by Kasi Blake
It was against the law to cross over without written permission from the Van Helsing Group. Knowing this didn’t stop Bay-Lee, yet it made her cautious. She locked her bedroom door and closed the curtains. According to Van there were only a handful of people who could cross over without months of training and effort.
She was one of them.
Bay-Lee lay on the bed, spread-eagle as if she was a human X. While teaching her how to cross over, Van had warned her even the slightest distraction could wake her before the trip was complete. First she needed to relax, completely relax. That wasn’t an easy feat considering the epic amount of stuff floating around in her brain. She had questions about her visitors from last night, about Connor’s odd reaction to the rock star’s death, and about the secret Van was supposedly keeping from her.
She needed to clear her mind.
Bay-Lee breathed the way Van taught her. Eyes closed, she took easy breaths, in and out, and she pictured the oxygen light blue in color. It slid into her lungs. When she exhaled, the color changed to a deeper, darker blue and her body began to float.
She stared up at the ceiling as she drifted away on an invisible cloud.
She needed to know when to jerk herself awake on the other side. Van explained it as the time we are caught between waking and sleeping. Everyone experienced it at some point during their lives, but few understood what it meant. They complained about a falling sensation as if they’d stepped off a cliff, but in that precise moment they had one foot in the Spirit Realm.
In seconds she felt like she was falling. This was the crucial moment. Other people automatically jerked awake, back where they started, but she’d trained herself to ignore the disturbing sensation. Letting herself fall, she waited. The horrible feeling only lasted a moment.
Shadows formed on the ceiling. They danced as she watched. A few of them formed faces and began to talk to each other. This was the turning point. Now she just needed to jerk herself awake on the other side before she began to travel backwards. It had to be done quickly. If she wasn’t fast enough, the ghouls would attack.
According to Van ghouls lived in the space between here and there, waiting in the darkness to snatch people from this world. No one knew what they wanted with the people they took, and she didn’t want to find out firsthand.
Bay-Lee inhaled one last time and held the breath tight in her chest. She forced herself to wake up in the Spirit Realm. The shadows slowly disappeared. Her bedroom seemed to return to normal, but she wasn’t fooled. The image of the house momentarily crossed over with her. It would vanish along with the shadows soon enough.
She jumped off the bed and raced out her now unlocked bedroom door. The house was empty. Connor remained in the real world, probably sitting in front of the television. She hurried down the stairs, taking them two at a time. An eerie feeling squelched her excitement. She hesitated at the front door. This would be her last visual of the world she’d left behind.
It was weird how comfortable she felt in the Spirit Realm, like she belonged there. Maybe that was due to the fact she was forced to live a lie. She could be herself on this side of reality.
She opened the front door and stepped outside with a joyful spring in her step. Even though it was daytime back home, it was night in the Realm. Monsters lived in a world of perpetual darkness. Instead of a lush lawn, Bay-Lee found a barren land, no sign of civilization except for a lonely strip of road and a row of streetlights, totally out of place in the vast wilderness. It didn’t matter where a person crossed over. There was always a road.
A line of dead trees bordered the dark forest where the werewolf population lived. The street was the safest place to be. Humming to herself, she headed for the unmarked street. She couldn’t resist a last look at the house. It faded into the darkness until it completely disappeared. Now she was alone, free.
The Van Helsing family, beginning with the great Bertram, had worked with paid employees and hunters over the decades to install a road and lights along the border. Although Bertram was famous for discovering vampires—the infamous books got his first name wrong—he’d also been the first to find the doorway to the Spirit Realm, and he’d founded the school for hunters that Van now presided over.
The Realm was usually a quiet place. Not this time. As she finished the transition from her side to this one, the sounds of war hit her ears, confusing her. Bullets flew and tiny explosions rocked the barren land around her. Men dressed as soldiers raced over the dirty terrain in pursuit of a monster. Muddy boots slapped against asphalt as another line of soldiers marched down the road.
Bay-Lee heard a low growl behind her.
She spun around, moving backwards, and inadvertently stepped into the light.
Something hard hit her from the side, tackling her around the waist. Knocked off her feet, she went flying sideways. They landed in the dirt and rolled together. When they finally stopped, the weight of a man settled on top of her, holding her down. She viciously kicked and pushed at the stranger, wondering if it was a vampire or a werewolf. He bit off a curse word and lifted his head so he could look down at her. His husky voice and face immediately registered with her. Frozen in disbelief, she stared up into familiar jungle green eyes.
They spoke simultaneously.
“You,” she breathed.
He growled, “You!”
Chapter Four
CROSSROADS DINER