Completing a mission that reunites Guardian Twin Flames turns devastating when the Book of Phoenix throws Leni and Brock into a Dark world, leaving Jeric and Asia behind. They count on their other halves to rescue them, but when that doesn’t happen, they must fight through the Darkness and find a Gate that will take them home.

Except all of Earth’s Gates are sealed.

Enyxa, ruler of Darkness, and her horde of Dark souls storm the Gates to push their way through to Earth. While Leni and Brock fight Enyxa on their side, Jeric and Asia must figure out how to save their Twin Flames without jeopardizing all of Earth’s souls. Through it all—and with a little help from Enyxa—Brock and Asia begin questioning their relationship and whether they’re truly meant to be together…or if they’re two Lost souls forced to become one.

If the Broken dyads don’t find each other fast, they’ll be lost to the Dark forever. But to reunite means choosing themselves over all of Earth’s souls. Can Jeric make that decision? And will Brock and Asia find the love they both desperately crave? Or are they all doomed to perpetual Darkness?

Discover how it all ends in
The Space Within
, the explosive conclusion to The Book of Phoenix trilogy.

Books by Kristie Cook

— Soul Savers Series —

A young woman discovers she’s the future leader of a secret matriarchal society that serves as the angels’ army on Earth, and the man who’s supposed to be her soul mate and serve at her side was created by the very demons they fight.

www.SoulSaversSeries.com

Books 6 & 7 (Coming late 2014)

Genesis: A Soul Savers Novella

— The Book of Phoenix Series —

www.TheBookofPhoenix.com

The Space Between

The Space Beyond

The Space Within

Published by

Ang’dora Productions, LLC

15275 Collier Blvd

#201-300

Naples, FL 34119

Ang’dora Productions and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Ang’dora Productions, LLC

Cover design by Regina Wamba at
MaeIDesign and Photography, L.L.C.

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the copyright owner.

Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Edition July 2014

EPUB ISBN 978-1-939859-10-5

Dedication

To My Readers

Who Bring Me Love, Light & Hope Every Day

Chapter 1

Hunched over to push against the wind that tore across the desert terrain, I contemplated what would kill me first—the Darkness tainting my soul because half of it was worlds away, or the ugliness of this place called Erde. I’d yet to see anything but gray sand on the ground and swirling in the gusts that whipped my curls against my cheeks, the occasional gray tree permanently bent in the relentless wind, and the rare gray pond that was barely more than a puddle. No color here, only shades of gray. Even the sky, without a cloud in it, was the color of concrete. As Hayden and I hauled our measly findings—what he called food and a raggedy blanket—from our supply run, the sun seared down on us, hot and scorching, yet its warmth never penetrated beyond the sweater I wore. The rays blistered any uncovered skin, but couldn’t heat the coldness within.

At night, the grays disappeared … only to be replaced by varying shades of black. No moon lit the sky, and although more stars could be seen here than on Earth, their lights were dim, far away. No matter how hot the day felt, the temperatures plummeted to a freezing cold like none I’d ever experienced in the several places I’d lived on Earth. The bone-chilling cold of eternal Darkness.

Along with the cold and blackness, night brought the screaming.

The wind screamed through the cracks in the rocky cave that gave us shelter. Creatures I’d yet to see but Hayden had warned us about screamed as they hunted, becoming prey to even more wretched beings that bellowed with their victories. Bex, overcome by nightmares, screamed in the night, too, and Brock and I often joined her.

At least Bex had her Twin Flame to comfort her when she woke.

Brock and I may never see ours again.

The chill in my bones didn’t compare with the ice seeping into my soul. The Darkness of this world and of being Separated from Jeric grew heavier and colder with each passing day—at least five of them so far, although we couldn’t always leave the protection of our cave, so there could have been more. I didn’t know how many Earth days that equaled, but even one felt painfully long as we waited for Jeric and Asia to find us. Since they hadn’t rescued us yet, I began to worry they never would. They didn’t know how to use the Book of Phoenix, which had brought us here through a Gate portal but hadn’t returned us home. I’d lost the Book when we came through and could only hope Jeric and Asia had found it and would figure out how to use its powers. Soon.

