Bleeding Demons: The Dark Bloods - Book III ✓

Chapter 16 - The Broken Jade and Onyx World

Verden had given them an hour to gather themselves. That's all Reyna absorbed from his words. An hour to gather the remains of her existence, the relief that Dante was alive, the disbelief that Gahn was dead, the songs of the power in her head. She was walking away from everyone before she even knew her legs moved.

She felt like she was in a void. Maybe she had never actually left the spirit world. Lys would appear any moment and attack her. Of course if that happened, Reyna would've screamed and given into the insanity that bit at her heels. She would've allowed to be torn in half if not for the mental relief of what she had gone through but at least for the silence. An end to the hum in her head, the miasma of whispers and hymns and whimpers. The sound of her dark blood.

A cry, a real one that wasn't from her deranged brain, caught her attention. The sobs came from behind one of the trees in front of her.

"Dante!" she said because even though Reyna had walked off alone, she knew Dante had been there with her, and suddenly the symphony in her mind dispersed. But when he paused by the trunk, eyes wide and mouth open, Reyna felt her heart stop.

"They're dead," she said even though she wasn't seeing what he was.

Oh god no. No.

She had never been able to sense death before, but she felt it now. It was a disappearing mist, like a fire losing its warmth. The waves shortened and wavered until all was cold and gone. But there was also another energy, and that one pulsed strong and vigorous. And familiar.

"Anna!" Reyna rushed to the base of the tree.

The dried blood on the little girl's brown face and arms looked like she had been messily finger painting only to grow bored and throw the sole color on the ground. The two corpses–one on each side of her—dismissed the innocent scenario Reyna wished was the actual truth. She took a step back as if what she was seeing was a force that pushed her.

"Diorela. Michael," she whispered.

The two teens were incomplete. Michael's legs were gone, one from the knee down and the other from the thigh down. The blood around him was fanned out with the clear strokes of a struggle. Dirorela's right side was entirely gone as if a giant blade had fallen from the sky, went through her head down to her groin, and whisked away half her body. Her left arm along with Michael's right clutched Anna with such ferocity Reyna felt the little girl would be held there forever.

"Just look at me, Anna, okay?" Dante's voice sounded far away.

Reyna saw in slow motion as he bent down to pick up Anna. No, Reyna wanted to say. No. Anna was stuck there, couldn't he see? She was stuck there forever in the arms of those that protected her. If he moved her now, Anna would disappear.

But he plucked her away and Anna wailed in his arms, her own clutched around his neck. She cried out the same phrase over and over and through Reyna didn't understand it, they rang like a prayer.

Verden came to heed it. He took Anna from Dante; she clung to him as if to commit him to memory and buried her head in his shoulder. Verden glanced at Diorela and Michael. His jaw set, bowing his head as he hugged Anna tighter.

"Reyna."

She felt a touch on her shoulder that jerked her out of her nightmarish haze where death was felt in her chest and perched on her friends' faces. Dante gazed at her. Shadows rested on his face, and his eyes screamed with the same turmoil that charred inside her.

"Let's go," he said.

Had they been heading somewhere to talk? Is that why she had started walking in the first place? She continued. Her steps felt heavy even though Dante's hand held hers, and when he stopped her, she welcomed it.