Page 79 of Walking in Darkness

A disbelieving sound rolled out of me, and I told her about what had happened last night. How Ambrose seemed to be able to get to me in ways I’d never fathomed. Dragging me into the unknown.

“God. I feel like we’re inside some kind of weird freaking movie,” she said. “One of those horror-slasher kinds.”

Air huffed from my nose. “We might as well be. The Kruen must be the origin of every terror that has ever been written.”

Every fear and insecurity that people possessed.

Every evil that captured humans’ minds.

Pausing, Dani stared into her tea, leaning on her elbows on the counter, before she looked back up, blinking at me from behind her glasses. “Do you feel it, Aria? This thing in the middle of you?”

She edged back to touch high on her abdomen. “It’s ugly and foul. Ominous. Like I can feel something coming. Something changing.” She wavered, then whispered, “But there’s also a pulse in the middle of it. Something urgent. Like I’m supposed to do something, but I don’t know what it is.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had felt it coming for weeks. That tsunami in the distance that gathered strength as it surged forward to consume the land.

“Yes,” I said in a rush. “I feel it, too.”

She shifted to look at Pax, who still hadn’t taken his mug of tea, the man just standing there, observing us.

“Do you?” she asked point-blank.

Pax’s nod was slow, his voice rough. “Yeah. I feel it. Like wickedness is rising up from the ends of the earth. Building in power as it is driven to one specific place where it all will come together. And when it does, there’s going to be a catastrophic implosion.”

“Where?” she asked in exasperation.

To all of us, herself included.

“Don’t know. I’m afraid it’s going to hit us from out of nowhere,” he said.

“He wants to rule here,” I murmured. “Out in the open. He said everyone would bow to him.”

“How is that even possible?” Dani wheezed as her face pinched in aggrieved disgust.

“I don’t—”

My words were clipped off when there was a soft thud and then a clatter on the outside of the house. Our attention whipped toward the wall the shelves rested against.

Our teeth clamped down and plunged us into silence, though I could hear the sudden ravaging of our hearts. The boom, boom, boom that thundered through the room.

We remained still, barely breathing as we listened.

We all heard it at the same time. The clicking of a latch.

Someone’s out there,I mouthed.

“The gate that leads into the backyard,” Dani muttered beneath her breath.

“Fuck,” Pax spat, and he eased off the wall and pulled his handgun out from inside his jacket. I didn’t know when he’d moved it from the duffel and into his pocket, but he lifted it then, turning off the safety and checking that it was loaded.

Horror ripped from Dani, though she clapped her hand over her mouth to cover it, and Pax mouthed,Get down on the floor, both of you.

Dani dipped behind the counter, and I slipped off the stool and climbed down onto my hands and knees so I could crawl over to her.

Dread pulsed and pulled, the uncertainty of what we would face stirring us into a frenzy. We wondered if Ambrose was here, in the flesh but so much stronger than any man. Or if it was another he’d sent. Someone he’d wielded his power over and bent to his will.

Dani gripped my hand the second I got to her. She was shaking so hard that she rattled in my hold.

“We’re going to be okay,” I promised, squeezing back.