“How did you survive so long with this pain in your soul?” I asked Hayden. His muscular form, clothed in a threadbare brown sweater and holey jeans, led me as we headed back to our cave. It was the same one he’d brought us to the night we landed in the pond that had shrunk into a mud puddle now. Because of Bex’s condition, we hadn’t been able to move yet, which made Hayden tense—he wasn’t used to staying in one place for so long, he’d said. But her health and well-being were more important to him than anything.

Either Brock or I had accompanied him on a couple of supply runs while the other hung back to watch over Bex, who spent most of her time sleeping. Hayden had loaned Brock a hoodie, and the first trip they’d made out, they brought back clothes for Bex and me. My shorts and flip-flops wouldn’t have cut it here, and Bex’s clothes were a bloody, shredded mess because an asshole coward who supposedly loved her had nearly killed her. Hayden and Brock had been able to find each of us a pair of pants, boots, and a sweater, but no coats. I wore everything, including my own clothes under the oversized, black pants, with one of Hayden’s knives hanging from my belt. He never let us go out unarmed, although we hadn’t come across any other living thing yet. Hayden said that was both good and bad—creatures meant food, but could also mean death. I didn’t doubt it by the screaming we heard every night.

“The pain and suffering … they were different for me,” Hayden answered with an accent that reminded me of Australian, but wasn’t quite the same. He reached down from the charcoal colored boulder he’d just climbed to take the burlap sack of treasure I carried. I followed him up and took the sack back. “I didn’t know my Twin Flame in this lifetime. I hadn’t even known she existed until Enyxa reminded me. The evil bitch gave me memories of our past lives … along with the despair of our Separation.”

“How nice of her,” I muttered.

“Not exactly,” Hayden said, and I didn’t know if my sarcasm was lost on him or if he was returning it. “Eventually, the memories would begin to fade and the pain would dull to an annoying ache that I would accept as a part of me. As soon as I learned to live with it, though, Enyxa returned to refresh my memory and renew the pain.”

“What’d you do to piss her off so bad?”

Hayden looked at me with his brows pinched together. The contrast of his light eyes against his tanned skin was sometimes unnerving, especially with the sharp angles of his high cheekbones and jaw. Even if he weren’t as tall as he was, way over six feet, he’d be intimidating. He kept his light brown hair military short, and if we were home on Earth, I’d expect to see dog tags hanging around his neck. He had that look to him.

“Piss her off?” he asked. “As in urinate on her? I can’t deny I’d considered the idea, but have never actually done so.”

I snorted at his comment and the miscommunication. This world was supposedly a near duplicate, although Darker, version of Earth, if what Enyxa, leader of the Dark worlds, told Hayden was true. The air was breathable and the water hadn’t poisoned us yet. Hayden looked like us, dressed similarly, and even spoke English, although with that unusual accent. He said most of the “intelligent” (I imagined air quotes the way he’d said it) beings here were the same. But there were differences, and this was one of them.

Hayden spoke English, but our languages weren’t exactly the same. If our worlds were nearly identical, I figured our continents and countries were similar, too, but what Hayden called the place we were at now was no name I’d heard on Earth. The terrain and climate somewhat resembled the southwest United States, but could have just as easily been the Sahara Desert, somewhere in the Middle East, or the Australian outback. He’d said climate change and the humans—that was what they called themselves, too—had altered the geography of the world centuries ago, so I’d probably never know for sure anyway.

Although he seemed to use sarcasm at appropriate times, he didn’t always get ours. And slang terms were often lost on him. Like just now. He knew piss had to do with pee, but apparently they didn’t use “piss off” with an alternate meaning here.

“In our world,
pissing off
means making someone mad,” I explained.

“Ah. Yeah.” He chuckled, a sound that fell flat in this flat world. “I used to wonder myself what I’d done to her. Sometimes it does feel like she singles me out more than anyone else, like she deliberately hunts me down for a specific kind of torture, but I think it’s really just who she is. She probably chooses favorites as souls cycle through to keep the boredom away, and maybe I happen to be that right now.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. She did me a favor. Knowing Rebethannah existed and that we have a love that transcends time and even worlds kept my hope alive. Hope that I’d somehow be with her again before it was too late. And look what happened.”

