Page 141 of Walking in Darkness
A mutant turned, the human’s skin bubbling with the fire of the Kruen that writhed inside him, the monster going straight for Ellis.
“No!” Aria shouted just as a swell of protectiveness rose up inside me, so severe that it closed off my airflow.
I stepped out into the middle of the street, cold spikes of ice raining from the darkness that continued to pelt us from the sky.
“Ellis, get down!” I shouted as I lifted my gun and aimed.
He turned toward me, surprised by the call of his name, and I was running his way, throwing myself on top of him one second before the bastard got to him.
Curling my arms around him in the hope that I would protect him rather than hurt him as I took him down.
We hit the ground hard, and the second we did, two shots rang out.
One piercing the monster in the chest before the next struck him in the middle of his forehead.
He dropped to his knees, and I glanced back at where Timothy had stepped forward and taken the shots.
Relief surged between us, and the whole group came running as I carefully unwound myself from him.
Ellis.
The man who’d been my teacher for my entire life. The only real father I’d ever had.
I gripped him by both sides of his neck as he sat up. “Are you hurt?” I begged through my fear, though the words were harsh.
He nodded. “I am uninjured.”
Air heaved from my lungs.
“Thank fuck.”
Then Aria was there, throwing herself around him, weeping as she hugged him. “Ellis. Oh, Ellis. I can’t believe it’s you.”
Joy rolled out to clash with the alarm as she helped him to stand.
Then the energy shifted.
A whirring of warmth that blasted through the cold as he shifted toward Josephine, who’d come three steps closer.
For a few suspended moments, the two of them just stared at each other from five feet away while the savagery raged on around them.
Josephine’s stringy gray hair whipped around her weathered face. A face that was littered with a thousand scars.
The most gentle, beautiful woman. Battle worn.
The same as Ellis.
His thin, feeble frame downtrodden, flesh covered in the wounds from his years fighting the battles of Faydor.
But there was a strength beneath it.
A stoic ferocity that burned between the two of them.
Then they both stumbled forward and met in an embrace.
A fierce, unrelenting embrace as they hugged each other with the force of a thousand lives. An embrace that went on forever, no words said as they shared a moment that could only belong to them.
We surrounded them as they did, creating a barrier of protection, each of us facing out to ensure no one could get close to them.
