushed as hard as I could, my entire body shaking.
“Push!”
I gritted my teeth. Pushed. Pushed some more. The stone heaved, rolling off. I crawled, pushing the smaller ones out of the way until I could see Sam’s face peeking through the cracks. Sebastían and the others dug as fast as they could. But I was faster. I was stronger.
Stones tumbled past me as I crawled over the wall, my hands covered in soot and blood.
“Thought I was the only one with super-human strength,” Clarke said, his smile buried beneath a thick red beard.
“You okay?” Sebastían’s eyes weren’t just full of surprise this time but awe.
“Fine,” I said.
“Careful.” Christine rushed over. “Are you hurt? You’re bleeding.” She hissed between her teeth. “Are you bleeding anywhere else? Any wounds?”
Her questions made me dizzy and I clutched the wall. “I’m—”
“Check her. Turn around, Bryn.”
“What’s wrong?” Sebastían asked.
“You said it’s almost your eighteenth birthday?” Christine said.
I nodded. “Almost, but I’m not sure if that’s weeks or months…”
“Or days,” she finished. “And if you turn eighteen while we’re stuck in this place, your wounds could carry over into the real world.”
The stone against my back was suddenly colder. I remembered Roman learning something like that from the Rogues. It was the reason he’d made Sam and me run from the confrontation with Michael in Rheinpark. It was too dangerous, especially since Sam wasn’t being hidden like the rest of us.
I thought about the bruise on her stomach leftover from the shadow’s attack and the way it had disintegrated after she’d woken back into her body. I’d found scars on my legs too. I lifted my pant leg, shifting my skin in and out of the light that was flooding the cavern. The skin glinted as if it was wet. The scars were still there.
“I have some too.” A young woman pulled her hair into a knot until her neck was exposed. The scars were thicker, not just an echo of the injury like mine were, but a tactile reminder. They shone in the light, raised dots that had turned grey. Bite marks. “My pillowcase was covered in blood. My mother thought I’d tried to kill myself.”
“Was it the shadows?” I asked.
She looked down and Clarke placed a hand on her back. “It’s okay, Scarlett.”
“No,” she finally said. “It wasn’t the shadows.”
A few of the other Dreamers took turns exposing themselves in the light, scars on their backs, their hands, trailing down their ribcages. I waited for something inside me to shake loose—broken bones, a crushed lung—anything to burst or fall apart. I’d been crushed, the pain of it more real than anything, and yet I was still standing.
“The light’s fading,” Sebastían said, everyone facing the way out. “Are you ready?”
I nodded. “I’m ready.”
Clarke and Scarlett climbed out first, Christine and Chloe following behind. There were only a few Dreamers left from the other cells, Joseph gone just like Kira. We all held our breath, waiting to find out who might be next.
We emerged from the cave onto a blank canvas, the snow I’d expected the first time all around us. It stung my hands as I climbed out stomach first, Sam almost losing her grip where it was starting to melt. We huddled together, nothing to shield us from the harsh wind, the thin tops of trees barely sprouting in the distance.
“So that’s how it works then.” I looked back at the cave we’d just stepped out of. “The nightmares. The moment Joseph and Kira conquered them, they disappeared.”
“Then we were wrong,” Sebastían said.
“About what?”
“About the test being behind us. That wasn’t the test.” He looked out over the expanse, teeth chattering. “This is.”
28
Roman
I got to my feet, keeping a safe distance as those wide eyes shifted from my hands to my face. I knew what he was looking for, not just a spark or a flame, but for the darkness my mother had warned was inside me.
I cleared my throat; tried to sound as unassuming as possible. “Maybe we should talk somewhere else.”
I reached the end of the alley by the time he decided to follow. I wasn’t sure where to go and decided being in motion would probably be safer than looking for somewhere discreet to trade war stories. We crossed fifth, heading for a quiet residential street.
“You got a name?” I asked.
He hung back, speaking to me over my shoulder. “Adham.”
“And you and Cole…”
He stopped in the middle of the street.
I approached, tentative, sensing his suspicion. “I’m not some kind of psychopath.” I held up my hands in a feigned surrender, skin barely glowing. “I’m just like you.”
