Chapter Eighteen Aria #2
It was harder here outside of the supernatural realm. When I was wholly human, and I had none of the strength and speed that I had in Faydor.
Except my spirit rattled and my fingers buzzed.
A reminder that that wasn’t true. I was different. Some of the ethereal had followed me here.
A reminder that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t succumb and, rather, would fight.
A reminder that I had to face him head-on or this was never going to end.
Laven would continue to die because of him—because of whatever or whoever this monster was.
“You bastard,” I spat, unable to hold the spite back when I knew he was responsible for the deaths in our family. For every Laven who had been lost this week.
A thrill ran through his features, and he cocked his head to the side, his voice condescending. “Have you enjoyed my handiwork, little Valient? I wondered when you would notice. When you’d see that I meant it when I told you I was going to end you all.”
He came forward then, the pavement below me rumbling with each step he took, thunder that rolled like a dark storm possessing the ground and sky.
“Every last one of you, and there is nothing you can do about it. This has been coming for a long, long time.”
I lifted my chin, nerves clattering as I tried to stand my ground.
To hold on to hope when I was surrounded by sickness.
The disgusting presence of the man who’d grabbed me salivating with evil from behind me and the culmination of it in front of me.
“Since the day Abigail died?” I said it as a challenge. I wanted to set him off-kilter and make him stumble.
He only grinned. “Ah, you have been doing your research, I see. She was such a sweet little thing.” He tsked like it was a shame. “Talented and beautiful. I loved her with everything I had. Your Nol will do that to you, though, won’t they?”
It was me who stumbled. Me who was set off-kilter at his words.
Was that what he was saying?
That he was a . . . Laven?
But how . . . how had he ended up like this?
I gulped around the thickness that nearly closed off my throat.
“You’re a Laven.”
But his eyes . . . they weren’t gray.
His laughter was menacing as he began to circle me as if I were prey. I followed the path, trying to keep him in my line of sight.
All while my mind shouted for Pax. For him to feel me. Find me.
“I was a Laven,” Ambrose hissed before his voice turned mollifying again as he continued.
“It’s true what Valeen says . . . Your Nol is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.
I was supposed to take over my father’s printing shop, but I didn’t care.
When I was seventeen, I traveled from Chicago to South Carolina to find her.
She was the only thing I cared about in that horrible life I’d been sentenced to. ”
He kept moving, his voice drifting between malice and awe. “God, she was breathtaking. I was enthralled. I would have given anything just to be by her side. The smallest reprieve from a lifetime of torment. The voices? The burns? Those eyes? As if what we’d been given was supposed to be some gift?”
His scoff was discordant.
Jarring.
“I hated it and would have done anything to be rid of it. I would have given anything to be normal and go to sleep and dream at night. But Abigail . . . she embraced it. Her whole purpose was what happened once she went to sleep. And then one day she woke up changed . . . and she took on that purpose during the day. A Valient.”
He snarled it as if she had committed a sin.
“No regard to anything else but giving herself to the pathetic, weak creatures of this earth, as if they deserved her time and care. As if they should have something better than what Kreed had planned for them.”
His jealousy twisted around him, a tornado that spun as fast as the clouds overhead.
“She was pathetic, just like the rest. So it was easy when Kreed made me the offer.”
A soft puff of air slipped from his nose.
“Did you know if a Laven doesn’t sleep for a week, he’s brought before Kreed?
Its soul so weakened by not returning to Tearsith that he now owns it.
I wished I’d have known sooner so I could have been brought before Kreed earlier.
It turned out, all I had to do was kill her in his name.
Take one Valient’s life, and mine would go on forever.
I’d be removed from the burden that Laven were given.
Given a true gift . . . one where I ruled the night. There was really no option.”
He said it casually. Easily.
He circled me, coming closer with each rotation that he made around me.
“You should have heard the way she screamed inside that house when I set it afire.”
Pax, I begged in my mind. I could feel his confusion and fear blistering through the air. He was searching for me.
Ambrose angled his head to the side. “Just the way every Valient I’ve hunted down over the years has done.
One given to this world each decade as if they might have the power to stop me.
