Chapter Twenty-Nine Pax
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Pax
A tormented groan rolled out of me when I came to, face down on the floor. I struggled to push myself up onto my hands and knees. To get the fuck up. To get to Aria.
A bolt of pain stabbed through my head the second I moved, racking through my insides.
I fought to stay upright, and I gripped my head in both hands to try to stop the spinning.
To ward off the incoherency that pushed in at the edges of my consciousness, threatening to suck me back under.
Though the shout of Aria’s soul was so much louder.
Breaking through the murky blur of my mind.
Screaming as it battered against my spirit.
Pax. Pax. Pax.
I could feel her calling for me.
Begging for me.
Blood gushed from a wound cracked high up on my skull, and nausea boiled in my guts, my sight nearly blinded. But I couldn’t let it sway me. Couldn’t let it stop me from my purpose.
Aria. Aria.
I could barely make out the fuzzy figure that was suddenly standing over me, something close to hysteria spilling from his mouth. “Oh, fuck, Pax. Fuck. They have her. They took her.”
I could hear the shout of an engine tearing up the street, and I staggered onto my feet.
I floundered, and Timothy’s hands landed on either side of my upper arms to keep me steady.
“You need to sit down, man,” Timothy instructed, like there was a chance I would be able to comply. “You’re bleeding like a faucet turned to high.”
“You know that’s not gonna fuckin’ happen,” I spat as I pulled away from him and stumbled to where I’d left my clothes in a pile on the floor. I bent down, jamming the heel of my hand into my eye when it felt like a hot blade pierced my brain, though I gathered myself enough to drag on my jeans.
Clarity began to infiltrate the daze with each second that passed. Each of those seconds warning that we didn’t have one of them to waste.
It might already be too late.
Desolation yawned through the middle of me, though it was the panic surging through my bloodstream that rocketed me into action.
I snagged my shoes and shirt from the floor, and I glanced to where Dani was a stir of agitation at the door. “Tell me you have a car.”
“I do,” she rasped.
She didn’t pause to wait before she darted down the hall. She was back two seconds later with her purse and keys, wearing a pair of sweats, a tank, slip-on Vans on her feet. “I’m ready.”
“Need to grab supplies.” I ripped open my duffel. I took the gun I’d left on top, plus the two large hunting knives I’d tucked in beside it, my insides rattling as I stuffed them into my pockets.
“Shit,” Timothy grunted.
No doubt the guy’s head was spinning since he hadn’t lived the type of life that I had.
His life was devoted to children.
To the classroom where he’d instilled his own brand of hope into his students, though there was no question he knew enough from walking in darkness that he’d have a clue what we were up against.
“Hurry,” Dani begged.
“Ready,” I mumbled as I grabbed my boots, and Dani ducked out of the doorway and headed back down the hall. We ran out behind her, and dipped through the door closest to the living room that led into the garage.
Dani flipped on the light, illuminating the space that housed a newer four-door Civic.
The alarm still blared through the house, and I shouted, “Turn that off before the cops show.”
I was unable to keep the harshness out of the command as I rushed to the car.
Though I knew she got it. Felt it. What was riding on this.
She nodded frantically, her pink hair sticking up all over the place, flustered as she punched the code into the pad next to the interior door right before she jammed the button to the garage to open it.
I’d already ripped open the door to the front passenger seat and was sinking down inside when she flew back around, jogged to the driver’s side, and jumped in.
Timothy dove into the back behind her.
Our ragged breaths jutted into the cab as she pushed the button to start the vehicle and whipped into reverse. We flew backward out of the garage, tires screeching when she hit the street. She didn’t even come to a full stop before she rammed it into drive and floored the accelerator.
Night was all around, the only illumination the few exterior lights that glowed from the porches of the houses that sporadically dotted Dani’s street, mere outlines sitting way back below the trees.
Everything was too quiet and still.
Except for us.
We were chaos.
Calamity.
She blazed up through the neighborhood, already asking, “Which way?” before she got to where the street made a T at the main road. But I could feel the despondency behind it.
Her fear that we weren’t going to find her.
That Aria was already gone.
Lost.
That urgency roiled inside me. The call that had led me to Aria the first time screaming so loud it was the only thing I could hear. Her fear and desperation in the middle of it, promising me that she was still alive.
I shoved my right foot into my boot as I shouted, “Left.”
Dani barely slowed, and the car careened across the road as she made the sharp turn. The tail skidded, whipping far right, then left, before it corrected; then she was ramming on the gas again.
