Through Glass: Episode Four Read Free

happen.
    I swallowed as the words got stuck in
my throat, the dark brown of Travis’s eyes boring into me. I had
almost expected the pity I had seen there before, but instead, I
only saw a hard line and determination that had become so expected
of him.
    The look I had never seen in my little
brother.
    “ I read your file. You told
me about Sarah; how she changed right before your eyes. We have
only ever seen that once, when someone we rescued changed for the
first time. But what if it wasn’t the first time? What if they can
change back and forth at will?”
    I could only gape at him. My spine
tensed as my mind slowly began to process his words, the heavy beat
of my heart moving into a frantic race at the memory of my best
friend changing right before my eyes. I cringed at the memory of
the dark, thick blood seeping over her face as the razor sharp
feathers pushed their way through her skin, as she became a
Tar.
    I had seen it happen, yet I still did
not want to accept it. Not for her, not for the seemingly unmarred
people back at the compound. And certainly not for
Cohen.
    I swallowed hard, wishing that the
lump that had suddenly grown in my throat would disappear, but it
stayed, thick and heavy.
    “ So those men can change?”
I barely got the words out, trying to keep my focus off Cohen but
knowing it wasn’t working.
    Travis’s jaw tightened as he fought
the answer that both of us knew, the answer that neither of us
wanted to accept. “Those men that you turned to ash have been there
since the beginning. They were the ones who barricaded the school
and kept us safe. They were the ones who figured out the generators
and the cell towers, and discovered how to keep us safe and a
society running in the dark. They aren’t Tar.”
    “ Then what are they?” My
body tightened as I asked the question, my muscles tensing as my
eyes darted out of the bright light we stood in, the bubble of
security that we had clung to.
    The shadows seemed to ripple as we
walked, the same as they always had, shadows that lay just out of
the corner of my eyes. This time they almost seemed to taunt me,
screamed at me that they were more than shadows. That they we were
no longer safe, not anymore. Not with men that stood in the light
and monsters that could change back and forth at will.
    I swallowed hard and pulled my eyes
from the shadows of the old craft store we walked by, my mind
already putting large, winged creatures where only the dark fingers
of shadows on top of shadows were.
    “ They must be something
that Abran has created,” Travis said, the muscles in his neck
pulling in his discomfort. “We just need to find out
what.”
    “ By getting Cohen back.” My
voice was little more than a whisper as I pushed it out of
me.
    “ The Tar take the humans to
a large warehouse in Arkansas. That’s what Abran is going to
raid.”
    “ Arkansas?” I gaped, fully
aware that not only were we in Texas, but with where he had
described our destination to be, we were already headed in the
wrong direction.
    “ They take them there and
change them.” The shock I had felt at where we were going vanished
as Travis’s deep voice rumbled around me, my heart seeming to stop
as my limbs became heavy.
    Where they change
them.
    I wished I could un-hear his words. I
wished I could get the image of Cohen’s limp body as that thing
took him away from me out of my head.
    But it was already there.
    I had accepted him as dead, turned
into another of the army of black monsters that had taken over the
world. I had vowed to rescue him from that. I had vowed to release
him from that prison whether it was by my gun or someone
else’s.
    I knew they would send him to me, just
as they had Sarah.
    But Travis wasn’t talking about trying
to find the man that I was still desperately in love with. He
wasn’t talking about releasing him from the tormented hell that I
was sure he was trapped in. He wasn’t talking about killing him,
not like I was.
    He was talking