He had more firsthand experience with Enyxa than I did, but my memories of her ripping our souls apart didn’t lead me to believe she’d intentionally reward him with something like hope. In fact, it seemed like that was the last thing she’d want if she desired his soul to go Dark. Did this mean Hayden was stronger than Enyxa had anticipated and his hope was an unexpected consequence? Or did she have other plans, maybe using the hope to make him fall further and harder? The latter was probably the case, but I liked to believe in the former. I needed that kind of hope and strength myself.

“Hayden, do you think it was that hope that allowed you to communicate with us?” I asked.

I’d been hounding him with questions every chance I had since we’d arrived, trying to find clues that would lead our way home. He’d been able to leave us messages in the Book of Phoenix when we’d been on Earth, allowing us to know Bex was his other half and to bring her to him. He’d shared some of the memories Enyxa had given him, such as being part of the Original Seven, but he knew nothing more elaborate to share. I’d asked him about the Original Seven, wondering if it was the same as the Sacred Seven the Phoenix knew on Earth. Well, we didn’t know much—just that we were all somehow a part of the Seven, Jeric and me, Asia and Brock, and Bex and Hayden. So it was probably the same Seven, but the memories Enyxa had given Hayden were incomplete. He couldn’t remember what might have made us original or sacred, anything about the Book or what clues and powers we’d given it, or other potentially helpful details. Enyxa had apparently blocked any of his memories she knew would aid us in escape. Talk about selective memory.

“I’m sure hope didn’t hurt anything,” he said as we began the ascent up the hill to the opening of our cave. “Like I keep telling you and Brock, I don’t know exactly how I was able to project my soul, as you put it. It wasn’t like I do with Bex now—not all the way out of my body like that—but enough to feel disconnected from the physical world. And when I did that, yeah, I felt like maybe there was a chance of finding her. Belief … hope … whatever you want to call it, I’m sure it helped.”

“I just wish we could figure out how to do it,” I muttered.

“I can’t say it enough—if I could help more, I would. All I can say is it took time to feel that loosening, but once I did, it got easier to push out … beyond my body. And that’s when I felt there was something more than the here and now. Enyxa had been showing me for years that my soul has existed in other bodies and on other worlds, but I didn’t know what that had to do with my life now. Not until I felt that separation from my physical self and this world. I’m assuming that’s how I made the connection with you and Bex, but I can’t be certain.”

Brock and I had both felt the loosening of our souls from our bodies when we’d tried, but probably because we were used to the feeling of completely projecting. Neither of us had been able to push our souls out, though. Projecting was supposed to be impossible without your other half, but if we could push just enough to disconnect from the physical world, as Hayden had explained, maybe we could communicate with Jeric and Asia through the Book. Maybe we could at least feel them and know if they were on their way to rescue us. And if they weren’t because they didn’t know how, I could explain how to use the Book to do so. Of course, that was assuming they’d found the Book after we left.

“When I felt you,” Hayden said, “especially her, that’s when I felt the most hope … but also became my most desperate.”

“And the more desperate you were, the clearer your messages came.”

He shrugged. “I guess so.”

“You were pretty desperate when you knew something was wrong with her.”

He answered with a rumble of choice words.

If desperation was the key to unlocking the messaging powers of the Book, we should have already been communicating with Jeric and Asia. With the despair of being Separated a crushing force on our souls, I couldn’t imagine being more desperate than we already were.

Especially when we entered the cave and Bex’s joy for Hayden’s return filled the small space with an almost tangible thickness. I was happy they’d found each other and shared so much love, but it made my heart ache for Jeric all the more.

“Did you talk to her?” Bex asked Hayden, her voice barely more than a whisper, as he knelt beside her, evaluating her wounds. The swelling in her face had gone down quite a bit, but there was still a lot of bruising. We’d bandaged her arm as best as we could to set it. Hayden seemed to know quite a bit about emergency first aid and wound treatment, learned during his harsh life here where the only halfway decent medical care, he said, was in the cities. The cities that were overrun by Darkness, which meant anything humane like medical care was difficult to obtain and came with a hefty price.

A look of discomfort passed over Hayden’s face. “No. Not yet,” he answered in hushed tones. “Where’s Brock?”

“He went outside to take a leak. And why not? We both feel it. She—”

“Because it doesn’t matter right now. You’re in no condition to travel.”

“Um.” I cleared my throat. “I’m right here. What’s going on?”

