Chapter Forty-Five Aria #2
In my periphery, I noticed Pax’s movement. He was slinking around to the back of the gazebo, slithering within the shadows.
Keeping himself hidden as he went.
It took everything inside me to force myself to keep my attention ahead.
Not to shout at him to stop or be careful.
Not to draw attention to my Nol, who had stealthily begun to climb onto the gazebo railing. Once he found his footing, he jumped high, his arms outstretched as he grabbed on to a beam on the edge and used it to drag himself up.
He threw himself on top of the roof, his feet light as he landed in a crouch.
“Pax.” It was a whisper from my soul, and my pulse stampeded when I realized his intentions.
He was suddenly charging.
Charging at full speed before he rammed a shoulder into Ambrose’s back.
Ambrose was so consumed by the spite he had fastened on me, on the challenge I’d thrown up at him, that he was caught unaware. He stumbled forward, unable to stop himself before he hit the edge.
His arms pinwheeled as he tried to stop his fall, but he couldn’t stop the momentum.
Was still vulnerable because he was still partially man.
But not completely.
My heart sank when I realized maybe not at all. Not anymore.
Because he landed with a roar and on his feet.
It placed him mere yards away from me.
The distance separating us churned with frigid, ferocious air.
And the light . . .
The light bottled inside me swelled and burned, and my hands tingled with the need to fight. With this purpose that I’d been given.
One I’d struggled with my entire life to understand, but now, in this moment, fully grasped.
It built and grew, manifesting into something so powerful I could barely contain it.
When holding it in became too much, I let it go.
A bolt of energy arced between us and blasted into Ambrose in a flash of blinding light.
I nearly sagged in relief until the dust cleared, and I found Ambrose just standing there with his mouth twisted into a sneer.
Malicious laughter rolled from him as he slowly moved in my direction.
His words a taunt that danced with the frozen spikes of rain.
“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.” He tsked. “It’s pathetic, really, that you came here thinking you could conquer me. It’s time to surrender.”
“I will never surrender.” It was an oath. A promise to humanity.
I waited for the right opportunity. For the moment when Pax silently eased up behind Ambrose and gave me a telling nod.
As one, we rushed him from both sides, and we slammed our hands on him at the same time.
We let go of the light. The energy that burned and raged within us.
Streaks of power that pelted through him like darts.
Ambrose howled, though he retaliated, and a surge of his own energy blasted us back.
I flew, my feet ripped out from under me, airborne for five seconds before my body was thrown to the ground.
A surprised cry jutted out of my lungs; nothing I could do to stop myself from skidding fifteen feet back, cutting into the cold, frozen ground as I went.
Pain lancinated, every muscle in my body aching, but I refused it. My breaths were choppy as I staggered back to my feet.
Pax was already on his, and we shared a look.
Together.
The mass still battled behind us. Cries and shouts and the clashing of weapons.
While Ambrose smirked. Smirked like the wicked bastard he was.
And that rage billowed. Coming at me from all sides. All the depravities I’d seen through my years. The torture and the torment.
He couldn’t win. He couldn’t.
Teeth gritted, I ran back for him, desperate to focus on the light. Praying it would regenerate. That I would have the strength to see this through.
It faintly flickered, and with each thud of my feet, it wicked back to life. Growing quick. Combusting to a boiling point.
In a flash, I could no longer contain it.
My arms were stretched out in front of me when Pax and I hit him again, though this time, we held on, trying to inject as much energy as we could into his body.
Into his spirit.
Unsure of which needed to succumb first in order to end him.
Praying that ending him was even possible at all.
That his immortality didn’t actually mean that he would go on forever.
Because this had to end.
It had to.
We couldn’t allow this infestation to spread across the globe. Couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering.
My family’s faces flickered through my mind as I struggled to hold on. To pour everything I had into burning out his soul.
My mother.
My brothers and sister.
My father, too.
Those who’d been manipulated and used. Targeted and violated.
For all of them.
For everyone.
“Don’t let go, Aria,” Pax wheezed, trying to hold on as well. Our limbs shuddered and shook from the effort, from the energy that surged and passed between the three of us.
Ambrose thrashed, trying to buck us off.
Pax’s brow furrowed, a warning that he was going to shift, and for a second, he let go with one hand and withdrew a blade from the sheath attached to his waist.
He lifted it and drove the blade into Ambrose’s side.
