We stopped for a moment in the clear air, catching our breath and looking back. The bodies were nothing but writhing limbs now, rolling on the pavement or stretching out of the crumbled building.
My skin pricked, sensing something I couldn’t see. I searched the ash and dust. I searched the sky.
“Felix, are you okay?”
The vibration was so faint I thought it was in my gut. A memory. A nightmare. I looked up, the buzzing burning like a match between my ears. The dark cloud rose above the dust and then it headed straight for us.
49
Rodrigo
Another lash comes down, the braid sticking to wounds I can hardly feel any more. It slides, slick as it trails my blood onto the floor. But it isn’t my blood they want.
I haven’t shed a tear in eighteen months and twenty-seven days. But every morning and every evening they still come, trying to force from me a storm that will make them immortal. It doesn’t work that way and my tears only prolong the inevitable. My life is the only elixir but it’s gone now and all that’s left are these false things that fall from my eyes. Dreams.
But I can’t tell them it’s all just a dream. My tears. This life. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. And if they did…then she’d have nothing to find once she finally ripped apart these bars and these men with the hands I used to kiss and press upon my face. She’d have nothing left to save. And I wouldn’t either.
50
Domingo
“You should have brought Stassi.” Valentina traced the top of her coffee mug. She gripped it in her fist and then it cracked. “We have to get her out of there before—”
“Relax.” Lathan sat across from her.
“I’m sure Domingo has a plan,” Charles added.
They all looked to me. For the past three years I’d been the one everyone turned to when we needed to find the way. I’d been Lathan’s third in command after Michael, his tracker, his friend. And then somewhere along the way, as the desolate road we’d been travelling in search of our Dreamers continued to stretch and fall off into the distance with no sign of our soul mates, we’d become something more. Valentina and Lathan were my family. Could I really betray my family?
“We’ll help you find her body,” Valentina said. “Whatever it takes.”
“We can leave tonight,” Charles said.
None of us had seen Charles in weeks and he’d been the first to arrive at Lathan’s safe house. His Dreamer was still intact; would be even after he woke up in his body. Because he still had a body to wake up in.
“No.” I’d spoken too quickly and I backtracked. “I mean…you know how maddening it is. The searching. I don’t know if I’m ready.”
Valentina gripped my shoulder and then she rested her forehead against it. “I’m so sorry, Domingo.” She looked up at me. “It just isn’t fair.”
I wondered how long it would be before I was holding her down or holding her back, telling her the same thing.
Lathan watched their Dreamers where they rested in front of the fireplace. Two summers ago he and I had laid the brick while Andre took out his frustrations by chopping down half the forest. Logs from that summer were still stacked against the wall, the smell of them burning giving me chills.
“What are we going to do?” Valentina watched the Dreamers too, the shadow of flames painting Rodrigo’s forearms.
I remembered her telling me the story once of how they’d met. Only once. Out of all of the Rogues, Valentina talked about her Dreamer the least, and when she did the memory and the mystery of his disappearance drilled her with holes. As she watched Rodrigo now, wrapped and stitched and mending in front of the fire, I knew pieces of her were mending too.
I wondered if she was remembering her father’s restaurant and the song Rodrigo had played the first night he performed there. When his fingers had tripped over the strings, distracted by the girl who was sitting on the bar, by the flames in her eyes that recognized him instantly. Or maybe she was waiting for him to finally tell her where he’d been. Not the sand swept prison where she’d found him but the years before. The years between their wedding day and the day Anso sold him.
Her jawline tensed as her ears trained on the sound of snow against the windows. She was waiting for something. Probably Bryn. I didn’t want to think about what she would do when she finally showed up.
Lathan rapped his knuckles against the kitchen table and I tensed, my own ears trained on the front door, on the sound of footsteps I knew would appear any moment.
“You alright, Domingo?” Lathan grabbed two beers from the fridge and handed me one.
I stared down at the cap, picking at the creases. “I’m tired.” It was a safe answer because it was a true one.
“Tell me about it.” Charles took a long swig of his beer. “And yet, I still can’t sit still. I guess when you spend half your life searching for something your mind and your body just don’t know how to stop. I feel like I should still be out there. Doing something.”
“We all feel that way,” Lathan said.
This was the first time Lathan and I had been alone together since he’d come out of hiding. It felt strange and I wondered how much small talk I should make, how much more pretending to be his friend I should do before he found out I wasn’t. That was the part that had my shirt collar soaked, hands sweating against my cold beer. I’d spent almost as many years looking for Lathan as I had Stassi. What if the choice I’d made to stand with Bryn would only send him back into hiding?
“It’s almost over,” he said.
His confidence was confusing. Lathan was a smart guy and it was hard to believe that he really thought it would all be that easy. That he could hide his Dreamer until the end of the world. Could he really let that happen?
I set my beer down on the table, unopened. “Is it?”
Valentina studied me. “What do you know?”
“Nothing. That’s why I’m asking.” I faced Lathan. “If you’ve figured out some kind of loophole that would be good news for all of us.”