They exchanged a look, and after a moment Hayden seemed to acquiesce because he looked away first. Bex moved to prop herself up on her good elbow so she could see me better in the dim firelight. I moved closer to her pallet of blankets. They’d been Bonding their souls every night, which seemed to help her healing along—or at least keep infection at bay—but they really needed to Forge to do her the most good. And to Forge, they needed a Gate, and we had no clue where to find the nearest Gate.

“We’ve been feeling this strange, uh …” Bex’s big blue eyes slid to Hayden, but when he failed to provide the word she sought, they came back to me. “I guess a tug? Kind of like we’ve been hooked on a fishin’ pole and someone’s reelin’ us in like a big ol’ catfish.”

My breath caught, and I sprang across the five paces separating us to fall to my knees next to Bex. “Seriously? Like an urgent need to go somewhere that comes all the way from your soul?”

“Yes!” Bex nearly squealed, the loudest sound I’d heard from her since we’d been here. She looked up at Hayden. “I told you she’d know.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. “It’s a Gate! You’re being pulled to a Gate so you can be Forged. And you
have
to go or you’ll both die. How far away do you think it is?”

“It’s to the east,” Hayden answered with reluctance. He blew out a sigh. “If it’s where I feel like it is, about a three-days’ walk. If we’re lucky and don’t have any problems, which is unlikely.”

I wanted to squeal like Bex. A Gate! They knew where to go to find a Gate, which meant they’d not only be stronger by being Forged, but Brock and I could get back home. I didn’t squeal, though. Only nodded.

“We need to leave as soon as we can,” I said. I thought about the screaming creatures we heard at night. “It’s better to travel in daylight, right?”

“We’re not going anywhere until Bex is fully healed and ready to travel.”

“She’ll heal faster once you’re Forged at the Gate. We’ll have to help her.”

“I can—” Bex started.

“I said
no.
” Hayden stood and put his hands on his hips as he towered over us. “We’re not going anywhere. Not yet.”

I rose to my feet to face him. Unfortunately, I was vertically challenged and he definitely was not, so I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. “Didn’t you hear me? You
have
to. If you don’t—”

“I don’t like sitting here any more than you do, but we’re not moving until Bex is ready. She’s not ready yet.”

“You’re going to run out of time! If we don’t get you two to the Gate in time, your souls will start to reject your bodies. And if your physical bodies die before we can get your souls to the Gate and to the Space Between, the Darkness here will overtake you. All of this will be for nothing!”

I didn’t know how much of that was actually true here on this Dark world—if things worked the same way they did on Earth. I didn’t know if a Gate here
could
Forge them with all of the Darkness surrounding it. Unless Brock and I somehow figured out how to project, I didn’t know how we could get their souls to the Gate if it came to that. Would we be able to stay in our physical bodies, like we did when we passed through the Book’s portal? Would Lakari try to stop them or us? So far, the Dark souls didn’t seem to care much about Brock and me or that Nathayden and Rebethannah had already started the Bonding process—they hadn’t attacked us yet. I didn’t know anything, really, except that a Gate held a lot more promise than anything else in this world. The news that they’d been feeling that pull was the best news we’d had since arriving.

Hayden’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed a finger at me. “You have no idea what it’s like out there.”

“We just came from out there,” I said through clenched teeth, glowering at his finger. Yeah, the climate sucked. So did the scenery. I did have an idea what it was like outside.

“That was a quick supply run,” he snapped. “We got lucky by seeing nothing. Or by nothing seeing
us
! Shelters like this are rare, and if we get trapped by a gozzard or a Weiran or even a human, Bex can’t fight and she can’t run. We’re dead anyway!”

He glared at me, and I glared back. I’d heard the sounds at night that came from creatures Hayden called gozzards and alien races with names like Weiran. But we’d yet to see or hear them during the day. Before we could continue our argument, monster-like screams came from outside.

“Ah, shit, what the hell is
that
?” Brock yelled as his footsteps tromped through the outer cave, quickly coming closer to us. “
Hayden!
”

His terrified yell for help was drowned out by a deafening roar.

“Oh, fuck,” Hayden said as he leapt to immediate action. Four-letter words were apparently universal.

He snatched up one of his bags and pulled a dagger out of it, although he already had one in hand.

“Arm yourselves!” he ordered as he took his place in front of Bex.

BOOK: The Space Within (The Book of Phoenix #3)

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