FallOut (BOOK 2)

-13-

-ERIC-

I've always thought that it was cliché when someone described waking up out of a fog, but...this must have been what they meant. Except...this wasn't comforting. I didn't feel safe. If anything, the fog here was foreboding. The cabin was bleak, and...dammit. I'm not in Blackwood Mountain anymore. This cabin is centuries old. Where the hell am I?

"I apologize for the theatrics," a man with a wide-brimmed hat and slight English accent greeted me.

When he removes his hat, I see that I have another distant as hell relative.

"Issac Worel," he continues.

"Eric King," I reply with a nod.

"I should've been stronger..." He murmured. "I should have fought harder. But you weren't to question a reverend, no matter how twisted he had become."

"Who?" I asked, taking in my bearings.

I realized that I was in Little Hope... but it wasn't the place I drove through with Rachel years ago. She had described it as "quaint, but empty." She went on to describe the urban legends of the place. I wish I'd listened back then.

"He calls himself Reverend Carver," Isaac informs me. "But I know better now. He's the Devil!"

A sharp chill shot up my spine, even though I'm sure Lucifer wasn't worried about Little Hope. Azreal and the others were the problem right now. But I'm not going to correct him. I need information.

"What did he do?" I asked calmly.

"I-he's lured people...people who look like you and I," Isaac reveals in a shaky voice. "He's killed them...over and over again, haunting them with their doubles! They're all stuck here. All of us are!"

"The doubles..." I sigh, taking a deep breath before I continue, "They weren't witches or demons. The people he had you kill... they were innocent."

Horror and disgust wash over Isaac, and it made me wonder if I've been looking as haunted as he does now. But then, a hardened resolve steels him. He doesn't want to wallow in the pain of what he's made to do. He wants information . He wants revenge. We're related, after all.

"Who are they?" he asked in a steady.

"There are certain people who were tasked with fighting demons," I explain. "Bloodlines. For some reason, we resemble one another. Carver must be working with Lucifer to stop us."

"What is he trying to stop us from?" Issac asks next.

"Our bloodlines are the only thing standing in the way of Lucifer being freed from his cage," I inform him.

"...I've felt a shift here," Isaac murmurs as he walks around the cabin. "More people have been lured here than usual...is that your doing?"

"My...yes, it is," I caught myself from calling them "my team." I'm still working on that. "There are seals that keep Lucifer in place. We've kept one from being broken, and we're working on saving another one."

"I think there's a Seal here," Isaac realized, motioning me to join him at the only window in the cabin.

When I joined Isaac at the window, I realized  how much that Little Hope is, the kind of town that feels like it's stuck in time.  I couldn't help but notice the thick fog that seemed to hang in the air, giving the place an eerie, almost surreal quality. The streets are lined with old, weathered buildings that look like they haven't seen a fresh coat of paint in centuries, from what little I could make out.