Page 69 of Walking in Darkness

Aria was already sitting up, chest heaving as she searched for the oxygen she couldn’t seem to find.

“What happened, Aria? What’s going on?”

“It was Ambrose,” she rasped as she tossed off the covers and slipped from the bed. Anxiety bound her in chains, her entire being vibrating with trepidation.

I scrubbed both palms over my face, trying to break up the confusion. To orient myself after being yanked from one reality to the other. One minute, Aria and I had been tracking through Faydor, and the next, she’d been distraught, racing into the nothingness.

A flash of a second later, we’d both tripped, like our spirits had snagged on a branch and we’d been sent toppling forward.

And we’d landed here.

Awake.

Still two hours before dawn.

“What do you mean, it was Ambrose?” The question cracked through the disordered air.

Aria rushed her palms up her arms as she hugged herself. “It was like he was right there, riding a thin line between Faydor and wherever he was. That place, I think ...” She inhaled a shattered breath. “He called it Baahg.”

“The place you’d gone to? That night?”

“Yes.”

Rage and hate lit up my insides. “Was he trying to drag you back there? Compel you?”

“No,” she wheezed, and her eyes slammed shut. Distress held her in a fist. “He was showing me what he was going to do.” I shifted off the side of the bed, and I slowly rounded the end of it to come to stand in front of her. In front of this woman whose spirit was shaking so badly I could feel it battering into me. “What did he show you?”

“Dani.” She choked on her name.

Dread spiraled through the center of me.

“He’s going for her,” I said, the words blunt.

Filled with the fury this bastard evoked.

I wanted to end him. I wanted to end him with my bare fuckin’ hands. Destroy him for the destruction he’d employed. But I knew it was going to take so much more than me.

“He wants to hurt me. Make me suffer before he brings me to my end.” Aria’s voice tremored.

“Or it’s a fucking trap. A manipulation to get you where he wants you.”

“He can obviously find me anywhere, Pax. That was the whole plan, wasn’t it? That I’d draw him to me.”

“It worked before the bastard ran away.”

“And I think he’s changing tactics. He’s filled with hatred. He wants to torture me. Weaken my resolve by stealing the ones who mean the most to me.”

“Because he’s afraid,” I said. “Afraid of what you can do.”

Aria blinked those pale, pale eyes in the dimness of the room. Sparks of white flamed in their depths. “I don’t know what his twisted intentions are, but I can tell you I’m not going to let him get to her.”

She went to her phone, which was charging on the nightstand, her face pinching as she input the number, faltering over a couple of them. She wheezed in frustration, “I don’t know if I remember the exact number.”

She made the call anyway. It rang and rang. Never doing anything.

“Dang it, Dani.” Worried frustration rolled from her before she grabbed her duffel from the floor, where we’d left our things packed in case we had to leave quickly in the night. She tossed it onto the bed, unzipped it, and dug through to find a change of clothes.

“You know where she lives?” I asked.