Page 13 of Walking in Darkness

We stayed that way for the longest time; then she was swiping at her tears as she forced herself to step away. She turned on her heel and took the same path my siblings had taken as she headed to my grandmother’s house.

Though my mother ... she never looked back.

I had a feeling it was too painful for her.

I stood there until she disappeared around the corner; then I turned, still hugging the blanket around me as I started for where Pax waited in the distance.

I was halfway across the field when I felt it—a shift in the atmosphere. The way ice crystals seemed to form in the gloomy air.

With it, evil crackled across the open space.

The hairs on the nape of my neck lifted in awareness.

I whirled toward the direction that I’d sensed it. A hundred feet away, a man had cut through the field, riding toward me on a bicycle.

It wouldn’t have been all that strange a sight except for the expression on his face.

Pure, unmitigated hate.

That, and the piece of metal that glinted from his hand beneath the bright rays of winter sunlight, protruding from the handlebars like a sadistic appendage.

A knife.

Fear streaked through my being.

Then I turned, and I ran.

Chapter Three

Aria

Terror battered my senses, and my heart thundered so hard in my chest that it was the only thing I could hear. The pound, pound, pounding that drummed through my senses on a wail.

A shout of instinct to protect myself.

Tossing the blanket from my shoulders, I took off in a sprint across the crispy, dead grass.

I knew the moment Pax realized what was happening. There was no missing the fierce pulse of protection that blistered through the air, cutting through the cold in a slice of lightning.

A bolt that struck in the middle of me.

My feet clapped on the hard ground and air ripped from my lungs as I raced toward the car.

I could feel the man gaining on me, erasing the distance in a flash. The tires of the bike crunched over the dead field as he pedaled, the harsh rasps of his breath growing closer with each second.

He was suddenly right there, riding his bike around me and cutting off my path.

Surprise tore out of me on a yelp, and I stumbled to the side. The only thing I could do was shift course, pivoting ninety degrees and driving myself away from the direction I’d been going in.

I got the sense the man was herding me.

Forcing me to run toward an acre of woods that rose up about fifty yards in front of us. He came up to my side, and he swiped an arm out, stabbing the knife toward me.

“Bitch. Whore. Did you think he would let you live?”

I ducked, and the blade whooshed by my face, missing me by half an inch.

Behind us, an engine revved and tires squealed, and I could hear the scraping of metal as the car jumped the curb.