Page 33 of Walking in Darkness

“How is it possible?” I blinked as he made a right. “He was born in 1863. This is beyond—”

I clipped off, not able to process it, let alone voice it.

Pax looked through his side mirror as he hit the freeway before he glanced my way. Apprehension scored deep grooves into his forehead. “So, what, this fucker is immortal?”

His jaw clenched when he said it, and his tattooed hands covered with the vapor of Faydor flexed on the steering wheel.

Another shiver rolled through me at the thought. Uncertainty weaved a path through my senses. “He wasborn. You and I both saw him walking here, in the flesh. He has to be human.”

“A human who’s more than a hundred and fifty years old?” Speculation suffused the words. “A human who was able to drag you from Faydor and into a whole different plane? One none of us has ever known?”

Each instance he issued was like a stake being driven into the validity of Ambrose being human.

I tried to swallow around the unrest that quivered inside me. It had been hard enough trying to accept who I was. My fate. So many misunderstandings surrounding it.

And now it felt as if I was floundering through a brand-new world. A world in which all of us had been given a death sentence.

“And he told me he was the one who sent the Ghorl,” I added on a breathy wheeze, trying to piece together the clues we had.

A harsh puff of air escaped Pax’s nose, and he roughed a hand through his shock of white hair.

“He took on the face of that little girl we thought was a Laven,” he started to reason. “Maybe he’s taken on the face of Abigail’s husband. Maybe he’s bred of Kreed, some kind of Kruen that we’ve never encountered before, and his taking on the identity of a human is the only way he can be here. Hell, maybe heisKreed.”

I choked on the idea.

We’d all be dead then. But ultimately, wasn’t he what we were up against?

Reaching across the center console, Pax curled a warm palm over the top of my thigh. “Fuck. Didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just throwing out ideas. Trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. We don’t have any proof of anything.”

Doubt furled out of me on a small laugh. “You can’t upset me more than I already am, and you know you can’t tiptoe around me. Figuring this out together is the only way we’re going to survive.”

I shifted to look at him fully, determination in my voice. “And I think confronting him head-on is the only way we’re going to get proof of what he is. The only way we’re going to be able to get answers. The only way we’re going to be able to stop him.”

A roll of dread left him on a heavy exhalation. “And what exactly are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we need to pick a spot and stay there for a little while. Let him come to us.”

“Aria . . .”

“I already told you I’m not running this time, Pax. I’m here to fight, no matter what that looks like.”

“It goes against every fiber of my being ... thinking about putting you in the line of fire. You want to confront him, and the only thing I want to do is hide you from him.”

“I’m already in the crosshairs, and there’s no way to get out of them. I just need to figure out how I’m going to fight my way through it. I can’t sit around and allow something like what happened this morning to happen to any more of our Laven family. You and I both know Nathan didn’t fall down those steps on his own, Pax, and we know William wasn’t responsible for OD’ing. And then Peter ... we had direct access to that Ghorl’s thoughts.We know.”

The question no longer lingered.

It was plucking us off, one by one.

“I have to do everything in my power to end this sooner, because if he continues, I’m not sure how many of us will have a later.”

It was late afternoon when we carried our bags up the stairs at a motel in a suburb of Indianapolis. The chill of Fort Wayne had followed ushere, the winter in full force, the wind a blustery gale that cut all the way to the bone.

Darkness loomed on the horizon, ready to swallow the gray sky as the last vestiges of the sun melted away.

“Cold as fuck,” Pax grumbled as we came to stand in front of Room 251. This motel had a key card that slid into the lock, and it gave when he ran it through. The orange door drifted open to a room that was decent compared to some of the other places we’d stayed.

A king bed sat against the left wall, and a flat-screen was mounted on the opposite. A larger round table was beneath the window, and the dressing area and sink were situated on the far wall outside the bathroom.