Chapter Twenty Aria

Chapter Twenty

Aria

The diner wasn’t busy, Pax and I the only patrons in the restaurant other than two booths that were occupied and the solitary man who sat at the bar, sipping from an endless cup of coffee.

I shifted on the red pleather upholstery, the stiff material creaking beneath my weight, and I fiddled with the handle of my coffee mug as I stared at the man across from me as if I could sort him out.

Dig through the hard layer that lined his being.

Morning light poured in through the window, casting a spotlight on the harsh angles of his face as he studied me. He was somehow slung back in the seat, though he had both hands wrapped around a mug that sat on the table.

Just looking at him made my heart skitter, pitching with errant, extra beats.

Everything about him was menacing. A warning to keep your distance.

But God, I wanted to be closer.

He’d removed his coat, and tattoos covered every inch of his exposed flesh, each painted in horrors, some in color and others in all black. It was as if he’d used his body as a diary, a place to record his darkest secrets.

The scar that cut through the right side of his face only made him appear more terrifying. Proof that those secrets were dark and gruesome.

But I knew it was those keen, tormented eyes that set him apart from anyone else.

Labeled him as something to be feared.

“What are you thinking right now?” I suddenly whispered, pushing closer to the table that separated us.

Pax let go of a disbelieving chuckle. “That I can’t believe you’re sitting across from me.”

Heat flooded my cheeks as a rush of warmth skidded through my veins. “I can’t believe it, either.”

“Looking at you sitting there is like I got an answer for every single question I’ve ever had,” he admitted.

I diverted my gaze, and I fiddled with the fork that sat on my napkin. “I know. It’s like ... the fear that I’d forever harbored that I was wrong in some way? That my makeup was distorted? It’s gone.”

Disquiet gusted across Pax’s face, and his fingers, which were inked with an innuendo of the vapor in Faydor, twitched around his mug. “But this new fear is bigger.”

Air puffed from my nose as I lifted my attention back to him. “And it’s met with just as many questions. But I ...” I paused, unsure if I should say it, if I should admit the way he made me feel. “But it doesn’t feel so lonely anymore.”

Regret tightened his expression, the truth that this was fleeting.

We both jumped when our server was suddenly standing at the side of our table. She glanced between us in an apology for interrupting as she topped off our coffees. “Your food is almost up. Is there anything I can get you in the meantime?”

“No, I think we’re fine, thank you,” I told her, keeping my gaze low as I barely glanced at her, trying to remain as inconspicuous as I could, even though I got the sense it was an impossibility.

I doubted there was a single person in there who hadn’t noticed us.

She dipped her head and scurried away.

“Have to give her credit ...” Pax’s deep voice cut through the air. “She barely flinched when we first sat down.”

“What do you think goes through their minds when they see us?” I whispered it. A secret only we could share.

He shrugged a shoulder, though it didn’t come close to being blasé. “People always fear the unfamiliar. What doesn’t make sense to them.”

I had so many things I wanted to ask him. What his life was like. Where he came from. Who he was. But he scanned out the windows again toward the road, tensing when a Highway Patrol rolled by.

Worry thickened my throat. “Are they looking for us?”

Agitation twitched at the edge of his jaw, and he seemed to war before he spoke. “While you were getting changed, I searched for news articles. It’s all over the place in Albany. Mostly pictures of you. When you were younger and a few more recent. A statement from your parents asking for help to find their mentally unstable daughter.”

Sorrow bound my being. The swelling kind that made me feel as if I might drown in it. I could almost feel the distinction of my mother’s pain. Her worry and her grief calling out to me from across the miles that separated us.

God, how could I turn my back on her? Make her worry this way?

Pax continued, “Cameras got a shot of my profile. They’re looking for the car we ditched. First reports had it labeled a kidnapping.”

I winced. How were we going to survive when threats were coming at us from every direction?

He scraped a palm down his face. “That nurse, though? The one who helped us?”

“Jill.”

Gratitude swelled.

His nod was clipped. “She made a statement that you’d been unsafe there, that a janitor had developed an obsession with you, and you’d run away with a trusted friend.”

Another rush of gratitude filled me, this virtual stranger who had put herself on the line for me.

Believed in me.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not wanted, though, and the way I went in isn’t going to help things.”

“It was the only thing you could do.”

“Not saying I regret it. It’s just something that isn’t going to stack in my favor.”

My lips tugged down at the sides. “You’re the bad guy in this situation.”

Incredulous laughter rolled through him, low and dark. “I am the bad guy in many situations, Aria.”

He kept alluding to it. The truth that I didn’t know him here. That he was as dangerous as he looked.

I’d forced myself to sit back from the lure of it when the server approached, carrying our order.

