Page 126 of Walking in Darkness

Dani rammed on the accelerator and flew down the road, again wiping tears that dripped down her cheeks when she glanced at the house that sat up the road from her own.

It was where she’d left Pixie. Dani had taken her to her elderly neighbor’s and told the woman she had an emergency and needed to leave town for a while.

She’d promised she’d return as soon as she could.

Only I’d felt the wavering of the lie.

The way she’d been unsure if she would see her cat again.

If she would make it back.

If she would even haveanythingto come back to.

It was where our own humanity collided with our purpose. Where we struggled with our mortality.

Struck by the magnitude of the uncertainties that stretched around us.

A foreboding so thick in the cab of the car that it was difficult to breathe. Our lungs heavy and tight. Tremors of alarm and trepidation ripping through our bodies and shattering our spirits.

Pax clutched my hand as Dani flew down the street.

“Where exactly am I going?” she asked.

“East” was all I could say.

It was the only thing I was certain of.

The tugging at my spirit that guided our path.

A different place than the men had taken me last night.

“Yeah, east,” Timothy agreed, no doubt getting the same indication.

“I know,” Dani whispered, the words barely audible. “I just ...”

Timothy reached out and set his hand on her thigh, trying to offer some of the peace that had seemed to slip away with each second that passed.

But any hope of peace had been torn away when Pax had turned on Dani’s television as we ran around packing the few things we could bring. When we’d seen the carnage that had begun to spread across the world.

The complete panic and turmoil the world had been cast into.

No answers for the tragedies that befell the world. The murders and the fires. Wars started between allies and friends. Every manner of crime right out in the open. As if the reasons for hiding sins had been stripped away.

So far, we hadn’t seen any reports of strange beings, but there was no question the Kruen we’d seen breaking through the two realms were responsible.

Pax searched for a route on his phone, and I could feel him scouting around within himself, looking for his own lure. For the power inside him to discern where to go. “Take I-84,” he finally said. “We need to make a pit stop first. There’s a camping and hunting store three blocks up. We need supplies.”

Disquiet whirled around us.

From the opposite direction, three cop cars approached at high speed. Red and blue lights flashed, and their sirens blared.

Dani pulled off to the side of the road, and we were all silent as they whizzed by.

An ambulance and fire truck came from the west, crossing at the intersecting road and continuing in that direction.

We held our breaths as the world spun out of control around us.

Once they had all passed, Dani mumbled, “That is, if there is even a store left,” before she pulled back onto the road.