Chapter Forty-Three Pax #2
Ellis turned to look at me. Devotion burned in his depths. “Pax. My sweet boy. My son. We were called for a purpose. First for Faydor and now for this. And together we will fight. I will not sit it out.”
“They’re slaughtering.” My teeth ground together as I said it.
“My life has been dedicated to humanity. To safeguarding the lives of the vulnerable. And that mission has never been more important than now.”
“Ellis . . .” I pleaded, his name cracking as I said it.
“I know, Pax. I know.” His nod was slow; then he turned and took Josephine’s hand, and she shifted to slant a glance at me from over her shoulder.
Knowing.
Adoring.
Determined.
“We need to keep moving,” Timothy said, turning in a circle, his gun lifted but aimed toward the ground a few feet in front of him as he kept threats at bay.
Hesitation brimmed in me, but Aria reached out and threaded her fingers through mine, her touch both gentle and firm as she looked at me with those eyes. Eyes that shone with her own wisdom.
This was a call for all of us, and I had no right to try to sway Ellis and Josephine from heeding it.
I gulped around the impulse to argue and instead squeezed her hand.
My own surrender.
Together.
Timothy passed large hunting knives to both Ellis and Josephine. “You’re going to need a weapon.”
The dip of their heads was succinct.
Accepting.
“This way,” I said, and I gestured toward a large industrial building across the road. We kept low, hiding ourselves in the shadows as people continued to pour down the street from the fracture that roiled in the distance, held in a constant barrage of lightning strikes and thunder.
The ground trembled with each, sending tremors underfoot.
A gush of wind rolled over the top of us, so strong that we slowed, hunching our bodies against a frigid squall we could hardly move through.
Wicked voices intoned within it.
“She’s the one.”
“Stop her.”
“End her.”
At least twenty-five of the wicked who were streaming toward the crater stopped in their tracks. Shifting course. Craning their necks as they felt for her.
As if they could sense her presence.
No question, they could, the way they suddenly turned and came running our way.
A whole herd of the deranged.
Crazed as they screeched with bloodlust. Their faces contorted with perversion.
“No more hiding. It’s time to fight this shit out,” Timothy said, and he stepped out first, taking aim and firing. He hit one at the front of the pack, sending the asshole flailing backward.
It tripped up two others, who struggled to get back to their feet.
I did the same, lifting and firing as we all moved in their direction.
Taking them head-on.
I fired quickly, taking three down.
A woman broke from the pack and came sailing for Aria, her voice shrill as she hissed, “End her. She’s the one. He will be pleased.”
Aggression burned through me. The need to protect.
But I didn’t have time to shoot before Dani had lifted her bow and set an arrow free.
It arced through the air and skewered the fiend in the center of the chest.
A shrill scream ripped out of her as she dropped to the ground.
We kept firing, taking them down one by one.
Ellis and Josephine faced the other way, swishing blades outward toward anyone who made it far enough to get around us.
Only they seemed to multiply, more gathering around us with each one we defeated.
“End her. End her.”
I popped off a shot at an old man who was coming for her.
I swiveled, pointing at a bastard who launched himself in Aria’s direction, my finger tugging at the trigger.
Fuck. I was out of ammo.
Fear gripped me by the throat when I realized I wasn’t going to get to him in time—until an arrow flew through the air.
Dani, striking him through the shoulder.
But we were surrounded.
The crowd surging. So thick it was nearly impossible to hold them back. The mayhem so fucking loud it was confounding. People everywhere, fucking flying and dropping. Ravaging and protecting.
“Aria, we need you,” I gritted out as I struggled to reload as quickly as I could.
“I know,” she wheezed, and I could feel her focus.
Could feel her gathering the strength required to garner another surge of that energy.
Another piece of shit slashed a knife as he came toward her.
“Aria,” I shouted, finally getting the mag loaded into the gun, but not before he was right there, two feet in front of her, when another shot rang out.
A bullet pierced him in the temple and sent him reeling sideways.
I looked in the direction of where the shot had come from, and Keith gave me a dip of his chin in acknowledgment before he took aim at others.
Ellis and Josephine pressed their backs up against Aria as they kept her shielded on the opposite side, and Aria ducked her head and pulled from their power as they poured what they had into her.
