Chapter Forty-One Aria
Chapter Forty-One
Aria
We’d been driving for more than five hours.
We’d crossed into Idaho and the scenery had become the most desolate stretch of road that we had traveled since Pax and I had first come together, and we’d spent more hours than I could count driving roads where it felt as if we might be the only ones on them.
The houses and small towns that had been sporadically placed along our routes.
The rare cars and trucks we encountered during that time had made it feel as if we’d been secluded from the rest of the world.
Maybe lifted and elevated above it.
For a few moments, given a reprieve from the dangerous force that had tracked us for weeks.
This was an entirely different sensation, though, driving toward the danger we could feel compelling us forward. A danger that grew thicker and more menacing with each mile that passed.
The few moments of levity we’d found when we sped out of Portland had quickly evaporated.
In their place was something ominous.
A foreboding that crowded overhead as the terrain blurred by through the windows we each warily watched from. A river had followed us nearly the entire way, weaving along the side of the highway as we cut through the low range of mountains that appeared more like hills than anything else.
The knolls and rises nearly void of trees.
A landscape of snow-covered fields that had rolled on forever, the same as the heavens seemed to roll overhead. Laden with heavy clouds that hung low from the sky.
For a hundred miles or so outside Portland, the clouds had at least been pale gray, rimmed in fiery whites from the sun, which struggled to shine from behind them.
Though now, that light had lapsed.
The clouds growing denser the farther we got from the city. Every ounce of the sun obstructed as a storm had gathered from every direction, sitting heavy on the horizon.
Amassing as the clouds thickened.
Their bellies bloated and bulging, sending darkness curling over the earth.
Dimming the air in an omen we could taste.
It felt as if my spirit was being crushed by it. Flattened and mangled by the ugly, unbearable weight. Though something within me flailed to break out from under it, urging me toward the destination where we were being called.
I glanced down at my phone, warring before I tapped out another message to my mom. I’d texted her that morning to make sure they were fine and encouraged her to stay inside for the day without giving any real details.
She’d promised they would.
But I still couldn’t settle.
Me: Is everyone inside and safe?
It took a second for a return message to blip through.
Mom: Yeah, we’re all here. Locked inside. Except for your father. I did text him and asked him to lay low as well.
I could feel her love for him amid the wounds my father had carved deep inside her.
Me: That’s good. I’m glad you did. Is it . . .
I hesitated before I finished the thought.
Me: Do things feel normal there?
Mom: I wouldn’t call it normal. We turned on the news. A ton of tragic things are happening. I mean, there always seem to be a ton of horrible things happening. But this is entirely different.
A moment passed before another text came through. I didn’t need to hear her voice to feel her terror.
Mom: What is going on, Aria?
Pax peered my way, his concern patent as I wavered with what to give my mother. I didn’t want to freak her out or scare her unnecessarily. But this was too urgent to tiptoe around. I glanced at him, my chest compressing in the love that I had for them all.
With this hope I couldn’t let go of, no matter how much it felt as if we were traveling toward destruction.
I turned back to my phone, fingers trembling as I gave the only answer I could.
Me: This battle we’ve been fighting has become something greater than any of us have ever known.
We are trying to stop it, but I have no idea what is going to happen today.
So please be careful. Stay inside for as long as possible.
And know how much I love you and I’m fighting for you. For all of you.
A car suddenly whizzed by at high speed on my side, even faster than we were traveling, snapping up my attention.
A blip of black that flew past in a blink.
A few minutes later there was another.
Then another, and another.
It felt as if they were coming out of the nothingness that surrounded us.
I exhaled a shaky breath, and Pax shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Agitation eating him alive as he was forced into waiting.
“Do you think we’re going the right way?” Dani asked into the tension as she gaped out the windshield, hands tight on the steering wheel, which I was sure was slicked with sweat.
The question was choppy and didn’t need an answer, but Timothy rumbled, “Don’t think we could even force ourselves to go anywhere else.”
The sky toiled above, roiling over a lake that appeared to the left of the freeway. The water, which should have glistened, was covered in a dingy bleakness. A few spots of colored lights flashed in the distance, no question ambulances and police cars responding to pleas for help.
Because I could feel it—the cold slick that slipped over the surface of my skin.
The evil of Faydor.
“It’s close,” Pax grunted from beside me.
