Chapter 9

The timbre of pain in Darius’s wail was so piercing that it sprang tears into Jonas’s eyes even before he saw the body. His eyes seemed to take too long to leave the petrified faces of the teenagers and focus on the thin, pale woman lying in her already congealing blood.

“Mia!” Darius gasped, falling to his knees and crawling to her corpse. Her eyes were wide open in shock but lacked the cunning glint that used to both draw and repel. Her skin was the palest he had ever seen, and when he reached out a trembling hand to cup her chin, not only was the skin cold to touch, but it was also morbidly stiff. His eyes followed the line of blood trailing from her mouth to the ground, and his heart felt like it would fail. Again.

Darius collapsed on top of his wife and cried like never before, his tears and snot rubbing and falling against her lifeless skin. At the moment, he didn’t seem to care about what happened and only wished that he would wake up from the nightmare that had b