“Let go of her.”
The guards released me as Anso turned to my body, still hanging over us. He held it upright, my head slumped, feet dangling, and then a deep red line bled through my clothes.
“Take the body instead,” Anso said. “Bleed her out with the others but don’t let her out of your sight. The boy will come for her. Make sure he only finds a corpse.”
I crippled. Without my body there would be no leaving. There would be no waking.
Anso knelt over me, those bruised eyes bleeding. All I wanted was to claw them out, to ignite like he’d said I would. But I was frozen and worthless, still too weak. I tried not to cry as he flicked his wrist, throwing me onto my stomach.
“She’s been inside you all along.”
I strained to look away, the worst of his power trapped in his eyes.
“I can see her there, taunting, marveling.”
He forced me onto my knees, my arms straight at my sides. He carved lashes from wrist to elbow, blood trickling to the floor as I tried to disappear again.
“Look at what she’s done to me.” He wrenched my face, my neck popping. “Pieces of her have been waking ever since the day I buried her. And that first piece? She buried that first piece in me.”
He lifted a hand and I flew back against the wall. My spine cracked against the stone, my lip splitting against the floor as I crashed back down. I rolled, clutching my head, trying not to choke on the blood.
“Pain. That’s what she gave me. That’s what I can do.”
My chest burned, skin splitting open as he carved another wound. Blood soaked my clothes, my hands slipping as I tried to get to my feet.
“You dream of pain because it’s who you are,” I growled. “Not because it’s who she made you.”
He scowled, dragging me with just his gaze. “I could shatter you into a million pieces.”
Anso and I had been face to face before, more than once, and he’d never destroyed me like he’d always threatened. He’d never killed me or even tried. Because he couldn’t.
“You killed her,” I said. “That’s why you’re cursed. Not because she was born but because she died. Because you killed her!”
“And I’ll do the same to you.”
“And you’ll stay cursed,” I said. “Even if you wake out of this nightmare, even if you die, you’ll still be a monster. Monsters don’t get redemption. They don’t get salvation. They get hell and you’re already there.”
He spun me, my forearm snapping against the floor. The bone cut straight through the skin and I howled, the world around me a dark smudge. I saw my lashes, the shadow of my nose, the concrete walls, Anso. He watched me, speaking in a muffled monotone that made me dizzy. I tried to sense my body wherever it was, the blood draining from it one drop at a time. I strained for some piece of it that was still intact, but the fear held me back. Because if I woke into it now and my body was dead, I’d be dead too.
Anso tossed me against the dungeon steps and my head cracked against the stone. The pain was a blind spot, my thoughts stalled against every ache and burn. I flitted between memories as the agony spun me from one dream to the next. I saw stars and vines and Roman, beats of black and blue cutting the room to pieces. I saw my hands and flexed my fingers, trying to creep towards the starlight. It flickered in and out, but I couldn’t tell if the flame was just a finger’s length away or if it was inside me.
I slid to the floor, Anso still trying to break me. But suddenly the pain was just as hushed as his voice and the thoughts in my head. I lay there, breathing, breathing, blinded by starlight, drinking in every spark. It was so warm, coaxing me, swaddling me. And as Anso boiled my insides, dragging me across the stone; as I hung above him, pulseless and trapped, I’d never felt more…alive.
I fell straight down, sprawled in a pool of blood. I traced from my toes to my knees, back to the shadow of my lashes. And I felt awake. Not in my body. Not in this prison. Not even in this time and place. But everywhere and in everything, I felt awake.
Anso screamed, falling over himself. Because I was still alive and so was he. “We’re both cursed. Can’t you see that? Can’t you feel the night?” He crept towards me. “The stars rest like thorns around your lungs, burning black holes in your heart. Don’t you want to make it stop?” He fell to his knees. “Don’t you want to finally sleep?”
