Act of a Demon: The Dark Bloods - Book II ✓

Chapter 27 - Requiem for the Living

27.

Requiem for the Living 

“Not even a hello, Sister?” Ram’s grin spread. It was like he was meeting an old friend.

Reyna screamed and charged. Her muscle memory contracted as her hybrid power pulsed through her arm to summon a blade, but nothing emerged from her palm. Ram caught her wrist and knocked her feet from under her. He wrapped an arm around her, breaking her fall only to twirl her around as if they were dancing.

“Your powers don’t work here, Sister. How silly of you to not know that.” He laughed as they spun.

She grunted and pushed away from him. She tried to summon her armor again. Create a healing charge. Anything, but it was gone. Her Magika was gone. She felt so weak. So human. Reyna almost grinned. She had wanted that feeling for such a long time and now that she had it, she was terrified.

Ram stared at her, the black marks on his face intensifying his crazed glare. “Aren’t you going to ask something? You must have questions.”

She stiffened. Of course she had questions. Countless, but should she even be talking to him? She felt Ram probably had some sort of power here and she was without her own. It was nerve wrecking feeling so vulnerable.

“What happened? Where am I? What happened to everyone else? To Dante? Verden? Mundus?” Reyna asked, the questions pouring out of her mouth faster than she thought. “Are you even really Ram?”

That last one seemed to inflict him in some way. His grin died. “How can you not recognize your own brother? Are you really that cruel?”

“Cruel?” she exclaimed. “I’m not the one that was going around killing people. Killing our own parents!”

He looked like he had been struck; his face softened. “I…I did, didn’t I? Reyna?”

She frowned. Reyna? He called me Reyna.

Ram started laughing. “I’m supposed to be telling you stories. Don’t distract me, Sister.”

“You’re the one that told me to ask you something,” she cautiously said.

“You have to hear the one about the young woman that was murdered.” He grinned, his oddly colored eyes leering at her. “She was closing up a diner, alone. She was a waitress because she was paying for college, you know. And she was pretty. Very pretty.”

Reyna stood her ground as he started circling around her. “What are you saying?” she asked.

He continued as if nothing. “But it was so late and someone broke inside and she got herself killed by an insane murderer. They exist, you know.”

Reyna scowled.

“She had so much potential, but instead she was murdered, but maybe this story isn’t what you want to hear. Maybe you want to hear the one of the little boy,” Ram said and stopped in front of her. “He was from a rich family, but even this rich family couldn’t cure his consumption. That’s what they used to call it back then, Sister.

“This little boy would hear the howls of wolves as he withered away in bed. He seemed to like them. He didn’t have as much potential, but it was enough. This next one though, Sister. He was scary.” He grinned.

Something was off, and it wasn’t just Ram. Reyna looked around. The greyness that had been hovering in the horizon seemed closer to them, and instead of its previous ring–like appearance, it looked like it was climbing around them.