Damien and Juliet (ON HOLD)

C22| A warning

Hey all!

I hope you enjoy  this chapter. Don't forget to leave me a comment and a vote if you liked it!  x

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C22

I could see the glow of the fire before I could see the destruction it had caused.

As soon as Damien and I had trudged through the thicket of the forest and reached the burning, crumbling building, my hands flew to my mouth in an effort to supress the gasp of shock threatening to leave my lips.

"Damien..." I trailed off, unconsciously reaching out to grab him for support as I stared at the orange glow of the destroyed building blazing before us. Surprisingly, he let me grab onto his bicep and even went as far to shuffle closer to me.

Hunters were rushing purposefully throughout the forest, dodging one another as they tried to put out the fire. My eyes travelled the length of what I knew had once been a warehouse, surprised that it looked as though it once was as long as a football field. The three sections, the entrance, middle and the far end, all looked as though a separate bomb had gone off.

My lungs were slowly filling with the thick, black smoke swirling around us and I could hear the sounds of the shouts and screams coming from the Hunters doing the rescuing and from the Hunters being rescued.

If there was a hell, this is what I imagined it to be like.

"Come on," Damien gently pressed his hand against the small of my back. "We have to help," he murmured and after hesitating a moment, I carefully placed my bow on the dry, grassy ground and followed after him, unable to tear my horrified gaze from the scene before me.

We both jogged forward to where the fire had been put out and in my peripheral vision I could see many other Hunters working to put out the last of the fire in the middle. While I watched more Hunters lean forward to start digging through the rubble, another Hunter suddenly thrust a pair of gloves at me.

"The rubble's still hot. Be careful," the man gruffly stated before walking off to pass his collection to others. I quickly pulled the thick gloves over my fingers and turned to face Damien just as he pulled on his own. When he knelt down and started rifling through the warm broken blocks of concrete, I did too, frantically digging through the rubble.

As we dug, I occasionally heard the sounds of people shouting out that they'd found someone and each time I'd turn around to see a group of Hunters rushing to pull a badly scorched, dust covered person out.

For a while I scrambled to clear the rubble and I was sure that if I took off the gloves now, the skin on my fingers would have been lightly scraped away. With a deep breath, I brushed back the messy strands of hair falling into my eyes with the back of my arm and continued to dig, my heart stopping when I saw a pale, dusty covered surface.

As my breathing picked up and my heart resumed its erratic beat, I dusted away the concrete and then, when I finally realised that I'd just found a person, I hysterically slapped Damien's arm, glancing from the skin I saw in the remnants of the building, to him.

Damien instantly turned his gaze to me and then followed my own, his lips forming a perfect 'o' shape.

"We found someone!" he shouted for me at the top of his lungs, immediately drawing the attention of a few other Hunters. People scrambled over the rubble toward us and within seconds they were digging in the surrounding areas. It didn't take long for us to reveal the scratched torso of a woman and eventually I was pushed back so the stronger Hunters could swiftly pull her out.