I stared down at my skin and he was right. Past the blood, past the flesh and bone, I was full of stars. They pulsed in my fingertips and I gripped the floor, remembering the glass at the Köln building. I pretended I was standing against the wind again, so high up that I could taste the constellations on the tip of my tongue. I tasted them now, every breath thick with electricity. Whether my age had changed, or something else, I was igniting one cell at a time.
My fingers splayed against the floor and I didn’t even have to push. I didn’t have to move an inch. All I had to do was think the word—freedom—and the cracks rippled up on their own. They pinched beneath my palm, the stone splitting in two. A wide crack raced up the wall, carving over my head, tiny veins breaking off like branches. They deepened, the concrete heaving and groaning beneath my gaze. I pushed, soft, careful, and the walls shattered.
Anso cowered as the dust settled. Every emotion flashed on his face but he didn’t run. He pleaded, relieved, relenting. “Finish this.”
I’d watched him murder his child and then I’d watched him grieve, the same look on his face now. He crumbled, wilting until he looked as old as he really was. Until he looked frail and desperate and sorry.
“You don’t get to be sorry,” I said. “You don’t get the easy way out.”
“You’re broken.” His eyes widened, furious. “I did that. I did all of this. I deserve to die!”
“You don’t.”
I lifted a hand, Anso’s body tumbling into the blackness where the walls once stood. I didn’t wait to hear him reach the bottom or to watch him crawl back out. I knew he’d live. I wanted him to. I wanted him to suffer in that nightmare for all eternity, the one he’d hoped would plague the waking world in my absence. But he’d never actually meant to kill me either. He’d meant to hurt me the way he’d hurt himself, and if I didn’t reach my body in time, he’d do just that.
It hummed to me and I followed the vibration through corridor after corridor. Stones tumbled, and I took deep breaths, trying to keep the entire world from collapsing. Walls broke away at the brush of my fingers, leading me through tunnels that were nothing but mud. The stronger my body called to me, the more certain I felt that I wasn’t too late.
I rounded a corner and was stopped by the chill. Shadows. They shot to the ceiling with a hiss but they weren’t on the attack. They were cowering. They were afraid. Of me.
They stared, faceless and loathing. I remembered all those nights they’d watched me as I slept, I remembered them plucking Sam’s soul right from her body. The earth shook and so did I. Because I hated them. I hated the way they made me feel and the way they made me not. I hated being afraid and out of control. I hated running.
The flames started in the palm of my hand, one exhale leading them straight up. The shadows raced across the ceiling, howling, burning. I stood there and just watched, each one slithering down and becoming someone else. My grandparents. Dani. My mom. Roman.
“Bryn!” His skin burned red, then black.
I looked away, tears scraping down my throat.
“Bryn! Please!”
There were tears in his eyes too, red and thick, his blood rising to the surface. He cried and called my name, that one syllable ripping into a scream. It ripped me open too—the sound of his voice, the sound of his pain. But they were all lies. I knew that now.
So I let him burn, I let them all burn until the ground was black and steaming, until there was nothing left but smoke. I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for their screams to incinerate with everything else. When I finally opened them again the hallway was empty, the walls gone and the cold too, the space carv
ed open like a wound. I knew my body was close.
I wrangled the smoke and ash, parting it like a curtain. And there in the debris was Roman. He was kneeling, his back to me, but he wasn't alone. The Rogues turned, seeing me there, and then so did he, his face smeared with soot and blood. He stared, barely able to catch his breath. And then I saw why he was kneeling. Why he was crying and covered in blood.
My body was sprawled out in front of him. Pale and stiff.
“No.”
Vogle reached for me, his hand on my arm like the kick back on a rifle. He fell against the wall, the others keeping their distance as I crumbled to my knees.
“Am I…?”
Roman took my face in his hands, thumbs brushing my cheeks, my eyebrows, my hairline. I absorbed his shaking, the look in his eyes making me feel like a ghost. Because I was. Because I was...
“Roman, am I dead?”
He sighed, choking.
“Tell me I’m not!”
