The Space Within (The Book of Phoenix #3) (3 page)

Asia gave a sharp nod, and we both tensed to jump. But something large and dark flew at us through the hole. A rush of Lakari souls, but that wasn’t all. A giant human-ish body with a torso the size of a truck, bulging limbs as thick as redwoods, and a reptilian-like head with multiple horns, everything covered in a green, leathery skin. It charged through the hole in the Gate.

The light walls cracked and disintegrated, and water rushed over us. I tried to find my regulator, while also reaching for Asia’s to help her. The hole from another world somehow remained open, though, with Darkness filling it and trying to push through. Guardians fought back, keeping as many as possible from entering our world. Especially that beast.

Once the regulator was back in my mouth and I could breathe again, I pushed off the bay floor and shoved at the thing’s head with my whole body. It pushed back with a force stronger than anything I’d faced before. I palmed the knife strapped to my leg and yanked it out. As Asia and the Guardians’ souls held the creature half in and half out of the hole, I stabbed it in the eye and plunged the blade deep into its brain—assuming it had one. It fell still, its head hanging through the gap in the Gate’s wall as a thick, black substance swirled into the water around us. We shoved the creature back through, and the hole closed up. Several Guardians shut down the lights of the Gate and sealed it up again. Others took off after the Lakari souls that had made it through and had already soared for the Earth’s surface. Asia and I swam back for shore slower than we’d come, impeded not so much from the physicality of the fight, but from the defeat weighing heavy in our souls.

How could that thing be so solid and pass through? We’d thought only spirit forms could enter the Gate, and Asia and I had been banking on a slim bit of hope that it would take us since it had taken Leni, Brock, and Bex in their bodies. We hadn’t considered physical bodies coming
in
, however. This changed everything. If huge beasts like this could get through to Earth, what would we truly be up against?

By the time we waded out of the water, the fight with the Lakari was over and most of the projected souls had returned to their bodies. Dozens of Guardians stood by the water’s edge, waiting for us.

“What the hell was that thing?” I demanded as soon as I could talk. I yanked the equipment off and threw it on the ground.

“Nobody knows,” Kel, a Guardian from our Gate, said.

“Never seen anything like it,” Yoshi added. “Nobody has.”

I scanned over the dozens of faces in front of me. “
Nobody
remembers anything like that? Not from any world you’ve ever been on? Any life?”

Silence met my question.

“So where did it come from?” Mat, Kel’s boyfriend, asked. “Because that’s not something easily forgotten. I know
I’d
remember it, and I don’t care how long ago the past life was. That thing was fucked up and something that would stick.” He jabbed at his temple as he said it.

Several people murmured in agreement. I was right there with him. We only had glimpses of past lives and worlds, but that thing would be one of the first memories I’d be able to recall. No doubt about it.

“It’s obvious,” Asia said, her voice heavy. “It came with the Lakari, none of us remember seeing one before, and its Darkness was …
solid
. It had to have come from one of the lowest worlds. One of the Darkest.”

“If any of those get all the way through, Earth will go Dark fast,” Kel said. “We can’t allow them in.”

“Damn straight,” Mat agreed, crossing his arms over his chest. “It was
solid
. In. Its. Body. We can’t let that shit into this world.”

Everyone nodded in consent, and some shouted it out.

“Sorry, Jeric, but there’s only one thing we can do,” Melinda said. “We have to keep the Gates sealed. We have no choice.”

Asia and I looked at each other. Her eyes filled with the same mix of emotions roiling through me. I pushed my hands through my hair, blew out an angry breath and stalked off. My chest felt like cement had filled my lungs. My heart was tight and small. I’d never felt such an overwhelming sense of loss, not even when my parents and sister had died.

With long, forceful strides, I walked until I was far enough away to be out of sight. When I stopped, one hand dropped to my hip and the other squeezed the bridge of my nose. I had to compel myself to breathe, the air tearing through my lungs as they tried to inflate against the thousand-pound pressure on my chest. My eyes squeezed shut against the burn in them, only to see Leni’s face and those beautiful sea-green eyes on the backs of my lids. A sob pushed at my throat.