It did nothing to shatter the connection that strummed between us, a constant hum in my veins and a prodding from somewhere in the recesses of my soul. I was sure that I did know him, in every way that mattered.

“Here we go. Three eggs over medium with sausage and white toast.” She set a large plate in front of Pax. “And a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream for you.”

My stomach rumbled and my mouth watered as she placed the towering goodness onto the table. It wasn’t until then that I realized I really hadn’t eaten in days. Not since before I’d been admitted to the facility.

It felt like an eternity from then.

“Thank you,” I told her.

“My pleasure. Anything else I can get for you?”

“I think we’re good.”

“Just let me know if you need anything else.”

I watched her walk away, and when I looked back at Pax, I found him staring at me. The slightest smirk hitched at the edge of his mouth.

“What?” I asked him.

“Are you eating dessert for breakfast?” The tease played across his features.

I liked it too much. Him looking at me that way.

“It’s my eighteenth birthday. I think I’m allowed.”

And that impenetrable stone that normally hardened his expression had gone gentle. “I think you’re more than allowed, Aria. You deserve so much more than this.”

“I guess if there’s anyone I could share my eighteenth birthday with, it would be you.”

My mother’s face flashed behind my eyes. My sister. My brothers.

What were they doing now? Was my mother pacing? Was she driving her minivan around the city? Was she on her knees?

My eyes squeezed closed with the weight of it.

“My mom wanted to take me to my favorite restaurant and for us to go ice-skating this weekend.” I admitted it quietly.

It felt like I was letting go of a dream. But I’d already known I had to leave. That I couldn’t stay under their watch, causing them pain.

Affliction carved through Pax’s features, and he sat forward a fraction. “I’m sorry.”

A single tear got free, and I swatted at it. “I just ... can’t stand the thought of her worried about me. Can’t stand her thinking that I’m ...”

I trailed off, choking over the torment.

Pax stretched his hand over the table and set it over mine.

“Wish it was different,” he said.

“I know. I do, too.” But I doubted he knew how much different I wished it could be. “So what do we do now?” I asked.

“First and foremost, we have to keep you safe. Keep moving. Stay one step ahead of both the authorities and any Kruen or Ghorl who might seek to do you harm. Beyond that, I think we need to find out why this is happening to you. How you’re healing people in the day. If there’s anyone else like you.”

My brow furrowed. “How do we do that?”

Pax blinked through this frustration. “I can’t believe that these bare specks of information about how we’ve come to be is it. I mean, fuck, we go to sleep and end up somewhere else to fight against all evils in the world? And we’re just supposed to believe we were randomly chosen to do it? I have never been able to wrap my mind around it.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about it many times, too. It’s always felt like a bad dream—all except for the scars I wake up with.”

His nod was measured, and he took a bite of his eggs, chewing slowly before he wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Don’t you find it strange that there’s never any mention of us in society? That there’s no history here? That no one has noticed and talked about us? Written about us? Even if it was chalked up to mythology?”

We knew from teachings that we weren’t completely rare. There were many other Laven families like ours. Each drawn together to their own sanctuaries and descending into Faydor in their given times.

Awareness sat heavy on my chest. “It’s because we’ve been sworn to secrecy. Told to never speak of it to humans.”

Except I’d done it. Many times over. Unable to keep the truth of who I was from bursting out of me.

“I have a hard time believing no Laven in all of history didn’t break that law,” Pax challenged.

“Like I did ... with my parents.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“There has to be something out there. Something that could help us,” he added.

I realized I hadn’t told him my experience when Ellis had led me to the stream. “Ellis took me to the stream to seek Valeen.”

Surprise flashed through his expression. “Did you hear her? See her?”

None of our family ever had. It had always been believed that she spoke to us through The Book of Continuance . That everything we needed, we would find there.

Somehow, Ellis had considered that I might be able to do it.

“I’m not sure. I heard a vague, indistinct whisper.”

“What did she say?”

“That only I had the strength to defeat this evil.”

“What evil?”

Uncertainty billowed through my spirit. “I’m not sure. The Ghorl, I guess.”

He sighed in frustration. “There has to be something. Something more than the little information we’ve been given.”

I took a bite of my waffle, contemplating before I asked, “What are you hoping to find?”

His left shoulder hiked toward his ear. “I don’t know. A clue. Something that could give us any insight into you. How it’s possible that you bound a Kruen while awake. You’re unlike anything we know.”

Pax hesitated, regret glittering in the white flames of his eyes.

My head tipped to the side as I frowned. “What is it?”

He warred, then said, “Ellis said he’d read in the book a mention of there being Laven who had greater powers than others, and there was ...” He hesitated before he added, “There was a legend passed down from his elder of there being someone like you long ago.”

My stomach lurched. “Why would he never have spoken of it before? In all our teachings?”