“You’re...how...where were you?” He grabbed me in fistfuls, grieved and relieved and confused. “You’re alright…”
He was delirious but so was I, the dream we were in suddenly made of glass. I stared at my body, my arms cold and limp. I pressed my ear to my chest, clutching the hollow space. I brushed my lips and eyelids but my reflection never stirred. Roman was wrong. I wasn’t alright. I was dead, and if I pressed my mouth to those lips, if I leaned too close, I wouldn't wake up. I'd disappear.
And I didn’t want to disappear.
I didn’t want to die.
“Roman…”
His hand trembled against the back of my skull but there were no more words from either of us. He held me, the others closing in, circling my corpse. My corpse. Me.
Andre and Vogle knelt, just as silent, though I could see that there were words pressed against their lips—pleas or warnings about time, about the danger of running out of it. I was dangerous. Being out of my body was dangerous. Being in this prison was dangerous. But I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move.
“Bryn…”
There was an echo inside me, so loud that Vogle’s voice was lost. One. Two. One. Two. I pulled away from Roman’s chest but it wasn’t his pulse I heard. I looked down at my body, still lifeless. The sound swelled to a drumbeat that drove me to my feet.
“Did you hear that?” I said.
Roman caught my hand, spoke silent words. All I could hear was the pounding.
I stepped into the sound, the notes made of heat and breath and sleep. “This way.”
Roman cradled my body, Shay and Domingo flanking him as if it still needed protecting. The cavern ahead of us narrowed, slanted stones guiding us into dankness so thick I could barely breathe. I waited for the cold slice of the shadows across my skin. I waited for Anso, mangled and begging for mercy. But there were no monsters sleeping here. There was something else.
Light bloomed behind me, Andre and Roman turned to beacons, but it wasn’t enough. I wished for light and then I was made of it, the sun peeling from my skin and climbing the stone walls. It chased the darkness back and then I saw them.
Bodies.
So many bodies.
Tangled and fallen and…
“Sleeping.” Michael was crouched next to a girl with raven-colored hair. “Every last one of them.”
Andre’s fists turned to flames. “How the hell…?”
Michael hung his head back, defeated. He was bones and bruised skin and for one second I forgot all that he’d done. When his bloodshot eyes settled on me he stiffened. “You.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” My body in Roman’s arms was the only thing keeping him planted there.
Michael smirked but it tangled with a sob. “All this time she was sleeping.” He fell to his knees again, tucking his hands beneath the head of the girl lying in front of him. “All this time she was waiting for me.”
I remembered that black hair and fair skin on the girl who’d stripped the world of color. “Darina?”
Michael’s eyes snapped to mine again, manic. “I gave him your body. I gave Anso what he wanted and then he gave me this!” He slammed his fists against the stone. “She’s empty! She’s empty and I can’t wake her. I can’t…”
My throat clenched. “You were going to trade me for Darina?” I was standing over Michael before I even realized I’d moved. “That’s why you killed my grandmother? That’s why you did it?”
“Anso’s the one who wanted her blood and I gave it to him. Every last drop.” He smirked again and I wanted him to choke on it, to fucking suffocate. He doubled over, gripping his knees, and that’s when I realized he was. He stumbled to his feet, reaching for air.
“What’s happening?” Andre said.
I fell back, Michael writhing on his hands and knees, his face turning blue.
“Bryn, what did you—?”
“I don’t…” I swallowed the lie. I’d wanted to hurt Michael and I had, my thoughts a noose around his neck. I knew that I could stop it. I knew that I could save him. But I didn’t want to.
Michael doubled over and then he was one giant flame, the heat sparking from his skin and lapping at the floor like lava. He faced the unconscious Dreamers, his light glinting off their skin and hair. They were soaked in gasoline.
I lunged for him, but he clapped his hands together, the sudden rush of heat forcing me back. The flames spread, his eyes stoking them, the light cast out like a net as it raced from one limb to the next.
