Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Each flashed in a brilliant light before they disappeared.
Pax and Aria waited at the back, and he squeezed her hand even tighter. “However many nights we have to spend searching, we will find it and we will destroy it. Do not forget what Valeen told you. You have the power, Aria. It’s you.”
Surprise gusted through her before she gave him a small nod. “I will give everything to try to find it within myself.”
They stepped forward together.
A searing cold blistered across his flesh, and he clung to her hand as they fell for what seemed an eternity.
Darkness reigned on all sides, disorienting and confusing as they tumbled and spun and hurtled through the desolation.
Violence filled their ears, the call for wickedness, the beckoning for desolation.
He never let go of her hand.
They hit the frozen ground, and the barren expanse of Faydor opened in front of them.
Their Laven family raced headlong into the roiling chaos. Into the mist and shadows that howled with depravity.
The instinct was to fight. To engage. To chase down the foul and end it.
It felt nearly impossible to keep moving, to ignore the innate reflex to battle the disgusting thoughts as they passed.
But they couldn’t stop.
They couldn’t slow.
Aria was at his side as they tracked over the rough, barren terrain, through the heavy vapor that concealed and camouflaged. The barest light glowed at the edge of Faydor, the darkness so thick it was noxious.
Ice-cold poison that they inhaled into their lungs.
Aria kept stumbling at the wickedness that was intoned. Her need to intervene was almost too powerful for her to ignore. The pain she emitted was overwhelming.
Unbearable.
Pax gritted his teeth. “We have to find it, Aria. Right now, our only job is saving you. You can’t protect the blameless if you’re not here to do it.”
The words raked up his throat, low and desperate, and Aria pushed herself harder. They increased their pace, racing through stricken darkness, twisting around the boulders and lifeless elms.
They inclined their ears, listening in on the screams and taunts, the wickedness that oozed, the evils that possessed.
They ran for hours.
Hunting.
Searching.
Lost in the bowels of nothingness. A wasteland of greed.
He’d begun to lose hope when he got the barest inclination. When he picked up on a sound. A tone that reverberated through the frigid air and flamed at his soul.
The Ghorl.
“Climb the stairs. Break the lock. She’s waiting. You get to fuck her if you do. She’s never been touched. She’s yours. Then let her blood spill over your fingers.”
Catching a glimpse of the Ghorl’s mind, Pax saw his car parked in the lot, two spaces down from the set of stairs that led to the upper level of the hotel where they were staying.
Where they were asleep inside.
Aria saw it at the same time, and she gasped. Her knees went weak, her feet close to failing as she stumbled over the rocky, rutted ground.
Pax tightened his hold on her hand.
“I won’t let him touch you. I promise you. We have to remain strong. Fight.”
Resolve rushed through her on a palpable wave. Bottled strength that rose from the depths, where it had been dormant and hidden away.
Pax was sure Aria didn’t have the first clue of how powerful she really was.
What remained untapped.
But he knew exactly why she was such a threat.
They drove themselves toward the voice, hurtling across the ground.
“Do it. Go up the stairs. Move. You have nothing to lose. Everything you want is on the other side of that door.”
Running through vapor and mist, they rounded a boulder, and the Ghorl came into sight. It writhed in a bubbling, black mess on the pitted, desolate ground.
Both liquid and shadow.
Different from a normal Kruen. It throbbed with untapped power.
With a wickedness so great it bleared their eyes and distorted their senses.
Together, Pax and Aria found the light within themselves, the power to crush the iniquity, and they projected it toward the Ghorl. They needed to surround it before it could realize they were there.
Only it sensed their approach, and it flailed, gathering to take new shape as it reared up to stare back at them.
Its flesh was pitch-blackened char, though you could see the evil pump through its veins. Its face a gnarled mesh of depravity, its mouth deformed and twisted as it bared its jagged teeth. A flash of a second later, it had transformed into shadow, and it broke into two fragments as it raced away.
Curling and twisting in a bid to disorient them.
“Follow the largest fragment.” Aria rushed, her breaths ragged as they chased. They struggled not to lose it, trying to track it to the place where it would come back together so they could bind it as one.
Their only hope was to eradicate it when it was whole.
Only the thoughts the Ghorl had been feeding into the man had already been seeded.