Chapter Thirty-Four Pax

Chapter Thirty-Four

Pax

Aria’s spirit crushed me in a fucking fist as I stood outside the bathroom in the hallway, doing my best not to lose my goddamn mind as I waited. I would have stormed right in there if I hadn’t known there was a mother and her little girl inside.

But fuck me.

How the hell was I supposed to stand out here when I knew Aria was distraught? I had felt the shift the second we’d stepped out of the motel room fifteen minutes ago. The way the air had gusted with a current of cold.

It was different from the effects of the temperature, though.

It’d been like touching down on Faydor.

It had seemed as if there had been a sudden break. A snipping of the thread of sanctuary we’d managed to find ourselves cocooned in last night, even though every fiber had been frayed, the fabric we were forming so fucking tattered that there was no chance it wasn’t going to fall apart.

Pacing the hall, I listened to the sound of a flushing toilet, then the running of water, and I yanked at my hair to try to tamp down some of the anxiety that lit through me; then I was heaving out a flurry of hot air when the door finally swung open.

“Good luck,” the woman called as she pushed through, leading the little girl out by the hand.

There was no focusing much on either of them. Not when Aria stood in the middle of the bathroom, all the blood drained from her head and her skin so fucking white there was no chance she could remain standing.

It was like she’d just been exposed to the most horrific scene, which was insane, considering the grisly shit we witnessed every night.

The door drifted shut as the woman and child passed, and the second they rounded the end of the hall, I pushed back open the door, feet eating up the space before I had Aria in my arms.

She was shaking.

Fuck, she was shaking so hard.

Terror gripped me by the heart, by the throat, by this desperation. “What’s wrong?”

I angled back, taking her cheek in my hand, bending down to peer into the roiling depths of her eyes. “What happened?”

I was trying to make contact.

To snap her out of whatever had her twisted.

“I . . .”

She couldn’t even form words.

I startled when the door swung open, and an older lady fumbled to a stop in the doorway. I was pretty sure she was wavering between running to the front for help or pummeling me to death with her giant purse.

“Are you okay?” she asked Aria.

Aria managed to nod, and she finally gathered herself enough to speak. “I just wasn’t feeling well, so he came in to help me.”

The woman frowned like she was questioning the validity of it, and I didn’t hesitate to loop an arm around Aria’s waist so I could haul her the hell out of there. By the time we got up front, they were calling our number, and I snatched our bags and drinks, because there was no chance that Aria was going to be able to sit at a table and act like everything was fine.

She kept her head down as I ushered her outside, and we hurried across the lot to where the car was parked. I helped her in, then rounded to my side and slipped into the driver’s seat. I kept glancing at her as she tugged at the end of her sweater like she might be in physical pain.

I reached out and spread my hand over the tight fist she had hers in, hoping I could assuage whatever the fuck was going down, calm her, give her peace, all while losing faith that I had the capacity.

“What’s going on, Aria?” My words were jagged.

“I ...” She swiveled her attention to look over at me. Agony bled through her expression. “My family.”

She choked on it, and there was so much torment in it that I nearly came apart right there.

My brow furrowed as I lost myself to her grief. “I know, Aria. I know you’re worried about them, but we already talked about this.”

Her head shook. “You don’t understand.”

I was going to respond that I understood perfectly before she was hugging her arms over her chest and a sob was erupting from her throat. “I ... I thought I heard a voice last night when we were in Faydor. I thought I heard the Ghorl whispering to my father. But it was so far away from where we were that I couldn’t be certain. But I swear, Pax, I swear I saw him hit my mother.”

I shifted in the seat so I could fully face her, my hand on her leg as I tried to calm her, though I doubted there was much of a chance of that. Not when she was caught in a turmoil so great it didn’t fully belong to her.

This pain was bigger than the both of us.

Gasping over a cry, she fumbled through the explanation. “But I felt safe with you this morning. When I woke up in your arms. It felt like it was exactly where I was supposed to be. Even if it was only for that moment, it felt perfect, Pax.”

My hand curled on her thigh, and my chest was squeezing tight as my lungs compressed.

And still, I didn’t say anything. I just waited for her to explain. To give me this since the only thing I wanted to do was hold everything for her. Be her buoy, her raft, her safe place when I was sure she was getting sucked into the depths of despair. An ocean of desperation swallowing her whole.

“And then, when we were ordering ...” She hiccupped, then tightened her arms like she was doing her best to hold herself together. “The cashier. I kept seeing my sister’s face in hers, and I swore she was asking for help.”

Ice slicked down my spine, and a cold dread seeped out to saturate every cell in my body.