I may never see her again. We may never be together—not just in this lifetime, but ever. Our souls would be lost to the Darkness. Because if the Gate had been trying to connect Asia and me to where Brock and Leni were, then they were stuck in the same world where that evil beast had come from. They were in the lowest realms of Hell, and we had no way of getting them back.

Chapter 3

Two more days had passed that felt like two lifetimes. When I wasn’t taking Bex outside to pee, I remained curled in a ball by the fire with my one measly blanket wrapped tightly around me, as if it could hold the pieces of me together. My chest ached. My stomach remained in a tight knot. My muscles felt weak and quaky when I used them, and my skin constantly crawled like something lived underneath it. I couldn’t believe I’d become addicted to a damn man—a man!—but here I was, having serious physical withdrawals. Sometimes this Twin Flames crap was really screwed up.

I couldn’t say if Brock was handling it better or worse than I was. He was taking it like a man—with anger. He constantly paced around the cavern, threw punches at the air or even the wall, and muttered or yelled obscenities. He should have been bald by now from all of the pulling he did at his dark hair while he groaned from the pain living inside him.

The agony of being apart from our other halves had become a living and breathing beast within us. It clawed at our hearts and ate on our souls, never satiating itself but definitely growing. Before long, it would consume us whole. Sometimes, letting it devour me felt so easy. I’d wanted to succumb so many times. But that was the Darkness of the world niggling its way in. I couldn’t allow that. If I gave into the Dark, Jeric would be forced to, as well. I couldn’t do that to him.

Bex and Hayden weren’t much better off than Brock and me. Although her injuries were healing miraculously fast, their souls were not. The effects of their Bonding every day kept them from worsening, but the melding no longer provided improvement against the Darkness. I could feel it settling in on them almost as quickly as it had on Brock and me. Before long, their bodies would start failing.

“Hayden, we have to go soon,” I said, my voice raspy from another night of whimpering and sobbing. Or a day of it. I’d lost track of time, but it seemed like it had been a while since the screaming that came at night. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

“We have enough meat to last a few more days yet,” he said from his spot next to Bex on the other side of the fire, where he drew lines in the dirt floor with the tip of his dagger. The gozzard may have been huge, but only certain parts of it were edible, and the four of us had been starving before it followed Brock into our lair. The meat didn’t last long. “That gives Bex a few more days to heal. She’s still too weak.”

“But we’re all going down,” I said. I glanced over at Brock, who, for once, wasn’t pacing, but sat with his knees drawn tightly to his chest, his eyes glazed over as he stared at the flames. “In a few days, we’ll
all
be too weak to travel.”

“She’s right,” Bex said, straightening to sit up on her own rather than leaning on Hayden, as though to prove herself. “I’m doing a lot better. I can walk, and I think I can even run. And this tug in our guts has gotten crazy strong. I don’t think we can fight it much longer.”

“You can’t defend yourself with a broken arm,” Hayden said.

“We’ll have to do it for her,” I said. “Isn’t it better to have one of us a little weak than all of us? Right now, we can look out for her. But the way we’re going, I can’t say we’ll be able to do that in a few days. Not even you, Hayden. Once the soul-sickness sets in, you’ll go down fast. Both of you. Do you really want to risk Bex’s soul after all of this?”

Hayden didn’t answer me. He continued dragging the point of his dagger through the dirt.

“What if your mates finally come looking for you and you’re gone?” he asked. “Waiting here for them to get us off this world is a lot safer than searching for a Gate, especially since we’re not exactly sure where it is.”

“Instinct will guide you,” I said. “And if Jeric and Asia figure it out, they’ll be able to come to us wherever we are. We were able to find you.”

“Have you even tried to contact them?” he demanded. His tone raised my hackles.

