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)
Then they were right there, twenty feet in the distance.
Aria and the rest.
Nothing but a living, thriving ring.
Aria caught my eye from the middle of it.
Energy crackled. Riding between us on a keening bow. Invisible but so bright it was blinding. A mark forever written on my soul.
Hope blazed from her.
Belief.
Faith.
Conviction.
I swore she scored it into me, and I turned and sat back on the seat. I gripped the old gearshift, and metal groaned and protested as I tried to put it into reverse. Took me three times before I got it; then I backed up, smashing into a car behind me as I turned it around in the middle of the street.
By the time I finally got it righted and was facing the other direction, Aria and the rest had made it to me, and I began to drive the tractor up the center of the road, clearing a path as we moved up the street.
I didn’t slow.
I ran right over the depraved who came sprinting my way without thought while I shouted warnings at Laven to get out of the way.
Laven who gathered and gathered, quick to come to the realization that they were meant to stand with us.
Each of us tied.
Strength in our unity.
Something that scum Ambrose had tried to keep hidden.
But that tether was too powerful between Aria and me for him to keep it bottled up. For him to keep it from us.
Because she and I? We were meant for this.
I carved a passageway for the slew of Laven who now marched together; then we all stopped when we’d made it to what appeared to be the town square.
It was a large, rambling park with an assortment of benches and a playground on the opposite side of a big, grassy circle.
The road looped around the entire area, and four roads jutted out from its juncture.
Right smack in the middle of it was a gazebo.
And the sky?
It was open directly above it.
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.