Page 165 of Visions of Darkness

“What are you not saying?” she demanded.

Dani glanced at Timothy once before she spoke. “It had shifted gears tonight and was seeking to prey on your family.”

Horror spiraled through Aria. Hopelessness taking seed, though she wasn’t surprised. She’d known from the visions it was using her father.

Dani gulped, her delicate throat thick as she wavered before she continued with the confession. “We saw what it has planned. Your father ...”

She trailed off like she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

Aria reached out and snatched her hand, the cruciality whipping from her tongue. “Tell me.”

A tear streaked down Dani’s cheek, and she sniffled around what she believed could not be stopped. “Your brothers. Your sister. Your mom. It will be a massacre.”

It was the blow that dropped Aria to her knees.

A guttural wail broke from her chest. “No!”

No.

She would stop it.

She had to.

She had to.

Pax knelt in front of her, taking her by the face. “Aria, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Only they both knew that was a lie.

It wasn’t okay.

And she wondered if it was the grief that carried her, what catapulted her from one realm to the next.

Because the next second, she woke up gasping on her back, gazing toward the ceiling of the dank motel room with one of Pax’s arms belted across her chest.

Chapter Forty-Two

Pax

I awoke to her in a frenzy, jumping to her feet and charging to her duffel bag, which was packed and zipped where I’d left it at the door in case we had to flee in the middle of the night.

She knelt, and the sound of the zipper ripping open bolted through my body and shot me upright to her frantically digging through her things.

“Aria,” I called, voice hoarse with the aftermath of everything that’d gone down tonight.

It didn’t even come close to breaking into her alarm. Wasn’t even close to touching the chaos that swirled like a tornado around her body, a force of its own that hammered against the thin walls.

Shaking out of control, she tossed a shirt over her head.

I was on my feet and across the space in a second, flat. Leaning over her from behind, I curled my arms around her shoulders, trying to drag her back from the tumult. “What are you doing?”

Without looking at me, Aria gave a turbulent shake of her head, the words cracking on her tongue. “I have to go back. Don’t try to stop me.”

I could feel her turmoil race through me, my blood poisoned by her grief and my spirit bound by her sorrow.

I experienced it as if it were my own, and I knew after what we’d done earlier, I’d be tied to her in an entirely different way, because this girl now beat through me like she’d become the blood in my veins.

Every thud of my heart was a resonance from her chest.

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