Page 102 of Visions of Darkness

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.

Had already taken hold.

Pax suddenly lurched, and his hand slipped from Aria’s as he was shocked awake.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Pax

I bolted upright, jarred as I was tossed between two worlds.

Disoriented as I was swamped by the darkness of the room.

But my heart pounded at a million miles a minute. Each harsh beat battered at my ribs.

Awareness crawled over my flesh, and the sweat that drenched me was thick and sticky.

Evil coated the room.

There was no missing the stench of it.

Squinting, I tried to adjust to the dim light as I listened for what had pulled me from sleep.

Aria’s breaths were long and shallow as she continued to race through Faydor. Her body vibrating and ticking beneath the covers on her bed.

But the rest of the room was too still.

Too quiet.

It was then that I saw the shape move out from where it was hidden in the shadows against the wall.

Rage clouded my vision, and I could barely breathe with the adrenaline that dumped into my system. With the rage that careened through me.

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