Lathan downed half of his beer. “No loopholes.”
I eased back in my chair. “Then what’s the plan?”
Valentina raised an eyebrow. “We fight.”
Lathan rapped the table again, thinking. “No.”
“No?” Valentina turned to him, slow.
Lathan sighed. “Aren’t you tired of fighting?”
“Aren’t you forgetting that’s what we were made for?” she shot back.
Lathan leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “Not anymore.”
Valentina crossed her arms. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, guys.” Charles leaned into their line of sight. “This isn’t helping.”
Lathan’s face churned red. “You know exactly what it means.”
Valentina stood, her chair slamming against the wall. I stood too, afraid she might try to make a run for it.
“You know how long we looked for them,” she said.
Lathan stared past Valentina. Rodrigo, Cora, and Callum were looking back.
“I also know how long they waited to be found,” Lathan finally said.
I expected Valentina to erupt, to perceive Lathan’s understanding as a betrayal. I expected her to destroy something—me, Lathan, maybe even herself. Instead, her back pressed to the wall and then she slid all the way down. She ducked her head against her knees.
“You’re not hiding here,” Valentina said. “You’re waiting.”
Lathan’s face was covered in lines. Tears traced them to his chin. “It’s what she wants.”
“And you? You don’t get a say?”
Lathan choked. “No.”
In the corner of my eye I saw Cora ease onto her feet. She followed the sound of Lathan’s sighs until she was sitting on his knee.
Valentina glared at her. “You’re going to kill him.”
Cora ran her thumbs over Lathan’s face, my mind trying to make sense of the emotions flitting behin
d her eyes. The closer I looked the harder it was to breathe. I stared at my hands instead, trying not to let Valentina’s anger seep through my skin.
Rogues and Dreamers weren’t supposed to exist apart. Without a Dreamer, Rogues weren’t supposed to exist at all. Not just because it was fate, not just because we were created for one purpose and one purpose only. But because the distance between Stassi and me, between Rodrigo and Valentina was a serrated chain, linked to every organ and every nerve and every breath. One step too far in the opposite direction and that chain would cut us in half but the years and thousands of miles we’d been apart had cut us into a million pieces.
It was a pain that could hardly be called that. Because pain implies feeling. This was something much worse. And if Lathan’s Dreamer died, something much worse would happen to him too. I’d already seen the agony sprouting in Shay. If Cora died Lathan wouldn’t just be heartbroken. He’d cease to exist.
Valentina scowled as he disappeared right before her eyes. “She’s going to kill you.”
“So I’ll be dead here on earth for another forty years and then I’ll wake up in her arms.”
“He’ll forget.” Cora’s voice rose above a whisper for the first time since I’d arrived. “After years have passed, the pain will let go of him and he’ll forget how much it hurt. He’ll go on living and he’ll forget.” She narrowed her gaze on Valentina. “I will never forget.”
“So you’re both giving up.” Valentina stood. “Then you were made for each other.”
Valentina rushed to the room she’d been staying in, mumbling something in Spanish about Rodrigo and her parents and their house in Argentina as she threw her clothes into a duffel bag. She zipped on her coat before stomping into her boots. She swiped a set of keys and her burner from the kitchen counter. And then she stopped.
Rodrigo stood in front of her and even with his chest pushed out, even with the two inches that made him slightly taller, he still looked like a boy. As if the memory of being small, of being lesser had been dragged out of him and now he was just a shell of the man who’d married Valentina. But maybe he was still strong enough to stop her.
“Rodrigo…” She froze, searching his eyes for solace, for some proof that she wasn’t alone.
He didn’t speak, his silence chipping away at her.
She collapsed, her bag and her coat and her husband falling down with her. “Don’t do this,” she pleaded.
“It’s done,” he whispered back.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
He pressed her hands to his mouth, whispering the truth into her skin. “It’s done.”
The knock on the door sent a jolt through everyone in the room. We stared at the stained glass, trying to count the number of faces on the other side.
“It’s them.” Valentina looked to Lathan. “Isn’t it?” She rose to her feet, clenched fists turning gold. “How did they know where we were?”
Lathan led Cora to her feet and then he stood. “Because Domingo told them.”
51
Bryn
Roman and I stared into the stained glass, wondering if knocking would really be better than the ambush Andre had originally suggested. He and Shay were still monitoring the windows and side door near the back of the house but the last thing I wanted was to come in swinging. That would only cause Valentina to swing back and I didn’t want to fight with her. I didn’t want to cause her more pain than was already promised.
I raised a fist to the door, reflection of a fire crackling behind the glass. The flames were natural, someone leaning to stoke the logs. My hand fell. I expected Roman to ask me if I was okay or do the hard thing and knock himself. But he wasn’t staring at the glass anymore. He was staring at his hands. They were smoking.
A trace of smoke danced behind his eyes too, evaporating the minute I touched him. He jumped.
“Roman…” I barely breathed his name, afraid of drawing attention to our outlines outside the door and also of chasing away whatever vision he’d been trapped in. I needed to know what Sebastían had made him see.
