Chapter Eighteen Aria
Chapter Eighteen
Aria
It was unsettling, waiting for something to happen. For the tsunami I could feel building in the distance to finally hit land. A surging force that would eradicate everything in its path.
It was as if I could feel it lingering at the edges of this world. Trembling and vibrating as it gathered strength. And when it combusted, it would fracture everything this world knew.
That worry over my family had come back in full force, and I’d probably checked in with my mother too many times to make sure they were all safe.
They were.
Safe and still staying at my grandmother’s.
I’d warned them to be extra vigilant.
I glanced around the grocery store, where Pax and I roamed up and down the aisles, grabbing a few things to stock our room with.
I couldn’t help but peer at those surrounding us who went about their days without a clue. Some in torment, the voices so strong that it felt nearly impossible not to reach out and touch them as I passed by.
Others where their voices were only a slight drone.
None were without hopes and fears.
An elderly woman, her back hunched with a hump and her head permanently angled to one side.
A mother with three young children who was frazzled but still patient as she smiled.
A man who rushed in to grab a twelve-pack of beer.
The workers.
The patrons.
My spirit ached with what might happen if all Laven were erased. I couldn’t imagine that society would stand. It would mean complete and utter destruction.
It would be impossible for life to go on the way it was meant to.
The precarious balance we tiptoed tossed from its axis.
“Ah, here we go. Doughnuts.” Pax sent me a wry grin as he grabbed a plastic container from a display in the bakery.
A sad smile ridged my mouth. There was no stopping the melancholy. Finding proof of all the dead Laven earlier today had wrecked something inside me.
But I had to put one foot in front of the other and hope I could tap into whatever was trapped inside me, the way Pax had said. It just made it really difficult when I didn’t understand any of it.
The hardest part was that this was no longer about my survival only.
It was about survival for all of us.
For Laven.
And I knew, without question, that extended into humanity.
Pax felt my unease, and he reached out and tugged me toward him. “Come here, Princess.”
He tucked me between himself and the cart, and he started pushing it around the end of one aisle and up another, his mouth at the side of my neck as he murmured near my sensitive skin, “Remember when you told me we had to cherish every moment that we had? Make use of every minute of time that we’re given?
I’m gonna hold you to that right now. We’ve got too much to be living for .
. . to be fighting for . . . for you to give up on me now. ”
I leaned against him, letting myself sink into the warmth he exuded. “I’d never give up on you, Pax.”
“Good, because I’m never giving up on you.” He let go of the handle with his left hand and splayed it across my belly, pulling me closer against the rippling strength of his body. “I have too much planned for you, Aria Rialta, for you to start looking like you’re ready to surrender.”
I turned in his hold, and he stopped moving. The two of us just stood in the middle of the cereal aisle, staring at each other. That energy wisped between us, the connection that bound.
“I’m not surrendering,” I promised.
“Good girl.” The words were a brush of air that he exhaled.
I fiddled with the collar of his tee as I gazed up at the ruthless beauty of his face. Heat danced just under the surface of my skin. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Is it working?”
“I think it might be,” I said, playing along.
His smile turned to greed. “Think we should get back to the motel and put some of this time to good use.”
He shifted me around so he had his left arm slung over my shoulders, hugging me to his side as he maneuvered the cart to the checkout.
More people were up front than in the rest of the store.
The voices crowding in and growing louder.
Pax could sense it as he grabbed the few things we’d picked up and ran them through the scanner, working quickly and precisely, the way he always did.
His eyes were keen, but today, they were keen on me.
Reading me.
Knowing me.
Getting me.
His voice was hushed as he covertly looked around, as if he were trying to figure out who I might be drawn to. “You have work to do? Not gonna stop you, Aria, but you need to try to conserve your energy if you can.”
My brows drew together in concentration. “I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone is in crisis.”
Those were the ones I couldn’t resist. The ones that compelled me to do something.
“Okay . . . You just say, though.”
“I know,” I told him as I helped place our purchases in a bag.
Two minutes later, we’d paid and were heading out into the day. A heavy chill sagged in the dense air. The clouds were so thick it almost felt as if evening were approaching, though it was the middle of the day.
A shiver rolled through the chill.
Something ominous that coasted down my spine.
