Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Dani scoffed. “Don’t even try to pull that bullshit with me, Pax. You act like I haven’t fought in Faydor for longer than you. And yes, I know it’s different. I know here I’m fully human and have all the vulnerabilities that come with that, but this is Aria we’re talking about.”
She flung her hand in Aria’s direction.
“She’s our family, Pax,” Timothy rumbled from behind. “I know you want to protect us, but we’re not sitting on the sidelines—just like you didn’t when you believed Dani was in danger.”
Lightning streaked above. A frisson of energy crackled through the atmosphere, a slow slide of iniquity that lifted every hair on my body.
“Don’t know what we’re up against,” I warned.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re in this together,” he said. “Now, you’re going to give me one of those knives, and you’re going to give the other to Dani; then we’re going to go get our girl back. We’ll creep in on either side of them, and you go up the middle.”
“You’re sure?”
They both gave me a resolute nod.
Dread thickened my throat, but I warily passed each of them one of the massive knives. Dani looked like she was going to puke when she clasped her hand around the hilt, her fear patent though her courage was vivid.
I clicked the latch to the door and slowly pushed it open before I cautiously stepped out into the howl of the whipping wind.
Wind that was crystallized. Frozen particles that stirred through the torrid atmosphere.
The clouds reeked with the stench of death.
But it was what was moving through them that nearly made me trip. The swirls of red and flashes of black.
Holy fuck.
It wasn’t Ambrose.
These were Kruen.
Chapter Thirty
Aria
Intonations whisked through the rumblings of thunder that cracked overhead.
“End her. End her. Think of how she will scream. How her blood will feel drenching your fingers. She’s the one in the way. He must have her heart, and you will have your reward. You will reign with us. Powerful beyond measure.”
Only the voices weren’t in the heads of the deviants who’d kidnapped me. They were there. Above, in the clouds.
Flagrant and audible.
It was as if they were being played on a distorted record, the influence of the wicked so much more powerful as the Kruen dripped their poison into the ears and hearts of the men who danced around in deformed glee.
Oh God.
How was it possible?
The Kruen were here. In this realm. Unless I’d been intercepted again, taken to an unknown plane I’d never known existed.
But this felt so real.
Too real.
As if a fracture had opened up between Faydor and Earth.
It was all driven by Ambrose, who I could almost feel hovering in the distance.
The way it felt as if the blood in my veins had crystallized and frozen.
I could smell him.
The nasty smell that he emitted.
Fear clashed with the light that glowed hot inside me, an urge to do something. To release the power that burned deep inside.
So intense I could barely bottle it.
Could barely restrain it.
But I needed to be able to direct it. Control it in some way that assured I might be able to get away.
I still wasn’t entirely sure how to use it. If I even could use it on humans like this.
A defense.
A weapon.
My mind spun through the scenarios. Worried if I loosed the energy too early—if they weren’t close enough—I wouldn’t be able to strike them all. Worried I wouldn’t be able to incapacitate them all.
More than that, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to harness it again once I expelled it. That it’d be used up, and I’d be drained and completely weakened.
Then I’d be completely powerless.
I wasn’t sure I could risk leaving myself that way. Not when I didn’t understand the strength any of us possessed. How the impossibility writhing in a sky that sagged too low above me was going to affect the men. Not when I didn’t know what would happen if I used the rage inside me that begged to be delivered.
I railed against the two monsters who held me by either arm as they hauled me up toward the other three, who frolicked like fiends below a colossal tree, waving their knives in the air as they chanted, “She’s the one, she’s the one.”
I could smell the stench of alcohol that oozed from their pores, though it was bloated by something foul. Something sickeningly cloying that saturated the atmosphere in a thick mist that rained from the toxic heavens.
My spirit screamed as it called for my Nol.
Pax, Pax, Pax.
I could almost feel him racing along the fringes of my consciousness, his fingertips ghosting over my soul as I silently begged for him to be okay.
He had to be.
He had to be.
I couldn’t believe I would feel him so strongly if that blow had killed him. And that connection had only grown stronger with each mile that should have taken me farther away from him.