Through Glass: Episode Four

Through Glass

A Novella Series

Episode Four

Rebecca Ethington

This Novella is part of an ongoing
Novella publication.

A new episode of The Through Glass
Series is released in timed intervals throughout the
year.

If you have read the ORIGINAL Through
Glass Novel (released Sept. 213) or have read the first three
novellas this is the next one you will want.

The novellas are meant to be read in
order.

Published by Rebecca
Ethington

Smashwords Edition

Text Copyright ©2014 by Rebecca
Ethington

The Glass Series, characters, names,
and related indicia are trademarks and © of Rebecca
Ethington.

The Glass Series Publishing rights ©
Rebecca Ethington

All Rights Reserved.

No Part of this publication may be
reproduced, or 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
publisher. For Information regarding permission, write
to:

Rebecca Ethington – [email protected]
Rebecca Ethington.com

Published by Imdalind Press

Copyediting by C&D
Editing

Production Management by Imdalind
Press

ISBN-13: 978-0-9914313-1-1

Printed in USA

This Edition, March 2014

The cold of the darkness we stood in
seeped through my father’s heavy leather jacket like a slow leak,
chilling my bones and igniting the shiver of fear that was already
running over me. What little light we had sequestered ourselves in
rippled off the old stone of the alley and faded into the
encroaching darkness that was now our world.

My breath came in heaving intakes as I
stood in the orb of light Travis had created. My lungs shook as if
I had somehow forgotten how to breathe; as though running from
Abran’s men, watching Bridget bleed in Travis’s arms and everything
that had happened in the last few minutes, was nothing more than a
nightmare. A nightmare that I hadn’t woken up from for the past
eight years.

We had barely escaped what should have
been safety—a compound that was flooded with light, keeping the
inhabitants safe from what lingered in the shadows outside—from the
shadows we now stood in.

But that safety could never be safe
for me, and what little security the Blue, that Azul, contained was
really only a disguised danger, a danger that had been revealed the
second I squeezed the trigger and a man who had been thought to be
safe, a man who had stood in the light, turned to ash.

Just like the monsters do, like the
creatures that had taken over our world and cast everything in
shadow.

Now, nothing was safe, only a ticking
time bomb.

And in Travis’s attempt to keep me
safe, to escape the compound that had suddenly been cast in fear,
we were now marooned in the dark. Isolated in the very place that I
had escaped from only days before; the very place I had been so
desperate to return to after I had heard what Abran had planned for
me. The science experiment I was to become.

And now I was here, in the world that
would haunt and destroy us, yet somehow, would keep us
safe.

It was so much more than that, though.
It was the question of what we had escaped from, and what very well
might now be hunting us that caused my chest to tighten in a
familiar fear, my breath to catch painfully in my
throat.

My chest shook as I inhaled, the fear
stuck deep inside, as I looked to Travis, waiting for an answer to
my question.

The question of what we did
next.

“
Let’s start by getting
Cohen back.” He said the words so simply, but the effect was
anything but. The effect was razor blades that cut against the iron
cage that had grown around my heart, an all-encompassing ache that
inflated in my stomach.

Getting Cohen
Back.

It wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t be
possible.

He was gone, changed into one of the
Tar. Travis had told me this; I had accepted it. I had vowed to
save him from that fate in one way or another.

But not to get him back.

Not in a way that made it sound as if
he was still there, as if he was still human.

I gasped as the words repeated in my
head, the desperate hope freezing me in place as I tried to push it
away and accept the truth I already knew.

Travis walked deeper into the alley
while I stayed planted in the middle of the shadowed passageway,
the movement hidden from me until the light that he held like a
shield suddenly began to dim, the safety it brought leaving as he
did.

“
What do you mean we need
to get Cohen back?” I asked as I caught up to Travis, almost afraid
to hear the answer.

Travis didn’t even look at me, he only
kept walking, his eyes trained far ahead into the dark of the
alley. “You watched them take him, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
How long ago?”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to
close it again. It seemed like such a simple question, yet I
couldn’t find an answer. So much had happened, so much time stolen
from me while I was held captive.

I honestly had no idea.

I did not like the ugly twist of fear
I got from the thought, the way a razor blade of stimulated panic
ran over my body in waves of fear. My muscles tensed as I looked at
him, his handsome face strong as he waited for my
answer.

“
I don’t know,” I admitted
the words slowly, almost hoping that an answer would magically
appear at the last minute, but nothing came.

Travis’s throat made a soft, little
click of disappointment as we stopped at the end of the alley, the
tall walls that had surrounded us opening up to a wide street that
I recognized at once as old downtown, a place I had visited so many
times before except that nothing about it was familiar.

