Page 30 of Walking in Darkness

I couldn’t help but do the same. Needing to do something. To stop this from happening.

Only it was too late.

Because the man uttered his name, and Peter looked up.

The second he did, the crack of a gunshot rang out.

It echoed and rolled.

Disorienting.

Everything set to slow as a scream locked in my throat.

Stunned, Peter gripped his chest.

“Fuck,” Pax spat at the same second as he whipped his gun from his jacket pocket.

Shock covered Peter’s face, though I thought I saw realization dawn beneath it. When he discerned that he had been the next fatality. That our family’s twisted fate had brought him to his end.

Something close to sorrow billowed through his expression before he stumbled to the side, then dropped to his knees, slumping face down on the snow-covered lawn in his front yard.

Snow that turned bright red.

A rattled ball of grief lifted, but I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep it contained, knowing I had to get to the man before he knew I was there. Put my hands on him and pray I could extinguish the cruelty he had been given, all while wondering if it was too late for him.

If he’d fully succumbed and welcomed the wickedness. A willing vessel to inflict pain.

Only I had no time. There was nothing I could do but let that rattled ball of grief go when the man brought the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

It rang out, and the man crumpled to the ground.

My legs wobbled from the horror, and I dropped to my knees on the pitted pavement.

Pax rushed around the front of the car, and he curled his arms around me from behind and tried to get me onto my feet.

“We have to go, Aria. We need to get out of here.”

“Peter,” I wept. “We were too late. We were too late.”

“I know. I know. I know, baby.” He mumbled it against the top of my head. “But we have to go.”

I gasped through the tears that blurred my eyes, and I swore I could hear Ambrose’s laughter roll through the trees. His satisfaction that he had taken another of us.

His words from that night infiltrated my mind. The vitriol.

This life is filled with many mysteries, is it not? A child lying in their bed, waking to a paradise unseen, believing they are a chosen one. But no ... that paradise is only a shroud. A cover for the affliction we’re to be given. A man walking in darkness. Charged with a burden unlike any other would ever be asked. Asked to carry an albatross so great he’s on his knees, both night and day. But why suffer when we can be so much greater than that?

Awareness pulsed through my consciousness, and I rasped, “I remember. I remember where I saw his name.”

Chapter Ten

Pax

I resisted the urge to speed out of the neighborhood like a maniac, instead gritting my teeth as I drove slowly, taking one quiet street and then another. The whole time, I kept one hand on Aria’s thigh like it might be enough to stanch the shaking that wouldn’t quit as she sat gasping in the passenger’s seat.

Whatever epiphany she’d had locked on her tongue.

All while searching out the windows to make sure no one paid us any mind. Hoping no one had witnessed what had gone down between Peter and that bastard, and pinned us as being there.