Chapter Twenty-Two Pax

Chapter Twenty-Two

Pax

Disappointment sank like stones to the pit of my stomach.

It was a bunch of fucking gibberish.

Misspellings.

A couple of people with the name.

“Damn it,” I grumbled, and Aria peeked over at me before she reached out and typed Laven .

A bunch of names populated that time. Lots of last names bearing the same title.

My spirit twisted in a bid of hopelessness because, God, I was trying so hard, but I had the sinking sense that we might be grasping for something that wasn’t there.

Determined to find a solution in the middle of obscurity. We’d been sworn to never speak of our time while asleep, but still, we were humans during the day, and I wasn’t sure how, in all of time, those oaths had been kept.

Couldn’t believe that one person hadn’t dished, even though they’d likely have been labeled the same way as Aria had been.

Unstable.

Still, there had to be something.

An answer.

I had to find one.

Aria’s survival was riding on it.

Frustration heaved from her on a weighted exhalation before she deliberated, then leaned in again and let her delicate fingers move over the keys.

Tearsith.

We both were holding our breath as the screen switched, and our eyes quickly scanned the results.

More misspellings leading to other entries. Some board game. A couple of random people.

Not much.

Except there was one tiny image that populated at the bottom of the page. One that stopped both of us in our tracks. The oxygen hitched in our throats, and our hearts picked up a reckless rhythm of disbelief.

Aria glanced at me in a second of stunned wariness before she maneuvered the mouse and clicked on it.

“Oh my God.” A whispered gasp rushed from her, and the air was punching from my lungs.

It was a painting.

A painting of the place we knew. Our sanctuary. A meadow with a stream running through.

People were there, sitting on the green bank among the vingas, wearing the same brown clothing as us when we showed up in Tearsith every night, though it was obvious from their hairstyles the image was dated.

“I can’t believe it.” Aria stretched out a trembling hand and brushed her fingertips across the screen as if she could reach it.

Our truth.

And, for the first time, we had confirmation that it was someone else’s truth, too.

And fuck, I wasn’t sure that this life had ever felt more real than right then. Sitting beside my Nol and seeing this.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone.

“Who’s the artist?” I asked when I turned back, my voice craggy with urgency.

Aria scrolled through the painting’s description.

“ Tearsith is a nineteenth-century painting by Abigail Watkins.”

The name was hyperlinked, and Aria clicked on it.

Abigail Watkins was an American painter.

Born: February 16, 1871, in Pendleton, South Carolina

Died: March 4, 1902, in Charlotte, South Carolina

Known for: Painting

Spouse: Ambrose Watkins

Parents: Robert Ray Smith, Beatrice Louise Remington

Abigail Watkins was known for painting. While the peers of her time had moved on to realism and impressionism, Abigail’s works were notable for their mystical elements and her flair for the demonic, her style lending itself to the romantic period preceding her era. Abigail Watkins’s works were virtually undiscovered until after her unfortunate death at thirty-one years old. While it’s believed most of her works were destroyed in the house fire she succumbed to, five paintings were recovered and are now on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

We both were fucking shaking as we clicked through the five images lined up beneath her name.

The first was the original we’d seen, the one labeled Tearsith at the edge where she’d swiped the letters across the bottom. The others were unnamed, but that didn’t mean we didn’t recognize them.

Two were depictions of the bowels of Faydor, the barren plane we knew so well. One was a landscape, as if she had perfectly defined the hell where we found ourselves each night. In another, a Kruen had risen high, amassing from shadow to its macabre form. Its face was a void, with innuendos of shape and holes for its eyes that led to eternal nothingness. A pit of darkness and despair. This Kruen had six spindly, branch-like limbs that flamed with fiery tendrils as it prepared to lash out in defense.

The other two were varying portrayals of Kruens peering down from that unseen plane, devouring the innocent below. These were grisly. Gore-strewn. A clear parable of how she interpreted the devastation they wreaked.

“We aren’t alone, are we?” My words were hushed. The search might not have given us the answers we’d been looking for, but I thought there was something comforting about it. Seeing it beyond the borders of our minds.

Aria shifted her attention to me. “No. We aren’t. It’s strange to have felt alone for so long, and this somehow feels ... like an affirmation.”

“It’s a piece. A start.” With it, I had to believe there was more.

Aria turned back to the screen. “I just wonder who she was. What she was like. She died so young. In a house fire. How awful.”

A bit of that hopelessness bottomed out my stomach. It was so long ago, so I doubted we would find any connections. As cool as it was to have this piece of who we were, we needed a ton more information if it was going to make a difference for Aria. We needed something solid. An answer for who she was.

