The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix) (31 page)

We stayed low to the ground as we snuck out of our hiding space and along the rear of the building. Even Sammy walked in a crouch as if he understood. Micah and I angled our heads to peek around the corner. My Jeep stood in the parking area about twenty yards away, and beyond it and across the street sat a marked car under a street lamp. The cop, however, didn’t sit in his car on a stakeout, but spoke animatedly to a man at the bar’s door, his hand gesturing in our direction. He was probably questioning the employees to find out if any of them knew who Micah and I were. Thank goodness they didn’t—not for our sake, but for theirs. If we’d made any friends in this little town, they could have wound up dead.

Micah held his hand out in front of me, and the streetlight glinted off of my keys. I pointed to the one for the Jeep, and he nodded. As soon as the officer turned his back to us, we ran for it. Adrenaline overcame my weakness and carried me across the overgrown weeds and grass to the Jeep. Sammy jumped in the back and Micah threw our bags back there, too, as I clamored into the passenger seat. Micah peeled out, and I looked over my shoulder—the cop shouted after us as he ran to his car.

Micah sped down the road and barely slowed enough to avoid tipping the Jeep as he made the turn for the bridge to the mainland. Sirens wailed in the distance, but we had enough of a head start. When we crossed the bridge, my lungs released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. I couldn’t believe we were running from the police. This wasn’t the same as bolting from a party when the cops showed up. We were probably considered honest-to-God fugitives, but it looked like we actually might make it.

Until a huge, dark shadow flew at Micah’s window. A sound cracked through the night. Breaking glass. Micah jerked to the side, and the steering wheel spun in his hands, careening us off the road and down the embankment. Micah’s arm flew out, pressing me against the seat. The Jeep flipped once. Twice. Landed upside down on the edge of the water.

“Are you okay?” Micah gasped as his hands already worked at his seatbelt.

“I think so.” My head ached even more, and the seatbelt dug into my shoulder, but I otherwise seemed uninjured. I fumbled with the clasp until my belt freed me, and I fell to the roof. “Sammy?”

My mind registered his barking outside of the vehicle.
Oh, thank God
. He’d already made it out, and he sounded okay, though jumpy. I wasn’t sure if the roll bar would have saved him. As I army-crawled my way out of the wreckage, though, he darted into an alleyway, still barking.

“Sammy!” I called.

“He’s probably scared,” Micah said from right next to me. He squatted over where I lay on the ground, not letting me up until he fully inspected me for injuries.

“Sammy,” I yelled again when Micah finally released me, and I’d pushed myself to my feet.

A dog’s cry sounded from the alley.

“Shadowmen,” I whispered in horror.

Micah moved faster than me, already sprinting for the alley. Sammy came out, though, limping toward us. Relief and exhaustion brought me to my knees, and Sammy came over and laid his head in my lap. Another deep cut jagged through his other shoulder—whether from the accident or the Shadowmen in the alley, I wasn’t sure.

The wail of sirens grew louder.

“We have to get out of here,” Micah said. “We’re out in the open.”

He gathered our bags and half-carried me up the embankment and into the alley Sammy had come out of, my dog limping along at our side. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead—at least one Shadowman, the one who’d probably flown into the Jeep, had just been down this alley—but we had nowhere else to hide. The police must not have seen the Jeep upside-down by the water, because their cars flew right by, red and blue lights flashing across the buildings beyond the embankment.

“Come on,” Micah said, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear.

His body threw off a blanket of tension that locked my own muscles tight. I stumbled at his side, my weight too much for my legs to carry, as we made our way to a residential street. Micah pushed me into the first vehicle he found with an unlocked door—some kind of older model American sports car. I was too tired to care what kind. Too tired to care when he hot-wired the ignition and drove us out of there.

“It’s not very far,” I mumbled, my head lolling against the passenger side window. “I feel it. Right up the road.”

Micah rested his hand on my knee. “I’ll get us there.”

“The mansion, right? You know where?”

I dozed off before hearing his answer.

“Damn.” Micah’s huff of exasperation brought me out of unconsciousness.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to peel my eyes open.

