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)
Night was all around, the only illumination the few exterior lights that glowed from the porches of the houses that sporadically dotted Dani’s street, mere outlines sitting way back below the trees.
Everything was too quiet and still.
Except for us.
We were chaos.
Calamity.
She blazed up through the neighborhood, already asking, “Which way?” before she got to where the street made a T at the main road. But I could feel the despondency behind it.
Her fear that we weren’t going to find her.
That Aria was already gone.
Lost.
That urgency roiled inside me. The call that had led me to Aria the first time screaming so loud it was the only thing I could hear. Her fear and desperation in the middle of it, promising me that she was still alive.
I shoved my right foot into my boot as I shouted, “Left.”
Dani barely slowed, and the car careened across the road as she made the sharp turn. The tail skidded, whipping far right, then left, before it corrected; then she was ramming on the gas again.
Timothy sat forward, holding on to Dani’s headrest with both hands, his head poked between us. “Well, shit, it’s a good thing my girl drives like her damn pants have caught flames. My mom’s going to love you.”
Dani croaked an incredulous sound. Disbelief that he was being light in the middle of this. Injecting hope in the midst of affliction.
“That is, if I don’t kill us first,” she mumbled as she flew down the road.
“Nah, baby, we’re going to get through this. All of us.”
I could feel his encouragement. The same encouragement he’d fed me when I was a kid, the man my guide for so long. Support and insight and the kind of love I’d never received from my real family.
Except this—this was my family. The center of it out in front of us, ensnared.
Held.
But I could feel her—could feel her rushing through my bloodstream on a plea.
“Yeah, we are,” I promised quietly as I crammed my other foot into my boot, tying them tight before I shouted, “Right,” when I was suddenly overcome by that sensation.
Swelling and rising.
We were getting close.
Dani gripped the steering wheel with both hands, jerking it hard as she took the turn far faster than was prudent. The tires screamed as we whipped around the corner. But she nailed it, the engine revving high as she blew down the road.
Not a soul was around. Businesses locked up tight, the neighborhoods quiet and dimmed.
Something about it felt different. Like we’d traveled beyond the limits of the city. Or maybe beyond the limits of this world.
The heavens too close.
The clouds, this tumultuous disturbance above. A bolt of lightning cracked through the sinister canopy that rolled in undulating waves above.
“What the fuck?” Timothy drew out on a whisper.
The energy shifted in the car as each of us became aware of the otherworldly.
“He’s here,” I said, gritting it out through the clench of my teeth.
A full-body tremble skated through Dani as she raced beneath it, the buildings becoming scarce, interspersed with open, rolling fields.
I thought she must have felt it, too—this connection with Aria—because she abruptly slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left when we came to a large open field.
The car pitched hard, and we hit the dirt at high speed. The front slammed against an embankment that sent us flying over the top. We caught the slightest bit of air before we bashed back onto the ground, the car jostling and lurching. The tires spun for a second; then we caught traction again and flew across the rough terrain.
The headlights were extra bright as the front of the car ate up the high grass we could barely see over, the sound of it grating beneath as it scraped on the underside.
When we crested a ridge, Dani smashed on the brakes as the scene came into view in the distance.
A pickup truck was parked out in the field, the headlights left on and illuminating a tree on a hill about a hundred yards away from it. A tree two men were dragging Aria toward, where three more men waited, each of them unable to sit still as they itched with bloodlust.
Ice sank down into the depths of me, freezing me in a vat of anguish.
“Oh God, what do we do?” Dani whimpered as she clutched the steering wheel and peered out the windshield.
“You two should stay in the car.” It tortured me to suggest it, but this shit was clearly not stacking in our favor. Something about what was going down was so much bigger than anything I’d faced before.
The men who’d been sent to stop Aria previously had been fully human.
Sure, twisted, deranged, fucked-in-the-heart humans who had no other concern but her utter destruction—but still, human.
Mortal.
But there was something about this that felt off. Like maybe we were being lured straight into a trap, one I couldn’t ask Dani and Timothy to step into.