Page 60 of Walking in Darkness

The atmosphere simmered with evil, and my eyes peeled open to Ambrose standing over me. He turned the knife over, the blade pointed downward as he held it between both hands.

My heart was his target.

I could see it. The finality that gleamed in his eyes.

But the energy shifted, stirring through the air in a clamor of desperation. A thunder of footsteps raced up behind Ambrose, and Pax drove his shoulder into his ribs. The velocity knocked Ambrose to the side.

Pax’s eyes were wild when he saw me on the ground. “Aria.”

“Pax!” I shouted when the other man lumbered up behind him. “Behind you!”

Pax whirled, ducking just in time to miss the fist the man threw before he delivered a punch that knocked the monster onto his back.

I scrambled to my feet and ran toward Ambrose, who’d spun back around and was coming for me.

We met in the middle, and I grabbed the wrist of his hand that still held the knife while a tussle of shouts and kicks and punches thudded behind us.

I begged my spirit to comply. For the light to gather in a way that it never had before. To become something great. The power Valeen had promised that I possessed.

It glowed within me, and I gritted my teeth as I fought with everything I had to use it against Ambrose.

But on his face was a sneer. The amusement that I thought I could prevail.

Still, I tried to harness the power from Valeen and send it sailing into his being.

If it wasn’t enough, then how could I end him here? Was it all futile? Worthless?

I gasped and choked as I tried to push against him. To break the knife from his hold. Turn it against him. Hopelessness rolled through me. Even if I managed it, it likely wouldn’t do any good.

He was immortal.

A wave of strength erupted, and I managed to twist his wrist just a fraction away from me, turning it toward him.

His sneer turned to a snarl, and he pushed against the light.

Darkness enveloped, wrapping around me like the fiery tendrils of Kruen.

Pax was suddenly behind me, both hands planted on my back as if he was going to rip me away so he could stand in front of Ambrose.

Only the second he touched me, the light surged.

A shock wave that blistered through my hands in a burst of power.

The knife drove forward, and the blade plunged deep into Ambrose’s stomach.

It blew him off his feet and into the air, and the monster slammed into the grocery store wall. The cinder blocks cracked and crumbled where he smashed against them.

He stumbled forward, dazed as he jerked the knife from his stomach.

Blood gushed from the wound—a thick, sticky red. Like the wounds Pax and I woke up with after being burned in Faydor. Shocked, he stared down at it before he lifted his malicious gaze to me.

I was frozen in it.

This thing that felt like a crossroads.

We stayed that way for a prolonged beat before he suddenly turned and ran down the far side of the building, far faster than either Pax or I could run.

Our own shock held us there, our breaths panted and harsh as we tried to make sense of what had happened.