Chapter Forty-Four Aria
Chapter Forty-Four
Aria
I’d never seen anything so gruesome. Anything so grisly or appalling.
The atrocity greater than anything I’d ever witnessed, including what I’d seen in the minds of the Kruen as I’d fought in Faydor.
Not until this.
Pax was right.
They were slaughtering.
Slaughtering and slaying and butchering without thought.
Blood and limbs and bodies were strewn everywhere. Some had been set afire. Others moaned and begged to be relieved of their fatal wounds.
The stench of the carnage filled my nostrils and sent nausea swirling through my stomach.
But I staved it off.
We didn’t have time to weep or mourn. We had to meet the brutality blow for blow.
My heart raced in the middle of it. A thunder that drummed through my spirit and rushed through my veins.
An awareness so viscous and heavy that I felt it as weights around my feet.
The wickedness that crawled this plane.
Noxious.
Toxic and foul.
A cold slick that slipped across my flesh as we moved toward the place where I knew Ambrose would be.
Josephine and Ellis held my hands as we moved within the sanctuary that had been created by the other Laven.
Their loyalty and ferocity feeding me strength.
Timothy was in front of me, and Dani was behind.
While Pax carved a path for us with the tractor up ahead.
Then everyone suddenly stopped.
Froze.
It felt as if the temperature had dropped by a thousand degrees.
Even the deranged had ceased to fight, and instead turned toward the origin of the suffocating power that held the oxygen in its cruel, vicious fist.
Pax shut the tractor off, and the loud roar of the engine was suddenly silenced.
And in it was a quiet howl.
A howling of the wind.
A howling of the wicked.
A profane whispering that curled through the air.
“He will reign. He will reign.”
Pax hopped off the back end of the tractor and pushed his way toward me. His breaths were haggard as he stepped into my space.
Energy rushed.
Frenetic and intense.
A tether tied so deeply within us that, in this moment, we felt the same.
One.
Our fabric completely woven together.
“She is safe and whole,” Josephine murmured in adoration as she released me so Pax could take her place.
“I knew that you would protect her.” Pax’s voice scraped with the adrenaline I could feel rushing through him in waves.
“With our lives,” Ellis said.
Pax slipped up to my side where we were still hidden behind the tractor, and brand-new power streaked up my arm when he threaded his fingers through mine.
“Aria,” he murmured.
A balm.
Belief.
Love.
I squeezed his hand.
“Together,” I told him.
Ellis edged behind me so he could get to Josephine’s opposite side. Then the four of us were linked as we held on with everything we had.
And all those who’d been summoned by the sinister suddenly broke apart and surged forward to surround the park.
In tandem, the Laven filed around the tractor, marching forward so we could see, still drawn and unable to do anything but come to stand where we had full view of the town park.
And the oxygen gushed from my lungs when I saw the depraved had dropped to their knees.
Bowing in reverence when Ambrose suddenly appeared from the shadows.
Anxiety rippled through the Laven, so severe that I thought they might scatter. Yield to the fear that crested and swelled.
But no.
They remained staunch, guarding me without anyone having told them why they should.
And my spirit wept and pleaded, begged with Valeen to give me strength. Begged that she would not have led us here if we didn’t have the chance to defeat the monsters that loomed in front of us.
Rise up; you must lead.
Violence skated through Pax on a palpable wave, fury and rage lighting him through as he saw Ambrose standing like some kind of twisted savior on the steps of the gazebo.
Ambrose, who himself was not the same human I’d faced over the last few weeks, even though his power had been greater than any other human I’d met before him during that time.
Now his own skin had become translucent. Veins of fire twisted and twined beneath his flesh. His eyes were the same blackened holes that led down into the eternal void as the Kruen.
Eyes that led into nothing but devastation and desolation.
The sky spun above him, the clouds revolving and agitating the air into a cyclone.
Ambrose lifted his arms, and the words he emitted pulsed through the frigid atmosphere.
“I have spent many years waiting for this moment. For the moment when I would stand in front of you to give you each the freedom you have been searching for. For the moment when I would get to end the mindless cycle of those who seek to stop what has been coming all along.”
He stretched his arms out even wider.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment, when I would finally stand in front of you to lead you into a brand-new day. A brand-new life. One where we will rule together.”
Then I felt the force of his gaze land on me.
Evil crawled across my skin.
“But I know that you know . . . know that you can feel it . . . that we have Valeen’s chosen one in our way. She has come. Stand, my children, and bring her to me.”
There was a stir of the possessed, and every single one of them returned to their feet as the charge was issued.
Rise up; you must lead.
Valeen’s voice trickled through my mind again.
A prodding.
An urging.
You, you are Valient.
Valient. Power surged as I realized what it meant.
The strength she’d given me to lead. I lifted my chin and shouted above the howl of the wicked, “We may fear, but we will not falter. We may be outnumbered, but we will not surrender. Look inside yourselves for strength because it is there. You possess so much more of it than you know. We are Laven, called for the good, to protect humankind, and together we will purge the wickedness that wants to consume. We will not relent or bow. Together, we will fight.”
There was suddenly a new roar that deafened all ears. A shout of survival.
And one second later, all Laven burst forward and ran headlong into the wall of wickedness that had risen up to devour them.