I looked up, drawing that first drop of rain down from the ceiling, the others following in a rush. But it wasn’t enough. Everyone crawled toward the flames, taking hands and arms, trying to pull people free. I screamed and the rain fell harder, so thick I could barely see.
But Michael was still on fire, his body tumbling as he tried to breathe. I imagined the invisible noose around his neck growing fangs. Blood dampened the flames as his throat was sliced open, the cut so long and deep that I could see right through him.
The rain fell harder, more wild than any storm I'd ever seen. It beat down on the flames, the fierce wind snuffing them out. I heard the sizzle of steam, Rogues coughing, crying, calling each other’s names. They wandered the wreckage, heaving bodies, paused by familiar faces and falling to their knees.
Andre clutched a lifeless hand. Stassi hugged body after body, listening for a heartbeat. I paused too, falling next to Kira.
Sleep still fluttered from her lips as I brushed the ash from her face. She was unburned, a porcelain doll among the wreckage, and it only reminded me that what was happening to her out there in the world could be worse than what was happening to her body in this room. She could be suffering. She could be scared. She could still be trapped in that nightmare, shred to pieces by the very thing she’d been meant to control.
Roman knelt next to me, my body lying limp with all the others.
“We can’t leave them here,” I said.
“I know.”
I kept my eyes down. “You don’t have to come with me.”
Roman looked stung. “And you don’t have to do this alone. You’re not meant to.”
I didn’t dare look back at my body or even think about what this all meant. The only thing I knew for certain was that I was still awake, somehow, and that I was the only one who could put the pieces back together.
I laid my hand flat against Kira’s temple, tugging every piece of her I could to the surface. I closed my eyes, concentrating, reaching. I smelled antiseptic, chemicals, and wet leaves. Rain. Then I saw her standing in it, soaked.
My eyes opened. “Cape Town.”
I examined the room again and it was impossible not to count them. Not just every body, but every pair of lips, every eyelash, every open hand and strand of hair. I counted the rise and fall of their chests. I counted the rhythm of each pulse until the sound was deafening.
“I can hear them.”
I crawled to the body next to Kira, holding the girl until her pulse swelled to a revved engine, voices and
bells over a shop door. Chicago.
“I can see them.”
I grabbed the man’s hand who was lying to her right, the sounds inside him echoing fall. I heard swirling leaves and snapping twigs, wolves sniffing at a corpse.
I crawled from body to body, touching every Dreamer, reading their senses like a map. I was gripped by tastes and smells, by hard rocks against my skin, bark and saltwater and sunlight. Sunlight. Not all of these Dreamers were trapped but they were all lost, roaming the in-between without their bodies. All waiting. For me.
The Rogues carried out the ones I’d already touched, a procession of them disappearing into the moonlight I’d carved above us. I reached for the next body but Roman pressed against me, staring. His eyes were stained red.
I looked away. “I have to find them. I can.”
“You have to stop.”
“We have to go.”
“We?” There was an ounce of relief in his voice but it wasn’t enough to keep his eyes from straying. It wasn’t enough to keep mine from too.
I looked back down at my body and I knew there wasn’t a pulse loud enough to stir those eyes open. I knew that I’d never sleep safely inside it again.
My throat was on fire but I didn’t let it rage through the rest of me. I had to be still. I had to be strong.
“Tell me what to do,” Roman said. “I don’t know. I don’t…please, just tell me what to do.”
I stood in front of him, a vision of the flesh and bone on the floor beneath us. I was dreaming. And so was he if he thought there was a chance of me ever waking up.
Andre and Domingo carried the last of the Dreamers to safety, Vogle and Shay watching from a distance as my body lay alone on the floor. I could see it in the corner of my eye, the flames in my throat pressing against my lips, filling me up and drawing tears.
I took a deep breath and then I said, “Bury it.”
Roman stared straight through me, searching, pleading, waiting for a spark of life. He touched me, coaxing out more than a spark. Because even though I was dead, I wasn’t done.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 93