The words didn’t seem to ease him. “What was all of that back there?”
“I don’t know,” I
said, honest. “The shadows…”
“They speak to you?” he said, confused and disgusted all at the same time.
“They haunt me,” I corrected him.
By the look on his face I knew that answer wasn’t good enough. He needed to make sure I wasn’t possessed by one of those parasites, and by the sheen of his clenched fists, I knew that if I didn’t convince him soon he’d try to drag it out of me himself.
“My mother was a Dreamer,” I said, hoping I’d have more luck playing the sympathy card. “She killed herself and now the shadows like to parade around her corpse.”
He looked away. “I’m sorry.”
After a beat of silence, I shook off the cold, the two of us moving again. “You and Cole were arguing before. Does he know what he is or what you are?”
Adham stared straight ahead. “He hates me.”
I startled, confused. We came in pairs, and according to the Rogues, we weren’t just bodyguards but our fates even more intertwined than that. I was Bryn’s soul mate, which meant that Adham was Cole’s. How could Cole hate his own soul mate?
“I don’t understand,” I finally admitted. “We come in pairs. That’s how this works.”
“Yeah, well, Cole doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“And you?” I asked.
“We don’t really get a choice, do we?”
He was right. Even if I hated all of this, even if I hated Bryn, I still wouldn’t be able to fight the gravity of her.
Adham kicked a loose piece of pavement. “Cole doesn’t want my protection but if he keeps avoiding me he’s going to get himself killed or worse.”
“Killed? What do you know?”
Adham lowered his voice. “I know that something’s happening to the Dreamers and I know that it’s bad.”
“Specifics?”
“Not really. It’s more of a feeling.” He paused, looking me up and down again as if I was some kind of apparition. “I’ve never known anyone like me before.” I imagined his head spinning the same way mine had when I’d met the Rogues. “I always knew there were others, I’ve just never met any. Have you?”
We circled a nearby park as I told him about Michael and the Rogues and their MIA leader, Lathan.
“So the Dreamers are disappearing,” he said after I’d finished, “but the Rogues aren’t dying. What if that means the Dreamers aren’t really dead?”
“That’s one theory,” I said. “A hopeful one.”
“But you’re not hopeful.” He eyed me. “Where’s your Dreamer?”
“In a coma,” I said, “in Texas.”
He stopped walking. “All of that stuff about coma outbreaks on the news…”
“You’ve seen it?”
“They can’t all be Dreamers, can they?”
“I don’t know. The news makes it sound like all of those kids fell into comas spontaneously but Bryn…she…” My knees almost buckled. “She was attacked.”
“How long has it been?” Adham asked, his breath quickening.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to calculate the time without drudging up all of the feelings that came with it. Adham saw the panic anyway.
“Three weeks.”
He stared straight ahead. “That first girl from Chile, her name was…Nathaly Rojas.”
“I remember,” I said.
“When was the last time you watched the news?”
“Not since I got back in town. I was in Austin checking on Bryn.”
Adham took off, cutting back across the park. We reached 5th street again, the restaurant lit up on the corner. I thought Adham was going to barge inside, but instead he headed for the last storefront lining the strip. Muted colors flickered against the sidewalk, the glow luring us towards the windows. TVs lined the entire wall, sports games and newscasts humming just behind the glass. Adham scanned each row before coming to a stop dead center of the display.
The coma outbreak was being covered on the Spanish news station, the captioning in English. Even without the translation I would have been able to tell exactly what was happening. Nathaly was lying in a hospital bed, an IV in her wrist. There were two policemen standing guard near her door, the blur of other uniforms out in the hall.
“Her doctor tried to kidnap her unconscious body in the middle of the night,” Adham said.
My fingers grazed the glass, a photo of the resident doctor coming onto the screen. I recognized his face but it wasn’t the same picture Felix and I had seen when we’d been watching the story in his apartment. This photo was older, probably something the hospital kept on file. But the photo Felix and I had seen was cut from a live broadcast of a press conference outside the hospital just after Nathaly was admitted.
I replayed the story of Andre’s Dreamer over and over in my head. He and Olivia had already found each other but his presence still wasn’t enough to stop the shadows from trying to take her. The shadows had possessed Olivia’s sister, Sara, forcing her to lead Olivia as far from Andre as possible. And she’d done it, both of them disappearing one night without a trace.