He just shook his head, confused and still on high alert. I moved to reach for him again and then I felt a shock. I gripped my skull with both hands, panting against the surge. It felt like lightning. Like knives and ice and fire. I closed my eyes, swimming in black again. I could sense Sebastían adrift in it too. Looking for me.
Out. Out. Out. Get out!
Sebastían’s hold weakened, his presence dissipating as I fell against the door. I froze, easing back as the buttons on my jacket scraped the wood. Then there were footsteps.
We’d expected them to run or to burn the house down. We even considered the possibility of it all being a trap, Valentina and Lathan so desperate to save their Dreamers that they were willing to kill us in the process, or at least try. What we didn’t expect was for Lathan to open the door and invite us inside. When he did, Roman had to nudge me forward, my muscles frozen in anticipation of something worse.
By the time we were all sitting around the fire I was struck by the idea that maybe it was all a dream, something planted and manufactured. But then Lathan spoke and I knew his pain was real. Not the kind created by Anso but the kind created by love.
“I’m sorry…” I’d meant for being distracted and losing the sound of his voice but I knew he thought I’d meant for coming at all.
Instead of responding, he stood. And then he kept walking. Through the back door of the cabin. Into the snow.
“I’ll go check on him,” Andre said, following.
“Lathan may be too weak to keep fighting but I’m not.” Valentina spoke under her breath, the threat hidden beneath the crackle of flames.
“You think we want things to end this way?” Roman sat forward. “You think Bryn wants to have to do any of this?”
The heat radiating from Valentina’s skin met him half way. “I think you’d rather get it over with as fast as possible instead of looking for another way.” Her voice cracked, betraying what was really fueling her anger. “Have you even tried?”
Memories snowballed until I saw my father’s face just before the shadows ripped him from his body. I saw him gripping my shoulders, trying to shake me with some kind of revelation. Find another way, Bryn…find another way.
He’d been trying to save my life and yet, here I was, about to be three Dreamers closer to fulfilling the very prophecy he’d begged me to avoid. Finding the Dreamers was supposed to ensure my death and it had. Now I had no choice but to find the Dreamers and fulfill the rest. But Valentina wasn’t convinced. She looked at me as if I did have a choice and I was making the wrong one. Was I?
I finally looked at her, our eyes locking as she looked back. “I’m dead too,” I said. “Remember?”
Roman’s face fell.
“I know what I’m taking from you because it’s the same thing I’m taking from Roman. The same thing that’ll be taken from me. You might not believe that I care whether your Dreamer lives or dies but don’t you think I care about living myself? Don’t you think I want to live?”
Her gaze tilted, a challenge in it. “No, I don’t.”
My face warmed and I looked away, afraid of being transparent. “I’m not the same.”
“So, what? Now all of the sudden you want to live? Because according to all of those people holed up at Celia’s it was just a few days ago that you left Roman behind so you could venture off on some suicide mission and finish this before he even got a chance to say goodbye.” She bristled. “Is that what you meant when you said you were taking something from him?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roman was still only because he was thinking. Probably that she was right. But he stood up for me anyway. He forgave me anyway.
“You’re delusional,” she said.
“So are you.” There wasn’t a hint of aggression in his voice. Instead there was pity and it wasn’t just directed at her.
“I’d rather be delusional and still fighting tha
n delusional and giving up.”
“Valentina…” Her Dreamer emerged from the hallway. His voice was bigger than he was, old wounds making him stiff beneath his clothes. He was swimming in them, one hand hiking up a pair of Lathan’s pants to keep them from falling.
Valentina stood, fighting with whether to help him to the couch or to block him from view. He stepped past her. And then he froze. Struck by something. He stared at my face, tracing my features as if he were reading a map. One whose pathways he knew by heart.
“Bry—n.” His voice broke halfway through my name.
Valentina interpreted it as exhaustion. The look in his eyes said it was something else. They flashed wet and I thought he might reach for me.
Valentina stepped into his line of sight. “You need to rest.”
He reached for the couch instead. Valentina sunk next to him, defeated and afraid. Her eyes snapped to my face, waiting for me to make a move. Rodrigo leaned forward, still reading my face. Still…remembering.
That was the strange glint in his eye, the unease in every breath. He was reliving something. He was remembering something. Me.
“You know me,” I finally said.
I didn’t know what Rodrigo dreamed about or what he could do. I feared that maybe he could see death like Alma or maybe the future. Maybe he had access to an alternate reality, one where I was some kind of monster, or maybe there was an infinite number of realities and he’d seen the destruction I’d caused in every single one.
But then he smiled. Tired. Relieved. “I’ve been dreaming of you.”
Valentina stilled. “What are you talking about?”
He took her hand, holding onto it as he waded back through his memories. His thoughts must have snagged on one because he grimaced. He let out a breath and then he said, “I’m supposed to give you something.”
“No.” Valentina turned to him. “Stop it. Please.”
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 129