His hand patted my thigh. “Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep. I’m going to take us around Tampa Bay to the other side.”

My eyes finally cracked open—well, one did anyway—to see a huge body of water in front of us, the moonlight glancing off its rough surface as Micah hightailed it in reverse. Several black shapes flew over the water. More Shadowmen.

The mansion pulled at my gut from the distance, but we couldn’t get there from here. Too many shadows for us to fight, especially when I couldn’t even lift my head from the seat. My eyes closed as I prayed—
prayed
for the first time since my parents died—that Micah would get us to safety. To the mansion.

The next thing I knew, Micah was pulling me out of the car seat and into his arms.

“Are we there? At the mansion?” I asked, my voice thick with grogginess and my eyes still closed as I lay my head against his shoulder, and he carried me away from the stolen car.

“We can’t drive there,” Micah said. “I don’t think we’re going to make it there at all.”

“We have to,” I mumbled with a tongue that felt like dead weight in my mouth. Although my whole body felt numb, useless, my heart spiked with panic. “It’s the only place . . .”

“Shh. Don’t worry. You just need to rest right now. I’ll take care of things.”

“But—”

“Over here,” an unfamiliar voice called out, no more than a whisper, though it sounded miles away. “Get her in here.”

I had no clue who she was or where she beckoned us or if she was even real because blackness overcame me.

I awoke in an unfamiliar bed, but an actual real bed that was soft and comfortable after weeks of sleeping on the floor. Except Micah wasn’t in there with me. I tried to sit up, but my body remained numb and heavy as a truck. I peered around the dark room—a motel room, maybe?—to see Micah’s form silhouetted against a large window as he gazed out of it. He must have sensed I’d awakened because he didn’t look my way.

“There’s at least twenty of them,” he said quietly. “Maybe thirty. We’ll never make it.”

I pushed myself up enough to see out the window. I could make out the water with tiny lights on the far side of it, probably Tampa Bay, and felt the pull of the mansion—our refuge—somewhere out there. It must have been on an island, just out of reach. Dozens of shadows flew in the night sky and hovered over the water. I wondered if everyone could see them, or only us.

“We have to find a way,” I said. My elbow buckled, and I collapsed against the pillows.

“I’m not taking you into that,” Micah said. “It’s way too dangerous.”

“We
have
to, Micah.”

I blacked out again. Well, not really blacked out, because I dreamt. Except it didn’t really feel like a dream, more like past experiences, memories. Micah and I were one again, our souls united into a single being, and we were in that other world, the one where
I
and
me
didn’t exist, but only
we
and
us
. Even for the others in this world, so many others, life was about all of us.

The world itself was like Earth, but not. The sky appeared more teal than blue, and two yellow orbs shone in it—two suns, one big and seemingly close, the other much farther away and the size of our Earth’s moon. A sweet fragrance filled the air, but not anything I’d ever smelled on Earth. Trees with twisting branches and purple bark and leaves lined the edges of a vast space in front of us interrupted by rectangular pools of fuchsia water. The scene reminded me of The Mall in Washington between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. Except for the candy-like colors, of course. We stood with others like us at the top of the steps of a huge building I knew to be a castle. Its crystal-like walls reached high above, reflecting the aquamarine sky.

The people, for lack of a better word, around us revered Micah and me, as if we ranked high above them, although structured hierarchy meant little in this world. At least it hadn’t really mattered until we’d come under attack. I tried to understand what that meant, but couldn’t. We weren’t being attacked now . . . although the sky—no, everything—seemed to be darkening around us. Fading out. Disappearing?

I couldn’t lift my head when I awoke, still in the bed in the dark room by the water. The pillow under me was soaked and so was my face—covered in tears. My chest felt an unequivocal emptiness, a hole even bigger than Bex’s and Pops’ deaths had created.

“Micah?” I whimpered.

A weight settled onto the bed next to me, and he pulled me into his arms.

“Right here,” he murmured.

“I thought . . . I thought I lost you.” I didn’t know why—that’s not what I’d dreamt at all—but the feeling was true. I was losing him. The hole in my chest was
his
absence. And in more than just my heart. His presence in my soul was disappearing, too. “Something’s wrong. I think . . . we need to get to the mansion.”