“Every minute of the day! I’m
constantly
reaching out for Jeric. And I’m getting no response. I can’t feel anything from him except the pain in his soul. However you were able to send us messages, it’s not working for me. Which means there’s a good chance the Book’s not working for them at all, and they’ll never get here. We have to go, Hayden. Sooner, not later.”

“Jacquelena’s our leader,” Brock said, his words surprising me. His eyes had focused beyond the fire, straight onto Hayden. “And you know she’s right. We need to go before we’re all taken by the Darkness. Including your Rebethannah.”

We all watched Hayden expectantly. He stopped drawing in the dirt, but gave no response. Instead, he rose to his feet and took over Brock’s usual pacing, his hands on his hips.

“We can leave in the morning,” Bex said when Hayden still didn’t concede. “That gives us another night of rest and food, and you and I can do that thing with our souls to make us stronger, Hayden. And then we need to make like a tree and leave.” He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her and opened his mouth, presumably to protest again, but she held up a hand and cocked a brow. “No arguin’ with me now. Just shut that trap of yours and listen. We don’t have a choice. I feel it, and I know you do, too. We’ve been through too much to get here only to lose each other all over again. Besides, Leni and Brock risked themselves—and Asia and Jeric, too—for
us
. We owe them, Hayden. We’re not gonna let them down. We all need this, and you know it.”

When a Southern woman was as serious as she was, a smart man didn’t argue with her. Hayden may not know Southern, but he was obviously a smart man. Finally, we’d be on our way.

We packed up and headed out at first light the next morning. We followed the pull of their souls in the direction of the Gate, moving slowly at first as Bex pushed through the ache of her healing wounds. After a while, she must have grown accustomed to the pain because she began to move faster. She was the only one not carrying a bag of supplies—Hayden carried hers for her. Mine was strapped to my back, over my raggedy sweater that was too tight across my boobs, and my knife hung from the belt that scrunched up the waist of the black pants that were too big for me. At least my boots fit fairly well, and their fit was more important than anything. We had a long walk ahead of us.

I mentally snorted at myself. Barely more than a year ago, I’d been auditioning to be a ballerina in New York City. Only a few months ago, I was dancing on stage in Italy. And here I was now, trekking through some post-apocalyptic world, prepared to fight alien creatures so I could get home to a man whose soul I shared. Since meeting Jeric, life had become so weird, but I couldn’t imagine living without him. Well, I could since I was doing it now. But this wasn’t living. This was struggling to survive until we could be together again.

We’d been traveling for what felt like a few hours over the gray, desert-like terrain when a forest appeared in the distance ahead of us.

“We don’t want to go in there,” Hayden said. “We need to go around.”

“How big is it?” I asked. “Won’t going around take longer?”

“Yeah, but trust me, we don’t want to be in that for—ahhhh.”

All three of my traveling companions screamed and clutched their heads as they fell to the ground around me. I spun in a circle, my stomach clenching with panic. Their faces twisted and their bodies thrashed as though they were in a great deal of pain, but I had no idea what caused it. I had no idea what to do.

A woman’s laugh carried across the land. My head whipped in the direction it came from. Four figures emerged from the forest, quickly headed straight for us. My extra sharp eyesight gained from the Forging must have been fading—I could barely make them out from here. Three appeared to be huge monsters, and the other quite smaller, possibly human, but I couldn’t be sure. All of them seemed to be gliding rather than running.

“Come on,” I said, tugging at Hayden. He yanked his arm out of my grip and rolled away, moaning. “Someone’s coming, Hayden! Please get up!”

“Noooo,” Bex cried, her eyes squeezed shut as she, too, rolled on the ground. “Sissssssy …”

“Asia, please,” Brock begged.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” I demanded, my neck prickling with fear. My heart raced at the thought of having to fight alone. I’d never be able to do it. “Get up!”