And you, little Valient . . . you will be the last. Have you ever wondered why you were the last Laven in your family?
Valeen has no power left to bring anyone into her fold.
She gave everything she had remaining to you—creating the last Valient to stand.
And it will be my pleasure finally bringing her vain attempt at stopping me to its end.
You are the final one sustaining her, and once you’re gone, Valeen will finally have lost the very last of her pathetic, wilting strength.
I’ve been waiting for more than a hundred years, and now, once I remove you, I will reign here. No longer in the darkness.”
His voice twisted and dipped, and my pulse careened as I tried to process everything he was saying.
“People will no longer fear what is in the shadows. They will fear what stands in front of them in the day. Me. They will bow at my feet. I have given my soul to Kreed, and he has offered me this reward. To rule both here and in Faydor. And there will be no Laven left to protect them from that. And you, little Valient, are that bridge. I will cross it when you come to your end.”
The second he said it, he grabbed me by the throat and threw me to the side.
I flew off my feet and slammed against the block wall. My head cracked against the concrete.
Pain ricocheted through my body, and the air was knocked from my lungs. Gasping, I attempted to orient myself, to hold on to the memory that I’d beaten him in that realm. That I’d gotten away.
He’d been afraid.
Energy throbbed within me. Convulsing and rough.
I grabbed hold of it, but I had no time to focus on amplifying it before Ambrose was on me again. Gripping me by the throat and squeezing with both hands. “And that end is now.”
Blackness clouded in at the edges of my sight, coming so fast I was unprepared.
Eyes bulging with pain, with the loss of oxygen, I tore at his wrists, but I was unable to budge him.
The other man danced around in the periphery, howling with deranged excitement.
And I thought that this was it. I really had met my end.
Except, in the middle of the desperation, the light within me suddenly glowed. Glowed so bright it was blinding. It built in a flash.
I struggled to harness it, to bring it to my hands and use it against the one man who would bring complete annihilation to the world.
I stopped clawing at his wrists and instead drove my fingertips into his sides.
He roared when the contact blew him back ten feet, as if my fingers were electric prods. The beast skidded on his feet, and it took him all of two seconds to right himself.
I didn’t have time to process the exhaustion that wanted to bring me to my knees before he was flying back for me, though he’d produced a knife. “You little bitch. Whore. You think you’re going to escape me the way you did in Baahg? It will not happen again.”
He slashed the knife in my direction, and I lifted my hands to protect my face. A yelp rolled through my throat when it nicked the tip of my pinkie.
But that energy boomed. Bounding within me and becoming something brand new. I fought him with it, grappling as he lashed and whipped the knife. I kicked, sending him flying backward again, much the same as I’d done in that realm he’d called Baahg. In the place where he currently ruled.
Ruled the Kruen.
The Ghorls.
In the place where he commanded that all Laven be extinguished.
I had to stop him.
A shout ripped out of me as I dove for him. I knocked him back to the ground. He whipped the hand with the knife across the air, barely missing my chin as I ducked before I grabbed him by the wrist with both hands.
I tried to jostle the knife loose, and he roared, tossing me off.
I tumbled across the pitted pavement behind the grocery store, groaning when I landed on my back. My eyes pinched shut from the jolt of pain that rocked through my body.
The atmosphere simmered with evil, and my eyes peeled open to Ambrose standing over me. He turned the knife over, the blade pointed downward as he held it between both hands.
My heart was his target.
I could see it. The finality that gleamed in his eyes.
But the energy shifted, stirring through the air in a clamor of desperation. A thunder of footsteps raced up behind Ambrose, and Pax drove his shoulder into his ribs. The velocity knocked Ambrose to the side.
Pax’s eyes were wild when he saw me on the ground. “Aria.”
“Pax!” I shouted when the other man lumbered up behind him. “Behind you!”
Pax whirled, ducking just in time to miss the fist the man threw before he delivered a punch that knocked the monster onto his back.
I scrambled to my feet and ran toward Ambrose, who’d spun back around and was coming for me.
We met in the middle, and I grabbed the wrist of his hand that still held the knife while a tussle of shouts and kicks and punches thudded behind us.
