Always and Forever (Sequel to 'If Only You Knew')

Chapter Twenty-Four - Is This It?

Gray and Alyssa searched the entire town for Deliora's blood, but they couldn't find it. They finally went back to the last place they hadn't checked: their home. Gray was sorting through the rubble when Alyssa called out to him.

"Gray, there's something here," Alyssa beckoned him over.

"What is it?"

"I don't know, but look at the ground here."

Gray did as she said, and he made out a spot of red in the dirt. As he stared closer, he realized it was in the shape of a handprint. But whose... he thought to himself. All at once, he was pulled, again, into his memories of the day of the attack. That spot on the ground...that was where his father's hand had fallen when he had been crushed by the fallen plank of wood from their burning house. Gray had assumed that the blood was his father's, but as he thought back, he realized that when he had first been thrown out of the house by the explosion, and his parents had taken him and run, his father's had already been covered in blood. Not his own, Gray now realized, but the demon's. His father must have fought the demon in the town square before running home to collect his family. Gray turned to Alyssa as he once again found himself tearing up.

"It was dad..."

"What?"

"Dad...he was the one who fought the demon...the handprint there...it's dad's."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

So it was you, old man...Gray thought. Thank you, for helping me live and get out, and now for helping me get back home.