If we could find out who the Laven was who’d held the same powers as Aria? Find any history on her? Find out exactly how the Kruens or a Ghorl had tracked her down and destroyed her?

Maybe then we could find a way to truly protect Aria forever. Help her tap deeper into who she was.

Maybe I was grasping at straws. Any sort of solution.

But we had to try to find something.

“It says she was married.” Aria reached forward to click on Abigail’s spouse’s name, but we both froze when we felt a presence cloud over us from behind. We’d been so engrossed in what we’d found that neither of us had heard footsteps.

Violence pulled tight across my chest. It was so goddamn reckless to have let my guard down like that.

In a rush of protectiveness, I shifted in the chair, and I glared over my shoulder. Every muscle in my body was bunched and prepared to strike.

It was a man, maybe in his late thirties or forties, and he’d gone to the Healthy Lifestyle section, which was against the far wall. He kept peering our way, trying to keep it covert, like I couldn’t feel his curiosity spearing into us.

“We need to go,” I mumbled under my breath, frustrated as hell that we hadn’t even gotten the chance to check news articles.

Aria looked back at the screen, wishing to push further, to dig deeper.

“We’ll stop again. At another place,” I promised.

We just couldn’t sit idle like this when we’d captured someone’s interest.

I didn’t feel a whole lot of evil radiating from the guy, but right then, with the sense I’d gotten from the trucker, we couldn’t take that chance.

Nodding, Aria stood, and I ushered her back across the loft and to the stairs. I could feel the weight of the man’s attention follow us the entire way.

And I wondered how strong the Ghorl was who had been feeding evils into the janitor’s mind. How fucking in tune it was. How far it could reach. I wondered if the monster could feel the man’s interest, would take advantage of it and manipulate him in a single beat.

Could he take him from mild intrigue to bloodthirsty?

The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t fucking like it, and when he turned and started back in our direction, I hurried Aria down the stairs. By the time we hit the bottom landing, we were close to a jog, me at her side and rushing her toward the front door. “Keep moving, Aria. Don’t look back.”

We were almost through the door when from out of nowhere a hand reached out and gripped Aria’s arm.

Aria’d had her head down, and a yelp of surprise left her at the contact. I whirled, getting between the person and Aria, backing her out of the threshold while I prepared to fight.

“Stay the fuck away,” I growled before I could even process who was there.

My tension minimally eased when I realized it was the older Black woman who’d been working the checkout.

Fear over the way I’d responded to her was clear in her expression, though it was mottled with something I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Still, I kept moving backward, edging Aria through the door while I made myself a barricade of protection in front of her.

The woman stepped forward, and she reached out like she was trying to grab on to a ghost. “I know what you are.”

She whispered it in reverence.

In grief.

Shock blew my eyes wide. What the hell? Did she just imply what I thought she did?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gritted out.

We couldn’t trust anyone.

I could feel Aria trying to peer out from around me. Shock rippled across her flesh, and her heart beat manically against my back.

“You do. You know,” the woman pressed.

She reached again, though this time, I noticed she had her hand balled around something she held in her palm. I stalled out, my gaze sweeping from her to the man who was now downstairs.

She swung her attention his way before she turned back to me and urged, “Take it.”

I resisted for only one moment before I accepted the crumpled piece of paper from her hand. The second I did, she turned and called, “What can I help you find?”

It was a clear distraction.

I swung around before I could watch anything else play out, and I took Aria by the elbow as we darted back onto the sidewalk. We rushed, our feet pounding on the concrete as I led her back to the car. I jerked open her door and she jumped in, and I rounded the front and slipped into my seat. I peeled out from the lot, heading back in the direction of the freeway.

Aria blew out the strain, her fingers driving through the long locks of her black hair before I felt her gaze washing over me. Confusion and hope bound her spirit. “The woman. She knew what we were.”

My stomach clutched, and I exhaled as I passed over the piece of paper that I still had crumpled in my hand. “Think so. What does it say?”

Cloaked in anxiety, Aria unwrapped it. “It’s her name and a phone number. Maria Lewis. And there’s another name: Charles Lewis. She wrote that one in all caps, like she wanted to emphasize it.”

“She wants us to look him up,” I surmised.

“I think so.”

“The next place we stop, we’ll find somewhere to do it.”

Aria sank back in her seat, taking in a bunch of breaths before she whispered, “I feel it, Pax. It feels like maybe the answers are right there, hovering all around us, and we just can’t see them yet. But I also can feel the devastation coming, too.”

Fear clamped around my heart, and my teeth ground as I uttered, “Then that means we have to head it off.”