Read The Betwixt Book One for Free Online

front of me, I didn't have a hope of moving a
muscle. And yet, from within me somewhere I had a desire
to . . . 
    ‘ Stop it from coming any nearer. That's what you want, that's
what half your body is telling you. And listen to it, listen to the
part that isn't human.’
    Images flashed in my head, maybe memories, maybe the stuff of
dreams. Two hands on a door holding it firm against the outside, a
palm outstretched, a cruiser slamming on its breaks, a storm
beating restlessly against a wall.
    Stopping. All of them were images of stopping.
    I . . . I knew . . .
I . . . wasn't thinking clearly. I felt half at the
edge of sleep, half at the edge of mania.
    Then the thing – the Shadow, the Twixt – it shifted forward.
It didn't spread out, screaming like a thousand trapped souls, nor
did it tighten its form ready to pounce. But I knew what it wanted
to do.
    ‘ Turn it off,’ I heard my voice as if it were far away on some
distant crackly com-link,’ turn it off now.’
    ‘ It can't hurt you, it is trapped—’
    ‘ No,’ I breathed, my voice still distant, still somehow not me.
‘It's calling.’
    The creature tipped what could only be described as its head
towards the ceiling – shadows of tight, rope-like muscles twisting
in its neck.
    ‘ Turn it off!’ I shrieked.
    Then it faded, faded with a snap, back into the
tube.
    I fell to my knees, exhausted from no fight at all.
    The little alien, eyes almost popping with fear, stowed the
tube back into his robe, placing a hand over the folds of fabric as
if to trap it in place. ‘It, it shouldn't have been able to do
that.’
    I just looked at him, my head tipped slightly to one side as
if I were some limp doll that had been left out in the wind and
rain. ‘Why did you do that, what was th . . . ‘ I
let my voice trail off. I couldn't ask the question again. That was
a Twixt. A shadow that had come alive, if ever I had saw
one.
    I felt cold and damp, but strangely, I couldn't shiver.
‘There's one on the station?’ I whispered.
    The alien nodded silently. ‘But . . . I fear
it . . . it may not
be . . . .’
    ‘ Is it coming here?’ I pushed myself to my feet, the fear
surging through me like the shock wave from a supernova hitting its
once orbiting planets.
    Everything was going topsy-turvy, impossible and unbelievable.
I stood in the middle of my own quarters, talking to a little alien
who had just showed me a shadow trapped in a box. And my mind and
body were surging with jumbled energy, tinged with nauseating
fear.
    But I was just a waitress from a diner, I tried to assure
myself as I squeezed my hands open and closed. This couldn't be
happening to me.
    ‘ Yes,’ the alien's voice croaked, ‘I'm afraid it is.
Unless . . . .’
    ‘ Unless?’
    ‘ We get there first.’
    ‘ And do what?’ Call security; call the GAMs?
    ‘ Pray.’
     
     

Chapter 3
    This wasn't a plan. This wasn't a plan, I reminded myself for
the 1000th time as I ran down the corridor towards the docking bay.
I was following the equivalent of a well-spoken strawberry in a
robe to my certain death at the hands of something that wasn't
really there.
    I had never done anything like this before. I had nothing to
draw on from my years of experience: no adventures, no skills, no
training. I hadn't gone through the school of hard knocks, hadn't
roughed it as a GAM recruit, hadn't even been to the Rim of known
space. I was just a waitress. I was just a waitress!
    But that didn't matter, the little alien seemed convinced I
was the only thing standing between this station and horrible
destruction at the hands of a Twixt. But I wasn't standing, I was
shaking like ticker tape attached to the engine vents of a sonic
cruiser. And I still didn't even know the monk's
name . . . .
    I didn't know my way around this part of the station either –
I never had any call to come down here. This was the domain of
grease-faced engineers, smugglers, and legless crew who were