Prologue

Post apocalyptic scenery. Demons are real.

“A beautiful, majestic tiger licks its lips while staring at its prey, its black and orange stripes popping out from the forestry behind it.”

The words jumped from the page, their meaning lost to me. Ever since we found demons to be real, and found them too powerful to overcome (plainly stated, the apocalypse), there have no pictures of such creatures, there simply is all the ash and suffering. We have no more colors; they’ve all faded into greys. The demons have fed off of us and our despair until we found a safe haven. We, the rest of humanity, had found a safe place and that was underground. I faintly remember what demons look like. Some are the size of three story buildings, three of our tunnels one on another, with horns the size of cars, one our now-a-day carts, and a cloud of magical fear shrouding it. This cloud is how they feed off of our despair, they feed on out terror. This terror haunts the nightmares of all who were exposed to it and not harvested for food by the demons. Honestly, the only real definition of demons is pure terror.

A shelf rustles behind me. I turn around, slamming the book closed, it’s two ‘wings’ folded up. Another rustle to my now left so I turn back around. I bump against the table I was leaning on and hear a small hiss that shakes the table my lower back is brushing against. I drop the book I am holding and the loud echo carries through the large and empty halls of this abandoned building that was called a library. A group of different hisses echo back as a response to the dropping of the book.

Another shudder runs through the red oak, spread up my back and raises the hair on the back of my neck. I feel a stinger, hundred times bigger than a regular scorpion’s, caress my spine and my breath shakily comes in a gasp. The stinger slides up towards the base of my neck, the favored scare tactic of Kazvin, the demons’ servants, that are a third scorpion, a third spider, a third who the hell knows. The tip of the stinger lightly presses against the base of my skull. I wince in fear and the tip slides towards the owner. I drop to the ground, or the ground rushes up to me, causing the pins and needles effect for my hands and a lock of my red hair to fly into my face. I feel hands wrap around my ankles, and they pull back, sliding my body across the floor. The stinger stabs the marble only an inch from my face, cracking it, in a desperate flurry of movement. The arms that pulled me turned me over, the gloves hands resting on my waist. I look up to where the face should be, I see a dark hood hiding the facial features, but whispering a hint of blue eyes.

The boy that saved me looks at my waist to see if I have a weapon. I only have my black leather half-shirt, my black leather pants and my heavy-duty iron-toed boots. He unsheathes his hand and a half sword and slices the stinger that was aimed at his face. The disembodied limb lands on my exposed midsection and I shove my person to my right and in a sitting position. The boy finishes the Kazvin off with a stab to the heart where the flesh holds the hilt to it. The boy yanks his weapon out of the body and grasps my upper left arm. Dragging me to my feet, he stands me against the table. He grabs my loot bag, shoves it into my person and points for me to go to the entrance with his sword.

“Excuse me? I don’t take orders from you.” I reply to his command. His hand touches my lower back and starts pushing me around the table, towards the entrance. I spin around, slapping his hand from my back and start walking towards the book I had dropped. The boy grips my arm and pulls me to his body. He looks around then starts moving me towards the entrance. I kick him in the back of the knee, causing him to land on his backside as well as let me go. I walk to the book, bend down to pick it up, brush off the dust and place my leather over the shoulder loot bag on the table and gently slide the book in. Re-doing the buckle, I slide the strap onto my shoulder and turn to go over to another shelf. The boy is standing behind me when I turn around.

“If I don’t bring you to Dacree, he’ll kill me. I want to live, so please stop making this harder.” He whispers this, the cloth of his hood brushing against my cheek. He then gently almost as if he was now scared of me, touches my elbow trying to urge me into submission. I turn to him, then gently slide the hood off, his warm breath spreading across the palm of my hand. His ashy blonde hair falls-as if in slow motion- over his left eye, covering a scar. He looks up at me, his piercing light blue eyes showing his feeling of vulnerability. “He has my sister as motivation for me to bring you. I need your help, Aria needs you.”

“If you had said that in the first place, I would’ve been very submissive.” I add in a small chuckle at the end and he smiles. “Besides why does Dacree need me?”

“He plans to attack a demon.” The boy’s voice catches and I tilt his head to face me.

“I told that fool to never make promises he can’t keep. Even when the beginning of this whole apocalypse thing, he was trying to get the people’s support from my father, but actions spoke louder than words...” I pull his hood back up, and then start walking towards the entrance.

“What happened to him?” He reaches out for me, sensing the pain in my actions and words.

“He disappeared a few weeks ago. I’ve been taking over control.” I choke down a sob as his hand touches mine. I pull away and start at a heightened pace towards the entrance as if I could outrun my troubles.

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