“Get down!” Aria suddenly shouted, and we all ducked when she released it. A blinding shock wave of light blistered out, cutting through the horde that amassed around us.
It sent every piece of shit surrounding us sailing backward.
Bodies flew high through the air, their shouts of rage climbing into the atmosphere and echoing through the false night before they were extinguished when they slammed into whatever surface they met. Walls crumbled and collapsed with the impact.
The road and sidewalks fractured into splinters.
A shuddering of vengeance against the depraved.
Aria slumped forward the second the energy left her, and we all moved to her.
Surrounding her.
Touching her.
Protecting her.
Doing everything we could to support her in this fight.
She inhaled a shattered breath and forced herself to straighten. Those pale eyes met mine, glints of devotion in the storm. My heart clutched with it, the connection roaring between us.
We had to do this. We had to push through.
She peeled her gaze from mine and shouted, “We have to find Ambrose. Now!”
We all started running up the middle of the road, keeping a barrier around Aria as we moved. Close enough that we were touching her while still fighting off any monster that came our way.
People surged. Streams that gathered in the street and flooded toward the epicenter of the destruction.
Both Laven and the possessed.
Battles raged through the chaos that seemed hooked on one destination.
We circled Aria as we fought, making a living hedge of protection around her as we moved deeper into the turmoil. Dani fired arrow after arrow, and once her supply had been spent, she pulled out the hunting knife.
Timothy and Keith fired away, and when some asshole got too close, they would kick with their boots and physically fight them off.
Ellis and Josephine were in the throes of it, stabbing and cutting and fighting the way they did in Faydor.
Without reservation.
A woman grabbed hold of Josephine’s long hair. Vileness oozed from the woman’s mouth. “You’re one of them. You must die. We must end you all.”
Josephine whirled around, knocking the woman back before she drove her knife between two of her ribs.
The woman’s eyes widened, glowing red flames, before she was taken in the stampede of people, her lifeless body trampled underfoot.
Disbelief battered me, my entire body burning with the exertion. My spirit screaming with the compulsion to see this through.
We couldn’t falter.
We were in such a crush that it became difficult to shoot, so I pulled the machete Timothy had given me from the sheath at my side.
I lifted it and began to strike. Slashing across the riot of bodies that fought to get to us.
Blade slicing through each vile fiend we passed.
Grunts of pain and shrieks of barbarity pierced through the frigid air that seemed to have come alive around us.
Spikes of ice still pelting us from above.
While the circle defending Aria seemed to grow, Laven coming together to create a larger circle that pressed farther down the road.
It was as if they instinctively felt it. Knew what they were supposed to do.
And the sky continued to swirl and rotate above us, growing denser with each second that passed. The crack made through the two worlds seemed to enlarge, splintering with the number of Kruen that continued to escape the confines of Faydor.
The Kruen weren’t just possessing the humans who’d come in their wicked acquiescence.
They were taking form and shape on the ground. Manifesting as the Kruen we fought on the other plane.
Beasts that were at least seven feet tall. Their flesh blackened to char, though the evil was visible, thudding through their veins.
Red, fiery streaks pumped beneath the gore.
Their faces were contorted and gnarled, mouths mangled and disfigured, stretched wide to bare sharp, jagged teeth.
While the incantations whipped and whirred, coming from each of them as they raced into the disorder, chanting, “She’s here, she’s here. End her. End them all.”
“Kruen.” I felt the breath of the word that Aria exhaled rather than heard it. But I also felt the light burning inside her, rising higher and higher as we continued to battle our way toward the fracture above.
“It’s happening,” Dani cried above the din as she dashed the hunting knife at the toil of barraging people.
Panic infiltrating.
The horrible reality of this bleeding from her in her cries.
“They’re here. They’re real.”
“Don’t lose ground, Dani,” Timothy shouted, his grunts hard and palpable as he slashed his own machete across the neck of a man who’d lunged for him. “Remember why we’re here. You know what we’re meant for, baby. We’ve got this.”
People fell all around us.
Both Laven and the abhorrent.
And our circle became larger and larger, growing in strength and magnitude as the torrent of people undulated closer and closer to the magnet that pulled us all toward our destination.
The fissure.
Up ahead, Kruen began to run rampant through the mass.
Tossing people out of their way, rising high as they slashed with fiery tendrils, unconcerned who was in their path, though it was clear exactly who they were trying to get to.