Chapter Thirty Aria #2
“You’re dead, bitches. Both of you,” he grunted as he started to climb back to standing, then immediately dropped back down. But how long he would remain there, I didn’t know.
I grabbed Dani’s hand, begging, “You have to get out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you. Without all of you. We’re in this together,” she argued. A lash of worry cut into her brow when she took me in, her entire face pinching in concern. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
I blinked through the sluggishness.
“Drained,” I wheezed, panting into the disordered air.
“Oh God,” she mumbled. She curled her arm around my waist to support me. “Okay, okay, we’ve got this,” she promised.
I leaned against her, inhaling deep, massive breaths into my deflated lungs.
A spark of energy lit—the barest flame, but it was there.
“Aria, get to the car! Both of you get to the fucking car!” Pax shouted as he fought with one man. Another was on the ground, groaning beside him.
Timothy still warred with the other two, though I could feel him faltering.
Failing.
His own exhaustion from the type of battle he was not accustomed to slowing him down.
I thought Dani could feel it before I could. The peril that Timothy was in. Because she suddenly drew in a haggard breath, whispering, “No,” before she released me and bolted forward, screaming as she ran.
She didn’t slow or hesitate when she drove her blade deep into the thigh of one of the men who was overtaking her Nol.
Wailing, the man dropped his knife and gripped the wound with both hands. His voice dipped between his own and the rasped frenzy that the Kruen incited above. “You fuckin’ cunt. Whore. Bitch. I’m going to make you bleed. Slice you up. He’ll be pleased.”
Forgetting his injury, he snatched his knife from the ground, jaw clenched as he went for Dani.
I found enough strength to catapult myself in their direction, and my hand clamped down on her shoulder to push her out of the way as I drove my palm forward and into his chest the second before he got to her.
I released the bare sparks of light at the same time.
He flew back at the impact, catching five feet of air before he slammed to the ground, his body cutting into the earth as he skidded another three feet.
Dani gasped in surprise and relief, eyes wide with disbelief. “Holy shit, Aria. Did you seriously fry that bastard with your bare hand?”
I swayed, and when Dani realized I was about to fall, she rushed forward and curled around my waist. “I’ve got you.”
Timothy kicked at the single man he was fighting. His foot connected with his stomach, and it sent him sailing back into the tree.
His skull knocked against its trunk. Hard enough that he slid down to the ground, giving Timothy a reprieve.
The second he realized both men were down, he came running for us, shouting, “We have to get out of here. This is something different than I can explain. These assholes have more than human strength.”
As if to prove a point, the man I’d just sent flailing through the air climbed back onto his feet, and the other one Timothy had been fighting pushed to his, the two coming together as they turned back toward us.
Their faces were twisted in the ruthlessness that oozed in their veins.
“We have to go.” Pax was suddenly there, gripping me by the hand. A shock of his energy rolled through me.
Bolstering.
Sustaining and fortifying.
“Can you run?” he wheezed.
“I think so.”
He whirled us around with the clear intention of racing us back toward where they’d come from.
But we froze when we saw that the men he’d toppled had risen, as well as the third one, who’d been so close to getting to Dani.
Their features distorted, and their skin seemed to crawl and writhe over their bones.
The air around them trembled. Whirring and whirring.
More Kruen.
They spun around their bodies in a violent, cataclysmic storm.
The men closed in on us from behind, moving around to create a circle.
Trapping us.
Fear raced.
Disbelief and dismay.
A palpable wave that rolled through us all.
Pax still clung to me, and Dani held on to my other hand. Timothy was behind us, his back pressed to mine while we all watched the men come closer.
The four of us remained connected.
Our spirits clinging to each other.
It was a flicker at first. So slight that I wasn’t sure for one second before it was there—the light.
It resurfaced within me and quickly began to glow. It seemed to gather strength as fast as the Kruen spun around the men.
The circle of men edged closer as the darkened clouds opened above us.
Lightning crackled, and I swore I caught a glimpse of Faydor.
More Kruen were taking shape, their monstrous forms dripping down from the blackened heavens as if they could reach out and control what happened below.
I was punched by incredulity.
By shock.
It was almost the exact same picture as the one I’d seen that day in the library when Pax and I had first discovered the paintings by Abigail Watkins. One that she had painted of Kruen reaching down and devouring the innocent below.
One that I’d thought had been part of her imagination. A metaphor for the evils they cast into the world.
Had she seen it? Had she known what was to come? Did she sense the wickedness that had been borne in her husband?
Did she possess this energy that seemed to howl beneath it?
Expanding and deepening, becoming something beyond anything I’d ever felt before?
It trembled through me, shivers racking through my body as I tried to hold it in.
My hands burned with the need to do something.
This need intrinsic.
It seemed to feed off the contact.
Off Dani and Timothy.
But even more so, off Pax.
Spurred by the calamity that raged overhead.
And still, something told me to hold it.
Harness it.
Pax flinched as he gauged the men who inched closer. Every muscle in his body flexed with hinged restraint. Violence skated along the surface of his skin, sparks of volatility, and the gun he held in his left hand trembled.
“There’s no good left in them,” he muttered as if he were giving us a warning.
As if it needed to be said aloud.
A judgment.
A verdict.
A penalty.
“I have to do this.”
He started to lift his hand to fire when the force inside me became unbearable. When I could no longer keep it contained.
Before Pax could shoot, I ripped my hand from Pax’s and Dani’s.
And I let it go.
It was an earthquake.
A burst of lightning.
Blinding as it surged out in every direction.
It struck the men in a flash of light.
They flew.
Blasted backward a hundred feet.
They seemed to be airborne forever.
Immune to gravity.
Before they finally came careening back to the ground like darts shooting from the sky.
Dust gusted and whipped, and it was seconds later before it cleared and we could see where they’d landed.
Their bodies were bent at odd angles. Contorted and mangled.
A sob wrenched out of me when I realized what had happened.
Their deaths marked.
I choked on the sickness that curdled in my stomach, and the overwhelming weakness that rushed through me sent me staggering two steps forward.
Disoriented and grieved at the truth of what had to be done.
“Oh my God, oh my God.” I could hear Dani whimpering, and Timothy whispered something to her that I couldn’t make out.
Because the world spun and spun.
The darkened clouds continued to writhe, and a torrent of ice-spiked rain suddenly pelted us from the gaping hole ripped in the heavens.
The Kruen above howled their rage.
One rose high, its gruesome face warped in hate as it peered down at me from the toiling clouds.
And there was no time to devise and plan.
No time to deflect or anticipate.
None of us were prepared for the fiery tendril that streaked from the sky.
One that struck me in the side, as deep as a blade.