Ambrose howled with rage. With a fury unlike anything I’d ever heard.
His fist suddenly flew from out of nowhere. I had no time to prepare before it cracked against my jaw.
I was knocked from my feet before I could even process the agony that splintered through my head.
A moan of misery jolted out of me when I landed in a heap twenty feet away, my chest feeling as if it was going to cave in.
Blackness threatened to take me whole. Consciousness fading in and out. I blinked through it, clawing my way out of the delirium that wanted to pull me under.
I choked as I fought to catch the breath he had knocked from my lungs.
A haze billowed over the area, disorienting and dark.
A veil that tried to cloak my perception. To push me toward the surrender Ambrose had demanded.
But I wouldn’t give in.
I forced myself to sit up, but a sob ripped from me when a shearing pain suddenly tore through my thigh. A wild throbbing that nearly dropped me back to the ground.
I reeled when I realized a broken piece of wood was sticking out of my upper leg.
Nausea rolled through my gut, and my hand was shaking out of control as I wrapped it around the blunt end of the plank.
Then I yanked.
Hard.
A scream tore out of me as I pulled it free. The wood was bloody and sharp at the tip. Hand fumbling, I dropped it to my side, gasping for air, for resilience, for the strength to get back to my feet when everything hurt so badly.
I made it to my hands and knees when my gaze traveled, and it landed on Pax, who was coughing as he climbed to standing at least a hundred feet away.
Thrown across the park as well.
Then my attention jerked away from my heart and slanted back to Ambrose.
Ambrose, who stood at the base of the gazebo, staring at me.
Death in his eyes.
Lightning flashed above him in the toil of clouds, and a clap of thunder shook the heavens and rumbled across the ground.
Footsteps suddenly pounded up beside me, and a hand darted out to my shoulder. “Oh my God, Aria, are you okay?”
It was Dani.
Dani.
I struggled to speak. “I think so.”
Dread carved Dani’s brow when she noticed the blood saturating my pant leg. I shook my head to cut off her worry. “It’s fine.”
We didn’t have time for it not to be.
“Okay, but you’ve got to get off the ground. Right now.” Dani fumbled around in front of me and stretched out her hand.
A moan rolled from my throat at the rush of pain that clawed across my thigh, but I managed to stand.
Pax rushed up and held me in those strong, unrelenting arms.
“Aria. Baby,” he wheezed at my temple.
Torment seeded in the words.
I wanted to sag into his care. Into his embrace. Into the promises I knew he wanted to make.
But this wasn’t about my well-being.
So I gripped him for one second, relishing the warmth, his scent and ferocity and everything that he was, before I peeled myself from his hold and straightened.
With my chin lifted, I slowly swiveled toward Ambrose, who still hovered by the gazebo.
Dani and Pax were on either side of me.
It was the first time I noticed that the sounds of the battle no longer resounded, and I became aware that Laven had begun to gather.
A force that had assembled from every direction of the earth.
Surrounding me as they began to amass.
Timothy stepped up to Dani’s opposite side, and Ellis and Josephine were on the other side of them.
Then all Laven who remained standing, one after another, pressed in to create a vibrating throng that faced Ambrose.
The Kruen and their hosts had been destroyed.
Relief gushed out of me with the realization that Ambrose was the last one.
The beast who stood in front of us, his face twisted in wickedness.
The sky swarmed above him, vicious swirls that churned and howled. The fissure that cut through the realms throbbed, pulsing with brutality.
And on a thunderclap, it began to crack wider, a splinter that stretched wide across the heavens.
Horror ripped through me when at least a hundred Ghorl jumped through the crack, falling through the chaos that whirled from above and landing on the ground to gather around Ambrose.
Soldiers that assembled.
Enormous and obscene. My insides shuddered as I took them in on this realm. They were as big as buildings, towering high over Ambrose where they’d come to protect him.
Massive beasts.
Bodies of char and flame.
Radiating dominance and debauchery.
They were the strongest, oldest of the Kruen. So powerful that we’d barely been able to stop the one who’d hunted me, the one who’d sought my end through my father.
The one.
Now there was a host of them, standing whole on this plane, their mouths gaping open as they raged.
Smugness filled Ambrose’s expression, every vile thought he’d ever possessed so clear on his face.
The greed.
The thirst for power.
For recognition and adulation.
To be greater than those around him.