Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Until they came upon it.
In the distance.
They once again careened to a standstill, their boots skidding over the coarse, jagged rocks as they stumbled in shock.
Gasps of disbelief jutted from their aching lungs as they gaped at the affliction set out before them.
It was a giant fissure.
A crack that buckled through the cragged, rutted floor.
A fracture that opened directly to Earth below, and Kruen were slipping through it.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Aria
“Rise up and go.”
It was the faintest voice. A high-pitched tinkling in her ear. Dragging her through the nothingness where she typically hovered between sleeping and reality.
That moment when she was neither human nor ethereal.
“Do you feel it? The call?” the voice whispered. “You were made for this. Rise up and stand for the ones who cannot stand for themselves. End the one who seeks to destroy. Only you can. It’s time. It’s time to lead.”
The call howled around her, dragging her spirit in a direction she didn’t understand. The only thing she knew was she had to heed it.
And the sky opened up in the distance.
A magnet.
A lure.
The gravity a hook deep in her soul.
And in it, she saw his face.
Ambrose.
And Valeen’s voice whispered again, “Go.”
A cry ripped out of me as I flew upright in bed, disoriented as I held the blanket covering us against my chest.
My mind was a hurricane. Still stuck somewhere between Faydor and the fog where I’d drifted right before awakening.
Where I’d been removed from Faydor, and rather than being catapulted back to this reality, I’d been held in a dream.
Pax jolted up by my side, as if we’d been attached, both of us waking at the same moment. He grabbed for me the second we were both upright, palms rushing out to frame my face.
“Did you see it? Did you feel it?” he demanded. “Were you dreaming, too?”
My throat was too thick to speak, so I only nodded, croaking out a bare “Yes.”
There was a sudden pounding down the hall before a fist battered at the door. One second later, Dani threw it open. She stumbled in, pink hair a mess, desperation written in her expression. “I had a dream,” she gasped, “and so did Timothy.”
“We did, too,” I managed to force out.
“It feels like we’re being called somewhere else. Someplace specific. But where?” she begged, her desperation bleeding out onto the floor, the echo of her words climbing the walls with her urgency.
“That’s exactly the way I feel,” I told her.
But I thought we all already knew it. That the dream had been the same for each of us.
We were being compelled.
I blinked, trying to process what the visions meant. Where it was leading us. “I’m not sure . . . but . . . I think the area is close. I think I can feel it. Maybe a few hundred miles away.”
It was only then that I heard the wailing of sirens. So many of them in the distance. That and the thwomp, thwomp, thwomp of helicopters as they flew overhead.
Dread soured in my stomach. It had started. The chaos we’d known was coming.
Timothy suddenly appeared in the doorway, a tower behind Dani. “We gotta go.”
His features were a contortion of grimness and determination.
“I know.”
“We need to think about this.” Pax’s words slashed into the air, and he shook his head as if he could throw off the disorder. “We don’t know what we’re going to come up against. There was a crack in Faydor, and Kruen were jumping through it.”
Dani wheezed, “Oh God.”
“Yeah. We found it deep in the recesses of Faydor. It’s why the Kruen were acting strange. They were drawn toward it. No clue how many of them we’re going to encounter. What kind of strength they’re going to have on this plane. We can’t take them all on ourselves.”
Pax’s teeth ground as he said it, anger spilling free. The memory of what we’d come upon last night in the farthest reaches of Faydor.
The crack.
The rending.
The ruin we knew would already be waiting for us.
“We don’t have any other choice.” I tossed off the covers and hopped out of bed. “We have to go. Now. It doesn’t matter what we come up against. You know we’re fated for this. You know it’s the reason we’re all standing here together. There’s no cowering now.”
Pax radiated his reservations. The need he felt to protect me butting up against the truth of what we were destined for.
My guardian.
My shield.
My husband.
The one who saw everything inside me. My purpose and my dreams.
The one I knew already had his answer, even though he wanted to fight against it.
He scrubbed both hands over his face before he gritted out, “If we’re going to do this, then we’d better fuckin’ show up prepared.”
“Ah, now I like the sound of that.” A big grin spread across Timothy’s face.
“What the hell does that mean?” Dani glanced between the two of them.