I remembered what it had been like standing over my own body the first time I’d found it lying in that observation chair at the hospital—the air pulsing from the seam of my lips and the smell of my skin making the hairs on my arms stand on end. It had tied me in a knot to see it so alive without me in it and I could see that same knot making it hard for Kira to even hold herself upright.
The moment I forced Kira back into her body, air filling her lungs, eyelashes fluttering in those first moments of wakefulness, she didn’t look so broken anymore. She looked like porcelain. But when she finally opened her eyes she was shaking again, afraid of waking into something worse.
I leaned over her, tried to smile. “Kira?”
She looked straight into my eyes and said, “You took them.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“I felt it.”
I clenched my jaw. “I had to.” My face fell, a tremor cutting my words as I said, “Did it hurt? Did I hurt you?”
My tears startled us both and Kira sat up, reaching for me. She hugged me, squeezed me and held on tight.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m so sorry.”
11
Alma
The old woman sits, clutching a string of beads as she sends silent pleas in my direction. I swat them away, useless.
My face is hard. My voice is cold. “It’s her time.”
She shakes. “Please.”
I cast my eyes to the firelight shifting along the cave walls. Fate twists it into the shadow of a girl on a cot, clutching herself in pain, howling and trying to breathe. The old woman in front of me can’t see what I can see. She doesn’t know what I know. That her daughter is already dead.
“There’s nothing I can do,” I say.
“A salve?”
“I’m not a doctor.”
“A prayer? Please, even a sacrifice…I’ll do anything.”
I sigh, more like a hiss. “I’m not a witch.”
She straightens, confused. “Then what are you? I came from miles away.” She stands, angry now. “People said you could help me.”
“They were wrong. I can’t change your daughter’s fate.”
“You’re a fraud,” the woman spits.
It isn’t the first time someone has called me a fraud. When you tell people truths they’re not prepared to hear you’re either a liar or a witch. I’m neither. I’m not sure what I am and sometimes it makes me just as angry as the grief-stricken beggars trying to save their children from death.
The woman kicks the wooden pallet between us, the coins and trinkets she’d offered clanking onto the cave floor. I shield my face, turning away from the opening as she storms out.
I press my hands to the cave wall, cool and grounding me. I’ve clutched these floors and these walls so many times, crying out pleas of my own. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see. Please. I don’t want to watch them die.
“What about the ones who don’t deserve to live?”
I shudder, turn at the voice. Shadows slither up both sides of the cave, converging as a sharp sword of a man steps forward. He looks like a corpse, one that has clawed out of the ground, awakened by something evil. Something that isn’t afraid to defy fate.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says. “We’re the same.”
My insides twist, his voice foul and trying to lure me in. His deadness is familiar but whatever slithers through his veins is not the same as what flows through mine.
I finally speak. “Are you a ghost?”
He smiles, skin stretched and sallow. “Unfortunately not.” He approaches me, reaching out a hand. “Is it the skin you read or is it the mind?”
I take a step back until I’m pressed to stone. “Neither.”
“Read me,” he says.
I hesitate. “I only see one thing.” I hope he realizes I’m no use to him and leaves. “I only see—”
“Death.” He smiles again. “Now tell me mine.”
He takes my hand and there’s nothing but smoke and starlight, whispers and shouts. Someone is screaming or crying. Dying. But it isn’t the beast in front of me. It’s a girl. A girl with green eyes…bright like the stars. Like the moon.
La Luna.
“What do you see?” His voice cuts through the vision, impatient.
I push it back out, trying to part the smoke like a curtain. I finally see him, eyes stitched with Xs, skin shred from the bones. He’s deteriorating but he isn’t dying.
“Tell me!” His voice is frantic. “Tell me how it happens. Is it soon?”
I recognize the same desperation in his voice that I hear in every mother’s who comes to see me. Except he isn’t desperate to cheat death. He’s desperate to face it. Again. Because he’s wrong. The thing in front of me is a ghost. The thing in front of me is as dead as the dead can be. But he is also cursed, eternally unbound from his flesh and bones by an awful magic, flesh and bones that are probably nothing but dust now.
The vision shifts, spliced by a bolt of lightning. On one side I see his curse—his consciousness eternally separated from his corpse—and on the other I see a young man. He is running…and he is bleeding. His blood smells like the center of the earth and it drips from him, poison scorching a trail through the grass. A trail for the beast to follow. And then he finds him. The demon in front of me wrings the young man’s neck and then he drinks.
Fate whispers in my ear: “He cannot know,” before erasing any trace of the vision and finally letting go of me.
“What did you see?” the devil hisses.
I steady and try to look certain. Then I say, “Nothing.”
He scowls, unhinged, and every bone in my body aches. The ache turns to fire and then everything is pure white. I try to wake myself up, reaching for my body where it lies in my bed. Home. I think the word, a silent scream. Another plea. I plead with my body to wake itself up. But his voice is louder than my own. Louder than anything.
“You will dig their graves until you’ve dug your own. Until I have one of my own too.”