I begged my spirit to comply. For the light to gather in a way that it never had before. To become something great. The power Valeen had promised that I possessed.
It glowed within me, and I gritted my teeth as I fought with everything I had to use it against Ambrose.
But on his face was a sneer. The amusement that I thought I could prevail.
Still, I tried to harness the power from Valeen and send it sailing into his being.
If it wasn’t enough, then how could I end him here? Was it all futile? Worthless?
I gasped and choked as I tried to push against him. To break the knife from his hold. Turn it against him. Hopelessness rolled through me. Even if I managed it, it likely wouldn’t do any good.
He was immortal.
A wave of strength erupted, and I managed to twist his wrist just a fraction away from me, turning it toward him.
His sneer turned to a snarl, and he pushed against the light.
Darkness enveloped, wrapping around me like the fiery tendrils of Kruen.
Pax was suddenly behind me, both hands planted on my back as if he was going to rip me away so he could stand in front of Ambrose.
Only the second he touched me, the light surged.
A shock wave that blistered through my hands in a burst of power.
The knife drove forward, and the blade plunged deep into Ambrose’s stomach.
It blew him off his feet and into the air, and the monster slammed into the grocery store wall. The cinder blocks cracked and crumbled where he smashed against them.
He stumbled forward, dazed as he jerked the knife from his stomach.
Blood gushed from the wound—a thick, sticky red. Like the wounds Pax and I woke up with after being burned in Faydor. Shocked, he stared down at it before he lifted his malicious gaze to me.
I was frozen in it.
This thing that felt like a crossroads.
We stayed that way for a prolonged beat before he suddenly turned and ran down the far side of the building, far faster than either Pax or I could run.
Our own shock held us there, our breaths panted and harsh as we tried to make sense of what had happened.
Then Pax was in front of me, begging, “Are you hurt?”
I could hardly shake my head. “No. I barely cut my finger, but it’s nothing. Are you?”
“No, I’m fine.” His palms flew to my cheeks, cupping them as he stared at me. “Fuck, Aria, I was so fuckin’ scared when I turned around after grabbing that kid from the street and you weren’t there. Knew immediately what had happened.”
“I’m okay. I’m okay. I . . .”
I looked back to where Ambrose had disappeared before I turned back to him.
And that was the second we knew. When we understood what our connection meant.
We were stronger together.
The bond between us that had pulled us through time and realm amplifying our power.
We were meant for this—for this love that, for so many years, we’d been told was forbidden.
But no . . .
No . . .
Joy spiraled with the intensity that ricocheted between me and Pax, and in a flash, Pax’s mouth descended on mine, his kiss frantic as he twisted one hand up in my hair and clutched me against him with the other.
His mouth pressed and begged, his tongue stroking against mine in a bid of desperation.
Passion spiraled.
Speeding through our veins and whispering down into our souls.
Love and lust and every chain that had tried to hold us back.
He hoisted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist at the same time that I wound my arms around his neck.
I kissed him with the same fervency he kissed me with.
The need that boiled between us urgent and acute.
He didn’t break the kiss as he stepped over the man who was knocked out, face down on the ground, and carried me around the side of the building.
His tongue sought and his spirit thrummed while I breathed this new belief into his being.
“Pax.”
“Fuck, Aria, fuck,” he mumbled frantically against my lips.
When we got to the front of the building, he reluctantly set me on my feet, though he took my hand, and we raced across the lot to his car. He whipped the door open and helped me inside before he ducked in to take another desperate kiss.
He broke it long enough to jog around the front of the car, and he jumped into the driver’s seat; then he was reaching for me from over the console. Hot hands glided over every inch of my body he could get to, his mouth possessing mine again.
A groan rolled up his throat when he forced himself away. Ragged breaths jutted from his mouth, which remained an inch from mine. “Need to be inside you, right fuckin’ now.”
I leaned over the console, and I kissed up under his jaw and scratched my nails under his jacket and over his tee, searching for a way to sink all the way into him.
“And I need it. I need you to be. Right now,” I whispered back.
His hand clamped down on the inside of my thigh before he threw the car into reverse and whipped out of the spot.