Chapter Thirteen Aria
Chapter Thirteen
Aria
I couldn’t sit still as I rode in the back seat of the taxi. A taxi that had taken twelve minutes and fourteen seconds to arrive to pick me up. One that had nearly made me tremble apart while I paced in the motel lobby, anxiety ripping through my senses as I waited for it to show.
It wasn’t like I had a credit card and could download a rideshare app. I had the small wad of cash Pax had asked me to stow in my duffel bag before we left Albany.
Now I clutched two twenties in a sweaty palm, peering out the rear-passenger window at the city slowly passing by. The taxi crawled through traffic as the driver carried me to some random address that I’d thrown out.
I had to get downtown. At least that part, I knew. At least that part, I could feel.
That awareness thrashed inside me, gripping me by the throat as we traveled deeper into the city.
Worry and anger at Pax leaving me the way he had flashed through my senses, and I clutched the handle of the gun that I had hidden in the left-hand pocket of my jacket.
I’d never held a gun before.
Had never wanted to.
Now, it trembled in my hand.
Proof that Pax had left himself vulnerable.
Susceptible.
Because why? Because he’d thought I was too precious to be exposed to what he had to do, when I bore witness to the gravest, most horrible atrocities each night?
A part of me got his reasoning, but the other couldn’t abide him making this decision for me.
I would have been okay with waiting to hash it out with him when he returned.
But now? I couldn’t sit idle.
He was in trouble. I knew it all the way to my soul.
I could only imagine that sense was something similar to how he’d known I was in trouble when he’d come to rescue me from the mental facility.
The way our connection howled through me like the battering of a storm.
Pulling me toward a destination I shouldn’t know but could feel like it’d been marked with a target.
We were stopped at a light, and once it turned green, the line of cars ahead of us began to move and the driver accelerated. We’d made it halfway to the next light when I felt it.
The awareness became so intense it was strangling, my throat closing off and my heart violently bashing at my ribs.
“Stop!” I shouted.
The driver tossed me a worried glance through the rearview mirror. “We still have two blocks to go,” he said.
“It’s okay. Just let me out. Please.” The words hitched with the frenzy that burned through me like a flame.
He shrugged, likely happy to get the freak out of his car, and he barely pulled to the side when he stopped, the tail end of the car still angled into the road.
The car behind us laid on the horn, and I rushed, tossing the two twenties into the front seat before I threw open the door and jumped out.
Breaths haggard and panting as I stumbled out onto the sidewalk.
Disoriented but drawn.
I turned in a circle, trying to get my bearings, to tap into the tether that was hooked directly in my soul.
I instinctively turned toward the narrow road that cut between two tall buildings about twenty feet up ahead on my right. I rushed that way, dodging the people who bustled along the sidewalk.
I rounded onto that street, and I was nearly knocked off my feet by the swell of iniquity that slammed into me. A cold rush that whipped through my hair and gusted across my face.
There were far fewer people here, and it felt as if I’d been cut off from the hustle of the city and tossed into an entirely different realm.
It was like descending into Faydor from Tearsith.
Jarred from one existence to another.
Darkness reigned, and I lumbered deeper into its midst, through the vapor that pumped out the vents low on the buildings and misted the frostbitten air. Following the tether that pulled me in his direction.
My spirit screamed in awareness as I kept myself tucked as close to the walls of the buildings as possible.
I crossed one street, racing beneath the streetlamps of the crosswalk to the other side, before I was back to slinking through the pall.
It was freezing, the air spiked with ice, but I felt drenched in sweat. Consumed by an inferno that threatened to turn me to ash.
I clutched the gun inside my jacket pocket as I crept below the dull, hazy streetlights, the grip slick against my palm.
Too heavy.
All wrong.
I could feel my pulse accelerate, eyes sweeping as I took in everyone I passed.
Wary of anyone who might suddenly turn on me.
A young couple who kissed in a recessed alcove of an apartment building.
A woman who hurried across the street in front of me.
Two men who leered as they approached but were smart enough not to touch.
Breaths rasping from my lungs, I made it to the next street.
This one was nearly deserted, though there were two young girls on the opposite side on the corner. One had curly brown hair and was dressed in a miniskirt. The other appeared to be maybe three or four years younger than her, blond and wearing shimmery black shorts.