The pain intensifies, whipping into a cyclone that casts me adrift and carries me somewhere so dark and deep I know not even fate can drag me back out.
12
Bryn
We came to stand on a steaming street. A dry sweetness stuck to my throat as people pushed past us with wheelbarrows and wagons full of food and spices, speaking a torrent of words I could barely piece together. My vision went dark, vertigo sending me against Roman’s chest. Every sound was amplified, making me feel sick.
“Bryn, they’re looking.” Roman pulled me behind a cart full of burlap sacks, away from the eyes of passersby. “Do you feel dizzy again?”
I nodded. “Just give me a minute.”
“I knew we should have waited,” he said. “It was too soon.”
After Kira woke up in her body without her dreams, fatigue set in fast, and she fell asleep in the only empty room. It was a relief not having to explain everything but I was tired too and part of me wished I could have fallen asleep right next to her. But we didn’t have any time to waste. I could sleep once the Dreamers were dealt with. After rescuing the last one on my list…I’d sleep forever.
“What is this place?” Roman asked.
“Andalusia,” I said. “We’re here for a girl named Alma.”
We ventured back onto the street. A cart rolled past full of people. They called out to the shopkeepers guarding their goods and the people walking by, delirious and staring at the sky. The street was alive despite the night, the moon a faint scab beneath the cloud cover.
“What’s the time difference here?” Roman asked. “It shouldn’t still be dark, should it?”
I stopped. He was right. “It should be late afternoon. The sun should be out.”
We moved with the crowd, trying not to bring attention to ourselves. There was a clock tower behind an old church just up ahead, a crowd already amassed, praying and staring up at the numbers. When we got close enough the Rom
an numerals read 4:00 PM. That’s when I realized that the street wasn’t bustling because people were selling goods; it was bustling because people were afraid.
I tugged Roman away from the crowd. “This way. We should keep a low profile.”
Roman flashed me his cell phone. “Felix’s exact words. He just texted me and said some major European cities have already seen some major looting.” Roman sighed. “There was a mass suicide in India. Thirty-four people dead. Eight were children.”
I felt dizzy again, finding a wall and falling against it. Alma was only the second name on my list, the order as random and mysterious as this endless night. All this time I’d been worried about rescuing the Dreamers but what about everyone else? How many more people would die if I didn’t find the Dreamers in time?
“I’m sorry, Bryn. I shouldn’t have—”
“Yes, you should have. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Only when it’s helpful. I…just want to help.”
I imagined those thirty-four bodies—men, women, children. I pictured their faces, turned up towards the moon, towards some inevitable fate that scared them more than living. And then I scrubbed the vision out of focus until there was nothing left. I wished away that dark feeling again and it let go of me on command.
Roman was still shackled by it, his gaze wanting, as if my touch were some kind of skeleton key. But I couldn’t release him. I didn’t know how. Not anymore.
“We’re looking for some kind of square,” I said, redirecting us both.
I remembered Alma’s face but even more importantly I could still feel her, the tether between us growing taut with each step. It seemed to be the only sensation I was capable of feeling anymore. But it wasn’t a salvaging kind of connection. It was a predatory one. I knew that now. I knew that once I touched her, she would lose herself and I would gain her ghost, absorbing it into my very skin.
I quickened my pace, Roman and I zigzagging through the marketplace. A car horn blared and Roman pulled me against a building as two cars raced down one of the narrow streets that didn’t look built for driving. People jumped out of the way as carts and tables toppled over, clay pots shattering on the ground. More cars disappeared around the corner as a wave of children followed behind. They were yelling something, waving beckoning hands at the shopkeepers and trying to drag people along behind them.
“Where is she?” Roman breathed.
My pulse mimicked the chaos all around us. I stared after the people abandoning their stands, the thread between Alma and me growing even more strained. I felt ready to strike. “Not far.”
Roman caught me by the wrist. “Someone’s watching.” He led me around the wall of a building and into a dark alley.
I turned my head, slowly, and noticed the men lining each opening. I refocused, staring straight ahead at Roman. But he was already sweating and I felt my pulse racing too. I knew there was no way they could recognize us. But there was something predatory about the way they cinched us in.
We waited for them to go away, Roman leaning over me and pretending we were just a couple on vacation trying to steal a moment alone together. For a second my mind drifted, trying to conjure the sensations of that moment, to see if I could even still pretend. I felt Roman’s breath against my lips; his hands gripping my arms; his pulse drumming in each wrist. But I couldn’t feel mine.
“Are they—?”
Roman cut me off. “Not yet.”
Instead of sensing the men make their way back onto the street, I felt them pressing us in. I thought about all those people in Europe who were looting stores and wrecking havoc. Maybe they just wanted to rob us. Or maybe they wanted something else.
I pulled Roman close to me, his shirt wrapped in my fists, and then I whispered, “It’s them.”
Roman spun just as the shadows rose from the men’s opened mouths. I stared straight through them, watching as the bodies dropped one by one.
Since I’d woken up dead the shadows hadn’t haunted me like they had before, only appearing in the middle of the night, waking me out of a dream or threatening to trap me in one.
