Read The Space Within (The Book of Phoenix #3) for Free Online Page A

get up!”
    “Noooo,” Bex cried, her eyes squeezed shut as she, too, rolled on the ground. “Sissssssy …”
    “Asia, please,” Brock begged.
    “What’s wrong with you guys?” I demanded, my neck prickling with fear. My heart raced at the thought of having to fight alone. I’d never be able to do it. “Get up!”
    More laughter from the woman. Then I was suddenly not in the gray desert, but sitting in a motel room, on my cell phone, listening to my daddy tell me he didn’t have a daughter. Hearing him threaten to call the police if I bothered him or my mother again. And then I was on a street corner in Juneau, Alaska, facing my mama who had no recognition of my face at all. My heart broke as it had the other times I’d gone through the complete rejection by my own parents.
    “Lovely memories, yes?” a woman said from nearby, her voice as icy as the nights on Erde.
    I jerked out of the visions and refocused on my surroundings. Brock, Bex, and Hayden still lay on the gray, sandy ground, whimpering. The four figures stood a few yards away from us. The three big ones looked like gigantic dogs, but with three heads each the size of a small car. Drool hung from fangs longer than my arm, and eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. They all sat on their haunches, growling and snapping at the air. In front of them stood an average-sized woman with big, snow-white hair that reached her butt, streaked with thick chunks of jet black, perfectly clear skin as white as her hair, and eyes blacker than night. She wore a shiny, black, one-piece suit that appeared to be painted over her voluptuous body, and black, stiletto boots that reached her thighs. She looked like a villainess straight out of a comic book. She was an evil nemesis all right, but very real.
    Although I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in physical form, my soul recognized her black one instantaneously.
    “Enyxa,” I breathed.
    Her red, full lips quirked up into a smirk. “Jacquelena. It’s been a long time.”
    “Not long enough,” I said, pushing down my fear and putting on my mask of courage.
    The creatures snarled.
    “Watch it,” Enyxa warned as she reached up and raked her long fingernails down the mangy neck of one of the monsters. “My hellhounds don’t take well to a challenge. I wouldn’t try to run, either, although they’d love the chase.”
    I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat and tensed my thigh muscles to keep my knees from knocking together. Trust me, I wasn’t running. Especially as my friends still lay on the ground, helpless. “What did you do to them?”
    She glanced down at them, and her grin widened. “Ah, just showing them the way.”
    I cocked my head. “To where?”
    “To Darkness, my dear.” She gave a hand signal to her hounds, then began walking a circle around us, while the monsters remained seated. “That’s why you’re here, and what I do—escort souls to the Dark. By forcing them to relive all of the pain they suffered and the hurt they caused others, physical and emotional.” She stopped across the circle from me, and her dark gaze swept over the three people on the ground between us. “With as much pain and suffering you’ve all been through, your souls will go quickly. Hayden’s been a difficult one, but with Bex here in my world, they’ll both go fast.”
    They all cried out. She must have given them another bad memory.
    “Except for me,” I said, trying to pull her attention away from them. “My life hasn’t been so bad, and I have no loved ones to really care about. You have little to use against me, don’t you?”
    She looked up at me and tilted her head as she studied my face. The smile returned as she continued her walk, coming closer.
    “Oh, Jacquelena, you poor dear. You had no real love in your life this time around, did you? Did you ever think there’s a reason for that? Maybe because last time you caused the fire that killed your parents, pushed away the one man who did