Page 145 of Walking in Darkness

Timothy and Keith fired away, and when some asshole got too close, they would kick with their boots and physically fight them off.

Ellis and Josephine were in the throes of it, stabbing and cutting and fighting the way they did in Faydor.

Without reservation.

A woman grabbed hold of Josephine’s long hair. Vileness oozed from the woman’s mouth. “You’re one of them. You must die. We must end you all.”

Josephine whirled around, knocking the woman back before she drove her knife between two of her ribs.

The woman’s eyes widened, glowing red flames, before she was taken in the stampede of people, her lifeless body trampled underfoot.

Disbelief battered me, my entire body burning with the exertion. My spirit screaming with the compulsion to see this through.

We couldn’t falter.

We were in such a crush that it became difficult to shoot, so I pulled the machete Timothy had given me from the sheath at my side.

I lifted it and began to strike. Slashing across the riot of bodies that fought to get to us.

Blade slicing through each vile fiend we passed.

Grunts of pain and shrieks of barbarity pierced through the frigid air that seemed to have come alive around us.

Spikes of ice still pelting us from above.

While the circle defending Aria seemed to grow, Laven coming together to create a larger circle that pressed farther down the road.

It was as if they instinctively felt it. Knew what they were supposed to do.

And the sky continued to swirl and rotate above us, growing denser with each second that passed. The crack made through the two worlds seemed to enlarge, splintering with the number of Kruen that continued to escape the confines of Faydor.

The Kruen weren’t just possessing the humans who’d come in their wicked acquiescence.

They were taking form and shape on the ground. Manifesting as the Kruen we fought on the other plane.

Beasts that were at least seven feet tall. Their flesh blackened to char, though the evil was visible, thudding through their veins.

Red, fiery streaks pumped beneath the gore.

Their faces were contorted and gnarled, mouths mangled and disfigured, stretched wide to bare sharp, jagged teeth.

While the incantations whipped and whirred, coming from each of them as they raced into the disorder, chanting, “She’s here, she’s here. End her. End them all.”

“Kruen.” I felt the breath of the word that Aria exhaled rather than heard it. But I also felt the light burning inside her, rising higher and higher as we continued to battle our way toward the fracture above.

“It’s happening,” Dani cried above the din as she dashed the hunting knife at the toil of barraging people.

Panic infiltrating.

The horrible reality of this bleeding from her in her cries.

“They’re here. They’re real.”

“Don’t lose ground, Dani,” Timothy shouted, his grunts hard and palpable as he slashed his own machete across the neck of a man who’d lunged for him. “Remember why we’re here. You know what we’re meant for, baby. We’ve got this.”

People fell all around us.

Both Laven and the abhorrent.