Page 24 of Walking in Darkness

“Oh my God.” It gushed from Aria’s mouth, and I knew her heart was immediately stretching out for Claire. Like she might be able to reach her on another plane and comfort her. Though I doubted there would be much comfort for this.

Aria blinked through the disorder, and I could feel it gather inside her. The same awareness I’d been terrified of recognizing last night. “You don’t think it’s random.”

I exhaled heavily. “I can’t say for certain, but this shit doesn’t sit right. Two of our family in a week? Both of them young and healthy?When we haven’t lost anyone in years? And I don’t buy that bullshit that William OD’d. He didn’t strike me as a junkie.”

And God knew I’d encountered many of them hunting the streets of Las Vegas.

I looked to the floor, processing, before I tentatively returned my attention to her. “What that bastard said to you ... something about ending you all. You took it as him meaning Valients ...”

It took her a moment of the same processing. “You think he meant all Laven and not just me.”

She didn’t phrase it as a question. I think we’d both arrived at the same conclusion a while ago. Or maybe we’d just known it was coming all along.

“I don’t know for sure. But if it is? If these deaths weren’t by chance?”

“Oh God, Pax.” Tears blurred those pale-gray eyes.

“Maybe I’m being paranoid ...” Sighing, I anxiously ran a hand through my hair. Nothing about saying that sat right. Fit right.

Slowly, Aria moved toward me.

A lure, because there was nothing I could do but shift around to sit up on the side of the bed. My hands went to her thighs, and I held on to her like she could be an anchor.

She breathed out. “We have to stop him. Find him here, on this plane, and stop him like Ellis said. And we have to do it soon.”

Silence stretched between us.

“How the hell do we do that?”

She softly brushed her fingers through my hair, surety in her voice. “He’ll come for me.”

My arms curled around her waist, and I blew out a ragged breath where I buried my face in the towel at her belly.

Terrified that she was right.

Chapter Eight

Pax—Tearsith

He and Aria remained at the motel that entire day, watching out the window for any sign of the depraved, wondering if and when someone would come for them.

When it’d been quiet for the entire day, they curled themselves together on the bed, where they fell through time and space to emerge in their sanctuary.

Only, when they stepped out into Tearsith, it was anything but a sanctuary.

It was a place of torment.

One of grief.

Claire sobbed from where she was huddled with Margarethe, while murmurings of distress rolled through their Laven family.

Five others had not come tonight, and the worry of what might have befallen them was distinct. Palpable as it rippled through the cool breeze.

Many paced, ripping at their hair. Others mumbled among themselves, their voices hushed and dripping with fear.

Pax held tighter to Aria’s hand than he ever had in his existence.

Ellis moved to the spot near the stream where he stood as their teacher night after night.