That night Andre became a Rogue and ever since he’s believed Olivia was dead. But that part of the story had never made sense to me. The shadows’ entire goal seemed to be to inhibit the Dreamers enough to drive them mad, making them and their abilities useless. But now the shadows seemed to want something more. To kill the Dreamers maybe. To make sure they weren’t just brain dead but their bodies destroyed as well.
“Roman?”
I tore my eyes from the screen. “What happened to the doctor?”
“I think he’s in jail.”
I stared at the ground, trying to summon the words. “Bryn was attacked by her doctor too. Before she figured out what the dreams really were, she thought she was sick with something called Klein-Levin Syndrome. She went to Germany to find a cure. The doctor who was overseeing her care, his daughter suffered from the same thing.”
“She was a Dreamer too?”
I nodded. “It turned out Bryn’s doctor was more obsessed with finding out what happened to his daughter than with helping Bryn. He started sedating her, trying to lengthen her episodes so she’d be trapped in the dreams.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying not to lose it. “When I found her…he’d just given her double the dosage. She was in such a deep sleep that when the shadows attacked her she was helpless.”
I glanced back at the restaurant, wondering if Adham should be there to protect Cole whether he wanted him to or not.
“What could she do exactly?” Adham asked. “What would she dream about?”
The memory of Stassi’s warning made me hesitate. “We’re not exactly sure yet. She hasn’t turned eighteen.”
“When does she?”
I remembered every birthday since Bryn was eight being detailed in her diary. “October.”
“That’s soon.”
“It won’t matter. I’ve already tried to wake her up. I’ve tried everything.”
“Do you think that’s what’s going to happen to all of them? The shadows will find them one by one and they’ll all end up in comas?”
“Probably.”
Adham hung his head back. “But there’s got to be a way to reach them.”
“Unless there’s not...” I stopped, not sure what I was trying to say.
I’d felt helpless that day in the hospital. Like a failure. Like the old Roman whose mother had been right all along. But after seeing those stills and realizing that I was trying to wake Bryn from more than just a bad dream, it hit me how lost she really was. Too lost for me to find her. And even though it killed me, maybe I was never meant to save Bryn from this. Maybe I was meant to wait while she saved herself.
“What do you mean?” Adham asked.
My head fell back. “I mean wherever they are, whatever’s happening to them…”
“You’re saying they have to fight it on their own?”
“That’s what it seems like.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“None of this is.”
Even this far down the street I heard the back door of Moretti’s slam closed. Adham and I made our way around the storefront, peering into the alley as Cole stepped outside.
“Looks like your Dreamer’s en route,” I said. “You should follow him.”
Adham looked back at me. “You said her name is Bryn?”
I nodded.
“I’ll pray for her.”
When I got home there were eggshells littering the driveway; yolk staining the windows and smeared across the front door. The smell of rot wafted from the snow and I grabbed the water hose, aiming the stream over the mess.
I wanted to be angry, not just for the sake of feeling human again but for the sake of feeling warm. The water splashed against my shoes but all I could manage was a wince. I knew it was Carlisle. I knew he wasn’t finished with me yet but I was just too fucking exhausted to care.
29
Bryn
We were made of glass, the snow and wind having carved us into thin shells that were ready to crack. No one had taken ownership of the landscape yet but I knew we’d find out whose nightmare we were walking through as soon as we reached the trees. They carved up like dull razors—black and jagged and dreadful. They looked like monsters, long spindly ones that only knew how to strangle.
Sebastían led the way beneath the bare branches, everyone else looking up and behind, taking backward steps to try and spot what was coming. There was a sharp edge to the quiet and every time someone snapped a twig under their foot or knocked something loose in the snow I thought I was going to jump out of my skin.
Sebastían held up a hand, the group coming to a stop. I couldn’t hear anything past the sudden wind, the trees swaying up ahead, crowns sagging to the ground before springing up again. But Kira was gone. This wasn’t her dream.
I spotted Scarlett crouched behind a tree, her back to the bowing branches as she whispered to herself. I took quiet steps through the snow until I was kneeling next to her.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 75