More laughter from the woman. Then I was suddenly not in the gray desert, but sitting in a motel room, on my cell phone, listening to my daddy tell me he didn’t have a daughter. Hearing him threaten to call the police if I bothered him or my mother again. And then I was on a street corner in Juneau, Alaska, facing my mama who had no recognition of my face at all. My heart broke as it had the other times I’d gone through the complete rejection by my own parents.

“Lovely memories, yes?” a woman said from nearby, her voice as icy as the nights on Erde.

I jerked out of the visions and refocused on my surroundings. Brock, Bex, and Hayden still lay on the gray, sandy ground, whimpering. The four figures stood a few yards away from us. The three big ones looked like gigantic dogs, but with three heads each the size of a small car. Drool hung from fangs longer than my arm, and eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. They all sat on their haunches, growling and snapping at the air. In front of them stood an average-sized woman with big, snow-white hair that reached her butt, streaked with thick chunks of jet black, perfectly clear skin as white as her hair, and eyes blacker than night. She wore a shiny, black, one-piece suit that appeared to be painted over her voluptuous body, and black, stiletto boots that reached her thighs. She looked like a villainess straight out of a comic book. She was an evil nemesis all right, but very real.

Although I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in physical form, my soul recognized her black one instantaneously.

“Enyxa,” I breathed.

Her red, full lips quirked up into a smirk. “Jacquelena. It’s been a long time.”

“Not long enough,” I said, pushing down my fear and putting on my mask of courage.

The creatures snarled.

“Watch it,” Enyxa warned as she reached up and raked her long fingernails down the mangy neck of one of the monsters. “My hellhounds don’t take well to a challenge. I wouldn’t try to run, either, although they’d
love
the chase.”

I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat and tensed my thigh muscles to keep my knees from knocking together. Trust me, I wasn’t running. Especially as my friends still lay on the ground, helpless. “What did you do to them?”

She glanced down at them, and her grin widened. “Ah, just showing them the way.”

I cocked my head. “To where?”

“To Darkness, my dear.” She gave a hand signal to her hounds, then began walking a circle around us, while the monsters remained seated. “That’s why you’re here, and what I do—escort souls to the Dark. By forcing them to relive all of the pain they suffered
and
the hurt they caused others, physical and emotional.” She stopped across the circle from me, and her dark gaze swept over the three people on the ground between us. “With as much pain and suffering you’ve all been through, your souls will go quickly. Hayden’s been a difficult one, but with Bex here in my world, they’ll both go fast.”

They all cried out. She must have given them another bad memory.

“Except for me,” I said, trying to pull her attention away from them. “My life hasn’t been so bad, and I have no loved ones to really care about. You have little to use against me, don’t you?”

She looked up at me and tilted her head as she studied my face. The smile returned as she continued her walk, coming closer.

“Oh, Jacquelena, you poor dear. You had no real love in your life this time around, did you? Did you ever think there’s a reason for that? Maybe because last time you caused the fire that killed your parents, pushed away the one man who did love you, your so-called Pops, and led your best friend to be murdered? Even in this life, you’ve rejected Theodethan, the person besides Jeremicah who cares about you most, just as your parents denied you.”

My stomach fell, and tears stung my eyes. I’d never thought about things in that way, but I could see the truth in them.
Feel
the truth. And it hurt so much. The realization of how horrible I’d been as Jacey and Leni sent my emotions crashing over me in a tidal wave. She didn’t have to make me relive it all to Darken my soul. I could already feel it tainting.

Enyxa stopped in front of me and raised her hand near my head. I flinched as she drew a fingernail down my cheek.

“Don’t worry, darling, you have
lifetimes
of pain and hurt to relive,” she drawled. “But there’s more from this one than you realize.”