“I’m guessing because there were no others like us. That it seemed an anomaly, and he didn’t want to add a new burden to those we already carried.”

A new burden.

I felt the weight of it then.

The dread that dimmed Pax’s expression. The aggression that lined his jaw.

“Tell me,” I demanded. The last thing I could handle was him keeping things from me.

He inhaled a deep breath before he leaned forward. “He said she was hunted because of her powers. Because she became such a threat to the Kruen.”

He left out what was abundantly clear.

They had ended her.

His hand was suddenly squeezing mine from over the top of the table. “But I promise you, I won’t let that happen to you. I will find a way to stop this. Once we put more distance between us and Albany, we’ll find someplace to research. See if we can uncover anything that might help us. Whatever it takes, I’m going to make sure nothing happens to you.”

I turned my hand so I was holding his, hanging on because I didn’t know how to process all this.

I’d known deep inside that I would be hunted because of these powers. Powers that I had no idea where they’d come from. But there was something else altogether about getting the confirmation this way.

My spirit wept for the Laven who’d had to suffer it, wept for the loss I would soon sustain.

My mother’s face flashed through my mind again.

She would be devastated, destroyed when I was found. And she would never understand.

Regret churned through me, the pain of leaving her tormented this way.

“I promise,” he reiterated before he unclasped his hand and turned back to picking at his food.

He and I fell into a strange, disoriented comfort after that, slowly eating, processing, trying to come to terms with the place we’d found ourselves in.

Once we finished, our server left our bill. Pax pulled out a wallet that was stuffed with cash and placed two twenties onto the slip.

I eyed it. I had nothing. I was completely dependent on him.

“Do you have a job you’re supposed to be at?”

A dark chuckle rolled out of him as he slid from the booth. “No, Aria, I don’t have a job that I need to be at. Come on. We should get out of here.”

I wavered in the questions that rushed at me.

Insecurities and uncertainty had me shoving them down, and I pushed from the booth.

I tried not to shiver when he placed his hand on the small of my back.

It didn’t work.

Not when every time he touched me it felt as if I were being zapped. Charged with the impossible. This need I’d never experienced before, whipping like a storm inside my belly.

I was a fool for even allowing the thoughts. We had so much more riding on this than whatever attraction I felt.

But this was Pax.

Pax.

The one. The one who had forever possessed me.

He guided me through the restaurant. Tension radiated from his body, his attention continually scanning, calculating everything as we passed.

I did, too, furtively peeking at each person. The thoughts that swarmed them grew louder the closer I got to them.

The struggles.

The grief.

The hopelessness.

I wanted to reach out but knew I couldn’t do it, that we couldn’t afford to draw any more attention to ourselves than we already had.

We moved along the bar, and my regard traced over the old man who was sitting there. Loneliness radiated from him, a constant vat that dragged him to the depths. We kept moving, and I made eye contact with another man who’d just slipped onto a stool.

Short, blond hair with brown eyes, maybe in his midforties. He gave me a curious smile, one I didn’t return, and Pax hurried us out the door and into the frigid day.

The blue sky glowed white overhead. Painted in a cold winter clear. I shivered in the break of it, and Pax urged me forward, guiding me around the side of the building to head back toward the motel room.

Only I stalled out, gulping around the sorrow that possessed me again. Unable to take another step until I addressed it.

His powerful presence covered me from behind.

Almost oppressive in its watch.

I turned to him, trying not to allow the sight of him to punch me in the gut again, trying to rein in everything that I’d felt for him for so long.

But looking at the one who burned like a beacon in your soul and facing them in an entirely different reality was hard to do.

“I have to somehow get in touch with my parents,” I told him, my decision firm. “Let them know I’m safe.”

“Safe, Aria?” Disbelief pinched Pax’s eyes, his coarse voice scraping my flesh.

The energy he emitted crackled as he slowly took a step forward.

A semitruck rumbled by on the road, sending dust billowing through the air. Pax spoke through the scatter of debris. “You’re not safe. None of this is safe. And the only thing calling them will do is make the situation worse.”

He was right. I knew it. But knowing it didn’t matter.

I couldn’t leave my mother in torment.

“I can’t go on, knowing my mom is terrified for me, Pax. I can’t pretend like I don’t know that she can’t function because the only thing she can think about is me. I can’t pretend my brothers and sister aren’t being affected. I can’t.”

Pax edged even closer, speaking around gritted teeth. “You’re running because of them. Because they locked you away because they don’t understand you. They don’t understand you and they never will. You have to let them go.”

His words were harsh. Almost cruel in their delivery. As if it were the only way he could get through to me. But he didn’t understand these pieces of me, either.

“I love them.”

It was simple, and the way his jaw clenched made me sure he didn’t understand.

