Fear

Chapter Eleven

"I don't like this."

The small blonde girl tugged on her older brother's arm, small pink duffel bag clutched in her arm, wet clothes soaked in rain and tears.

Ripped stocking stuck to her knees, torn from trips down the sidewalk, and memories of hopscotch.

"You don't have to like it." The older boy of barely thirteen summers gripped his little sister's hand.

They both stood in front of an oblong building, with dark windows, stone structures, and peeked tops.

It resembled a church, but also a penitentiary, full of locked up ghosts, and buried secrets.

They had never met their uncle on their father's side, he was a man no one seemed to know much about, only that he was a preacher at Saint Mary's, and a diplomatic man, that encouraged the town council to enforce curfew hours.

But the dread that seeped over both of the small shivering children was not to be ignored, but taken into consideration about the hell they were both soon going to encounter.

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The only sounds to be heard were broken whispers and shuffled paper.

It resonated a low hum so unimaginably boring to most of the group in the large room.

Grieving families sat over, and next to several council members to discuss funeral arrangements, tears, stacks of paper, and handshakes were countlessly exchanged between person to person.

Louden himself had already been to thirty five funerals in the past twenty four hours.

The traditional rites were read, incense burned, and blood let from his own skin.

It was tiring, warrior training taking up most parts of the day, leaving the small fraction of his pack exhausted.

Unfortunately the empty abyss he felt in his heart by the toll taken on their land was not letting up.

Half of his territory was engulfed by seemingly eternally burning flames, every prevention and solution they had to it seemed to be fruitless.

They couldn't handle another attack if one happened. That's what scared him the most.

The far-off look everyone seemed to carry heavily on their shoulders weighed just as heavy on his mind.

He was supposed to protect his pack, not lead it in the ground.

But that's what you're doing, isn't it?

Every moment alive since he felt like he was just teasing the boundary of sanity, but lately it felt like he was hanging off the edge.