Between Worlds (Pendant Series Book 3)

by Austin, Cynthia

  He reached behind him and the box reappeared. He opened it and revealed its sparkling diamond. His words matched the romantic intensity of its sparkling presence.

  “I don’t care about anything that happened in either of our lives before this moment. Let’s only look forward. Marry me, Sidney, and we can leave this all behind. We can take Granny and move. We’ll go up to my parents’ cabin and live in the sticks where nobody cares about fortune and fame. We’ll just be Mr. and Mrs. Ryker.”

  I laughed as the tears of happiness slid down my cheeks. “Okay, Ray, I’ll marry you.”

  He slipped the beautiful ring on my finger and it fit so perfectly, as if this ring had always been meant for me.

  I knew in my heart it was true.

  This time, we would be happy forever.

  Chapter 6

  Turn it Off

  I still had to go to work but Ray couldn’t wait to begin our new lives as Mr. and Mrs. Ryker. We agreed I would finally give Bob my two-week notice.

  Ray was going to the hospital to get all of the paperwork done in order to have Granny transported to the cabin and away from the haunting memories our little town continuously seemed to inflict on all of us.

  I thought with more than a little elation, I’m finally leaving this place once and for all.

  I kissed Ray goodbye as we stood in the doorframe of Granny’s home.

  “Have a nice day, soon-to-be Mrs. Ryker. See you at dinner,” he said softly as he refused to loosen his grip on me.

  I smiled at my new name, clutching onto him just as tightly. “Be sure to keep your lips sealed until I get home. I want to be with you when we tell your parents.”

  Ray nodded with a smile plastered across his face. “Remember to give Bob your notice. Two weeks and then we’re gone. We’re never coming back here, Sid.”

  I never thought those words could make me so happy. I was finally going to escape this place of torment. Sneaking one more kiss, I reluctantly let go of my handsome fiancé and headed toward the truck.

  Four more hours and then I’ll get to see him again, I thought with a perma-grin melded on my face.

  Work was a breeze as I skipped around the store, happy to show off my ring to anyone who seemed the slightest bit interested. The magnificent piece of jewelry overwhelmed my finger and seemed to generate conversation all on its own.

  I thought telling Bob I was quitting was going to be difficult, but it actually proved to be just the opposite.

  It felt liberating.

  I think we both knew this was a long time coming. He even offered to put in a transfer request to a different store further north but I politely declined the offer. I knew Ray and I would have limited time to ourselves before he would have to go back out on the road, and I wanted to ensure that every second leading up to that point would be spent with my future husband.

  Of course thoughts of Adrian still danced around my brain. At first the tiny movements were like a subtle ballerina, barely scratching the surface with her tiny delicate feet. But as the day progressed, the thoughts grew stronger until they were like an intense tap dancer pounding forcefully on my brain. Despite my orders, my mind refused to forget him.

  I did my best to ignore them. I had moved on.

  But my dreams continued to replay in my brain. They continued to haunt me with their vividness. There had to be some logical explanation for it all; beginning with the Garden. Perhaps Granny did read that distorted bible story to me as a child and somehow in the back of my subconscious, it seemed to resurface when I slept. But that still didn’t explain why Adrian had that book. He also didn’t deny it when I accused him of being Samael. That was not part of my dream. That was real.

  I shook the thoughts out of my head and continued with my tasks at work. It no longer mattered who Adrian was or how he had become associated with Lilly. I was leaving this town behind and in it, I was leaving Adrian. Ray had forgiven me for my mistake and now it was time to focus on him and us.

  Adrian had Lilly now and they could both try to swallow the bullshit they fed to each other. They could both choke on it for all I cared. Lilly was a masochistic bitch and if that’s the kind of company he kept, then I wanted nothing more to do with him. I couldn’t believe that all this time I had felt sorry for Adrian’s sad feelings of lost love only to find out it was over her. It made me sick with anger. As I prepared to leave the store that evening, I banished the unpleasant thoughts from my brain. I said goodbye to Bob and headed out, eager to spend the night with my fiancé.