White-hot pain suddenly seared through my head, blinding me. When the brightness faded, several memories ran through my mind—pushed through it by Enyxa. Memories of me shoving my fist in my mouth to stick my finger down my throat, making myself purge all the calories I’d eaten behind my mother’s back. Memories of her forcing me to dance on a stress fracture in my foot. Memories of learning I didn’t get into a company or earn a part in a production, and other memories of girls’ faces full of hurt when they saw I was awarded a part over them. Memories of sitting in the corner of a dark closet where my mother had locked me up when I was little, my punishment for not mastering the pirouette yet.

“Besides, I have my own special plans for you, Jacquelena,” Enyxa said, wiping out the visions. She gripped my chin in her hand now as she looked down her nose at me, her eyes such a deep black, I didn’t know if it ever ended. “Plans that have been in the works for eons. After all, you’re the cause of
all
of everyone’s pain. Too bad you couldn’t figure out all the ways to use that Book of yours, which is pretty stupid of you, considering
you
created it.” She let me go and strode over to her hellhounds. “Have fun trying to escape the Dark worlds. As I said, my babies love a good hunt, and they
always
find their prey. So … I leave you with this until next time.”

She snapped her fingers, and she and her monsters disappeared into thin air, and my surroundings vanished once again. I was in Mason’s apartment, lying on my back, looking up at him as he hovered over me, a shard of glass carving into my breast. Except it wasn’t mine, of course. I was reliving Bex’s memory. Reliving her physical pain and her emotional hopelessness. Then I was transported again, now sitting in the driver’s seat of a car at twilight, witnessing an accident—a truck T-boning a small sedan in front of me. My heart buckled along with the bodies of the vehicles, folding in on itself just like the metal of the cars, becoming something much smaller and crushed until it was no longer recognizable. No way could anyone have survived that crash or the fire that exploded. A female wailed “Nooo! Oh, God, no!” next to me. She sounded like Asia, but the memory vanished before I could know for sure, leaving only agony in my heart.

Somehow, I was still standing when I returned to the present. Not for long, though. I fell to my knees and bawled. Ugly, snotty, gut-wrenching sobs tore through me until I no longer knew why I cried. With one arm held tightly against my stomach, I scrubbed at the wetness on my face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sobbed so hard. Probably never—my mother wouldn’t have allowed it. My eyes burned, and my skin felt gritty from the sand that had stuck to the tears. I tried breathing deep breaths, but the air hitched all the way in and all the way out. My heart and soul weighed so heavily with the spots of Darkness Enyxa had left, I didn’t know if I could even stand and support their weight.

“Fucking bitch,” Hayden groaned from my right. He rolled onto his knees and braced the weight of his upper body with his hands on his thighs. His head hung between his arms.

Bex and Brock came around, too, also rolling to their knees.

“What the hell was that?” Brock asked.

“The worst thing ever,” Bex said through heavy breaths.

“Enyxa paid us a visit,” I explained. “She told me we’d be reliving every pain we’d ever experienced and we’d ever caused. From all of our lifetimes.”

“That’s what she does,” Hayden said. “Leads us into the Darkness.”

“At this rate, we’ll be Dark in no time,” Brock said as his hand pressed against his chest.

I assumed the accident had been his memory, but I didn’t know what exactly happened that hurt him so much. He hadn’t actually been
in
the accident. Had he and Asia known the people in one of the vehicles? Or had they somehow caused the wreck? They’d never spoken much about how they’d met. I didn’t know their story. I had a feeling Enyxa was going to make sure I relived it myself. She said I’d caused all their pain. Had
I
been the reason for the accident? I didn’t know how that was possible, but my stomach tightened anyway at the thought.

Bex hiccupped with another ragged breath. “As if living through it once hadn’t been bad enough.”

My stomach heaved with the reminder of what Bex had just gone through. Again.

“Brock’s right,” I said. “I can’t remember everything about all of my lives, but I know they haven’t been paradise. We’ll never survive the Darkness if we don’t get out of here.”

Nobody argued any more. We all pushed to our feet and stumbled a few steps before taking off in the direction of the Gate—but staying far away from the forest.