Timothy sat forward, holding on to Dani’s headrest with both hands, his head poked between us. “Well, shit, it’s a good thing my girl drives like her damn pants have caught flames. My mom’s going to love you.”
Dani croaked an incredulous sound. Disbelief that he was being light in the middle of this. Injecting hope in the midst of affliction.
“That is, if I don’t kill us first,” she mumbled as she flew down the road.
“Nah, baby, we’re going to get through this. All of us.”
I could feel his encouragement. The same encouragement he’d fed me when I was a kid, the man my guide for so long. Support and insight and the kind of love I’d never received from my real family.
Except this—this was my family. The center of it out in front of us, ensnared.
Held.
But I could feel her—could feel her rushing through my bloodstream on a plea.
“Yeah, we are,” I promised quietly as I crammed my other foot into my boot, tying them tight before I shouted, “Right,” when I was suddenly overcome by that sensation.
Swelling and rising.
We were getting close.
Dani gripped the steering wheel with both hands, jerking it hard as she took the turn far faster than was prudent. The tires screamed as we whipped around the corner. But she nailed it, the engine revving high as she blew down the road.
Not a soul was around. Businesses locked up tight, the neighborhoods quiet and dimmed.
Something about it felt different. Like we’d traveled beyond the limits of the city. Or maybe beyond the limits of this world.
The heavens too close.
The clouds, this tumultuous disturbance above. A bolt of lightning cracked through the sinister canopy that rolled in undulating waves above.
“What the fuck?” Timothy drew out on a whisper.
The energy shifted in the car as each of us became aware of the otherworldly.
“He’s here,” I said, gritting it out through the clench of my teeth.
A full-body tremble skated through Dani as she raced beneath it, the buildings becoming scarce, interspersed with open, rolling fields.
I thought she must have felt it, too—this connection with Aria—because she abruptly slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left when we came to a large open field.
The car pitched hard, and we hit the dirt at high speed.
The front slammed against an embankment that sent us flying over the top.
We caught the slightest bit of air before we bashed back onto the ground, the car jostling and lurching.
The tires spun for a second; then we caught traction again and flew across the rough terrain.
The headlights were extra bright as the front of the car ate up the high grass we could barely see over, the sound of it grating beneath as it scraped on the underside.
When we crested a ridge, Dani smashed on the brakes as the scene came into view in the distance.
A pickup truck was parked out in the field, the headlights left on and illuminating a tree on a hill about a hundred yards away from it. A tree two men were dragging Aria toward, where three more men waited, each of them unable to sit still as they itched with bloodlust.
Ice sank down into the depths of me, freezing me in a vat of anguish.
“Oh God, what do we do?” Dani whimpered as she clutched the steering wheel and peered out the windshield.
“You two should stay in the car.” It tortured me to suggest it, but this shit was clearly not stacking in our favor. Something about what was going down was so much bigger than anything I’d faced before.
The men who’d been sent to stop Aria previously had been fully human.
Sure, twisted, deranged, fucked-in-the-heart humans who had no other concern but her utter destruction—but still, human.
Mortal.
But there was something about this that felt off. Like maybe we were being lured straight into a trap, one I couldn’t ask Dani and Timothy to step into.
Dani scoffed. “Don’t even try to pull that bullshit with me, Pax. You act like I haven’t fought in Faydor for longer than you. And yes, I know it’s different. I know here I’m fully human and have all the vulnerabilities that come with that, but this is Aria we’re talking about.”
She flung her hand in Aria’s direction.
“She’s our family, Pax,” Timothy rumbled from behind. “I know you want to protect us, but we’re not sitting on the sidelines—just like you didn’t when you believed Dani was in danger.”
Lightning streaked above. A frisson of energy crackled through the atmosphere, a slow slide of iniquity that lifted every hair on my body.
“Don’t know what we’re up against,” I warned.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re in this together,” he said. “Now, you’re going to give me one of those knives, and you’re going to give the other to Dani; then we’re going to go get our girl back. We’ll creep in on either side of them, and you go up the middle.”
“You’re sure?”
They both gave me a resolute nod.
Dread thickened my throat, but I warily passed each of them one of the massive knives. Dani looked like she was going to puke when she clasped her hand around the hilt, her fear patent though her courage was vivid.
I clicked the latch to the door and slowly pushed it open before I cautiously stepped out into the howl of the whipping wind.
Wind that was crystallized. Frozen particles that stirred through the torrid atmosphere.
The clouds reeked with the stench of death.
But it was what was moving through them that nearly made me trip. The swirls of red and flashes of black.
Holy fuck.
It wasn’t Ambrose.
These were Kruen.