  ***

  The first thing I noticed when I arrived home from work that evening was the broken glass. Tiny shards of crystal littered the front porch.

  Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

  What the hell?

  It sounded like I was walking across hard, frozen snow as my shoes crushed the glass below. Following the path of destruction with my eyes, I saw the big picture window had been shattered and the front door was ajar. I could feel my blood turn to ice as I realized what may have happened. I had defied the killers’ order to stay away from Ray and…

  Had they returned?

  Immediately, I pushed through the door and sprinted to Granny’s bedroom. I collapsed in relief upon seeing my dear relative lying in her bed. She was alive, her chest slowly rising before falling back down into her stomach.

  “Oh Granny,” I breathed, as I tried to calm myself down and think of a rational explanation for the broken window. Maybe Ray had accidently locked himself out and he had no choice but to break the window in order to regain entry into the house?

  Scratching my head, I slowly climbed to my feet, not convinced. My work was less than a mile down the road. If Ray needed to get into the house, he could have just stopped by the store and asked for the key.

  Walking over to inspect my Granny a bit more thoroughly, I noticed something that I hadn’t seen the first time around.

  As her chest rose up, so did a piece of paper.

  Its edge was curled up, flapping like the delicate wing of a sparrow with the motions of Granny’s breathing.

  It was a note addressed to me.

  I took a few steps closer as the warning bells began blaring in my ears. The handwriting was familiar. I had seen it before, when I lay in the hospital bed the day after the attack in my backyard. Detective Albright had given me the note which had the same recognizable penmanship. It had been written by the same person who killed Nouri.

  I gingerly picked the note up off Granny’s chest and began to read it. In the two seconds it took to piece together the words so eloquently scrawled across the paper, my perfect world collapsed.

  Why take old when you can have new? Granny’s safe, but Ray may be singing a different tune. I’d rather take him underground than dear old Granny anyway.

  Take Ray underground? What could that possibly mean other than to kill him?

  I stuffed the note into my back pocket and rushed out of Granny’s room in a mad dash to get help.

  “Chrissy!” My voice echoed through the silent house.

  No answer.

  I ran back into the living room, my feet feeling like heavy blocks of sludge.

  “Chrissy!” I yelled again.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I could see a yellow light protruding from the crack in the bathroom door. She must be taking a shower.

  I spun around to retrieve my phone to call Detective Albright. I had to save Ray before it was too late. But as I turned around my eyes met those familiar green eyes that still possessed the ability to take my breath away. Even in the midst of disaster.

  Adrian stood in the open entrance of the house. Confusion and worry lined his face. “What happened?” he asked.

  “They took Ray,” I cried as I rushed toward Adrian, reaching into my back pocket to retrieve the note.

  Resilient to my hysterics, Adrian focused only on one thought, “Ray was here?”

  I shoved the note into Adrian’s hand, forcing him to read it. After a long pause,
he finally realized he wouldn’t get any more details from me until he began to cooperate. Tearing his eyes away from mine, he looked down at the note.

  And then his expression changed. It darkened, in the same way it did when he visited me in the hospital after my attack. He focused so hard on the note that I had to nudge him to break his concentration and help me devise a plan.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked frantically.

  Adrian only stared at the fading scar that graced my hairline as his mouth twisted into a grotesque frown. He held up the note. “Do you think the same person who wrote this note hit you on the head?”

  I nodded in response. “Of course they did. Whoever wrote that note murdered Nouri!”

  “Lil.” He breathed the name so quietly I wasn’t even sure I heard him correctly.

  I stood still, waiting for Adrian to repeat himself, but he remained frozen, staring at the note. Finally, he looked up at me and I saw a side of him I had never witnessed before.

  Adrian was seething. “She’s my sister, Sidney. I never told you about her because I haven’t seen her in years. She may as well be dead to me.”