“I went into the restroom to try to gather myself because, obviously, I had to finally be losing it, right? I mean, I had to really be seeing things. Hallucinating. Then this woman came in ...”

Aria looked at me then, her chin quivering as she lifted it. “I asked if I could use her phone.”

Alarm banged through my insides, and my fingers dug deeper into her leg, holding on, too.

Trembles rolled through her as she swallowed, and she looked at me point-blank when she admitted, “I called them, Pax, because I knew . I knew I wasn’t hallucinating. I knew I wasn’t losing my grip on reality. I knew that it was real.”

She inhaled a shaky breath. The cut on the edge of her lip tweaked down at the side. “My mother answered. She was distraught, begging me to tell her where I was, while I begged her to go to my grandmother’s with my sister and brothers. I tried to warn her. I tried to warn her. A second later, my father ripped the phone from her.”

The same way as that bastard had done when she’d called them the first morning.

Disquiet gusted.

I’d always hated her father, my gut warning me he’d be a part of her demise.

“I could hear it, Pax ... I could hear it in his voice. I think he’s fully succumbed. I think my mom and my siblings are in danger. I have to go back.”

In a flash, both my hands were cupping her face. Fear ate me alive. “You can’t, Aria. If this is true? If it has gotten to him? Then it did it as a way to get to you. It’s a trap.”

Tears streaked hot down her unforgettable face, the beauty of her devastating. The one who was written in my dreams and carved in my soul.

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t turn my back on them.”

“And I can’t risk you.” My words quaked in emphasis. “There has to be another way. Some way to stop this. I can’t just take you back there and lay you at that monster’s feet.”

“I love them.”

“I know you do. I know you do.” My gut knotted in fear, and I leaned in closer to her until our air was getting mixed and she was the only thing I was breathing. “But I have to protect you. And if you’re hearing them ... in the day like this?”

How was any of this possible? The binding while awake was difficult enough to process. But at least she was right there, next to the person. I could almost wrap my head around it.

But this?

Aria was so much more than anything I could imagine.

Her power greater than anything any of us had ever known.

“We need to find out why this is happening to you.” So much shit had happened the last two days that we hadn’t been able to research more. Maria Lewis’s name beat through my mind. I was reticent to trust, but at this point, I couldn’t shun any chance of figuring out more.

I shifted and took both her hands she still had fisted in her sweater, prying them away. I pulled them up close to my chest. “We have to find out how these hands can reach out and bind the darkness.”

My lips found their way to her temple. “How this mind can see, can hear, can feel the things that it shouldn’t. You are special, Aria. So fucking special. And they want to snuff that out, and I can’t let them.”

I inhaled, filling my aching lungs with the scent of pineapple and coconut, wishing with all of me for that fantasy of the two of us on a secluded beach, so far removed that it would be impossible for anyone to get to her.

Not in the day and not in the night.

“How?” she begged. “How, when I can feel they’re running out of time?”

“Not sure, but I think we start with Maria Lewis.”

My forehead was against hers, the two of us rocking.

“Somehow we’ll find answers.” I pried myself back, holding the side of her face and brushing my thumb over her cheek.

In my periphery, I took note of a man walking by the front of my car, though he had his hands in his pockets as he casually strolled by.

In an instant, I was hit with the disturbance that radiated from Aria.

“What’s wrong?” It shot from my mouth.

Her attention was fixated on the man who’d passed.

He was a plain-looking guy. Wearing a button-up and slacks. Blond. Maybe in his mid to late thirties.

He didn’t seem to be paying us much mind as he strolled around the corner of another building and disappeared.

Confusion bound her, and something unsettled toiled in her spirit.

“Did you feel something about that guy?” I demanded.

Uncertainty pinched her brow. “No. But I swear ... I swear I’ve seen him before.”

Agitation crawled through my chest.

“Where?”

She blinked through her memories. “The first morning. At the diner. He was sitting at the bar next to the old man. I didn’t feel anything strange from him then, either.”

Dread seeped through my insides. “Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

Air puffed from her nose as she gave a harsh shake of her head. “No. I’m not sure of anything. I think I might be paranoid. Seeing things that aren’t there. Maybe all this is catching up to me. It’s all so much.”

“And I don’t think we should discredit a single thing you feel,” I told her as I put my car in reverse and whipped out of the parking spot and out onto the road.

I searched for someplace secluded we could go, and five minutes later, we pulled into the lot of a park. Figured it’d be quiet at this time of day, which it was. I whipped into a spot, left the car idling, then handed the phone to Aria.

“You ready for this?”

Aria gave me a tight nod. “Yeah.”