Page 132 of Walking in Darkness

The air shifted, and harsh gusts of wind began to blow across the hills.

Harsh gales that seemed as if they might toss the car from the road.

Dani fought against it, trying to stay in her lane.

A semitruck bowled up from behind us, coming from out of nowhere, careening by in the other lane.

Fear clutched my chest when it suddenly cut back to the right and its trailer swept into our lane.

“Dani!” I shouted in warning, and she slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel to the right.

Rumble strips roared in our ears as we hit the shoulder, and the tail end of her car skidded back and forth. Hands fisting around the wheel, she managed to steady it and pull back into the lane behind the truck.

“Shit. What the hell is that asshole doing?” Timothy wheezed before he cut his attention to Dani. “Are you okay?”

Her nod was wobbly, her attention fully trained out the windshield. “Yeah. I just ... I don’t know how to navigate in this. It’s all ... so new.”

Terrifyingwas what she meant.

“I know, baby,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. We’ve got this team surrounding us, remember?”

The truck never slowed as it barreled deeper toward the darkness that loomed ahead. Toward the cloud bank that convulsed and smoldered, appearing as if it would consume everything in its path.

Flashes of lightning struck within its blackened depths.

Blinding flares that burst in front of our eyes.

“This shit is wild,” Timothy muttered as it built and compounded over the top of us.

Pax only shifted closer to me, as if he could be a shroud of protection for whatever was coming.

Rain began to pelt us from the sky. Large droplets that suddenly turned to sharp spikes of ice that pinged against the windshield.

The sound grew louder and louder as hail began to pound, the sky spitting out what amounted to small rocks. They slammed against the car, so hard they bashed dents into the metal.

I cringed with each impact that battered the car. My lungs tight, my stomach twisting in the dread that churned through me as we approached our destination.

The chaos I’d felt coming for so long was right there.

Winding and whipping right in front of us.

A magnet.

Gravity.

I thought we could all feel it.

The consuming presence that overwhelmed. The darkness that reigned. The evil that silently intoned.

Beckoning anyone who would listen.

More cars flew past, some erratically, weaving back and forth across the lanes, and others seemed to wield caution.

“Get off the freeway at the next exit.” Pax’s voice was gravelly, carved in apprehension as he studied the map. “There’s one in two miles. Merge onto that intersecting freeway on the left, then take thenext exit on the right. There’s a town about half a mile off the interstate where a couple roads juncture.”

I could hear Dani gulp around the thickness in her throat. “I’ll get us there.”

But it was what we’d face once we arrived that chained us in trepidation. What slicked our skin in cold sweat and thundered our hearts into disorder. I swore that I could hear each of them—the hearts of this family.