  I was immediately confused. Lilly was Adrian’s sister?

  Isn’t that what the man in my dream told me?

  I refused to believe it and now the truth was smacking me in the face. I had rationalized to myself that the dreams hadn’t been real, that my mind was still groggy with sleep when I accused Adrian of being Samael. But now, the truth was confronting me with cold, hard facts. At that point, I started to silently freak out again, but at the same time, I was a little relieved to hear that Lilly was his sister and not his long lost lover; as I had initially suspected.

  “How?” I asked him. It was not a specific question but it was soon to be followed by more detailed ones as they poured out of me. How are my dreams real, how is Lilly your sister? How did she find you? How everything? “I mean, her last name is Lavelle.”

  Adrian tersely explained the surname. “It’s an alias. I had no idea my sister was the one Ray was sleeping with in LA.” He put his hands in the air, palms up. “I swear.”

  I believed him.

  “She told me all the gory details after you ran out of the house this morning. I’m really sorry, Sidney. I never meant for you to be hurt by all this.”

  I shook my head, not ready to get into this. “It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is that I find Ray.”

  I knew that every time I mentioned Ray’s name it was a punch to Adrian’s gut, but I had to focus on what was important here. Wherever Ray was, I knew he was running out of time. I had to save him.

  “Tell me what you remember,” Adrian persisted.

  I shot him a look of confusion, laced with impatience.

  He clarified his question. “You called me Samael this morning. What do you remember?”

  I shook my head, becoming angry with the time we were losing to find Ray. “It was just a dream I’ve been having. You reminded me of him. That’s all. Please help me,” I begged.

  I could see Adrian struggling with himself, deciding whether he wanted to help or not. After a few more seconds of indecision he finally let out a sigh of defeat, and reluctantly agreed to help me. “Okay, I think I know where they might be.”

  Chapter 7

  Burn Bright

  It was getting dark as we approached the cemetery that evening. It was late September and the days were growing shorter. As darkness enveloped the small town of Noddington Heights, I sensed a sort of evil seep into the graveyard.

  Adrian was trudging a few steps ahead of me and I had to run to keep up with him. He was not happy about helping me find Ray.

  As soon as I saw the brick and wrought iron entrance it seemed the sky grew even darker, with a semblance of fog.

  A creepy kind of mist was rolling in.

  It reminded me of a time years ago, when Chrissy and I had taken a walk through the cemetery at midnight on Halloween. We had ended up spooking ourselves when we went to exit the gates and noticed a group of raccoons climbing out of the two large oak trees next to the stone pillars. I swear they gave us a threatening look, stood up on their hind legs, and hissed at us. Both Chrissy and I ran away screaming. We found a hole in the cyclone fence and flew underneath it. We even took the long way back to the car to ensure we steered clear of those little beasts.

  Tonight, as Adrian and I entered the cemetery, I had a feeling that what waited for us was much worse than a pack of wild raccoons.

  Adrian seemed to accelerate his pace as he began to climb the dirt hill leading up to his family’s mausoleum.

  “Can you please slow down?” I shouted.

  He reached into his demin pockets and pulled out his only stress reliever. Stopping at the top of the hill, he thumped the cigarette box against his hand, ripped the cellophane pack open with his teeth, spit the wrapper on the ground, and pulled a cancer stick out of the box.

  While waiting for me, he cupped his hands around it and lit his cigarette. He inhaled and slowly released the toxic poisons from his mouth just as I finally caught up to him. They crossed through the air directly toward me, causing me to cough as I felt the damn smoke violate my nose. He was slowly killing me with his bad habits.

  Then, he turned serious. “I need to talk to you about last night.”

  He was not going to let this go.

  Exhausted and out of breath, I plopped down on the dirt next to his feet. Staring straight ahead, unable to look at him, I blurted out, “Last night was a mistake.”

