Page 72 of Visions of Darkness

He hopped out, attention roving again, searching the shadows before he dipped through the entrance.

Unbuckling, I sat on the edge of the seat so I could better watch my surroundings.

Vigilance was the only thing that was going to save us, if that was even possible at all.

Five minutes passed before Pax came back out. He strode toward the car. There was no tearing my eyes from him as he wound around the front.

My heart panged with the forbidden love I’d always had for him, and my stomach twisted in the tiniest quiver of fear.

He was different here.

Of course he was. No doubt, I was different to him, too.

There was an unease that pulled between us, strangers drifting in that familiarity that would bind us for all our lives. A familiarity we were never meant to experience here.

He opened the door and slid back into the driver’s seat.

His movements were stealthy and smooth.

The man was tall, his body lean, though I could almost feel the sinewy muscle bristle with strength beneath his clothes. Could sense the darkness that edged him in sharp severity.

Another shiver rolled down my spine.

There was something about him that was almost menacing.

Predatory.

Again, I was struck by how I felt like I recognized him all the way down to his soul but knew so little about him here. The glimpses into our everyday lives were shallow. Scraps we’d thrown together to form a patchwork picture of who we were while awake. Which I knew was how he’d found me, likely from when we were young, when we’d spenttime in the safety of Tearsith. Playing and talking before everything had changed the night Pax had first descended into Faydor.

He put the car in Drive and wound around the side of the building. There was a long row of doors, the entire length fronted by angled parking spots. He slipped into the one in front of Room 12.

He shut off the engine.

“Wait right there.”

He was out and around to my side in a blink, and he helped me out into the freezing cold. Dampness still saturated my clothes, my feet bare, and I felt him wince as he quickly ushered me to the door.

Metal scraped as he slid the old-style key into the lock, and once it gave, he reached in to flip on the light. He slunk inside, and I realized he had the gun drawn as he wove through the room, hugging the walls, checking every corner and niche.

I gulped.

Terrified it might be possible that the fiends had already found us here.

“It’s clear,” he rumbled.

I eased in.

The room was dank and stale. Two full beds covered in brown bedspreads sat against the left wall, and a television that should have been obsolete sat on a dresser across from them. A round table with two chairs was situated under the window, and the door to the bathroom was on the far back wall.

“I’ll be right back,” he told me as he slipped back out into a morning that broke at the cracks.

I nodded through the thickness, hating that I felt ill at ease, hating the tension that strained between us.

But I guess that was what happened when worlds collided.

There were fractures.

Pieces that didn’t fit.

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