Page 95 of Walking in Darkness
The compulsion.
The need.
I put my hands out in front of me as if I were surrendering, while I focused on the light that brewed in the deepest recess of my being.
Focused on amplifying it.
A charge that I hoped would be enough to bring them all to their knees. Then I’d run for the truck that was still idling about a football field’s length away.
I could do this.
I had to.
“You little bitch,” the one who’d dragged me out of bed snarled, his lips twisted in a sneer. “I know what you’re thinking. Go ahead and run; I’ll enjoy the hunt. Will enjoy tracking you through these woods. I won’t mind the taste of your fear on my tongue. You won’t get far. You can’t because your time has come. He told me you were mine.”
“It’s time, it’s time,” the other four chanted.
Terror clotted my insides, my blood turning to sludge, barely pumping through my veins. But I refused to yield. To submit.
And I swore I could hear it. A different voice that wisped through me on the trickling of fresh, clear waters.
“Rise up, dear Valient. You are the chosen. You must lead.”
Valeen.
I wanted to shout for her. Beg her to finally show me what she’d promised I possessed. To reveal it.
Only there was something inside me that told me I was the one responsible for finding it.
Straightening my spine, I slowly turned in a circle, gauging each of the men, who came closer and closer with each pass. My hands were pushed up in front of me as if they might hold the power to create a barricade between us.
The glow inside me burned and burned. Gathering in potency and volatility. I allowed it to become larger than it ever had before. Coerced into what I prayed would suffice as a weapon.
And I was shaking. Shaking and shaking beneath the pressure of it.
When I couldn’t contain it any longer, I let it streak down my arms and from my fingertips on a crack of energy. A shock wave that radiated outward. I wasn’t touching any of them, but it threw each of them back at least ten feet. Shouts hurled from their mouths as they were tossed onto their backs, each vile beast hitting the ground with a loud thud.
But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to keep them down.
One by one, they climbed back to standing, disoriented and confused as they choked over the rush of debris and dirt that gusted across the land, though the bloodlust left them undeterred.
My body sagged with the wave of exhaustion that slammed into me. Heavy and crippling. I could barely lift my arms. Could barely stand.
I staggered to the side.
It was then that a call ripped through the middle of the confusion, a low growl of a voice cutting through and impaling me in a slash of deliverance. “Aria! Run!”
Pax.
He was there.
Relief thundered through me, pummeling and battering in the midst of the fatigue. I swallowed, searching inside myself for resolve.
For strength.
I started to stagger in his direction where he was coming up the hill through the high grass, but one of the men rebounded and stepped in front of me to block my path.
He slashed his knife from left to right, driving me backward toward the rest, who were right behind me.