  I didn’t look up to see his reaction. I couldn’t face him.

  After a few agonizing seconds of silence, I heard his feet pound against the earth as he headed toward his family’s crypt. I slowly picked myself off the ground and followed him, intentionally keeping my distance.

  As we descended the steps, I realized why Adrian had thought of this place. The note mentioned taking Ray underground and this crypt was hidden beneath the earth. The missive made perfect sense. I just hoped we weren’t too late.

  When we finally made it to the masoleum, I was flooded with dissappointment. It was empty. “Where could they be?” I cried, panic beginning to set in.

  But Adrian no longer chose to humor me, he had some issues of his own he still wanted to resolve. “We lit this fire, Sidney. Nobody else helped us. It was us. Now you’re standing in front of me saying it was a mistake?”

  I stood there with my arms crossed, completely confused. At this point, I didn’t know if I was making the right decision or not. Every second spent with Adrian seemed right. But now with Lilly in the picture, and those dreams, things were getting too weird.

  Besides, how could I just throw away the last two and a half years with Ray? How could I work so hard at something I wanted so badly and when I finally got it, walk away?

  He had proposed to me. I couldn’t abandon what Ray and I had now. Furthermore, I couldn’t abandon Ray. He was in danger and I had to find him.

  “Ray’s not here. We should go,” I suggested.

  “Just answer me truthfully, Sidney. Was it really a mistake?”

  We stood on the cold brick floor staring at each other. Adrian was determined, waiting for an answer to his question, but I couldn’t say it. The minutes crept by and soon the sun disappeared from the sky. Eventually, we had to light a sconce to see inside the dreary tomb. Even then, I couldn’t deliver the answer Adrian wanted from me.

  “I love you, Sidney. And you said you loved me too. Do you even understand what that word means because so far in your life, everyone that tells you they love you has left you. Your mom, your dad, and Ray.”

  His words hurt, even if it was the truth.

  “I’ve stayed in this town for you, Sidney. I would trade everything to stay with you. Can’t you see that?”

  I carefully tried to soften my words in a way that would hurt Adrian as little as possible. But this wasn’t going to be easy.

  I quickly learned there was no painless wa
y to tell him, and I watched his face as each one of my words hit him like an emotional fist. “Everything you’re saying about me is the exact same way I feel about Ray.”

  He lifted his hands up to his head and began running them through his long black hair in frustration. Taking one last long drag on his cigarette, he flicked it on the ground and stomped the ember out.

  “I warned you, Sidney. I warned you before we even got involved to be sure that you knew what you wanted. I told you I don’t play games. I play for keeps. I thought you understood that.”

  “I thought that was what I wanted too. But that was before…”

  I stopped talking. I had said too much.

  Adrian had no idea about Ray’s proposal and at the moment, he didn’t seem stable enough to hear it. He was beginning to frighten me and I wasn’t sure if he could handle that kind of news right now.

  He caught my abrupt stop. He knew I was hiding something. He walked directly over to me, never taking his eyes off of mine. I took a step back but there was nothing but a wall behind me. I had no place to go. Once again I was trapped with him.

  “Before what?” he questioned, searching my eyes, looking for any hint of deception. I looked at the ground but he grabbed my chin with his hand and forced me to hold his gaze. “You thought you wanted me before what, Sidney?” he demanded.

  I bit my lower lip in anticipation of his anger and revealed only part of the truth; the obvious part. “Before Ray and I got back together, Adrian. I’ve decided to stay with him.”

  Releasing me, Adrian took a step back and automatically reached for his pocket. I put my hand on his but he cringed at my touch. Ignoring his dejection, I nodded toward his cigarettes, “Please don’t,” I begged. “You know how I feel about those.”

  He blinked, his eyes mixed with disbelief and a little bit of contempt at the nerve I had to ask him to do anything. It broke my heart for him to look at me like that.

  He took a couple steps back and defiantly pulled out the cigarette against my wishes.