The Betwixt Book One Read Online Free PDF Page B

foolish soldiers will
board it soon, let the Shadow loose.’
    ‘ A shadow?’ I didn't want to listen, just wanted to get to the
com-link, call security, and get that thing the hell out of here.
But that word ‘shadow’ - it struck a chord, a low and reverberating
one.
    ‘ Death Bringer, Old One, Invisibles, Not There's – races have
many names for them. We always called them Twixts.’
    ‘ Twixts?’
    ‘ They are what lie between, far more dangerous than what lies
beneath.’
    ‘ I don't believe you. If something like that existed, why
wouldn't anyone have seen it? Why wouldn't the station's sensors
have picked it up on that ship?’
    ‘ Very few can see them, precious few.’ He kept his hands
clasped behind him as he spoke; his head tilted up, face
calm.
    ‘ Well, sounds convenient—’
    ‘ You are one of them child.’
    ‘ Sorry?’
    ‘ You can see between, just like your mother.’
    I felt exasperated. The fear had balled up in my middle,
morphed to frustration, and it was choking me from the inside. I
felt like screaming. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘ If you have not heard, then you must listen. We have to stop
if before it comes aboard. The station, it has no security against
this threat, nothing. And those soldiers of the Galactic Army, they
will be the first to fall. It is your duty, your
legacy.’
    ‘ My duty to do what?’
    ‘ To stop the middle from reaching either end. You stop the
in-between from coming out. It is within your power, your heritage,
to fight the Twixts, to prevent the very collapse of this
galax—’
    I began to laugh, harshly and erratically, but the humor was
there. It was my destiny to save the galaxy? I was the least
capable person to have the weight of universal salvation thrust
upon my shoulders. I was supposed to be a klutzy diner waitress
turned super hero? What was this guy on?
    ‘ This is no laughing matter, child. There are lives in danger,
we must—’
    ‘ I'm a waitress,’ I said each word slowly, ‘not a hero. If
you're looking for someone to save the galaxy, go and look for a
GAM.’
    He became quiet for a moment, gaze drifting slowly to the
ground. Then he took a large breath, chest puffing out. ‘Very well,
I hadn't wanted it to come to this, but you leave me no
choice.’
    He reached into the folds of his brown robe and drew something
out, it was a long oblong tube with a seal in the
middle.
    ‘ I'm calling security.’ I finally dodged past him and made it
to the wall panel.
    There was a click and a hiss behind me, and somehow, somehow
it filled the room – the tiny noises echoed until they
boomed.
    Every single part of me buzzed. It was as if I had passed
right through an electrical storm in space, unprotected by the hull
of a ship – simply at the mercy of the wash of power. Yet at the
same time, I felt the unease pin me to the ground, sinking through
my middle like the 1000 tonne docking cable of a
cruiser.
    I could see it before I turned, if that made any
sense.
    I turned.
    It wasn't black, not like obsidian, or the furthest reaches of
cold space. It was . . . the color of a shadow you
see out of the corner of your eye. It wasn't color at all, it was
light turned away from itself.
    I wasn't breathing, wasn't moving, and neither was
it.
    ‘ You see now, you feel it?’ somehow the little alien had made
it to my side.
    I felt it alright, like a shard of ice sunk deep into my
belly. And I had never felt anything like this before.
    It was less of shape, less of a solid – more like an
impression in space. A terrible outline of something.
    ‘ It can't attack you, I have it trapped,’ the alien held out
the tube in his hands. ‘But you had to feel it, to know what you
are up against. And this is a weak one, very weak. It is at the end
of the in-between. Those at the center
are . . . .’
    I didn't understand a word of what he was saying, and to be
honest, his voice hardly bridged the ringing in my ears. As long as
that thing was in