Inner Demon: The Dark Bloods - Book I ✓

Chapter 34 - Shut and Tell

34.

Shut and Tell

 

Ram had of course known about the hideout.

Housed up underground, Amon, Mr. Armour, and the other survivors had been sitting in the improvised living room. They were talking and nervously laughing, trying to cope with the idea of having their protector, Dante, leave them.

“It will only be temporary,” Amon had told them sitting in the middle of the room. Each couch was occupied. Dante’s father was to his left, the blonde sisters in front of him, and the other woman to his right. She lay with her eyes closed.

“We’ll still be okay, right?” One of the sisters—the one with the braided hair—asked with a tinge of terror in her light blue eyes.

“Yes. My Magika is still keeping this place sealed, so we should be alright until he comes back,” Amon reassured her. Her sibling placed a hand on hers.

There was a stillness in the room.

“My son.” The voice was soft but it was heard by all. “Who would’ve thought? If only I had some of that power too. I could be out there instead of him.”

Amon exhaled. “Alex—”

“No,” she said, shifting his brown head up from his hands. “His mother left us. She never even properly cared for him. Never gave him anything. How fitting the one thing she actually left him could lead him to death.”

“This whole world is death. Even before the demons invaded.” The woman that was lying on the couch opened her eyes. They were sunken, the brightest feature on her skin and skull face.

“Don’t, Emma,” Mr. Armour said, but she shook her head. It was a slow and weak movement.

“I was a nun for forty-five years when they all came pouring in. When people discovered it was not a terrorist attack but the devil’s legion that had descended upon our land. The churches were bursting with people. Pews had broken from the weight of all who were sitting on them. Floors cracked from the combined weight of people standing on one another.

“All of them, praying and crying, claiming they saw the light. Praying for God to take them now, but there was no light. We are all in the same—demons and humans. How can we not be if Dante, a mortal boy, holds the same power a demon might?” Her tired, blurry eyes shifted towards Amon.

“Thank you,” she told him. “You do us a kindness by keeping us here. If there is something on the other side, I’m sure you’ll find rest once you are called.”

It was when the invisible force had fallen upon them. The living quarters became a still picture of frightened eyes. Appearing like magic, a slithering shadow curled inside the room. It weaved between the scarce furniture and around the still bodies. Its course halted in the middle of the room where it began to swell like a giant balloon. It soon occupied all the space, forcing and pushing ratty furniture and people up against the hard walls. Then it exploded. Dark fragments shredded and sliced through all like daggers. If the survivors had not died by suffocation, then the blades were there to finish them off.

Yet Amon lived.

Ironically, it was his wheelchair that saved him. When he was pressed against the wall, it prevented him from being crushed. It also protected him from most of the Shadow’s projectiles. However, it did not mean Amon escaped unharmed.

He opened his eyes only to be immediately blinded by a hot, cutting light. He blinked, feeling like a thousand little suns had surrounded him. His body was sprawled in a crater of hot clay that seeped waves of heat into his back and arms. A new set of wounds to add to his vast collection of scars adorned his entire body.