Demon Hunters by JKMelby74 Read Free Book Online Page A

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music playing softly behind us. I stopped as I came to an old pew
that had been spared destruction. The front one. It was where I sat
with my parents.
    I could see my mother. She was so beautiful.
She had raven dark hair, like mine. She smiled down at me and it
lit something inside of me. Love exuded from her eyes like air and
it filled me everytime I saw her. Her grip around my body was firm
but gentle. Secure. I began to remember my father and how proud he
looked. He had a square jaw, again, like mine. He was a big man but
that betrayed his easy nature. When my mother handed me off to him,
his touch was as full of love as hers. I could somehow sense how
hard he was trying to hold me carefully, afraid he’d break me in
his grip.
    He held me up to the priest and he began to
speak. With every word, I felt safer. I could feel something good
enter my body and I let it, but the world turned so quickly when
the first scream erupted from the people. My father turned to see
one of the parishioners leaping from her seat, her head ablaze.
This caused the whole congregation to break into panic.
    There were small fires exploding everywhere
and soon a wall of flame was swallowing the whole church. My father
rushed me to my mother but as we came together, the ceiling came
crashing down. I landed on the carpeted floor, but I lost sight of
my father. I turned and saw my mother pinned under a beam that had
caught fire. I crawled to her, unaware of the danger around me. I
came as close as I could before she urged me to stay away. She was
crying. I had never seen her cry before. That was when I realized
something was wrong. I tried to go to her, but she pushed me away.
She then looked back at me. She reached out and opened her hand to
me. I took it in my small baby hand. I felt the life drain from her
flesh and soon after that, I fell asleep.
    “Jake!” I suddenly came out of my memory. I
looked around and saw myself standing in the middle of the ruins of
my life.
    “Sorry. How did you know where this place
was?”
    “I didn’t. It was just on the route I found
on the map.”
    “I swore I’d never come back here. I can
still feel everything. I can see it all.”
    “I’m sorry.” I walked over to some old stone
pillars that had survived the fire. They were singed and cracked,
but as solid as ever.
    “It’s fine. I guess I had to come back
eventually. It’s hard to believe it all happened here. I was just a
baby,” My voice catching in my throat. “What was so important about
my soul that this demon had to kill all those innocent people to
take it? Why did it kill my parents? Why did any of this have to
happen to me?” I felt my normal composure melting away and tears
began to pour from my eyes. It was like a train of some bottled up
emotions was shooting through the walls I had spent so many years
of my life building up. My legs became numb and I fell to my knees
in the ash and dirt and the rage in my heart was growing so quickly
all I could do to vent it was to beat the ground with my fists. I
pounded down on the hard Earth with all the strength I could
generate. I felt the rocks and sticks buried under the dirt cut
into my hands and I saw the blood trickling down my arms, but even
then I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I kept clawing at the ground in
some vain attempt to exact revenge on something. I just wanted to
force my pain on something else, but as I did I began to realize my
pain wasn’t going away. I let out a howl of frustration just as
Ivar came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I
suddenly felt the same security I remembered from my mother. I felt
his strength pour into me and the storm within me faded.
    “We need to go.”
    “Yeah.”
    Ivar helped me up, but as we headed back to
the car, the ground began to shake. I stopped, frozen and an
explosion blasted a mountain of dirt and rocks into the air. When
the dust settled, I saw a giant rotted worm with a huge gaping
mouth complete with razor sharp