Page 186 of Pareidolia

And like I called him, the room is suddenly filled with shadows as the lights go out.

Shadows and darkness.

Death.

“Nox,” I whisper, and Noah manages to slam the knife into the center of my stomach one more time before black tendrils rip him away on a scream.

CHAPTER 35

NOX

There’s a moment where it seems that the forest sets on fire—that moment lives between one breath and the next as I feel Aspen’s agony tear along the black thread that spills between us. I drop what remains of the human’s body and launch myself into the sky before the pieces hit the ground.

Something is hurting him—something is breaking him. I can feel it, and I funnel my energy through the line connecting us and feel that pain spill into me in return.

It makes me falter—makes my wings twist in the air.

Aspen’s pain sends me crashing to the earth, and when I pull myself to my feet on the edge of Duskfen Forest, there’s blood on my chest where I hit the ground.

Black blood that oozes slowly. Focusing to heal it makes another streak of Aspen’s pain tear across my senses. I can’t heal myself and him at the same time.

Later.

I’ll heal it later.

I slip and twist, half between shadows and physical form, my concentration torn between getting to Aspen quickly and keeping him alive through the connection we share… because I’m not just keeping him healed.

I’m keeping him breathing.

He screams again, and this time I’m not sure if I feel it or if I can hear it, but I burst through the door to the house beside his in a shower of splintered wood and dark blood.

“Nox,” he gasps when he sees me, the pain and relief pouring off him enough to make me sway.

He’s not just hurt—one of his hands holds his stomach, and I can smell from here that something has been perforated, that he’s not just clutching at blood. He’s holding his insides in place.

And his chest…

The tattoo on his chest is half carved out.

The moment I come into the room and rip the ranger away from him, the shadows in Aspen’s body try to spill out. Those pieces of me can smell a dying human, and I don’t know what will happen to me if he takes them with him. I have to force them to stay, expend energy as I tear claws across my chest.

It makes black splash to the floor.

My blood, my very vitality. I have to force it across the room to fill him, and that same weakness from earlier ripples through me.

Immortality giving strength to a man—infected with humanity.

The wounds Aspen left on me before stayed.

Will these stay too?

“Here.” I touch his face briefly, gently.

“Never without,” he answers faintly and sets the bloody knife on the table beside him as he slumps against the wall.

He’s breathing.

He’s alive.