Not that it helped knowing when and where. It wasn’t as if a warrior’s mission history was available in a book or on a computer.
But the warrior standing in front of me knew. He knew all about that fucking mission, but he couldn’t tell me. The gods forbade the other warriors from helping me.
“That’s my report,” I said, my tone harsh. “Come back in five years. I’m sure nothing will have changed by then.”
I spun around and marched away.
“Devon, don’t be like that.”
I had every intention of ignoring Ryder, but when a chill brushed against my skin, sending a disturbance through the air, I halted and glanced over my shoulder. “Did you feel that?”
Ryder drew out his sword. “I did.”
The chill spread, bringing heavy, oily tendrils of darkness.
“Demons,” I whispered.
In the blink of an eye, my normal human clothes—dark jeans and polo shirt—were gone, replaced by the warrior’s thick dark leather armor, and my sword strapped to my back.
With cautious steps, Ryder and I stalked back to the main square. The darkness was thick and coming toward us.
Ryder twirled his sword in his hand. “Be ready.”
I unsheathed my sword.
Half a second later, the little fuckers jumped from the shadows, right at us. Dozens of lesser demons in the form of black shadow snakes. Some were as small as my forearm; some were as long six feet.
I swung my sword in a wide arc, hitting most of them in a single blow. The snakes exploded in puffs of dark smoke that dissolved in the night sky. A few more slithered from the shadows, coming at us from the ground. They hissed their forked tongues, as if teasing us.
All I wanted to do was stomp on them and be done with it. Killing them with swords while they slithered along the ground wasn’t the most practical fight. “I hate these things.”
“Me too,” Ryder said, and he drove his sword to the ground, piercing through the head of a snake. “But at least they are the lowest of the low.”
True. Of all the demons that existed, the snakes were the weakest.
One of the snakes lunged at me, mouth open wide and sharp teeth ready. I waltzed to the side, then stepped over its slimy body and cut off its head. It burst into smoke at my feet.
I looked up, ready to slash through some more, but all I felt was the darkness retreating.
I fixed a narrow gaze on Ryder. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know.” Ryder’s eyes scanned the area, as if expecting another surprise attack. “It wasn’t normal.”
I nodded. I had been in this town for almost two years now and I had never encountered any demons. Not even shadow snakes. They were weak and drawn to evil and dark places, like the alley of a bad neighborhood in a big city. They stuck to the shadows until the humans came near them and became their victims. “Snake-type demons don’t attack like that.”
Ryder sheathed his sword. “No, they don’t.”
The pressure and chill of the darkness dissipated, but a stifling feeling hung in the air. I didn’t like it. “Something is definitely wrong.”
Makenna
It didn’t matter how far we ran or how fast we ran, he always found us. He would always find us. I knew that as strongly as my heart beat painfully against my chest.
I spied past the thick dark green curtain into the parking lot below. I had argued against staying at roadside motels, and Cecilia never listened to me.
“Stop obsessing, Makenna,” Cecilia said, her tone too light for the occasion. “We need a good night's sleep. Just … stop, and come rest.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw her fluffing the pillows on one of the queen beds.
Was this the life she intended for us when we ran away? That I intended for us? We had been running and hiding nonstop for almost two years, and each time we settled for more than half a day, he found us.
I couldn’t deny it was better than suffering at his hands, doing his bidding without a choice, but I was so freaking tired of running. My only options were to suffer or to run. Sometimes, only sometimes, I wondered if I wasn’t better off dead.
Last time we stopped for more than twelve hours, he had found us. We had to fight our way out. We had to kill.
My stomach turned as I remember the blood, the gore, the darkness. A dark trail was left behind me wherever I went.
“How can you rest when you know we’ll be attacked soon?” I asked, venom lacing my words.
I half expected Cecilia to lash out at me, but she was too sweet for that, too calm. I could count on my fingers how many times she had lost her composure, and those had been during the most horrible moments of our lives.
Instead, Cecilia let out a long breath and crossed the room to stand in front of me. She rested her hands on my shoulders and looked at me. “Please, have a little faith.” Faith. That was such an odd concept coming from her. How could she believe in faith? Her warm brown eyes twinkled. “We’ve been on the road for a long time. We haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours. We need to sleep.”
Again. She forgot to say again. When we first ran away, we had wrecked the second car we stole. Now, we knew two things: One, we had to take breaks, even if it was for power naps of one or two hours under a shady tree, and two, we couldn’t keep a stolen car more than half a day.
Since we didn’t have any documents, and barely any cash, we couldn’t buy a car. So we stole them—borrowed them, as Cecilia liked to say. We grabbed cars, used them for a few hours, then left them where they would be found by the police and returned to their owners.
“Fine,” I snapped, though we both knew I wouldn’t relax, not until exhaustion won and I passed out in the bed.
“Good.” She patted my cheek, and for some reason, the gesture reminded me of a mother. Sometimes, I thought of her as a mother. She wasn’t just my friend. Cecilia was, in some ways, the mother I didn’t remember. “I’m going to take a quick shower.”
I only grumbled as she walked away and grabbed the duffel bag with the only things we owned: a few changes of clothes and toiletries.
Once more, I thought about the kind of life we were living, about the kind of life we would have in the future. Would we ever escape him? I hoped we would, but I didn’t have faith that we would.
I glanced back. Cecilia stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, the door half opened, and from where I was, I could see as she took off her shirt. I flinched upon seeing the scars covering her back and shoulders. Several long marks etched forever in her skin. She had been abducted years before I had, but I had watched him inflict most of those scars. I had cried as she bled in her bed later, her ragged breath making me fear she would die.
But despite her kind heart and her calm demeanor, Cecilia was a fighter. If it hadn’t been for her meticulous planning and waiting, we would have never escaped. At least, not alive.
Even if my freedom was another kind of prison, I owed it all to her.
I lowered my gaze.
And that was when I felt it.
The tendrils of darkness reaching out like claws, grasping the earth, and advancing and desecrating everything in their path.
I froze. Closing my eyes, I opened my senses and felt for the darkness—thick and slow. It wasn’t the darkness from demons, unfortunately.