He’d never experienced it here.

And that nearly killed me, too.

“I can’t just forget them, and you can’t ask me to.”

For the longest time, he stared at me like he wanted to argue.

Finally, he looked to the ground. “Goddamn it, Aria.”

He inhaled through his nose, agitation lighting him up before he pulled the oldest phone I’d ever seen from his coat pocket.

It was bulky and as obsolete as the television in the motel room.

“Here.”

I stared at it like he’d handed me a bomb. I guessed he had.

“Make it fast.”

My hands shook as I dialed my mother’s number, and all the breath left me when she answered on the first ring.

“Hello?”

Grief hitched in my throat with the desperate cry that infiltrated the single word: “Mom.” I choked it out. Eighteen years of pain and misunderstanding bled out with it.

“Aria, oh my God, Aria.” She gasped it around sobs.

Tears slipped free of my eyes.

“Oh my God, Aria. Where are you?” she begged. I could tell she was pacing, the phone clutched to her ear.

“I’m safe.”

“Please tell me where you are. I’ll come for you. Whatever trouble you’re in, it’s okay. We can talk and make this right. I promise—”

“I’m not coming home.”

Despair seeped into her voice. “Please, don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”

Agony burned in my chest. “I just wanted to let you know I’m safe. I’m safe. I promise I’m safe. And I want you to know how much I love you. That I understand why you’ve done the things you have, but I also need you to understand that I can’t live under the weight of that any longer.”

“Aria,” she cried.

A commotion clattered through the connection, a crash and the shattering of glass before my father’s voice suddenly came through the line. “Where the hell are you, Aria? Do you understand the kind of trouble you’re in? Whoever you’re with is going to pay the—”

I yelped when the phone was suddenly yanked out of my hand. Pax threw it to the ground and stomped on it with the heel of his boot, crushing it in one swift blow.

My hands flew to my mouth to cover the sob. There was a huge part of me that wanted to gather up the broken pieces and put them back together so I could hear her voice again. The part that wanted to succumb.

Give in.

Because I ached.

I ached for the woman who I knew was on her knees on the floor right then. Weeping for me.

“We have to go.” A dark urgency filled Pax’s tone.

But I couldn’t move. I gaped at the mangled mess that was left of the phone, a cold realization gliding through my veins.

I couldn’t go back.

I could never return.

I would never see her again.

Pax’s mouth was suddenly so close to my ear, his hold soft where he curled his hand around my elbow. “I know. I know. But it’s too risky. We can’t take this kind of chance again. I can’t take that kind of chance with you. It’s not tied to my name, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t tap in and track it.”

Numbly, I nodded.

“Let’s go.” Pax led me quickly across the lot. I fumbled along at his side, his strides so long and fast I had to almost jog to keep up with him.

I felt a disorder in it. A chaos that clouded. Particles from the piece of me that had been ripped from my soul.

As crushed as the phone had been at my feet.

My thoughts drifted to the past. When my mother had watched me with adoration rather than fear.

“ That imagination is something else. I bet you will write a book one day. Promise me one thing? ”

Aria gazed up at her mommy, eager to hear whatever she would say.

“ Never give that imagination up. Never stop dreaming. It shines so bright inside you. ”

Aria giggled and snuggled down deeper in her covers. “I won’t, Mommy. I promise.”

She tapped Aria’s nose. “I love you more than anything in this world. Now, sweet, sweet dreams.”

They’d been sweet, sweet dreams that had turned into our nightmares.

I choked around another sob, and that chaos spun. Into the air, where it whipped like a coming storm.

Dark clouds gathering in the distance.

It covered me in a slick of cold dread that lifted the hairs at the back of my neck.

I stumbled, unable to move my feet as Pax tried to drag me across the dirt lot to where his car was parked in front of the motel.

But I couldn’t do anything but look, my eyes wide as I lifted them to find a man who stood at the door to his semitruck.

I felt it crawl over me.

Evil.

I breathed it in through my nostrils, and it gushed through my veins in a streak of malignance.

Nausea boiled in my stomach and clawed up my throat.

Pax tightened his hold around my elbow, and he pressed his mouth to the side of my head. “Keep moving, Aria. Keep moving. Do not stop. Do not stop.”

He increased our pace, and he hurried me to the passenger side of his car, where he urged me into the seat.

Our bags were already stowed in the back.

He rose, straightening to his full, intimidating height, and I felt the crash of aggression blister through the cold as he glared over the top of the car at the man who remained in the same spot halfway across the lot.

Then Pax slammed my door shut. One second later, he was in his seat, starting the car, and whipping out of the dirt lot.

While my fingertips dug into the door as I watched out the passenger window with wide eyes as we flew by the malevolence that oozed back.