It was just like every other street
that lined the surface of the dark world, each one that was now
covered with the wide rings of ash; the circles that screamed of
death and painful endings. Windows were broken, cars upturned, or
even plunged through buildings in some cases. What had once been
the store where a thousand girls had bought their prom dresses was
now a dust-covered relic. The bookstore, like the ones I had spent
Monday afternoons in growing up, was covered in shards of glass,
the shelves broken and empty.

The street was nothing more than your
every day apocalypse.

I didn’t think I would ever get used
to it, the way everything had been destroyed. Even before I had
left home, I wasn’t used to it.

Travis stopped at the mouth of the
long alley as he looked over the street, his fingers tensing around
the light he held and obstructing the rays in order to send beams
of light away from us, turning the illuminated disk into something
akin to a flashlight.

My shoulders tensed as I stood beside
him, looking over the same desolate space he did, my heart beating
faster as the fear of an open space began to seep into
me.

We had run from the compound, but that
didn’t mean we hadn’t been followed. The alley may have provided
some security, but one step out and all of that was
ruined.

“
Do you think it’s safe?” I
asked, the shake in my voice surprising me.

“
I don’t think Abran would
have followed us all the way out here. I chose this side of town on
purpose.”

“
Why?” The word came out
all choked as it lodged itself in my throat, my mind already
berating me for asking the question.

“
This is one of the last
places in this section of town that the Azul haven’t cleared out.
We are in the Tar’s territory here.”

His words froze against my soul in a
line of terror that settled painfully in my joints. Everything
stiffened and I held tighter to my gun, almost as if one of the
massive things would come around the corner, as if their giant
claws would slash through the air and end me in a ring of
smoke.

Except I wouldn’t turn into a ring of
smoke, not anymore.

Not according to Abran, not according
to Travis.

I flinched as the memory of Cohen’s
blood splashing over me came back fresh and hard. The shadow of his
body against the black of the sky as he was taken away from me cut
through my heart. I tried to control my breathing as I looked out
on the grey of the street, my panic rushing through me in a painful
vice, screaming at me to run, to be ready to fight.

I knew both were coming.

“
We should be fine.”
Travis’s massive frame towered over me as he stepped into the dark
of the open street, his gun held before him as he scanned the
street. The way he moved looked like something out of a police
movie, the tautness in his back and shoulders matching the hard
lines of his jaw. I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, at
watching my once little brother take on a role I had watched him
play at so long ago. Except it wasn’t funny because I knew as well
as he did what could be waiting for us, and how real the monsters
he had once played at had become.

My heart thundered as I watched him,
knowing I needed to follow him, to stay in the precious light that
he held in his hand.

The destroyed street before me had
taken on a completely different form at the knowledge of where we
were. Whose territory we were in. I knew what dwelled on these
streets; I had run down them before I had been found.

I had been hunted.

I never stopped being
hunted.

Now there were more than just the Tar
that screamed for my blood, however.

My jaw tensed into a tight line as I
moved to walk beside my brother, my eyes continually darting
through the open area as I tried to get my bearings, convince the
painful wire of fear that had wrapped around me that it could
loosen, that with the light and the guns we held we had
security.

But it didn’t want to
listen.

Fear was as much a part of the world
as darkness was. If you went somewhere without fear, you went
somewhere without a hope of coming back.

We walked on in silence for a moment,
Travis’s tense movements still raging through me before he began to
loosen, the anxious line of his muscles relaxing a bit.

“
Can you guess?”

“
What?” I asked, not
understanding his question through the fear that still ruled me. My
mind rushed around at the simple phrase, the already heightened
nerves that ran through me flaring nightmares at what his meaning
could be.

“
How long it has been since
they took Cohen?” Travis clarified, his whispered voice somehow
heightened now that it only had open air to move into.

I stepped around a wide ring of ash as
I looked at my brother, trying to decide how best to answer him.
While the question was one that should be easier to answer, my mind
had still put a block on it as if I didn’t want to think about how
long it had been since I had lost him.

I swallowed as I stepped back to
Travis’s side, my heart squeezing together in an uncomfortable pain
at the thought of Cohen being taken away from me again.

“
Well, I left, slept once,
got knocked out, met your girlfriend, got shot in the chest—by said
girlfriend—and since then have been everything short of stoned
until we got out of there.” I rattled it all off like it was
nothing, even though my heart was reacting like I was reliving
every minute.

The emotions were raw and painful as
they moved through me, sparking a heat that heightened what I
already felt. The angry brick wall I tried to keep my heartbreak
behind seemed to crumble, my chest tightening painfully at the
unwanted memories, the unwanted emotions. I tried to push all the
feelings away and stop them from seeping into me, but it couldn’t
take away everything. It couldn’t take away the pressure that built
through me. It couldn’t take away all of the sadness.