Page 98 of As Darkness Fall
The truck bumped and rumbled along the small road while I peered out through the windshield, trying to spot where I needed to stop.
“Here,” I said to nobody in particular, stopping the truck. “Mom, Dad, you guys wait here with the team, okay? They’ll keep you safe, I promise.”
“What is going on, Dani?” My dad asked. “You just gave him the Idol.”
“I know,” I said with a smile. “But I have a trick up my sleeve. Well, two, actually. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. It’s been a long, what, ten months, for me, too.”
I was chatting like I didn’t have a care in the world. A part of me was screaming to stay focused, to remain on-task until the job was done, but it washard. These were my parents! Adopted or not, they had raised me. Cared for me.
There was still the question as towhythey’d lied to me, let me believe that I was theirs by birth.
That knowledge sobered me. When they’d been gone, I’d let myself believe they were my parents, that they’d loved me, because that was the way I had wanted to remember them. I’d not wanted any bad memories.
Now that they were alive, however...I was going to have some tough questions for them.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, getting out of the truck along with Vir and heading into the bushes, toward a tree surrounded by tall grasses and thick hedges.
“I told you this was going to work,” I said to Vir, elbowing him excitedly. “He didn’t have the dagger on him. You saw that, right?”
“Yes,” Vir said, his tone still advising caution.
That was Vir. No excitement, ever.
“He bought it hook, line, and sinker,” I chortled as we reached the little clearing underneath the tree, where the grass was short and the bushes didn’t grow.
“I still don’t like it,” Vir rumbled. “With the Idol, Lars can still work powerful magic.”
“Yes, but he won’t be invincible,” I countered. “You said you could beat him. Plus,we’llhave the dagger. That will make us stronger, right?”
“We shouldn’t have given him the Idol,” Vir said plainly.
I sighed. “Well, what would you have had me do then, Vir? I wasn’t about to let him keep my parents locked up. That wasn’t an option, and you know it.”
“I don’t know,” Vir admitted. “We should have found another option.”
“Thiswasthe other option,” I pointed out. “Our first option was to storm Aldridge Manor and take him hostage and hope he told us where my parents are instead of opting to die. Remember?”
The plan had been brought up but rather quickly discarded. Lars would have built safeguards into his plan for just that occurrence. Besides, it was too dangerous. Aaron and his team were experts, but there were only six of them. Six versus the entire pack, if it came to it, weren’t odds at all.
They were a massacre waiting to happen. I couldn’t stomach that. There were plenty of good people in the Seguin pack, people who had no idea what Lars was up to, who would leap to defend their Alpha without realizing how evil he’d become.
“He will defile an object like the Idol,” Vir pointed out. “Who knows what he wants it for.”
I sighed. “Vir. The protector of Amunlea. Real or in gold statuette form. Never change.”
“I’m a god,” he said. “We don’t change.”
“You’re a god who is Soulbound to a human,” I countered. “How’sthatfor change? A god who is experiencing emotions as well.”
Vir frowned, looking up at the murky, moonlit sky, a light gauzy layer of clouds obscuring the white orb from view. “It is a confusing time.”
“I know,” I said, resting a hand on his bicep, trying not to feel the firmness of the muscle under my fingertips. “But have faith. He wasn’t wearing the dagger. Because he doesn’t have it. Johnathan stole it. So now we can defeat him. Well, you can. He’s not as strong as he thinks he is, and I think we can use that to our advantage.”
“Maybe,” Vir said.
“We’ll wait for Aaron to heal, and then we’ll go deal with Lars all proper-like. After that, we’ll figure out a way back to the Direen so that you and your brother can have a chat.”
Vir bristled at the mention of his brother Irr. “Yes. A great reckoning is due. After he explains himself.”