As they billowed like black kites, winter scaling the walls of the alley, I couldn’t help but remember the first time I’d absorbed that chill up close. It was the night I’d ran off after a fight with my mom. I’d caught her and my uncle together but it wasn’t the secret that had hurt me most. It was the fact that she could have been happy—something that would have relinquished me of so much guilt—but instead she’d chosen to hide it, to run from it all because of me.
I’d run too, the elementary school playground near our house wrapped in the soft chorus of small voices, the sounds of the after school program and the sight of the lights and full parking lot making me feel safe. But then the shadow had appeared like a cold vice, dropping me to my knees.
As they approached now their chill stung like new but I wasn’t sure if I should run. There was an emboldened part of me that wondered if they could still hurt me. They definitely couldn’t control me. I’d proven that when I’d destroyed them while escaping Anso’s prison the second time, the shadows slipping on Roman and my grandmother’s skin in order to stop me from finding my body.
Roman shielded me as they swooped down like giant bats and I glared until the heat of my gaze made them flinch. Then I didn’t give Roman a chance to strike before I gripped his shoulders and sunk us both into the wall. We emerged on the other side, knocking down a shelf of old radios. Destroying the shadows wouldn’t keep more from following us. All that mattered was finding Alma before they did.
Roman was wide-eyed, stumbling. “What the hell?”
I dragged him behind me. The walls moved, cinching and widening, speaking to me. I found the back door, kicked it open, and then we were running.
The pull to Alma was so strong I almost lost my footing, the sensation trying to pull me straight through the walls again. The children we’d seen running earlier jumped over parked cars and shoved each other towards the square. When we reached it, it was full of people, all of them with their fists and voices raised.
“Is this some kind of riot?” Roman asked.
People fought near the fringes as dark men lining the perimeter waved loaded guns. I sidestepped between the crowd, moving on my toes as I tried to see over their heads. I could hear arguments, snippets of something about killings and kidnappings and putting traitors down like dogs. And the moon. People were yelling about the night and the blood on the moon and the end of the world.
“Is she in here somewhere?” Roman scanned the crowd. “What does she look like?”
I stopped short, bodies slamming into us. Up ahead there was a man on his hands and knees, shivering, bloody spittle dripping from his lips. Torch flames lit up his face, tears filling his eyes as a man held a gun to his temple.
Roman froze too. “Where the hell are we?”
I looked to the man’s left and spotted a girl behind a veiled canopy. The crowd screamed every time the breeze cast the curtain, revealing a bit of her skin. The man who held the gun called out over the crowd and they surged forward. Two more men were lined up on their knees next to the first. A woman was thrown down with them, her clothes ripped, the skin beneath torn and bleeding.
Another man approached, parting the curtain and revealing the girl’s face. It was painted in pale colors, done up like some oracle or even a queen. But I could tell by her tears that she was no more than a slave.
Her eyes flitted and then from more than a hundred yards away they fixed on my face. She had the strangest blue eyes I’d ever seen, almost purple. But it wasn’t the only thing that made her seem out of place. She was small, cheeks still plump and infantile despite the jewels pressed to her skin and the makeup smeared across her face. She reminded me of Sam. But not of her living. Of her ghost.
“Is that Alma?” Roman whispered.
Alma’s body was seared in my memory and I knew in an instant that this girl wasn’t her. But pieces of Alma’s es
sence still clung to the girl, her blood singing to me a familiar song.
The girl’s gaze intensified as if she could see Alma’s name on the tip of Roman’s tongue. She parted her lips, staring, and then she spoke. “La Luna.”
Despite the noise from the crowd, her voice shot like an arrow straight into my chest. The moon. I looked up but it hadn’t changed, the clouds still smearing it across the sky. I looked back to the girl but her face had fallen.
The man holding back the curtain asked her something, the crowd growing quiet to hear her answer. She didn’t speak. All she did was nod and the man holding the gun pulled the trigger.
My muscles tensed and my pulse spiked. I stared at the blood and my mouth went dry. But as my body reacted to the sight, the rest of me was unmoved. Roman paled and I waited to contract the same sickness but I felt…nothing. Nothing except the tether between Alma and me, nothing but the thirst for whatever she was made of.
La Luna…La Luna. The girl’s thoughts slipped inside my head, chiming with the watchtower as her body shook.
The stomping all around us grew louder and I realized the hoard was moving as one. There was another gunshot, another body slumped to the ground.
La Luna. La Luna.
I tried to decipher her chant but as she stared at me through the sheer curtains, eyes wet, I knew it wasn’t a spell she was casting in my direction. It was a prayer.
The crowd began chanting too. Another shot rang out.
Roman gripped my hand. “What are they yelling?”
I focused on the word. “Incendio.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
I locked eyes with the girl again. “It means they’re going to burn it down.”
I pushed forward, the crowd behind us doing the same, flames at the forefront. People held up torches, waving them at the men holding guns. They started chanting something else, the words barely more than a growl as gunshots rang out again. They were just a warning, the men standing between the crowd and the girl already slowly retreating.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 102