Page 57 of Walking in Darkness

I gasped and choked against the scent of him. Something vile and offensive.

He dragged me between two cars, quickly and steadily moving across the lot. I could hear the immorality of his thoughts, the heinousness he’d fully given himself over to. “He promised I could have you once he was finished with you.”

I kept trying to scream. To draw attention to what was happening. But no one paid any attention to us. Everyone’s focus was on the commotion happening on the other side of the lot.

The screeching of tires and the blaring of horns and the shouts of horror.

Unquestionably, the child was being used as a decoy, and there was no one there to notice that I was being dragged around the side of the building.

A fence ran the length of it. Only three feet separated it and the cinder block wall of the grocery store, the area completely isolated and concealed from the front.

The man kept my back pinned against his chest, walking backward as he went. I kept kicking my feet, trying to set him off-balance. I clawed at his hands, so hard I was sure I had to be breaking skin.

He only laughed a menacing sound. “So feisty. That’s good. I like it when they fight.” He pressed his mouth harder against my ear. “But I like it so much more when they scream. Are you a screamer, little girl? But I guess you won’t be screaming any longer once he gets finished with you. I’ll have to make do.”

Sickness roiled, and I could smell the stench of his memories. The horrid things he had done.

He hauled me all the way behind the building, where it was even more secluded.

I swore I could see the tumult in the sky. The roil of thunderous clouds.

Violent and cyclonic.

As if the heavens had begun to boil.

Awareness slithered through me. A horrifying recognition. It was Ambrose. I could feel him. The freezing cold he elicited.

“Release her,” a low voice intoned.

A cold sweat slicked my skin, the fear so deep I felt it sink into my marrow.

The man who held me whirled around and threw me forward at the same time. I stumbled with the momentum, trying to find my footing, to keep from falling to my hands and feet.

I was barely able to steady myself when I lifted my attention and found Ambrose standing twenty feet away.

Blond hair darker beneath the darkness of the clouds that swirled above him.

A man who had appeared so benign and plain, but who I knew possessed the greatest wickedness.

Was possibly the epitome of it.

Or with the way his brown eyes seemed to glow, maybe Pax had been right. Maybe he was the embodiment of Kreed.

Maybe I was standing in front of the evil one.

I searched inside myself for the courage I’d found when I faced him on that unknown plane. For the conviction to fight.

It was harder here outside of the supernatural realm. When I was wholly human, and I had none of the strength and speed that I had in Faydor.

Except my spirit rattled and my fingers buzzed.

A reminder that that wasn’t true. I was different. Some of the ethereal had followed me here.

A reminder that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t succumb and, rather, would fight.

A reminder that I had to face him head-on or this was never going to end.

Laven would continue to die because of him—because of whatever or whoever this monster was.