Page 31 of Walking in Darkness

It was one of the most painful things I’d ever had to experience. Trying to protect Aria the best way that I could, all while feeling like a piece of shit that I’d had to leave my brother’s body in a pool of his blood on the snow-covered lawn.

I was too fuckin’ late to save him, and unable to risk making an anonymous call. Could only hope someone would be out walking their dog or something soon and find them, or had maybe heard something and come out to investigate.

We finally made it to the other end of the neighborhood, and my heart hammered as I came to a stop at the intersection of twolarger streets. I made a left and wound into the traffic, becoming one with the mass.

We hadn’t traveled a quarter of a mile when sirens suddenly cut through the dense air. All the cars pulled off to the side as a cruiser came blazing down the street from the opposite direction. Four more followed, whipping by in a blur of flashing lights.

My hand tightened on Aria’s thigh, and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see them all make a right into the neighborhood we’d just come out of.

Guessed it hadn’t taken long at all for someone to find them.

Wasn’t sure if I was relieved or worried.

“Do you think anyone saw us?” Aria whispered into the anxiety hovering over us.

“I don’t think so. I would imagine it’s going to look pretty cut-and-dried to the investigators.” A murder-suicide they could easily wrap up. “They likely won’t be looking for anyone else unless someone specifically saw us get out of the car.”

Aria barely nodded as she sank lower into the seat.

I started to pull back onto the road, then had to immediately pull back off when an ambulance came barreling through.

“I hate this,” she rasped through her grief.

“I know, baby. I know.”

Once we got back onto the road, I started to take a bunch of turns, getting us lost in a maze of businesses and homes, before I finally broke back into the downtown area. I pulled off at a picnic stop that sat on the side of the murky river.

Everything was painted in a thick coating of snow. The tables and the trees and the roofs of the buildings.

It covered the park area, too, right up to the edge of the river that cut through.

I had planned on just leaving the car running so we could talk, but Aria tossed open the door and got out.

She lifted her face toward the bulbous gray clouds that hung heavy from the sky.

Long locks of black hair whipped behind her as she headed toward the edge of the river, leaving a trail of torment in her wake.

Chest as heavy as the fucking clouds, I climbed out, and I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket as I slowly edged up behind her, feet crunching through the snow and withered grass.

I stopped a foot away, just breathing in her pain.

“He’s going to hunt all of them, Pax. All of us. And he won’t stop until everyone is dead.”

Aria hugged her arms over her chest as she stared out over the muddy, stagnant river.

“Who is he?” My thoughts toiled with the possibilities.

She hugged herself tighter, and her head swept from side to side. “I don’t know. But I remember ... I remember where I saw his name. When we discovered Abigail Watkins at that library where we met Maria Lewis?”

When we’d been searching for any information on Laven and who we were, we’d found an artist who’d painted visions of Tearsith and Faydor. Abigail Watkins. She’d died more than 120 years ago in a house fire.

“Yeah?”

Aria slowly shifted to look at me from over her shoulder. Her face was pinched in doubt and speculation. “Abigail Watkins’s husband was named Ambrose. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

My mind spiraled back to that day, which felt like a lifetime ago when it’d been only a couple weeks. We hadn’t had time to click on the husband’s name since I was unsettled by a guy who was watching us, and we’d taken off.

With everything that’d happened, we hadn’t done any more digging around Abigail Watkins. Figuring it was nothing but a dead end. Too far in the past for us to glean anything useful.