“We can’t. I’ve been watching and studying, but there’s no way with all those Shadowmen out there.”

“We
have
to,” I cried, fear sending me into a panic. My heart raced, and the dark room suddenly felt like a prison, but I was too weak to escape.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t care! We have to get there. If we don’t . . .” My chest tightened with the reality of what I was feeling. “I think . . . I think I’m dying, Micah.”

He pulled back and stared at me for a long moment, and the same terror I felt filled his eyes. His arms tightened around me as he once again crushed me against him, eliminating any space between us.

“No. I won’t let that happen. I’ll take you to a hospital.”

“They can’t help!”

“They have to! I won’t lose you, Jacey. You can’t leave me.”

“Just . . .” My constricted chest and tight throat left me panting for a breath. “Get me . . . to the mansion.”

I passed out again, only to waken to Micah carrying me. But instead of holding me tight against him as he’d done before, his arms felt loose, as if he might drop me. His steps slugged heavily as he struggled to reach the door of the room.

“I’m gonna get us help, babe,” he said, his voice hoarse and distant. My eyes rolled up to his face. A thin sheen of sweat covered his pale skin. He looked as bad as I felt. “It’s just the flu. I have it, too. I’m gonna get us help.”

He lurched. We both crashed to the floor, and neither of us had the strength to get up.

The door flew open.

“Crap,” said a female voice. “They’re not doing well at all.”

“Let’s get them to the bed,” a male responded. “I’ve got him. You take her.”

Thin arms slid under my shoulders and knees and lifted me, though not far off the ground. My eyes fluttered open. A young woman, not much older—or bigger—than me carried my lifeless weight with ease. The moonlight through the window shone off her light-colored hair and into her pale eyes as she laid me on the bed.

A weight settled next to me. I could only move my eyes to find Micah in bed with me, a black guy standing over him.

“You two need to re-Bond,” the girl said. “Join up and get over there. Otherwise, you’re gonna die.”

“What do you mean?” Micah croaked.

“You’re Separating,” the strange guy said. “You need to re-Bond. Do it however you need to do it, but get it done or you’ll both die.”

“And if it comes to that . . . well, we can’t let you just
die
,” the girl added.

They left us alone with that cryptic message.

With the last bit of strength remaining in my body, I rolled over to face Micah.

“Who are they?” I asked.

He struggled to roll to his side, then to lift his hand as if to push my hair away, but weakness must have overcome him, because it rested like a dead weight on the side of my face.

“No idea. They said they could help us, but they haven’t done anything but—”

My eyes popped wide open as a stabbing pain jolted through my body. A scream blasted from my mouth, and I clutched at Micah’s hand and squeezed it to my chest. Another burst, like a spontaneous combustion inside me. Burning agony exploded through my racing heart, as though it were being smashed into pieces.

“Micah,” I gasped.

“I’m here, babe.” His voice came out thick, like molasses.

“It
burns
.” I tried to pull in a breath, but my lungs could only muster a wheeze of air. “Micah . . . finish the journal for me . . . okay?”

“What?”

“Just . . . promise. Write this . . . all down. Okay?”

“I promise,” he said as his fingers brushed against my cheek.

“I . . . love—”

He gripped my face harder, cutting me off. Panic raised his voice. “No, Jacey. Don’t do this. Stay with me.”

“I . . . love you.”

“Help!” he yelled, the scream piercing my eardrums. “Hurry!”

My vision blurred at the edges. This was it. I felt death at my door. “Love . . . you . . . . Always have . . . always . . . will.”

“I love you, too, Jacey. But don’t . . . hang on, babe. Don’t do this.” He yelled louder, “Get in here! She needs help!”

He tried to move away, but I held him to me tightly.

“Please . . . don’t . . . leave me.” I stared into his warm, brown eyes, falling into them like I had in the beginning as his gaze remained locked on mine, bathing in the love they now held.

“Never.” His voice fell away, like a leaf carried on the wind, off into the distance.

A bright light blasted my vision, and the world faded out as fire consumed me.