Both wore heels and were hugging their arms over their faux-fur jackets to provide some warmth as they waited to garner attention.
But it was what radiated from them that nearly stopped me in my tracks. What nearly made me switch direction and go straight to them.
The shouts of their thoughts.
Only they were dulled by the drugs I could almost smell running through their veins.
Sticky and sweet and vile.
But they made them no less profound.
The hiss of the Kruen that whispered the cruel evils into their hearts.
“You were destined for this. This is right where you belong. With the foul. Did you think you’d make something of yourself? You were born this way. You’re just like your mother. Disgusting and pathetic and weak. Ignorant and stupid.”
A wicked voice laughed low in the brown-haired girl’s ear. “Don’t think you’re smart enough to walk away. You owe your life to Thadeo. You wouldn’t have a roof over your head if it wasn’t for him. Your only value is your body, and he’s paying you exactly what you deserve, which is next to nothing.”
She fought them. The thoughts that fired through the distortion that blurred through her consciousness. Fought to rise above them. To break through them.
And the blonde . . . the one who seemed much younger . . . She was close to succumbing, her thoughts torrid and bleak.
“Of course it hurts. Because you deserve it. You earned it. Asked for it. Begged for it. Why do you think your mother’s boyfriends came to you?
You were always a little slut. They could smell it on you.
You’ll die this way, and soon. You should just put yourself out of this misery.
It’s okay to welcome it. It’s the only relief you will ever find.
You can’t take this any longer. It’s time. It’s time.”
I stumbled over her agony as her thoughts blistered through my mind. It was as if I could actually see her memories without touching her.
A terrified little girl. Man after man in her room. Telling her she was special. That she was pretty. That it was their secret. The pain. The prayers. The pleas.
Oh God, oh God.
Nausea coiled in my stomach, and my fingers tingled with an unbearable urge to touch. To end the battering mayhem in their minds.
It grew as their thoughts spiraled through me in a deluge of devastation.
It became impossible to turn from them, and I was moving, crossing the street without giving myself permission.
Drawn to them.
“You look like you took a wrong turn,” the older one—the brunette—tossed out as I approached. “You should get out of here before it’s too late.”
It was like she couldn’t tell if she wanted the warning to be spiteful or if she actually wanted me to run.
Except I was on the sidewalk, and my hand that wasn’t gripping the gun stretched out with the need to touch, though there was still a foot of space between us.
“Stay here. Please don’t leave. I’ll be right back,” I whispered to her through the disorder.
The screaming in my ears growing louder.
Both theirs and Pax’s.
I could almost hear Pax chanting, Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
A vague, fuzzy innuendo that he needed me.
Her laughter was a scoff. “What, you think you’ve got somethin’ to offer me? Get the hell out of here, you clueless bitch, before your luck runs out and you end up right here next to us.”
Terror flared in the other’s green eyes when she looked up at me and saw the color of mine, and she whirled, looking around as if she were searching for someone else.
Pax had been here.
I knew it. Could feel it stronger than ever. The pull that tugged and compelled.
I felt torn, fractured by the instinct to stay and help, and the need to go.
Hurry.
“I’ll be back,” I promised again, pain leaching out with the words before I moved deeper into the darkness that reigned along the side of the dingy building.
The sensation grew with each step.
As danger echoed and chaos thrashed.
Pax.
He was near. I could feel his severity. The sharp cut of his aura.
Keeping my footsteps light, I hurried in its direction, trying to orient myself to the bedlam that flashed through the dense, hazy air.
Hostility and malevolence.
Then I stumbled when I saw the outline of someone up ahead in the distance.
A dark silhouette that rippled with a twisted sort of violence. Everything about him was sullied. No goodness to be found in the slick of immorality that dripped like sludge from his being.
“No one plays with my girls unless they pay for it,” I heard him say, his voice a sadistic taunt as he took a step forward and disappeared on the other side of a large industrial dumpster that blocked the sidewalk. “You should have thought twice before you came sniffing around here.”
There was the echo of more footsteps that grew closer, and I could feel the swell of aggression rise in the atmosphere.
My senses keened as I listened through the muddle to try to discern what was happening.
Men were surrounding him.
Circling him.
Hunting him.