I trembled, but tried to ignore the foreboding that swept through me.
Pax pushed the cart out to the car, and he clicked the locks. We piled the few bags into the trunk while I struggled against the sensation.
Against the awareness that pulsed.
“Mommy?” A scared little voice suddenly carried on the wind, and I straightened from where I was bent over the trunk to look out in the direction it had come from.
There was a young boy, wandering by himself at the far end of the parking lot. Up close to the sidewalk.
The street beyond it was busy.
Cars, trucks, and buses whizzed by, their drivers unaware.
Dread grabbed me by the throat, though my mind wavered, uncertainty pulling through me like threads driven by a needle that tugged at my spirit.
“Do you see him?” I wheezed, terrified I was hallucinating the way I’d done the night when I’d been coaxed from the hotel room. When the little girl hadn’t been a little girl at all, but a manifestation of Ambrose.
“Where are you, Mommy?” The child inched closer to the street as his distress increased.
“Fuck . . . Yeah, I see him,” Pax said. He didn’t take the time to shut the trunk. He started sprinting in that direction, calling, “Hey, buddy, why don’t you come away from the road, and we’ll find your mommy?”
The child turned around. His eyes grew wide when he saw Pax running toward him. “No. You’re a stranger.”
“I won’t come near you . . .” Pax stretched out placating hands. “Just . . . come this way so you’re not so close to those cars. How’s that sound?”
I jogged to catch up to them, but Pax was already at the end of the lot when I was only halfway.
Shock hacked through me when arms suddenly wrapped around me from behind. A scream tore up my throat, but a hand clamped over my mouth and stopped any sound from getting out.
Terror locked tight, and I flailed and struggled to get loose, kicking my feet into the air since I’d been ripped off the ground. Shouts bowled up my throat only to hit the barrier that kept them trapped.
A man who had to be twice my size snarled venom into my ear. “You little bitch. Where have you been hiding? He’s been looking for you.”
I gasped and choked against the scent of him. Something vile and offensive.
He dragged me between two cars, quickly and steadily moving across the lot. I could hear the immorality of his thoughts, the heinousness he’d fully given himself over to. “He promised I could have you once he was finished with you.”
I kept trying to scream. To draw attention to what was happening. But no one paid any attention to us. Everyone’s focus was on the commotion happening on the other side of the lot.
The screeching of tires and the blaring of horns and the shouts of horror.
Unquestionably, the child was being used as a decoy, and there was no one there to notice that I was being dragged around the side of the building.
A fence ran the length of it. Only three feet separated it and the cinder block wall of the grocery store, the area completely isolated and concealed from the front.
The man kept my back pinned against his chest, walking backward as he went. I kept kicking my feet, trying to set him off-balance. I clawed at his hands, so hard I was sure I had to be breaking skin.
He only laughed a menacing sound. “So feisty. That’s good.
I like it when they fight.” He pressed his mouth harder against my ear.
“But I like it so much more when they scream. Are you a screamer, little girl? But I guess you won’t be screaming any longer once he gets finished with you. I’ll have to make do.”
Sickness roiled, and I could smell the stench of his memories. The horrid things he had done.
He hauled me all the way behind the building, where it was even more secluded.
I swore I could see the tumult in the sky. The roil of thunderous clouds.
Violent and cyclonic.
As if the heavens had begun to boil.
Awareness slithered through me. A horrifying recognition. It was Ambrose. I could feel him. The freezing cold he elicited.
“Release her,” a low voice intoned.
A cold sweat slicked my skin, the fear so deep I felt it sink into my marrow.
The man who held me whirled around and threw me forward at the same time. I stumbled with the momentum, trying to find my footing, to keep from falling to my hands and feet.
I was barely able to steady myself when I lifted my attention and found Ambrose standing twenty feet away.
Blond hair darker beneath the darkness of the clouds that swirled above him.
A man who had appeared so benign and plain, but who I knew possessed the greatest wickedness.
Was possibly the epitome of it.
Or with the way his brown eyes seemed to glow, maybe Pax had been right. Maybe he was the embodiment of Kreed.
Maybe I was standing in front of the evil one.
I searched inside myself for the courage I’d found when I faced him on that unknown plane. For the conviction to fight.