Imagine a loud crashing sound, like a whole city's towers crashing to the ground all at once. Now add a violent sandstorm to that and also add an unnaturally amplified sound of a lawn mower. What you are imagining is still less jarring and less eardrum-shattering than the sound that the three of us heard outside my bedroom window. It came in an instant, the loudest noise I've ever heard, and in that same instant, a wave of force, like if air had decided to solidify, slammed into my chest and sent me flying off the bed where I was sitting. My back hit the wall flat. I crumpled to the ground. Ears somehow simultaneously ringing and full of cotton all at the same time, the only thing I could hear clearly was the pounding of my heart. The wall had knocked the wind out of me and given me a splitting headache that made my head feel all fuzzy. Lightheaded, I lifted my gaze to my surroundings as I tried in stuttering attempts to choke down some air. I took in the now rubble-cluttered room with blurry eyes, blinking rapidly to clear my vision. Thankfully, it cleared easily but... what in the hell was going on?
Shakily pushing myself up off of the floor to see over the bed, still in my dazed state, I witnessed Kirya undeniably locked in combat with a creature even more terrible than what I had encountered in the alley way, if that were even possible. It bared its wicked teeth and swiped at Kirya with a set of shiny silver claws. Kirya raised her arm quickly, ice forming on it as she did so, and blocked the strike just in time to keep her from needing a new face. A hunk of ice forming on her other hand, Kirya then drove her fist into the being's side. It howled a primal guttural noise, muffled by my impaired hearing, and slashed at her again, only to be blocked a second time.
As Kirya and the monster were engaged in a vicious fight, another one of the horrible creatures arrived, clawing its way in through the window like some malevolent spirit in a horror flick. It turned its violent red eyes on me and I froze. My head was still fuzzy and everything sounded far away. The demon started to take a step in my direction but, before it could, a giant spear of ice impaled it through the chest from behind. The point stuck out in the middle of its torso, just below its chest like some snow capped peak of a mountain range. A repulsive black blood dripped from it like fluid obsidian, staining my rug. Infuriated, the monster tore out the spear. I watched, horrified, as its body regenerated at a terrifying speed, leaving only a ring of black blood on its pale skin where the edge of the wound had been. It turned on Kirya who was fighting the other demon -- there really was no other word that fully captured them -- with a sword of ice as clear as glass that looked viciously sharp. I vaguely wondered where Kirya got a sword (because that was toootally the most important thing in that moment) before sound started to fade back into my comprehension, my hearing finally returned. I was assaulted by sounds of slashing and snarling and Kirya yelling.
"Jake! Take her and go! NOW!" the likeness of true fear creeping into Kirya's voice.
Her (apparent) brother, who was also having to pick himself off the floor, seemed to have been hit by a chunk of debris when the wall was blown apart, a trickle of blood now running down the left side of his forehead. He stood up and shakily and started to walk towards me.
Even now with my senses mostly returned after being stolen by the earlier blast, I still regarded this whole scene almost sleepily, not fully wrapping my head around what was happening. Kirya's sharp voice brought me back to reality, "GO!"
Jake moved quickly for someone bleeding from a head injury, taking hold of my arm, pulling me to my feet and firmly leading me out of the room. I didn't want to leave Kirya to battle the two demons that entered through the newly-made hole in the wall. It felt wrong, like we should be helping.
"Wait!" I said, trying to pull my wrist out of Jake's grip. It didn't work. He kept pulling me along through the hallway. "Hey, we can't just leave her there--"
"She'll be fine," he answered curtly as we started down the stairs.
"Isn't she your sister? Don't you care? We can't leave her to deal with whatever those things are all by her--"
Just then, as we reached the bottom of the stairs, the whole house shook violently. Cracks appeared in the ceiling of the kitchen and a sound like a literal avalanche was coming from upstairs. The sound assaulted my ear drums and I used my one free hand to cover my already aching ears. Jake seemed affected by the noise as well and his grip on my wrist loosened.
I pulled my hand free and shot him a dirty look. "I can walk on my own, you know."
He sighed with a mild frustration (and... was that embarrassment?) and said, "Whatever. Come on we gotta go."
I took one step forward and stopped, having a horrible realization: where was my mom? I started to panic and turned to Jake who was taking quick steps towards the door.
"Wait!" I shouted over the noise, "where's my mom? I can't leave her here!" I started down the hallway by the stairs, towards my mom's bedroom.