The air shifted, and harsh gusts of wind began to blow across the hills.
Harsh gales that seemed as if they might toss the car from the road.
Dani fought against it, trying to stay in her lane.
A semitruck bowled up from behind us, coming from out of nowhere, careening by in the other lane.
Fear clutched my chest when it suddenly cut back to the right and its trailer swept into our lane.
“Dani!” I shouted in warning, and she slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the right.
Rumble strips roared in our ears as we hit the shoulder, and the tail end of her car skidded back and forth. Hands fisting around the wheel, she managed to steady it and pull back into the lane behind the truck.
“Shit. What the hell is that asshole doing?” Timothy wheezed before he cut his attention to Dani. “Are you okay?”
Her nod was wobbly, her attention fully trained out the windshield. “Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know how to navigate in this. It’s all . . . so new.”
Terrifying was what she meant.
“I know, baby,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. We’ve got this team surrounding us, remember?”
The truck never slowed as it barreled deeper toward the darkness that loomed ahead. Toward the cloud bank that convulsed and smoldered, appearing as if it would consume everything in its path.
Flashes of lightning struck within its blackened depths.
Blinding flares that burst in front of our eyes.
“This shit is wild,” Timothy muttered as it built and compounded over the top of us.
Pax only shifted closer to me, as if he could be a shroud of protection for whatever was coming.
Rain began to pelt us from the sky. Large droplets that suddenly turned to sharp spikes of ice that pinged against the windshield.
The sound grew louder and louder as hail began to pound, the sky spitting out what amounted to small rocks. They slammed against the car, so hard they bashed dents into the metal.
I cringed with each impact that battered the car. My lungs tight, my stomach twisting in the dread that churned through me as we approached our destination.
The chaos I’d felt coming for so long was right there.
Winding and whipping right in front of us.
A magnet.
Gravity.
I thought we could all feel it.
The consuming presence that overwhelmed. The darkness that reigned. The evil that silently intoned.
Beckoning anyone who would listen.
More cars flew past, some erratically, weaving back and forth across the lanes, and others seemed to wield caution.
“Get off the freeway at the next exit.” Pax’s voice was gravelly, carved in apprehension as he studied the map.
“There’s one in two miles. Merge onto that intersecting freeway on the left, then take the next exit on the right.
There’s a town about half a mile off the interstate where a couple roads juncture. ”
I could hear Dani gulp around the thickness in her throat. “I’ll get us there.”
But it was what we’d face once we arrived that chained us in trepidation. What slicked our skin in cold sweat and thundered our hearts into disorder. I swore that I could hear each of them—the hearts of this family.
The violent thrumming that thrashed within us.
It only increased when the exit came into view and Dani flicked on her blinker. Five cars exited in front of us. It was then that the train of headlights and taillights on the same route came into view.
A slew of cars barely creeping along as we merged onto the other freeway.
Dani didn’t let it sway her. She pulled out around the traffic onto the left shoulder, and she sped up the freeway to where there was a gap in the cars. She cut into it and sped across two lanes to the second exit.
The traffic was fully stopped there, and Dani slammed on her brakes behind a pickup truck.
Her attention darted back and forth, searching for a clear path. “What do we do?”
“Since you’re no stranger to off-roading, I’d suggest right there.” Timothy pointed at what looked to be a pasture off to our right, down a steep incline and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.
Dani hesitated for a beat before she threw her car into reverse, pulled back enough so she could make it out from behind the truck, then shouted, “Hang on!” as she rammed it into drive and floored it.
Pax curled himself around me as we flew, barreling down the sharp embankment. A shout ripped out of Dani as we raced toward the fence.
Metal pinged as we busted through the barrier.
Our gasps were harsh as we jolted forward, the tires peeling out and flinging dirt as we wheeled over the field.
We’d made it halfway across when Dani slammed on her brakes. We all stared, panting, the engine running and the headlights spearing the darkness that had crawled over the earth.
A forged eclipse.
None of us were able to move.
Frozen beneath the sight that writhed right over the very center of the town in the distance. Maybe a mile away.
The clouds boiled and seethed. Churning and twisting with depravity.
Whirring and whirring in a vicious cyclone that gusted across the land.
And in the middle of it was a crack.
The same fissure Pax and I had stumbled on last night.
And every sort of Kruen crawled out from it, clinging to the clouds before they dropped to the ground below.