Jake called after me but I couldn't hear him over the rumbling in the whole building and the fear coursing through me. Just before I reached the start of the hallway, something flashed in front of me and, suddenly, Jake was there, blocking the hallway. I ran into him, my face slamming into his chest. Taking a step back, I rubbed my nose. "What the hell?" I yelled, glaring at him. I started to make my case and say that I needed to find my mom but Jake spoke loudly, cutting me off. He gripped my shoulders and shouted above the noise
"Do you want to get yourself killed?!"
Startled, I just stared at him.
"Look," he said, doing his best to yell over the noise of the fight upstairs, "If you would just listen to me for a second, I would be able to tell you that your mom is fine. She's not even here. She went out to get groceries a little while ago and we sent someone with her to make sure she's safe. So before you try to do something pointless and moronic, actually think about the situation you're in." Still stunned by his outburst, I remained stationary until he said "Let's go."
Feeling embarrassed, and a bit stupid, I whispered, "Alright," and walked after him. Then the ceiling above us groaned and bowed, fissures racing in all directions. We both sprinted for the front door.
We got outside and not a moment too soon. Seconds after my heel left the door frame, the entire building collapsed, a large cloud of dust unfurling over the surrounding lawns and houses. I looked back as I ran, pained, but I didn't have time to mourn the destruction of my childhood home. We rushed to get in the car. I walked around the compact SUV to the passenger seat as Jake got in on the drivers side.
Only after getting in the car did I realize something that's kind of important when it comes to a car. "Hang on, you know how to drive right?" I asked Jake while I clicked the buckle of my seat belt.
"Yeah of course," he answered, but for some reason the way he said it made me nervous so I preemptively grasped the "oh shit" handle above the car door, just in case I needed something to hold on to. Jake shifted the car into drive and peeled away from the curb almost immediately after touching his foot to the gas pedal, nearly hitting the parked car in front of us. Oh shit.
"Hey this does not look like 'knowing how to drive,'" I said, clutching my seat and the handle.
"We're trying to get away from demons, not drive to dinner," he replied.
Then I heard a howl from behind us that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I turned to see a demon bounding after the car and to my dismay, it was not only keeping up but gaining on us. "Oh fuck." My heart started thundering again.
The demon continued to gain on us and I heard Jake curse under his breath. "Hang on," he said as we approached a T in the road and pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. I was thrown sideways and hit my elbow on the door. I gritted my teeth, Well that's definitely going to bruise. I glanced back behind the car again. The demon was gone.
"Did we lose it?" I wondered, hopeful. Suddenly, there was a loud thud on the top of the car that caused us to swerve, almost colliding with a tree on the side of the street. Another thud and the roof was indented in the shape of claw marks. I stared at the indentation, my heart in my ears, feeling more scared than I had ever been before in my life. It's going to break through. The demon swiped at the roof again, this time puncturing the metal, but before it could completely tear it apart, something whistled through the air and hit the demon, knocking it off the car. I looked through the rear window to see the demon writhing on the road, multiple spikes of ice impaled in various parts of its body. Another thud came from the car's roof and Kirya peeked through the hole made by the demon.
"You guys alright?" she asked.
"Uh... yeah," I answered dumbfounded.
"Cool," she said before reaching for the side of the car, opening one of the back doors and swinging inside like a gymnast. She closed the door and sat down, buckling her seat belt like she hadn't just got into a moving car from the roof.
"You're crazy," I said weakly.
"I choose to think of it as confidence and bravery," she responded with a wild grin.
"Sure...," I said, turning back around to face the front of the car. There's something wrong with these people.
Kirya's voice sounded from the back seat. "Jake, head to the second safe house. I'll contact Alex and tell him to meet us there," she said, pulling out something that looked like a small remote and beginning to speak into it.
"Second safe house?" I asked Jake.
"We have many, I can't tell you how many though. Supposed to be a secret."
"Oh, okay."
"Alex was the one we sent to protect your mom. He'll bring her to where we're going."
"Oh, thank you," God, I'm so fucking passive right now because I have no idea what the fuck just happened.
"Once we get to the safe house, we'll start your training," Kirya said from behind me, evidently done with whatever that remote-like device was.
"Training?"
"Yup," she said, cracking a mischievous smirk, "Welcome to the world of demons."
Huzzah.
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